Remove attributes from form which cannot be removed

There are some attributes on CRM default forms which you cannot remove. This post will show you how you can do this anyway. While doing so, please keep in mind that Microsoft must have good reasons to fix attributes on the form. Removing this might have implications, as always have a good backup ready.

The steps you need to follow to remove are:
- Export customizations for the specific entity
- Modify the form in the customizations xml
- Import the modified customizations

Since most of you are well known with CRM I will skip the Export and Import of customizations. If you need assistance with this, then don't try this change anyway :) To modify the customizations, open the file in notepad or another XML editor. In this file look for this path:

ImportExportXml - Entities - Entity - FormXml - forms - entity - form - tabs

Within tabs look for the tab with the correct name and similar for the sections. Get a bit familiar with the section xml once you have found the correct section. You'll find that there are a couple of lines that you need to remove. This is the example for the subjectid on the case entity:

<cell id="{a9859c32-0cdc-41b5-8e7e-3eb173cab4a8}">
<labels>
<label description="Onderwerp" languagecode="1043" />
<label description="Subject" languagecode="1033" />
</labels>
<control id="subjectid" classid="{270BD3DB-D9AF-4782-9025-509E298DEC0A}" datafieldname="subjectid" />
</cell>

Attributes which are locked on the form includes the following:
case - subjectid
case - contractid
case - contractdetailid

Note: Some of the attributes are used in hidden javascript codes. For instance the case contract contractid is used in the script for the customer onchange. You can also look at removing those scripts from the customizations file.

Changing default organisation

You can change the default organisation by opening the configuration manager. In this tool you can rightclick on the organisation which you want to set as default and click "set as default". You'll see that the name of the organisation has changed to: Orgname (default).

After you perform an IISReset you would expect the new default organisation to open up when you browse to your CRM server. Unfortunately that doesn't work immediately. My fellow MVP Marco Amoedo wrote this post in the community to explain why and how to change that behavior:

Hi Tony,

The default organisation will no change for the already created users, this change will only be applied for new users created after the change. This means that this changes is not applied in a retroactive fashion, only the new users that you create will have that organisation as default.

Each user record have stored the default organisation, so you would need to change them for each one of the already created users. You have two mechanisms. Either use this tool provided by Microsoft Support

Or directly modify the CRM Database to change the DefaultOrganizationId on the SystemUser table (like it is proposed here http://chicagotech.net/netforums/viewtopic.php?t=6046)

In either case, make a backup of the databases before just in case.

Hope it helps

Marco Amoedo