The user interface

  • 10 minutes

As a developer, you should explore the finance and operations apps user interface and become familiar with the functionality in the application. By exploring the user interface, you can develop better code to help users complete their tasks. When you begin using finance and operations apps, you will notice that Dynamics 365 has a familiar appearance and behavior across the entire Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Functionality in the finance and operations apps user interface provides key components that enable you to work more efficiently.

  • Navigation search - Any page that is accessed by using the Navigation pane menu (the left-most pane) is also available from the Search field. You can press Alt + G to move focus to the Search field, and then type the name of the finance and operations apps page. The Search field spans the top of the application user interface.
  • Action search - While every action that is provided on a page can be manually accessed from the keyboard, pages often have a lot of actions. The Action search functionality allows you to quickly and efficiently perform actions that you know the names of and with just a few keystrokes. You can press Alt + G to move focus to the Search field, and then start typing the name of the action. Usually after a few letters, the action you are looking for will be high in the results list.
  • Workspaces - Workspaces enable users to be more productive in their daily tasks by providing a single page that they can work from to perform the operations they do daily. Several workspaces come out of the box with finance and operations apps. Workspaces can also be created and modified in the user interface with no development.
  • User personalization - Users can personalize pages in finance and operations apps. Many types of personalization exist, including user options, where you can select a color theme and time zone. Personalization can also be used to change the way the user interface is displayed. For example, a user can specify how pages display when they are first opened. Personalization can also modify the appearance of a page. For example, you can hide, move, and rearrange columns on a grid. Note that user personalization is for that specific user, regardless of the type of personalization.
  • Task recorder - In finance and operations apps, the Task recorder focuses on high-responsiveness, a flexible extensibility application programming interface, and seamless integrations with consumers of business process recordings. The Task recorder has integrations with the Lifecycle Services Business process modeler (BPM) tool, which enables you to create business process diagrams from task recordings for analyzing and designing applications. You can use task recordings to create guided experiences through a business process, generate training documents that feature screenshots of the user interface at each step, and build tests that validate your code.
  • Office integrations - Several Office integrations that are offered in finance and operations apps help increase productivity. Office interactions include the Excel Data Connector add-in. This add-in allows you to export data from finance and operations apps to a Microsoft Excel workbook, including adding, modifying, and deleting records. The add-in also has a Workbook Designer that enables you to design an editable custom export workbook that contains an entity and set of fields. Other office integrations include document management to save records to the Azure Blob Storage.

Watch this video to learn more about the user interface in finance and operations apps.