Enable and Customize the Custom Help Panes in Dynamics 365 Model-Driven Apps

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Did you know that you can enable and customize the Custom Help Panes in Dynamics 365 Model-Driven Apps? This was a new discovery for me, and maybe it can be useful for you too! 🙌

📌What Is This?

In Dynamics 365 and Model-driven apps, you can enable a setting that allows you to customize a dedicated help pane that appears when users click the question mark (?) in the main menu. This provides an excellent opportunity to include relevant and tailored assistance for your users.

👉 Documentation: Create custom help pages – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

🚧Activating the Setting

I encountered some challenges when trying to enable this feature using the Power Platform Admin Center. Initially, I suspected that the issue was related to language settings in the portal or browser, but that was not the case.

✅ Solution: Using the Classic Interface

To successfully enable the custom help pane, I had to switch to the classic interface. After enabling the setting, it took a few minutes before it was fully updated, allowing customization of the help pane.

In some environments, activating this feature directly from the Power Platform Admin Center may not be possible. However, by forcing the classic interface, the setting becomes available.

🔄 How to Force the Classic Interface

To switch to the classic interface, simply append ?forceclassic=1 to the end of your environment URL:

🔗 Example:
https://your-environment.crm4.dynamics.com/main.aspx?forceclassic=1

⚙️ Steps to Enable in Classic Interface

Step 1: Open your environment using the force classic parameter in the URL.

Step 2: Click the down arrow → Navigate to Settings → Administration.

Step 3: Select System Settings → Go to the General tab → Scroll down and Enable Custom Help Panes and Guided Tasks → Click OK

⏳ Note: It may take a few minutes and require a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) before the help panes appear when clicking the ? in the main menu.

🛠️How Does It Work?

Once this feature is enabled, you will see an empty help pane like the image below.

This can be customized by clicking the three dots and Edit like the image below:

Here you can create a custom help page with relevant information for your users. This can be incredibly useful for providing quick access to:

✅Checklists
✅Help dialogs (Balloons)
✅Links to internal resources
✅Videos, images and instructions
✅Coach marks
✅Sections
✅Other customized content (free text with bold, italic, underline, and strikeout font formats)

📍Configure Per Entity

You can tailor the help page for each entity in the system, both on main views, forms and more. This ensures that users receive contextually relevant assistance tailored to their workflow.

👉 Documentation: Context-sensitive custom help

For instance:

You can have different custom help pages for the case main view and when working with a case from a form.

Case Main View

Case Main Form

🚀 Deployable via Solutions

Another advantage is that custom help pages can be moved via solutions, making it easy to distribute them across environments.

👉 Documentation: Solutions and custom help pane content

You can add them to the solution by use Add existing > More > Other > Help Page.

Mark your custom help pages and click Add to add them to your solutions.

More information about solution and deployment from the documentation:

🔒 Security Considerations

For users to read the help page, their security roles must be updated with Read access to the Help Page table.

👉 Documentation: Privileges required

🎯 Why Use This?

Many organizations use external documents, intranet, or SharePoint to store user guides. But what if users could get the help they need exactly where they are working? This feature allows you to provide a better user interface and a more streamlined experience.

🔹 Increased productivity: Users don’t have to search for documentation.
🔹 Better onboarding: New employees can receive guidance directly in the system.
🔹 Reduced support needs: Frequently asked questions can be answered directly within the app.

📷 Example

Here is an example of how a customized help pane can look in Dynamics 365:

Below you can see a GIF showing how it can look:

Have you already tested this, or do you see how this could be useful for your organization or your customers?

Useful links

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