If you’ve ever tried to use Read-Only fields, you may have run into a common issue–there’s no way to actually update that field! At least, it can seem that way, especially if you want to use a Workflow to set the field. A great example of this is the name field. We have many clients who want to use a standardized format for record names–for example, naming Opportunities Account – Created On Date – Est Revenue, or naming Leads Last Name – Topic.
There are tons of reasons why you may want to set a field to read-only on a form–below, I’ll show you how to set it by workflow.
Click on “Form Editor” on the appropriate form:
Uncheck the “show unused fields”:
In this example, I want to set the Description field by workflow but make it Read-Only for users.
Add the field twice:
Open the field properties for one of the two fields and select “Field is Read Only”, click OK:
Open the field properties for the other duplicate field and unselect “Visible by default”, click OK:
This allows the user to only see the read-only field on the form, and allows administrators to set the hidden, not read-only version of the field from a workflow or with a Business Rule.
Hmm I tried this and it did not work. The workflow designer does not show the editable (hidden) field, only the read-only field. This was on Dynamics 365 Online.
I’ll have to update this for version 9–they seem to have changed the way this works, now. Now, you would add the field to your form, but DO NOT make it read only yet. Then, you would go create your workflow and specify what you want to enter in that field. After the workflow has been created and activated, you can go back and make the field read-only and the workflow will still write to it. I hope that helps! Let me know if you run into issues.
That did’t work either. The read only field’s value set from the WF is getting cleared after making the field read only
Hi Akhil,
While this tip did work at the time it was written, it looks like one of Microsoft’s updates has changed and removed the functionality–this isn’t working for me anymore, either.
thanks that worked for me (add the field twice)