HowTo: stay on account view while opening a contact on a column

Question

I am using a simple tree view on the left side for a company to see linked entities like opportunities, contacts, etc.,

When I click on a contact, my browser gets redirected to the contact, but I want to stay on the company view and load the contact details into the second or third column or just any sector on that company view.

Getting redirected to each record every time I click a link is annoying because I lose my track and sometimes I want to see the parent details while I see the details of a child record. In this case I want to keep the company view while I can load one contact on the same view without any page load or redirection.

Note: I am using a demo access to Dynamics CRM 2015 online and installed a plugin from a third party to get a tree view. The above is not dependent on my tree view. This can also be done for activities for example which is listed on right column by default. By clicking on an activity, I would like to see the activity details loaded in some panel on the middle column or anywhere I want, without being redirected.

Answer 1

You probably can make do with a Quick View.

Let's say you want to do this trick with Accounts and Contacts, to display info for contacts inside an Account. It goes like this:

1. Create a lookup inside Account, to Contact entity. Put it on the form (you can make it not visible, doesn't matter).

2. Create a "Quick View" form inside Contact. They are built similar to normal forms. Include all the info you want to display.

3. Go back to Account form, INSERT -> Quick View. Select the lookup you made in point 1, and the quick view you just created.

4. The quick view will display on the Account form, grabbing info from the Contact selected inside the lookup. If you left the new lookup visible, you can play with it and see how it works.

4b. You probably will now need to "link" the treeview with the lookup somehow (since it's third-party I'm unable to offer any insight about it). It will require a bit of javascript for sure.

For more details, as usual, refer to MSDN

Ps: If you want to try it out fast, skip #1 and pick "Primary contact" as field in #3 (it's standad, and most likely already on the form)