Introduction to Rollup Views in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Satyvir Jasra, 08 October 2017

Microsoft Dynamics 365 includes a feature called Rollup views, which allows users to view Activities of child record from its parent record. Until now, associated activities of custom entities were not rolled up to the related parent record.

In this blog, I will walk through the steps to accomplish this functionality by rolling up activities of a custom entity called “Event” to the Contact entity.

Since, Activities are already enabled for Contact Entity, we need to make sure that Activities are enabled for the child “Event” entity.

Next step is to create a custom 1: N relationship between “Contact” and “Event” entities. During the relationship setup, under “Relationship Behaviour” section, set “Rollup View” to “Cascade All”. Save the changes, and be sure to click on Publish All.

Let’ see Rollup Views in action. I created a new Event record called “Tech Expo” and selected “Alex Wu” in the Supervisor field.

Then I created a new Phone Call ctivity and selected “Tech Expo” in Regarding field. Since, Alex Wu is a record of Contact (Parent) type, I should be able to see activities of Tech Expo from Alex Wu’s activities. I opened the “Activity Associated View” in Alex Wu’s Contact Record for Include drop-down I selected “Related Regarding Records”. Then I was able to see the activities where Tech Expo was selected in Regarding field.

There are few things that you must keep in mind when trying to use Rollup View behaviour. Activities need to be enabled for both, parent and child entity. A custom relationship needs to be created, and cannot edit OOTB relationships.