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Visual Hierarchies in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 allow users to visualise hierarchical relationships e.g. A group company structure. The feature is available out of the box to allow users to visualise hierarchies on Accounts, Cases, Contacts, Opportunities, Products, Teams, and User entities. This feature can also be enabled with any other system or custom entity within Dynamics CRM.
Where a parent/child relationship is available a hierarchy icon will appear next to the record in all views. This is illustrated below:
In the example above each entry in the view has a hierarchy icon next to the record. Clicking on the icon will open a visual display of the hierarchy as illustrated below. The information shown for each "Card" is also configurable in Dynamics CRM, via the Form Editor.
This feature enables users to visualise the parent-child relationship records in a simplified visualisation, instead of viewing in a flat list of records. Visual hierarchies comes with Dynamics CRM 2016 as standard which means there are no additional costs.
Hierarchies are easy to set up in Dynamics CRM, however before a Hierarchy setting can be used, the “Hierarchical” relationship must be marked accordingly for 1: N, N: 1 and N:N relationships.
What are the Benefits?
Visual Hierarchies help users to understand an organisation’s hierarchy through a “Family Tree” form of visualisation, it is also useful for other functionalities, for example:
1. Multilevel Mode hierarchy for Partners or Individual Users so they don’t need to build any custom reports to see which record is under which parent record
2. In regards to the organisational business reporting line, users can see the visualisation of the Position Hierarchy and Reporting Line Hierarchy, so they can easily check if the hierarchy is correctly set up
3. Visualisation can help users see the summary of records with specific important information shown in the hierarchy layout. This allows users to see how each entry in the hierachy contributes to the overall group e.g. sales per branch.
How to create a Visual Hierarchy Relationship
The video below demonstrates how to create a visual hierarchy with Dynamics CRM: