Advanced find in Dynamics 365 CE

Advanced find is one most of practical tool in the Dynamic 365 CE. With the assistance of advanced find you can find lists of data with specific criteria, edit that data, export, review, and so much more.

Where to find Advanced find?

You can find advanced find in the right side of the navigation bar.

Click advance find.

How to use Advanced find?

Step 1:
Find all accounts, where annual revenue is greater than $ 10,000.00

Select the entity(in our scenario, it is account) and select the query.
Select field annual revenue.
Select operator greater than.
Enter value, $ 10,000.00

Step 2:
Click Results

What if you want to add more fields in results?

Step 1:
Click Advanced find near to file in the navigation bar.

Step 2:
Click edit column.

Step 3:
Click add column.

Select the column from the list.

Click Ok.

Step 4:
Now, there is a a requirement that I need to add data of related entity “Contacts”.
Click add column => Select Record type Primary Contact

Select field Email and click Ok.

Optional:
Column size can also be customized by selecting the field and then click on the change properties.

Click Ok and click on the Result button.

You can also use OR/AND operators in the query.

What if you want to save the query for future?

Step 1:
Click on the save as button.

Add details and click Save.

Saved views can be found in Saved Views and Use Saved Views.

Download XML:
The best feature of advanced find for technical guys is that you can download the XML of the query.
Fetch XML can be used in JavaScript and Plugins to fetch the data.
Fetch XML can also be used in SSRS reports.

Step 1:
Click on the Download Fetch XML.

Step 2:
Debug XML:

<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false">
  <entity name="account">
    <attribute name="name" />
    <attribute name="primarycontactid" />
    <attribute name="telephone1" />
    <attribute name="accountid" />
    <attribute name="revenue" />
    <order attribute="name" descending="false" />
    <filter type="and">
      <condition attribute="revenue" operator="gt" value="10000" />
    </filter>
    <link-entity name="contact" from="contactid" to="primarycontactid" visible="false" link-type="outer" alias="a_410707b195544cd984376608b1802904">
      <attribute name="emailaddress1" />
    </link-entity>
  </entity>
</fetch>

You can also edit this Fetch XML and get greater results at time when using JavaScript, plugins and SSRS reports.

If you find any difficulty or have any query/concern feel free connect 🙂