Dynamics 365 Mobile apps are handy tools which allow D365 users to access and update their Dynamics 365 environment from anywhere and at any time. Beyond that, customizing what is available on the mobile app is key to ensure that the experience is efficient for both the user and the organization.

A user’s security role must include the necessary permissions in order for them to successfully use the mobile app. If you have used (or copied) an out of the box role chances are high that most of these are already set, but it never hurts to check. And if you have created a custom security role, it is particularly important to confirm that the following privileges and access combinations have been configured.

1. The Dynamics 365 for mobile privilege is the first one to confirm. This privilege is in the Business Management tab of a security role within the Privacy Related Privileges section. Verify that Dynamics 365 for mobile is set to Organization.

2. Validate that the following entities have a minimum of Read access at the Organization level, by navigating to the Customization tab of a security role.

• Custom Control
• Custom Control Default Config
• Custom Control Resource
• System Application Metadata
• System Form
• User Application Metadata
• View

3. Next go to the Business Management Tab. Verify that User Settings is set at the Organization level for Read permission, and the remainder of the privileges have a minimum of User access.

Goal management in Dynamics 365 is a tool which provides the ability to manage KPIs in just a few clicks. You can use goals to compare targets and actuals for a defined period. And given the fact that Goals is an out of the box feature with Dynamics 365, you can set them up in no time at all. Additionally, since Goals are native to the system, they work seamlessly with workflows, business rules and other various Dynamics 365 functions.

To help you understand how goals work, consider the following scenario:

Your company sells drywall, you, as the sales manager, want to set a revenue target for the overall sales team and then targets for each individual sales team rep who will contribute to the sales team target. With the given targets you want the ability to monitor progress throughout the fiscal period.

To get the results you desire you will need to utilize a couple entities in Dynamics 365 and create a handful of records:

1. Goal Metric: this allows you to set the detailed measurement (amount or count) for the defined goals. You can create multiple goal metric records to measure different elements, revenue and number of panels sold for example.

There is a standard site map for all Dynamics 365 instances, but chances are the default site map does not scream ease of navigation for your organization. It is important that Users can easily find the entities they need without hunting column by column, and more importantly they see what they need to see, and ONLY what they need to see.

Dynamics 365 provides the ability to modify the standard site map without coding, allowing everyday users to easily modify the layout, making it a better fit for your business. You will need either the System Administrator or System Customizer role to perform the following actions.

To customize the site map, simply go to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System.

You will find multiple site maps under Client Extensions, there is typically one which contains all apps, and then others which are each tied to a specific app.

In this case, we are using the default one which is labeled “Site Map”.

Running multiple business applications is a common practice nowadays, and it is often labor intensive or darn near impossible to make your applications talk to one another. This often leads to an awful lot of open tabs as you perpetually switch between applications updating information, or worse yet data becomes disconnected and disparate.

Microsoft has published their Business Application Platform including Flow, PowerApps and Power BI which are powerful tools that you can use to seamlessly allow your applications to talk to each other. Maybe even more importantly, these applications combine and merge the data from multiple applications, making the most out of your data.

Think of Microsoft Flow as a bridge which connects your applications and performs Actions automatically based on specified Triggers.

There are many out of the box Flow templates, built on applications used daily, which can be consumed. Additionally, you can create your own multi step Flow across several apps using supported Actions and Triggers.

Save time and invest your energy in other areas which require your focus. Let Microsoft Flow handle it, by sending you a notification about something which requires your attention, managing backend processes which up until recently were done manually, handling approvals…just to name a few. All of this can be done from the web, your phone or tablet, or even from your inbox! The functionality afforded by Microsoft Flow works with records stored in SharePoint, Dynamics 365, Tweets and over 100 other applications. The image below is just a small sample of the applications that you can connect with Flow.

Are you juggling two CRM systems because you have an overwhelming amount of data in your existing system, and you do not even know where to begin as you make the transition to Dynamics 365? Data importing aside, is a bigger concern loss of data and/or data integrity? Or do you have salespeople attending events and need a quick and easy process for getting all the data which has been gathered into D365?

Your search is over. Importing data is an important task you will need to perform at one point or another. Whether it be when your Dynamics 365 environment goes live or later when you need to bring in data which has been collected in another application. No matter how you slice it, the need will arise! You can import data into standard and customized fields of out of the box and custom entities in Dynamics 365. Not only that, you can also include related data, such as activities and notes. To assure data integrity, you can enable duplicate detection to prevent importing duplicate records.

A few pointers as you prepare your data for import:

Export data from your existing system in one of the following formats: comma-separated values (.csv), XML Spreadsheet 2003 (.xml), Compressed (.zip) or text files. Or save an Excel file, which has had data entered into it, as a .csv or .xml.

Once you have your raw data ready, the next thing you need to do is to prepare your data import template. There are a handful of ways to create a template for your data import into Dynamics 365.

Did you know that there is an auditing feature which comes standard out of the box with Microsoft Dynamics 365? All you need to do is enable and configure it to your needs and going forward all enabled actions will be logged. Auditing allows organizations to easily track high level record changes, granular field level changes, and user log in within the system.

By default, auditing is not turned on in Dynamics 365, so if you are interested in this feature you will need to enable and configure your auditing preferences. D365 provides the flexibility to enable/disable auditing at the organization, entity and attribute levels. It is worth mentioning that to audit at the field level, auditing must be enabled for the organization and the entity.

Enable auditing at the organization level

1.  Auditing setup is under the Settings Tile. Click on Auditing and go to Global Audit Settings. To enable auditing, if not ticked already, tick the box Start Auditing.

What if your most depended upon customer service rep leaves the company and no one else on the team has the level of knowledge he had on various topics? Or at the most granular level, wouldn’t it be incredibly useful if canned suggestions surfaced when opening a service case for a customer?

There is no reason to spend excess time and money researching and troubleshooting the same (or similar) issues repeatedly. Plan ahead and build a knowledge base which withstands the test of time (and turnover) and is shareable both internally and externally.

Knowledge Articles in Microsoft Dynamics 365 provide the ability to create articles with versioning and translation functions. Building a base of Knowledge Articles allows Customer Service Reps to reference and utilize the information to deliver accurate and consistent information to customers, while following the organization’s processes.

By providing access to the article directly from a Case record, the rep can link the article to the case, thereby documenting its inclusion as a step for resolution. Not only can the rep use the information as an assist to themselves, they can opt to share the article with their customer, who may prefer to “do it themselves.”

Knowledge Articles not only benefit reps, who now have answers at their fingertips, those that administer the articles also have something to gain. Analytics are measured which provide article insights for content managers. A couple key stats are how many views each knowledge article has, and the Cases which have been associated to the article. These statistics allow administrators to not only evaluate which articles provide the most value, but ultimately it may provide intel into where there may be a bigger issue which needs attention.

Dynamics 365 Business Rules help organizations achieve automation by performing tasks for users based on predetermined logic. This means less time entering data and more time making key decisions. Business Rules can also be used to enforce behavior by controlling certain field properties. This allows upper management to ensure proper steps are taken daily. If these controls are implemented properly, both the organization and users will see the benefit afforded through the configuration of Business Rules.

Business Rules in Dynamics 365 are a simple way to apply logic to your business data without the need for any code. D365 Business Rules are effective, yet easy to manage. The typical Business Rule follows the “if, then” statement structure and often contains two or more parts. The first part is always a condition statement where you state the condition which will trigger the business rule to take effect. The second part is the action, meaning once the set condition has been met, what action should be performed.

Below is sample Business Rule diagram to illustrate how a typical Business Rule is setup.

As you can see, the condition statement is checking the Estimated Revenue for an opportunity, if the Estimated Revenue exceeds a certain threshold then an account manager must be associated to the opportunity. Simple rules like these can help organizations improve their daily process and grow more effective to achieve their goals.

Business Rules in Dynamics 365 can perform an explicit set of functions against records. Below is a list of the actions and what each does.

Microsoft provides a robust connection between SSRS reports and Dynamics 365, allowing a user to run a report providing a summary of defined records. To create custom reports though, you will need to have a high-level knowledge of SQL/XML, or hire a consultant to build the report for you.

Why not take matters into your own hands and build your reports using out of the box components in Dynamics 365? Dynamics 365 offers both Excel Templates and Word Templates, empowering you to create reports which best suit your business needs, using the application that fits the bill.

Excel and Word templates allow you to create and share templates, so documents always have a consistent look and the necessary details included. Excel and Word templates are easily configured by selecting fields from your starting entity (i.e. Opportunity) to use as dynamic values in both Excel and Word. Not only can you select fields from the entity you began from, you also have the ability to select fields from related entities which have either a 1:N or N:N relationship with the starting entity.

With the help of Excel and Word templates, you can prepare beautifully crafted reports, which include data elements dynamically pulled in from D365. Should needs change, you can always modify and upload the revised template into D365, allowing you and your colleagues to always have the most current templates at your disposal.

Some benefits of using Excel and Word templates:

How many products/services do you sell? How many pricing structures do you have for each? Do you offer volume discounts? A no-nonsense, structured approach which can be seamlessly applied (every time and without a second thought) can improve your sales strategy and have everyone on the same page.

The Product Catalog in Dynamics 365 makes it easier for your sales reps to increase their sales by having an authority by which to work when talking to potential customers about products/services offered. The product catalog is a combination of the products themselves, and the underlying pricing mechanism.

Below are the components which form the Product Catalog:

• Families & Products – Products are the items which you sell and product families provide a way to group, classify and categorize products for streamlined product management. Both bundles and individual products can be included in a product family tree.
• Price Lists – Price Lists are product groupings with associated pricing. Sales operation managers can link Dynamics 365 territories to price lists. This directly benefits salespeople by defaulting the appropriate price list to opportunities, quotes, orders and invoices.
• Discount Lists - Discount lists are optional and are used in conjunction with price list items for volume pricing offers.
• Unit Groups - Unit Groups define the quantities by which a product or service is sold. For example, mouse pads may be sold in lots of 50, 100, or 200. Or Services sold by the hour may be grouped by day, week or month.

As you begin configuring your product catalog, add components in the following order: Discount Lists (if needed), Unit Groups, Price Lists, Products. When adding Product, you can define bundles, which allows you to combine multiple products into a group, to be sold as a package. Product relationships can also be defined, allowing for the suggestion of product substitutions; accessory recommendations; highlight cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Once the Product Catalog is setup, salespeople will have the ability to select and add products to their Opportunities, Quotes, Orders, and Invoices.

Do you find that the data shown in your Dynamics 365 environment is not reflective of the business data which is relevant to you? There are a variety of out of the box tools in Dynamics 365 which can be used to achieve this vital need. Such tools include Views and Charts which can be brought together into Dashboards to give an overview of data components captured in Dynamics 365.

For Dashboards, Views, and Charts there are two definitive types, Personal and System.

Personal Dashboards/Views/Charts

You, and anyone else, who has at least User level access to the system can build their own personal dashboards, views and charts based on their privileges in the system. The system administrator can modify the access level for each action in the security role to control the depth to which people can create, read, write, delete, assign, or share personal views.

All three components are owned by individuals and because of their default User level access, they are visible only to that person or anyone else they choose to share them with.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers the ability to streamline your business process through an often overlooked and underutilized feature called Business Process Flows. Business process flows are displayed visually in Dynamics 365 as a heading across the top of an entity form, and can carry from one entity to another, and can be configured for both out of the box and custom entities. Not only that, you are not limited to a single business process flow; you can configure one or more distinct business process flows, allowing different departments to have a flow unique to their daily requirements.

A business process flow is composed of Stages (highlighted in red below), which contain multiple Steps (highlighted in green below). In the business process flow heading, a user can see which stage they are currently working through (which is indicated by the flag), and the steps they need to complete (what fields need to be filled in) before they can advance to the next stage in the process.

Business process flows enable you to require users to complete certain steps before advancing to the next stage of the process. They also allow for branching logic based on data elements collected which may require a different path. There are a couple out of the box business process flows pre-configured for system entities, but you can modify these and create your own business process flows to meet the particular needs identified for your organization.

Create a Business Process Flow:

1. Go to Settings > Processes to create a new Process

Dynamics 365 is a sophisticated Microsoft business application, it grants the ability to better manage the relationships of your Sales, Customer Service, Field Service and Operation processes. But how can you access your data while you are out in the field, the internet is down or you are not anywhere near your PC? Dynamics 365 for phones and Dynamics 365 for tablets apps are the solution when you're on the go. These apps give you immediate access to accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, and so much more!

How to get the App:

Go to the app store on your device and download either Dynamics 365 for phones or Dynamics 365 for tablets, depending on the device you are working with. Both phone and tablet users alike will appreciate the new Unified Interface. The Unified Interface provides an optimized viewing and interaction experience, relative to screen size, device, and orientation.

 Accessing the App:

Once you have the app installed, open the app on your device, enter your Dynamics 365 URL (web address), and click the arrow to continue. Next you will be prompted for your user name and password. If you are unsure of any of these values, contact your Dynamics 365 administrator.

Analyze Dynamics 365 data to gauge performance. Recognize trends. Mass edit thousands of records. Share data with someone that is not a D365 User. These business requirements and so much more can be accomplished when you export your data to Excel or Excel Online from Dynamics 365. Plus extracting a large number of records is a non-issue because you can export up to 100,000 records in a single export file.

The Export to Excel feature has proven to be a vital asset in the D365 application over the years due its ease of use, and its obvious connection to Excel. With the continued enhancements in Dynamics 365, and the technology which can be integrated with the application, you can certainly do so much of your data analysis without ever leaving the environment, thereby reducing the need to export your data. Fact is though, so many have come to know, love and depend upon the tools and functions in Excel which bring data to life, thereby making the Export to Excel feature a much-coveted feature still.

Besides the need to extract data for data analysis, the Export to Excel feature carries another extremely valuable purpose. What if you have a query of 10,000 Account records, for example, and want to update the Industry field on all of them to the same value? Sure, you could select a maximum of 250 records per page and mass edit them. But consider this, 10,000 divided by 250, you would need to repeat the process 40 times. And let’s be realistic, out of the 10,000 records, chances are slim you would be modifying the Industry field value to the exact same value for all.

By leveraging the export to Excel function, not only can you view thousands of rows of data at once, you can also update all of them at once too. Data is exported in the same format as you see in your View, so text remains text, numbers remain numbers, and dates remain dates. The cell format in Excel may change for some formatting types, so you will need to be aware of this and be sure to update the affected rows accordingly.

Make any necessary changes in the exported file, and then import the file back into Dynamics 365. Just like that, your 10,000 Account records have been updated in a fraction of the time, and you have significantly reduced the risk of making an error.

Creating views and charts are a meaningful way to analyze and visualize your data, but they often live in multiple entities in Dynamics 365, and truth be told, you probably overlook or do not use them to their fullest potential. Custom dashboards in D365 give you the ability to pull together a variety of views and charts into one place, providing you a single stopping point to easily view metrics which span multiple entities.

Dashboards can be made up of views, charts, web resources and iFrames, allowing you to build your own collection of business intelligence metrics.

There are two types of Dashboards which can be created, system dashboards and personal dashboards. System Dashboards are created by a System Administrator or System Customizer, and are available to everyone in the organization. Personal Dashboards are those that a User can create for themselves, and are only viewable by that User (or Users they “share” the Dashboard with), and what this blog will focus on.

Creating a Personal Dashboard

You can create a personal dashboard by going to the dashboard area of Dynamics 365, and selecting an existing Dashboard and performing a “Save As” or create a new one. You are presented with layout choices, select one and click Create.

Leave the spreadsheets to your data analysts, and appreciate the effectiveness that charts provide. Dynamics 365 comes with a handful of charts out-of-the-box which you can pair with corresponding views to surface data visually. Like most companies, you likely have unique measures which the standard charts do not account for. That is where the flexibility and ease of creating your own charts in D365 shines. Dynamics 365 provides a variety of chart types allowing you to create column, bar, pie, funnel, and many more chart types, to fulfill your business needs.

Charts interact with the view which is chosen, and the data reflected in the chart is refreshed when you toggle between views. So, if viewing My Opportunities, the chart will depict that information, if you switch the view to All Opportunities, the Chart will change to reflect the data of the newly selected View. Similarly, you can switch Charts to display the View data in another way.

There are two types of Charts which can be created, system charts and personal charts. System Charts are created by a System Administrator or System Customizer, and are available to everyone in the organization. Personal Charts are those that a User can create for themselves, and are only viewable by that User (or Users they “share” the chart with), and what this blog will focus on.

Creating a Personal Chart

To create a chart, navigate to the entity (Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities…) for which you want to create a chart and choose the view which best demonstrates the data you want to visualize. Click the charts pane to expand this section.

The records you store in Dynamics 365 typically share some association with other records of the same type. Whether it be leads owned by a specific user, accounts of the same relationship type, contacts located in a specific city, opportunities created in last “X” days. The list is endless and limitless. With a little planning, you can create Views which automatically filter records for you based on the criteria you set.

So, what are Views in D365?

Views display all the records of a specific entity type in your D365 environment. Out-of-the-box you are provided with a variety views, but you can add to these, creating custom views which are significant to you. Clicking the drop-down arrow next to a view name reveals all the views you have at your disposal.

There are two types of Views which can be created, system views and personal views. System Views are created by a System Administrator or System Customizer, and are available to everyone in the organization. Personal Views are those that a User can create for themselves, and are only viewable by that User (or Users they “share” the view with), and what this blog will focus on.

Creating a Personal View

Wouldn’t it simplify things if you could go to one record and see everything you need to see? Ever find yourself heading into a meeting, and wish you could quickly “ramp up” on all interactions with the Customer? Getting the total picture in one place, enabling you to see every touchpoint, this is the benefit that sub-grids afford you.

One of the great things about Dynamics 365 is that it allows you to customize entity forms to display the information most relevant to your business. You will quickly find that providing your users with the ability to see, at a glance, a subset of related records when viewing a lead, contact or account record provides immeasurable value.

For example, your salespeople may benefit from seeing all tasks related to an account directly on the account record. Instead of having to navigate to a separate page or running an advanced find query, you can easily set this up by adding a task sub-grid to the account form.

To add a sub-grid to your account form, open the D365 form editor directly from the account record’s ribbon menu or by opening the general customizations menu, navigating to the account entity forms, and selecting the account main form.

Once you’re in the form editor, select the section that you want to add the sub-grid to, switch to the form editor’s Insert tab, and click the Sub-Grid button.

Isn’t it maddening to fill out the same fields, with the same info, when creating a child record directly from its parent form? Well -- Stop Doing It! Let the system fill out those fields automatically for you, instead of eating up your own time on it!

One of the “quiet” features of Dynamics 365, that will significantly save you time and protect data integrity, is Field Mapping. The purpose of field mapping is to copy certain values (e.g. address fields) from a record to an associated record (e.g. a contact created from an account)

The following details how simple it is to create field mapping relationships.

In Customizations, locate the Account Entity, and go to the “1:N Relationships” node.