RapidStart Project – Customizations

While RapidStart Project is an excellent project management app, it is designed to be further customized. Depending on your knowledge of Power Apps, you may be capable of doing this yourself. We consider the instructions in this post to be “safe”, provided you do not deviate from them.

The steps to customize RapidStart Project are the same as those for Dynamics 365 first-party applications. You will create an “unmanaged” solution in your environment, then add the RapidStart Project components to it that you want to customize, and then perform your customizations there.

You can perform this work in two places: the new “Maker” experience or the “Classic” experience. Since Microsoft is phasing out the “Classic” experience, we will use the modern “Maker” approach.

Note: If you plan on customizing many components, you should consider creating a development-purposed copy of your environment. Instructions for that are in the Tips and Tricks section of the RapidStart Blog. The guidance below is for “minor tweaks.”

Two common requests from RapidStart Project customers are to add columns (previously referred to as fields) to forms and also to customize views.

For our first scenario, we will add a column to the RapidStart Project Time Entry Form. In our second scenario below, we will customize a view. The same steps will apply to any forms or views in RapidStart Project.

Adding a Column to a Form

Log in to https://make.powerapps.com

(1) Confirm you are in the correct environment.
(2) Select “Solutions”.
(3) Then click “+ New solution”.

(1) Give your solution a name.
(2) Select “CDS Default Publisher”.
(3) Click “Create”.

(1) You will see your new solution in the list.
(2) Click the ellipses.
(3) Click “edit”.

(1) In the window that opens, you will see your new solution is empty.
(2) Select “+ Add existing”.
(3) Click “Table” (Formerly Entity).

(1) We want to add the “Time Entry” table by checking it.
(2) Then click “Next”.

If we plan to make a lot of changes, we may want to
(1) “Include all components”.
(2) and the “Metadata”.
(3) For this exercise, we will click the “Select Components” link.

(1) We are looking for the main form, so we will limit our view by selecting “Forms”.
(2) then select the Main “Opportunity” form.
(3) and click “Add” to add the form to our solution.

(1) We can now see the Main Time Entry form in our solution.
(2) Click the ellipses.
(3) Select “Edit”.

In the form designer, select “+New Column”.

(1) In the new column creation form, give your column a name.
(2) Select the type of data you want to capture.
(3) Provide an optional description.
(4) and click “Done”.

We can now see our new column in the columns list.

(1) Drag the new column from the columns list onto the form where you want it to appear.
(2) Click “Save”.
(3) then “Publish” your changes.

Returning to the RapidStart PROJECT App, we can now see our new column on the Time Entry form. Users may need to refresh their browsers to see the changes.

Customizing Views

For this exercise, we will customize a view of our Time Entries to display the column we created above. We assume you followed the steps above to create a new column.

If you are not still in the maker portal,  log back in to https://make.powerapps.com

(1) Confirm you are working in the correct environment.
(2) Select “Solutions”.
(3) you will see your solution.
(4) Click the ellipses.
(5) then click “Edit”.

(1) Filter the components by clicking “Views”.
(2) You will see that you have not added any Views to this solution.
(3) Click “+ Add subcomponents”.

(1) In the subcomponent selector, click “Views”.
(2) Select the view(s) you want to modify.
(3) then click “Add” to add them to your solution.

(1) Back in your solution, select “Views”, and you will see the view(s) in your solution.
(2) to edit, select the view’s name.

(1) You can see the previously created custom column in the column list.
(2) You can change the name of the view.
(3) as well as the view sorting.
(4) and filtering.

(1) To add your column, click “+ Add column”.
(2) then select your column to add it to the view.

(1) You can see your column has been added.
(2) You can drag it to the position you want.
(3) You can also edit other properties like width etc., by clicking the chevron.
(4) When you are done, click “Save”.
(5) then “Publish” your changes.

Returning to the RapidStart Project App, we can now see our new column on the Time Entries view. Users may need to refresh their browsers to see the changes.