The following are the main views present for any entity:

• Active records: This view shows the active records of the entity.
• Inactive records: This view shows the inactive records of the entity.
• Associated records view: This view shows the associated records (N:1 and N:N) of the entity with other entities.
• Lookup view: This view appears on the 1:N control.
• Advanced find view: This view allows users to create queries, and save and export the results. This can also be converted into a personal view so that the query is saved. Bulk operations, such as updation of records, are also possible using the advanced find view.

To modify any existing view or to create a new one, the user can navigate to Settings | Solution and open a solution containing the entity. The following screenshot explains the steps. For the sake of this example, we will use the out-of-box Contact entity:

To modify an existing view, just double click on View:

To add columns in the view, you can click on the Add Columns button appearing on the right-hand side of the popup window. This will open a list of columns that the user can select. Dynamics CRM also provides the capability of adding the attributes of related entities:

To edit the filter criteria, that is, conditions that will be applied on the records present in the entity, you can click on the Edit Filter Criteria link, and then select the column attribute and the appropriate filter value:

You can sort the records coming in the view by clicking on the Configure Sorting link. This will open a popup window, where you can select the attributes on which you want the sorting to be applied:

You can also alter the length of the columns by double-clicking on the respective column. This will open a popup window where you can then select the width you want for that column:

To create a new column, you can just navigate to the list of views and create a new view: