Choices column
In Dynamics 365 CRM / Power Apps we can define a column that allows a selection of multiple options. This is called the Choices column. Compare this with the Choice column which only allows one choice. This column is also known as MultiSelect Option Set or MultiSelect Picklist.
Visually the column looks like comma separated string:
But when you edit the Choices column, you can (de)select multiple choices (options):
This gives an easy and quick way for the user to select multiple choices.
One downside is that the list of choices can’t be changed easily. An administrator or solutions customizer needs to change this and publish it. If you have multiple environments, you also need to deploy the solution.
Another downside is related to integrating and reporting. The way this column type is being stored, makes it more work for this scenarios. The column is stored as text with a semicolon separated list of Choice id’s like:
interest@OData.Community.Display.V1.FormattedValue: "Marketing; Sales",
interest: "810510003,810510013",
This will give you the id’s of the selected Choices (and the names of these as added FormattedValue), but not the deselected Choices. These need to be queried from the metadata.
Spotler Set (Lijst) field
The Choices column would be a perfect candidate to synchronize to a Set (Lijst) field in Spotler. For example, the Interesses field:
In the Settings section in Spotler you can view and change this field:
From there you have the option to change the Set (Lijst) items to you whishes:
Syncing to Spotler
The connector can now synchronize to this field, the Set (Lijst) field. We enable and/or disable the items in Spotler, based on the Choices column in Dynamics 365 CRM.
This also works the other way around. When a customer updates his interest in Spotler, this will be synced back to Dynamics 365 CRM.
Optionally you can also synchronize the Choices column to a Text (Tekst) field, where it will be stored as semicolon separated text.
