Dependency Checker – Tracking down unexplainable field changes

Ever have something wacky happen to a field in your Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement system and need to track down the underlying cause?

The field value gets changed or it gets blanked out?

You have already looked at your plugins and javascript running of the form but can’t find the culprit. Based on the audit log, it appears that it is being executed automatically but you can’t figure out what is the trigger event? Where do you look next and who do you call?

If these guys aren’t available

And you aren’t at the CRMUG Summit to ask the Medics

Then here is what you need to do

Go to Settings, Customizations, Entities. Select the entity that has the problematic field. Then open up the folder, select Fields and then in the Window that opens up, select the pesky field.

You will then see this customization Window.

When you click on Show Dependencies it will open this new Window.

Within this Window, you can get a list of all the other components in the system that utilize or reference this field. BTW, if you tried to delete the Field you would get the same info, assuming that there actually were dependencies, if not it would just delete the field. This would not be the preferred technique. 🙂

A list of the Component Types that you will see on the list as they are relevant to the specific field are:

1. Process – really good for identifying workflows that use this field.
2. Views
3. Form
4. Entity Relationship
5. SDK Messaging Processing Step

Note: Thanks to my fellow MVP and friend Andrew Butenko for steering me in this direction.