How To Use The D365 Table Browser

There exist many forms to show the user data in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. However, sometimes it is very useful to look at all of the unfiltered data in a specific table. In this article, you will learn the multiple ways to use the D365 table browser. There have been many articles written about this topic by others. However, they do not always cover all of the ways of opening the table browsers. Therefore, I thought I would cover this topic briefly myself.

What Is The D365 Table Browser?

Before explaining how to open it, what is the D365 table browser? Ultimately, the table browser is essentially a form that will show the user all of the data in a specific table. As can be seen, it displays in a browser just like any other D365 form.

Table Browser URL

Why Learn The Manual Way of Getting the URL?

Most of the time, the people who are going to use the D365 table browser instead of the normal form to view data are developers. And if so, those developers can use the method I describe next to easily open the table browser form in an internet browser. However, this second method requires you to be on a machine with Visual Studio setup for D365 development. And this is not possible for TEST, UAT, and Production machines. And therefore, it is useful to know how to come up with the correct URL to put into any internet browser to use the Table Browser.

URL Formula

Follow this formula to use the table browser to view a table:

https://<environmentURL>/?mi=SysTableBrowser&tablename=<tablename>

Let’s walk through this step by step.

First, to get your environmentURL, open D365 to your environment, and look in the URL of your browser window. The browser will show https:// following my a bunch of characters that end in *cloudax.dynamics.com/. Take that whole first part of the url up to the forward slash and copy it into a notepad.

Secondly, add this text to the end of the URL you already have. Note, the case of the letters does not matter.

?mi=SysTableBrowser&TableName=

Thirdly, add to the end, the name of the table you wish to view. Often times you may not know the name of the table you wish to view. This is where this feature is usually used by a developer who can look up the name of the table by looking at the data sources used on a particular form. In any event, once you have the table name, add it to the end of your URL.

Finally, copy the text you have and paste it back into a browser.

One more thing to note. If your D365 user has a default company set, it will automatically be added to the URL. However, if you wish to specify a different company, you can do so by adding this text to the URL.

&cmp=<FourLetterCompanyID>

The final URL may look something like this:

https://dev713ef2c0ce428cc0aos.cloudax.dynamics.com/?mi=SysTableBrowser&TableName=InventItemGroup&cmp=USRT

Table Browser In Visual Studio

The D365 table browser can be opened from within Visual Studio. First, open the Application Explorer. Second, locate and select the table you wish to view. Thirdly, right click the node, and select ‘Open table browser‘.

The system will open a browser, and open the table browser form for this the selected table.

It is worthwhile to point out, that the URL in the browser that opens will contain the same URL shown in the first example. In this case, Visual Studio is generating this URL for us, which can be easier if you are already using Visual Studio. However, if you are in any other environment that does not have Visual Studio, understanding what URL to use is very helpful.

Google Extension

Lastly, the D365 table browser can be opened easily using a google extension.

First, open the link using the google chrome browser. Then, click the ‘Add to Chrome’ button.

Secondly, After installing the extension, click on the extension icon in the top right corner of the chrome browser.

Thirdly, the first time you use this extension, got the ‘Config’ tab, and enter the environmentURL. This is the first part of the URL found in the browser when you go to any form in the desired D365 environment.

Fourthly, go back to the ‘Table Browser Caller’ tab, and specify the Company ID that you wish to view.

Finally, enter the name of the table and click the Enter button. A new tab will be opened, with the URL that is generated by the Google Chrome Extension.

Ultimately, this extension is just helping to generate the URL the same way we did manually in the first step. This can help speed up the process if you forget this formula. However, it only works on the google chrome browser that you installed this extension on. If you are using a browser on another machine this will not work. You can either chose to download google chrome, and install this extension. Or, follow the formula as described in the first section.

Important Features

Column names

The D365 table browser will show all of the fields in the table, as columns across the top. However, it is important to realize that the names of each column will be the name of the field of the table. It will not show the ‘label’ property of each field. Therefore, if you are used to seeing fields in a different form, they likely will have a slightly different name in the table browser. For this reason, the table browser is most often used by developers.

Column Sort And Filtering

As a result of the table browser being a form, the filter and sort capabilities on each column can be used. In other forms, there may already be some filtering applied, causing not all of the data to show. In contrast, in the table browser, all of the records are shown. This can be useful when you are trying to look at all of the rows and understand the data.

Changing Data

An important thing to remember, is that data cannot be changed in Tier 2 and above machines. This means you cannot use the table browser to change data in a Production environment. You can create, edit and delete records in a tier 1 development machine. However, this is not usually recommended, as you may be bypassing validation or other code that would normally run if you were using the form designed for manipulating data in the table.

Visible Columns

Inside of Visual Studio, in the properties of each field, in a table, there is a property named ‘Visible‘. By default, this field is set to ‘Yes‘. However, it can be set to ‘No‘. When this property is set to ‘No‘, then this column will not show on any form, including the D365 Table Browser.

Therefore, there are times, when even the table browser will not show you all of the data stored in a table. In this case, you can open SQL Server Management Studio, and query all of the data, regardless of the value in the Visible property.

Use Cases

There have been many times when using the D365 table browser can be extremely useful. Sometimes you will use a form in Production and it is not clear why certain data is not showing. After some research into how the form works in a development environment, you realize the form is filtering the data on a particular field on the underlying table. However, that field is not shown to the user.

Sometimes you can use personalization to expose that field on the form. But other times that field is not part of a table that is a data source on the form. In this case and many others, using the table browser to quickly look at the data in the underlying tables can really help. And be done quickly and easily.

Consider this second use case. You find one record in a form that is ‘working’, but another one is not working as expected. You cannot see what is different between the two records. To help understand what is different, open the table browser. Next, filter the records to show the working record and non-working record only. Then, column by column, compare the values. Any values that are different ‘might’ be contributing to the difference in functionality.

These are often crude ways of investigating. And they are no replacement to the ability to debug the code. However, sometimes you are not able to replicate the issue in a development environment. And rather than waiting for a database backup to be taken, then restored to a dev environment, the table browser can help determine the problem.

Conclusion

There are certain times when it is very helpful to see the raw data in an underlying table. Using the D365 table browsers, users can view all the records in a table. Specifically, users can view the values in each column next to other records. And this can be done for tables and columns that are not always shown on the front end form. To use this tool, you do need to understand how to construct the right URL. But once you know how to do this, you can use this technique in any environment.

Peter Ramer

Peter Ramer is a part of the Managed Application Services team at RSM working on Microsoft Dynamics 365. He focuses on the Retail and Commerce industries. When he is not solving problems and finding ways to accelerate his clients' business, he enjoys time with his three kids and amazing wife.