The Spring Release of Dynamics CRM 2015 includes a new forms engine. You may have seen reference to this feature by the code name “Turbo Forms.”

The propaganda (marketing) says that we will get as much as a two or three times improvement in the rendering of a Dynamics CRM 2015 form.  My limited testing has not proven this statement but I can say that it is indeed faster.  I have a feeling that speed improvements will depend 100% on the contents of your form.

Let’s walk through the testing process.

Test Using Legacy Forms

The first test will be using the legacy forms to see what the original speed would be.  Perform these steps:

Test Setup

1. Clear your browser cache.

2. Navigate to Settings, Administration, System Settings.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the dialog and change the setting Use legacy form rendering to Yes:

4. Click OK to save your change.

Perform a Test

To perform the actual test, follow these steps:

1. Open a record such as an Account.

2. Press Ctrl+Shift+Q. This will open up the built-in and super-secret Performance Center tool.

3. Click the Enable button.

4. Refresh the web page (F5).

5. Press Ctrl+Shift+Q to display the Performance Center. This time, it will look something like this:

6. Click the very last flag on the right side of the Performance Center Window.

The text window below the graph will display something like this:

As you can see, it took a little over six seconds for all steps, including the loading of the sub-grids to occur.

Test Using New Form Renderer

To test using the new form renderer, perform these steps:

Test Setup

1. Clear your browser cache.

2. Navigate to Settings, Administration, System Settings.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the dialog and change the setting Use legacy form rendering to No:

4. Click OK to save your change.

Perform a Test

Repeat the testing steps performed earlier.

In my test, I see the following results:

The Results

So 4.4 seconds is not a 2x or 3x speed improvement but it is better than the previous form model. In addition, the form appears  to load faster.

One final caveat is this is a pre-release environment which, to my understanding, does not use the same hardware as production CRM Online.  This will probably mean that the speed will increase when the Spring Update finally reaches production release.

Final Thought

I’ll have a more in-depth article on the Performance Center soon.