Did you know the “?” is a help feature?

Did you know that the little ? icon in the top-right of every Dynamics 365 model-driven app is a fully customizable Help feature? Out of the box it just opens Microsoft Learn — but you can point it at your own documentation, your in-house wiki, or even table-specific guides without writing a single line of code.

What the ? icon actually does

It’s not just decoration. The Help icon is a built-in Power Apps platform feature that opens a context-aware URL in a side pane (or new tab). “Context-aware” matters because the platform passes parameters like the current entity, form, and language — so your help page can show the right content for the screen the user is on.

By default, every model-driven app in your tenant points to Microsoft Learn. That’s almost never what your end users want. They want your documentation: your processes, your screenshots, your internal terminology.

How to customize it

There are two levels of customization, and they layer on top of each other.

1. Global Help URL (per environment)

1. Open Power Platform Admin Center.
2. Select your environment → Settings → Product → Features.
3. Find Help features, toggle it On, and set Custom Help URL to your documentation root (e.g. https://help.contoso.com/dynamics).
4. Save.

From this point on, clicking the ? icon anywhere in any model-driven app in that environment opens your URL.

2. Table-specific Help URL (overrides the global one)

1. Open make.powerapps.com → Tables → your table → Properties.
2. Expand Advanced options → enter a Custom Help URL (e.g. https://help.contoso.com/dynamics/cases).
3. Save and publish.

Now when a user is on a Case form and clicks ?, they go to the Cases page; on an Account form, they go to the Accounts page. The global URL acts as a fallback whenever a table doesn’t have its own.

Parameters Dynamics passes to your URL

When the icon is clicked, Dynamics appends query string parameters: entity name, form ID, language, and more. If your help platform supports it, you can read these and route users dynamically to the right article. Even a basic redirect script (if entity == 'incident' → /cases) goes a long way.

Why this matters

User adoption in Dynamics 365 lives or dies on “how do I do X here?” Most users don’t read training docs sent over email — but they do click the ? when they’re stuck. Pointing that icon at your own help content turns a generic Microsoft link into a self-service support channel that lives exactly where the user got confused.

It takes five minutes to configure and pays back every day in fewer support tickets and faster onboarding.

Source: Sean Astrakhan on LinkedIn.