Enhancing Dataverse Views with Custom Icons, Tooltips & Visualizations (Dynamics 365)

While working with Model-driven apps, sometimes a visual indicator can make a view much easier to scan.

For example, instead of displaying simple text like Priority – Hot, Warm and Cold.

we can display an icon based on the value along with the field value. And we can also display a tooltip when the user hovers over the icon.

Microsoft Power Apps supports adding custom icons and tooltips to columns in views using image web resources and JavaScript. The JavaScript function determines which image and tooltip should be displayed for each row.

How it works

The JavaScript function receives the row data and the user’s LCID:

function displayPriorityIcon(rowData, userLCID) {
    var data = JSON.parse(rowData);
    var priority = parseInt(data.prioritycode_Value, 10);

    switch (priority) {
        case 1:
            return ["custom_PriorityHigh", "High Priority"];
        case 2:
            return ["custom_PriorityMedium", "Medium Priority"];
        case 3:
            return ["custom_PriorityLow", "Low Priority"];
        default:
            return ["", ""];
    }
}

The function returns an array containing: [imageName, tooltip]

For example: return [“custom_PriorityHigh”, “High Priority”];

The image names refer to image web resources that we add to the solution.

The userLCID parameter can also be used when tooltip text needs to be localized for different users.

Microsoft recommends using 16 × 16 pixel images for these icons. Also, when working with Choice columns, it is better to use the underlying integer value rather than the label, since labels can be localized.

Configure the view

The JavaScript web resource and function are then specified for the column in the view.

Open the view for customization, select Edit Properties for the column

Specify the Web resource and Function Name there.

Once published, the appropriate icon and tooltip are displayed based on the row data.

This can be particularly useful for columns such as:

Priority
Risk
SLA status
Customer health
Approval status
Integration status

The icon provides the visual signal, while the tooltip provides additional context.

A note about Column Visualizations

There is also a newer option available in Power Apps: Custom Column Visualizations for grids and views.

These can render column data as a Heat Map, Line Chart, Radial Dial, or Star Rating, allowing users to compare values visually within a grid.

I covered this feature in more detail in my earlier post: Column Visualizations for Grids / Views (Preview) – Dataverse / Dynamics 365

So, if we simply need a small dynamic icon with a tooltip, custom icons are a useful option. If we need a richer visualization of the underlying data, Column Visualizations may be worth considering.

Custom icons are configured per view, whereas the newer Column Visualizations are configured on the column and automatically appear wherever that column is used in grids/views.

Custom icons are configured as part of the view definition, whereas Column Visualizations are configured at the column level.

Custom icons and tooltips are supported for read-only grids. They aren’t supported for editable grids.

Hope it helps ..

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Drawer Lookup Control in Dynamics 365 (A better lookup experience on mobile)

I recently came across a small but useful addition to the Dynamics 365 / Power Apps lookup experience: the Drawer Lookup Control.

With the standard lookup, selecting a value typically opens the familiar lookup experience.

With Drawer Lookup, the records are displayed in a bottom-sheet style drawer, making it easier to search and select a record on a phone or tablet.

This is how it would look on Web –

How to Configure It

The configuration is quite simple. Open the form in Power Apps, select the lookup field, and go to Components.

Select:

+ Component → Drawer Lookup Control

We can then configure the lookup click-through behavior:

Enable lookup clickthrough
Disable lookup clickthrough

The control can also be enabled for the Web, Mobile, and Tablet experiences.

This is especially useful when we have forms that are frequently used from mobile devices, and users need to select records from lookup lists like leads, contacts, accounts, work orders etc.

The Disable lookup clickthrough option can also help prevent users from accidentally navigating away from the current form when interacting with a lookup value.

It is a relatively small UI enhancement, but for mobile-heavy Dynamics 365 implementations, these small improvements can make the experience noticeably cleaner. If we have forms that are heavily used on phones or tablets, Drawer Lookup Control is definitely worth trying.

References

Hope it helps..

How to Enable Microsoft 365 Copilot in Model-Driven Apps

Microsoft 365 Copilot brings conversational AI directly into Model-Driven Apps, allowing users to ask natural language questions about Dataverse data, quickly locate records, and improve productivity without leaving the application.

In this post, we walk through the steps we follow to enable Microsoft 365 Copilot in a Model-Driven App, covering the tenant, environment, and application-level configuration required before the feature becomes available.

What We Need Before We Start

Microsoft 365 Administrator permissions for tenant-level Copilot settings.
Power Platform Administrator access to the target environment.
Dataverse Search enabled for the environment (Default or On).
Sufficient Dataverse database capacity — Microsoft 365 Copilot for Model-Driven Apps relies on Dataverse Search indexing, and turning it on can increase capacity consumption.
Appropriate licensing (covered in Step 4 below).

Step 1: Enable Dataverse Data in Microsoft 365 Copilot (Tenant Level)

Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Copilot → Settings, and locate Dataverse data available in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Turn it on and choose either All Users or Specific Groups, then Save.

This is a tenant-level setting; it must be enabled before users can access Dataverse data through Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Step 2: Enable Dataverse Search for the Environment

Go to Power Platform Admin Center → Environments → select the environment → Settings → Product → Features, and set Dataverse Search to On, then save.

Dataverse Search is what powers the indexing behind Copilot’s answers, so this has to be on before Copilot can ground its responses in your table data.

Step 3: Verify Dataverse Capacity

Since Microsoft 365 Copilot for Model-Driven Apps relies on Dataverse Search indexing, make sure the environment has enough Dataverse database capacity to support indexing, semantic search, and the Copilot queries themselves. Check this under Power Platform Admin Center → Licensing → Capacity add-on for the environment before rolling this out to a production environment with a large dataset.

Step 4: Verify Licensing

Licensing depends on where the app lives:

Power Apps (Custom Model-Driven Apps) — users need a Power Apps Premium license together with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
Dynamics 365 apps — users need a qualifying Dynamics 365 Enterprise or Premium license. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is also required to unlock advanced Work IQ capabilities beyond standard Dataverse grounding.

Worth confirming this with your licensing/procurement team before you promise the feature to end users — a missing Microsoft 365 Copilot license is one of the most common reasons Copilot doesn’t show up for a user even after everything else is configured correctly.

Step 5: Enable Microsoft 365 Copilot for the Environment

Go to Power Platform Admin Center → Copilot → Settings. Under Power Apps, expand Copilot in Apps, choose Microsoft 365 Copilot, select the environment (or environment group), select Edit Setting, turn it On, and Save.

Step 6: Enable It for the Model-Driven App

Open the app in the Power Apps Maker Portal → Settings → Features, set M365 Copilot in model-driven apps to On, then Save and Publish the app.

Enable It for All Model-Driven Apps in an Environment

If you’d rather turn this on once instead of app by app, open the Default Solution → Objects → Settings, locate Enable M365 Copilot in model-driven apps, add the value if it doesn’t already exist, set it to 2, Save, and Publish the change.

What Users Will See

Once everything is configured, users can open Copilot → Chat from the top-right corner of the Model-Driven App and start asking natural language questions about Dataverse records.

The current experience is read-only by default: Copilot can find and summarize data, but it can’t make changes on the user’s behalf unless you’ve customized it with an agent. It’s also worth knowing that Microsoft 365 Copilot for Model-Driven Apps isn’t available in the Power Apps mobile app yet.

Microsoft 365 Copilot vs. Copilot Chat: What’s Changing?

If you’ve previously enabled Copilot Chat in Model-Driven Apps, you’ll now see two options in the Copilot menu: Chat and App Skills. This is part of Microsoft’s transition to Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is becoming the standard AI experience across Power Apps and Dynamics 365.

Area	Microsoft 365 Copilot (Chat)	Copilot Chat (App Skills)
Status	Recommended, actively evolving	Being deprecated
Availability	Power Apps and Dynamics 365	Preview in Power Apps
Dataverse queries	Yes	Yes
Navigation	Yes	Yes
Future direction	Microsoft’s strategic platform	Transitioning out

Deprecation Timeline

Microsoft has announced that Copilot Chat in Model-Driven Apps, for Power Apps environments not enabled for Dynamics 365 apps, began its deprecation starting in January 2026. During the transition period, organizations can enable either one or both experiences while users migrate.

What Users Will See During the Transition

Chat opens Microsoft 365 Copilot.
App Skills opens the legacy Copilot Chat experience.
Both experiences can coexist during the transition.

Recommendation

For new implementations, enable Microsoft 365 Copilot rather than investing further in the legacy Copilot Chat experience. Since Microsoft is standardizing AI experiences across Power Apps and Dynamics 365 around Microsoft 365 Copilot, adopting it now saves you a migration later and gives users access to the latest Dataverse-grounded capabilities, including Work IQ where licensed.

Reference Links

Hope it helps..

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Understanding the Hidden Property for Choice Datatype in Dataverse / Dynamics 365

Dataverse provides a flexible way to manage data through choice (option set) fields. One of the newer enhancements is the Hidden property, which allows administrators to hide specific choice values from selection while retaining them in the system.

To see it in action,

Navigate to Dataverse Table Designer in the Power Apps Maker Portal, and select the Choice (Option Set) field.

Here we have selected the Origin choice field of the Case table.

We have selected the Twitter choice value.

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Click on a particular choice value and open Additional Properties, check the Hidden checkbox, and save and publish the changes.

After applying these settings,

Hidden choice values will not appear in dropdown lists when users create or update records.

Existing records with hidden values will still display them in forms and views.

We can see the option greyed out for the record having that existing hidden value.

Business rules and workflows can still reference hidden values.
The hidden choice remains in the metadata and can be retrieved using FetchXML, OData, or SDK queries.
Power Automate flows triggered on record updates will still recognize hidden values.

We can use this new feature for the deprecating values that should no longer be used but still need to exist in historical data. Also, we need to communicate changes to users to prevent confusion when certain values disappear from selection lists. And finally, we should consider data migration and cleanup if a value should never be used again.

Thus, the Hidden property for choice fields in Dataverse provides a powerful way for us to manage choice options dynamically without affecting existing records. By leveraging this feature, we can ensure a smoother transition when phasing out obsolete values while maintaining data integrity.

Hope it helps..

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How to use the setIsValid Method in Dataverse / Dynamics 365

We can use the setIsValid method for validating field values in Model-driven apps. This method helps ensure that the data entered by users meets the required criteria before it’s processed or saved.

The setIsValid method is used to set the validity of a column’s value. It can mark a field as valid or invalid based on custom validation logic.

formContext.getAttribute(arg).setIsValid(bool, message);

bool: A Boolean value. Set to false to mark the column value as invalid, and true to mark it as valid.

message: (Optional) A string containing the message to display when the value is invalid.

Below we are using the setIsValid method in the function that ensures that the “End Date” is earlier than or equal to the “Start Date”, else it will mark the “End Date” as invalid.

function validateDates(executionContext) {
    var formContext = executionContext.getFormContext();
    var startDate = formContext.getAttribute("custom_startdate");
    var endDate = formContext.getAttribute("custom_enddate");
  
    if (startDate && endDate && endDate.getValue() <= startDate.getValue()) {
        endDate.setIsValid(false, "End Date must be after Start Date.");
    } else {
        endDate.setIsValid(true);
    }
}

We have it registered in the On Change of the ‘Start Date’ and ‘End Date’ fields.

Here if we try saving the record, if the End Date is smaller than the Start Date, we will get the message specified.

Hope it helps..

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Manage solution dependencies easily through the refreshed look – Dataverse

In Dataverse, solution dependencies are a vital aspect of managing and deploying applications. Dependencies ensure that required components are present for a solution to work seamlessly across environments. However, with complex solutions, understanding and managing these dependencies can become overwhelming.

The updated dependencies page is designed to simplify dependency management by offering a more intuitive, action-driven experience.

Select a particular component in the solution, right-click>> Advanced >> Show dependencies.

We can see 3 different tabs.

Delete Blocked By (tab): Displays any dependencies preventing deletion of a component. Below we can see that for the Age column, it shows Contact’s System Form as the dependency.

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Clicking on the Open option takes us to the component page, where we can see all the forms for the contact table.

Used By (tab): Lists other components dependent on the selected component.

Uses (tab): Shows dependencies that the selected component relies upon.

On clicking Open, it opens the Columns page for that table.

The different actions that we can take are Open and inspect the object, Delete the object, Remove dependency, and open the relevant documentation.

Below we have selected the option Remove dependency. As we saw the dependency here refers to the Contact System form in which we have the age field used.