
I have the requirement to develop a complex grid that will be used to quickly create quotelines.
User searches for products and on save the corresponding quotelines are created in CRM using the Xrm.WebApi.
It is a requirement that the grid works also while being offline.
Originally it was planned to develop this part as a webressource but having done some research I'm leaning more towards developing this as a big pcf control with react and FluentUI as this seems to integrate more smoothly with the platform compared to a webressource being added to an IFrame.
I'm still unsure whether PCF controls are intended to be used to replace these kind of bigger webressources.
This uncertainity is also intensified through the fact that you can only choose between pcf controls bound to a field or extending existing views through the dataset type.
It would be great if someone could share his experiences.
Hi @Tekina ,
If I have to code something new, I would always choose PCF over HTML WebResources. I've wrote a blog about this: https://dianabirkelbach.wordpress.com/2021/09/29/goodbye-html-web-resources/.
That's because of the deprecation of the globalContext, but also about great Platform integratiin possibilities, as you also said.
You can choose between a field PCF or a dataset PCF. In your case it would be a dataset PCF. There you can even include more datasets inside a single PCF (for instance for the list of the quotelines, and products). The dataset PCFs can be used for tables, views, or subgrids.
The dataset PCF can even save the data for you (you have a method for that).
That workds offline too.
But there might be also other alternatives for the future. For instance you could use the (Preview) Power Apps Grids for inline editing (offline too). To add quotelines, you could use a lookupObjects with multiple results, save the records using webAPI and then refresh the grid.
It depends how complex the requirement is..