Watch an agent work through a morning’s cases in the classic way and count the clicks: open the grid, open a case, work it, hit back, wait for the grid to reload, remember where you were, open the next one. The back button is doing a shocking share of the day’s labor. Focused view exists to delete that loop: the list stays on the left, the record opens on the right, and “next case” becomes a single click that never loses your place.
Switching in
On any grid, the Show As command reveals that a view has three renderings, not one.
Read Only Grid is the classic table. Power Apps grid control is the modern grid with inline editing. And Focused view is the split-screen working mode. It is just a rendering — same view, same records, same security — so switching costs nothing and you can flip back any time. For the case entity, an admin can even make focused view the default experience.
The split screen
The left rail is your work list, drawn as cards rather than rows — title, number, priority at a glance. The right side is the full record form: business process flow, tabs, timeline, everything you would get on the standalone page. Click a different card and the form swaps instantly; your list, your scroll position, your filters all stay put. The forward-back-reload ritual is simply gone.
What makes this more than a cosmetic change is that the form is fully functional. Save, Save & Route, resolve, the works — you process the record right there. For queue-based teams this pairs beautifully with the discipline I described in the queues post: open the queue, switch to focused view, and walk the list top to bottom without ever navigating away.
The list is a worklist
The card list has its own tools along its header: search within the list, filter, sort, and a card-density toggle. Two habits worth building. First, sort deliberately — oldest first is the honest way to work a backlog, and the sort control makes it one click. Second, use the list search instead of the global search when you know the item is in your current view; it filters the cards as you type without touching your view definition.
When to use which rendering
My rule of thumb: grids are for triage, focused view is for throughput. When you need to scan forty rows, compare columns, sort by three things and export — that is grid work. When you need to actually process fifteen records one after another — casework, lead follow-up, approval sweeps — focused view wins on clicks alone. The feature works on most entities, not just cases, so try it on whatever list your team grinds through daily. The switch is one command, the retreat is the same command, and the back button finally gets a rest.
