With the Dynamics 365 App Designer, you can easily create your own apps within Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement . However, don’t confuse App Designer with Microsoft PowerApps or the Microsoft Power Platform. This is not the creation of an application with completely new functionalities or interfaces to other applications. Nevertheless, Dynamics 365 Standard Customizing is possible from within the App Designer. Rather, the App Designer helps to create a new separate area, including your own navigation, that serves a specific purpose. Such as the existing Microsoft applications Dynamics 365 for Sales or Dynamics 365 for Field Service.
Create an app with the Dynamics App Designer
The scenario for our app is as follows: A marketing employee should have the opportunity to create or edit companies and contacts in order to then bundle these data records into marketing lists and send emails via ClickDimensions. As you already read, it is easy to use third-party entities in the App Designer.
1. Click Settings, then click My Apps.
2. Click the plus icon on the right.
3. The App Designer will open. To start, you need to name the app. A description can be added if required. The URL to the app will be provided to you immediately.
4. The App Editor will then open. You can set which dashboards and business process flows should be available for the application.
5. To add an existing entity, click the plus sign in the top left.
6. Select the entities that should be present in your application. Alternatively, you can create new entities using standard customizing. For our case, we’ll add Accounts, Contacts, Marketing List, and ClickDimensions’ Email Send entity.
7. For the individual entities, you can specify again which shapes, views, charts or dashboards should be available.
8. Once you have made your selection, you can save the app and have it validated. The components are checked for completeness and dependencies.
9. If you have not fully edited a component or if there are dependencies on non-existent components, you will receive an error message. In our case, it’s the site map (navigation) and dependencies on the shapes. Fill in the missing dependencies and then edit the site map.
10. In the Sitemap Designer, name or specify Area, Group, and Subarea. Save and publish the site map.
11. Save and validate the app again. If you no longer receive any messages, you can publish the app.
12. Your app is now available for you to choose from. Note: The last image is a screenshot from Dynamics 365 with Unified Interface.
Reduce the complexity of your system with Dynamics App Designer
With the Dynamics 365 App Designer, you can quickly and easily reduce the complexity of your system. Provide your teams and employees with only the entities and functionalities they really need. Now some of you may be thinking: Wait a minute, isn’t that also possible via security roles? Yes, it is. However, this path can take a lot of time. So if you want to keep the effort low, we recommend that you use the Dynamics App Designer and lock the remaining applications for the user via the security roles.
