Field Level Security in Microsoft Dynamic CRM 2013

Introduction to field level security

Field level security is a security feature available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 using which administrators can configure individual fields in Dynamics CRM web application so that user will have restricted access to those fields.

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Online you can use field level security to configure security roles that control user and team access rights to specific fields and entities.

One important point to remember when enabling field security is that it can be implemented only for custom fields, and not for system fields.

Benefits of field security in Dynamics CRM 2013

Using field security users can be given Create, Read, Update to individual fields in Dynamics Web forms based on the security profiles.

A Security profile determines the following:

Permissions to the secure fields
Users and Teams

A Security Profile can be configured to grant the following permissions at the field level to the added users or teams:

Read (read-only access to the field’s data)
Create (users or teams in this profile can add data to this field when creating a record)
Update (users or teams in this profile can update the field’s data after it has been created)

A combination of these three permissions can be configured to determine the user privileges for a specific data field.

Also read: Introduction to Business Process Flows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

Enabling Field security for a field on an entity form

In order to restrict access to individual form fields, field security should be enabled first and which includes the following two high level steps:

1. Mark the field as a secure field (enable it to be secure); and

2. Configure Security Profiles

1. Mark the field as a secure field (enable it to be secure)

Figure -1: Enable field security for a field by selecting ‘enabled’ option

This can be done by enabling the field security option on the form definition window and selecting ‘Enabled’ option as shown below.
Settings-> Customizations -> Customize the system -> Entities -> Entity Name -> Field Name.

2. Create field security profiles

Once the field(s) is enabled for field security, then we can create or use existing field security profiles to configure security to users belong to that profiles. These security profiles are similar to security roles in Dynamics CRM.

Security profiles are nothing but the means to configure field security to users by adding them to these profiles.

Field level security profiles can be created in the following Settings section: Settings -> Administration -> Fiel Level Security Profiles.

Figure -2: Existing security profiles in the system

Figure -3: Details of a security profile

Add users or team to the profile

Once a security profile is created Dynamics CRM users can be added to the profile to whom field security need to be enabled.

Figure -4 : Adding uses to a security profile

Edit field permissions

Clicking on ‘Field Permissions’ navigation link on left side to to view the fields for which field level security is enabled.

Click on ‘Edit’ button on top to open the field permissions window for the particular field selected in the Field permission window. You can select yes to to give ‘Read’, Update and Create permissions to the selected field level security profile.

Field permissions window can also be opened by double clicking on the field selected.