Error Field 'owning business unit' is required.

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Posted on by SR-11156

Recently, while performing update operations on some tables, I started receiving the following error message:

"Field 'owning business unit' is required."

The strange part is that this issue appeared out of nowhere, without any changes being made to the table structure or security settings. Previously, the same operations worked just fine.

I came across the "Record ownership across business units" option in the environment, but I’d like to understand it better before making any changes.

Has there been any recent update to Microsoft’s policies regarding this field? Or any new requirement for updating records in Dataverse tables?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

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Error handling

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Ravi-Prajapati 416 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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The error message "Field 'owning business unit' is required." during update operations suggests that the Owning Business Unit field is now mandatory for the records you're modifying. This requirement may have surfaced due to recent changes in your environment or updates to Microsoft Dataverse.

Understanding the 'Record Ownership Across Business Units' Feature:

The Record ownership across business units feature, introduced in preview, allows for greater flexibility by decoupling the Owner and Owning Business Unit fields. This means a record can be owned by a user in one business unit while being assigned to a different owning business unit. Enabling this feature allows you to explicitly set or update the Owning Business Unit field on records.

learn.microsoft.com

Potential Causes and Solutions:

Feature Activation:

Cause: If the Record ownership across business units feature was recently enabled in your environment, it might have introduced the requirement for the Owning Business Unit field during record updates.

Solution: Review your environment settings to determine if this feature has been activated. If so, ensure that all necessary fields, including Owning Business Unit, are appropriately handled during your update operations.

Form Customization:

Cause: The Owning Business Unit field might not be present on the forms you're using, leading to errors during updates.

Solution: Add the Owning Business Unit field to your forms to allow for proper data entry and updates. This can be done by customizing the form and including the Owning Business Unit field in the header or main body.
learn.microsoft.com

System Updates:

Cause: Microsoft periodically updates Dataverse, which can introduce new requirements or change existing behaviors.

Solution: Stay informed about recent updates to Dataverse by reviewing the official Microsoft documentation and update logs. This will help you understand any new requirements, such as the mandatory inclusion of the Owning Business Unit field during record updates.

Recommendations:

Review Environment Settings: Check if the Record ownership across business units feature is enabled in your environment. If it is, familiarize yourself with its implications and adjust your data management processes accordingly.

Update Forms and Processes: Ensure that all relevant forms include the Owning Business Unit field and that your data entry or update processes account for this field.

Consult Documentation: Regularly consult Microsoft's official documentation and community forums to stay updated on any changes that might affect your operations.

By understanding the role of the Owning Business Unit field and the impact of the Record ownership across business units feature, you can adjust your processes to resolve the error and maintain seamless operations.

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SR-11156 24 on at

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@Ravi-Prajapati Thanks for the explanation!
But it's strange for this to suddenly stop working, right? Especially without a clear warning.
I also looked through other forums but couldn't find anything explaining exactly what happened. Pretty frustrating.

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wyotim 2,545 on at

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I have been having this error as well and it turns out there is a bug causing it, but there is a workaround. Here is the LinkedIn post where I got this info: (2) Post | LinkedIn

The CoPilot suggestion with changing the Record ownership across business units didn't work as it is an issue in the table relationship.

Steps to mitigate from the post:

Step 1: in Dev go to the affected table (as obviously no one should make changes in prod) and confirm the issue on the erroring table by checking the Owning Business Unit field is set to required. You may note you can't change it to optional here.

Step 2: Click on the table's relationships.

Step 3: Select and edit the Owning Business Unit Relationship.

Step 4: The 'Lookup column requirement' field is likely blank but it might say Business Required, set this field to optional.
Note: in all the erroring tables I found that field was blank despite it being required by Dataverse.

Step 5: Save and confirm the field now is also optional and the error should be gone.

I found this on a handful of newer tables I had created, though some weren't so new. If this solves it for you, go give a like to the author of that post!

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