Dependent OptionSet(Picklist) consideration in Dynamic 365 CRM

Recently I was strike again with a very old and familiar requirement that we all might have come across in Microsoft Dynamic CRM –

How to create a dependent Pick-list/Option set list where the options of Second Pick-list are dependent on the Value of the First one.

We can achieve multilayer of dependency for so-called Pick-list/Option Set in Microsoft Dynamic CRM with the help of

           JavaScript coding, Form and Field level customization

Here is MSDN article which help to Create dependent OptionSets (picklists)

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg594433.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

You can find a very relevant tool (Dependent OptionSet Generator) to help in development of dependent picklist faster https://crmoptionsets.azurewebsites.net/

!!! Question is there a better way to achieve such requirement.

Can we not achieve this by using a Filtered lookup – no coding involve – will you not be happy with just customization and a much faster development!

Let us try to evaluate some benefits of using Filtered Lookup.

• Form's Related Records Filtering functionality to control the available selection of list items
• Easily add and deactivate list items, without changing any code.
• Almost no coding and debugging involved and a much faster development.
• Large dataset can be easily imported into lookup entities.

Disadvantage of Filtered Lookups

• Require creation of entities for possibly just one value.
• Report performance and other such retrieval performance problem as it may cost you with joins and linked entity.
• What if someone accidentally delete any record, it will be gone from all our records.
• All security role then must have full READ permission for such entities, otherwise user might face problem.
• Waste of resources-creating entities will have tables in SQL and other unnecessary empty fields would been created.
• Once the record is selected in Lookup and if user need to change then, it require more clicks.

Benefits of Optionset

• They are faster in form rendering, reports and any other retrieval operation.
• Neat and Clean
• Complete control from System Admin and System Customizer

Disadvantage of Optionset

• Require developer to code
• A little complex to play with Json configuration to add and remove optionset values.

One more CHALLENGE to our Implementation

Can we consider some more factor here ?

• Importing Data via Import Job  
• Bulk edit using Excel Online
• Integration with other System

As our implementation from either Dependent Picklist or Filtered Lookup are JavaScript (Client-side), they will ignore all validation that might be our Prime Objective.

So in this scenario, we need to implement Pre-Validation plugins, which will restrict user to not to select wrong options.  

I hope there will be more consideration to come with such a small requirement J.

Thanks,

Vipin Jaiswal

vipinjaiswal12@gmail.com

Guidelines to write good JavaScript code in Microsoft Dynamic CRMhttps://vjcity.blogspot.com/2019/08/guidelines-to-write-good-javascript.html