Dynamics 365 is a great tool for storing your business data, but if that is all you are using D365 for, then do we have news for you! One of the biggest values of D365 is the ability to create reports gaining valuable insight from your data. These reports can be setup in a variety of ways depending on your environment and organizational needs.

Do any of the above diagrams look familiar to you? If your response is “WHAT ARE THOSE!?” then you, my friend, are missing out! All the above are reports based on D365 data. These D365 reports can be run directly from D365 which gives users ease of access to analysis of business data. There are several types of reporting options available for D365, some are out of the box, while others require a bit more work to setup. With that in mind, many organizations opt to export their data to Excel and then use Excel to create reports, when they could be using these much richer options instead.

D365 out of the box comes with report building functionality, in the form of Charts and Views. Users can setup Dashboards incorporating these components, which can help them take their first step into the world of reporting. The CRM Report Wizard allows users to build reports using filters and conditions, like Views, with a touch more functionality and flexibility over the latter options.

While these out of box options are great, they do have their limitations which is why we also provide external reporting options. SQL and XML Reports are great for generating more complex reports and documents. However, if you are looking for an option that is more robust, and intensely eye-catching, then Power BI is the way to go. Power BI is one the most powerful BI and reporting tools on the market and integrates seamlessly with D365. Power BI allows for powerful drill down capability and smart slicers to filter your data however you like.

Reports are a great way for organizations to better understand performance, and with the various report options available, you are not limited to a specific visualization type. Data can be displayed through bar graphs, pie charts, map representations, grids…just to name a few! Maximizing the reporting options is great for upper management, who want a quick, high-level representation of how the business is doing. But wait there’s more! Automated reports can be generated with a click of a button and often require no additional maintenance once they are setup, reducing time and effort and improving efficiencies.

Microsoft Power BI can help company owners take a closer look into their business using stunning dashboards and visuals. They can also be optimized to locate and display only the most critical data. This data can then be used by company owners to review and streamline their business processes wherever it may be needed.

There are a large variety of data sources that connect to Power BI, and the list is continuously being updated. This data can then be altered and placed as a visual, measured or calculated column and then is added to a dashboard. It’s possible to share this information with colleagues at work by granting them access right from within Power BI.

These are six main components that make Power BI into such a strong and powerful tool.

Power Query: Importing and formatting the Data
The Power Query allows you to import data from sources such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, DB2, and the list goes on. It can also extract data from multiple file formats such as CSV, Text, and Excel. The imported data can be formatted by adding columns, charts or any other visuals onto the dashboard.

Power Pivot: Relationship Creating Tool
Relationships can be created using the Power Pivot function inside Power BI. Power Pivot is a powerful tool used to review data and create visual data models. To link tables together, Power Pivot can analyze the databases and see if the tables have any matching data inside. This function also allows the user to create calculations using the data, such as a calculated column or a measurement.

Power View: Data Visualization Tool
Power View is used to transform the data into interactive charts, graphs, maps, and other visuals. These visuals will only display the most important data since the data can be filtered using Filter Panes, slicers, and cross-filters.

Power Map: 3D Geospatial tool
The Power Map feature is used to create charts for Geospatial data into a 3D visual. Using the Geospatial users can display a metric visually on a map using visuals or even a heatmap. The maps are connected to Bing and are constantly refreshing to display real-time data.

Power Q&A: Answering and Question search engine
Users can ask the Q&A any questions regarding the data and get the quickest answers. Make sure to use natural language that the system would understand such as “Number of Products by Location.” Click Here for a list of words and terminology that Power BI Q&A recognizes.

Microsoft Power BI has six main components that make it such a powerful tool. It has become one of the most popular programs amongst small business owners to analyze their data. Watch this “Power BI 101 Webinar” video that goes beyond just the fundamentals of Power BI. This video will demonstrate how to create a dashboard using Power BI.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: Manufacturing Series Part I Manufacturing Concepts

In this webinar we'll be providing an introduction to the Manufacturing Module in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The manufacturing process is done in multiple steps and requires some initial set up. This webinar will provide all the groundwork needed in order to start converting materials into produced end items. Some of the items covered in this webinar are;

•Items and Master Data
•BOM/Routing
•Production Orders

Date: February 26, 2019
Time: 2:00PM - 3:00PM EST

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR TODAY!

Build better relationships with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement

Our Build better relationships with Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement webinar will give you the foundation needed in order to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement. See how easy it is to build relationships with CRM data located in an easy to use platform. This data can then be displayed using the Embedded Insights Navigator and then used to improve the current sales process. Attend our webinar and learn about this and other functionality for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement such as:

•Customer Service Hub
•LinkedIn Sales Navigator
•Outlook Integration

Date: February 27, 2019
Time: 2:00PM - 3:00PM EST

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR TODAY!

If a business wants to be successful in this modern digital world, it must remain innovative. Operating as a fully digital firm goes beyond just having an electronic communication system installed. It’s about running the company using ERP software to streamline the business and create B2B integration. In this new digital era, the demand for B2B integration is on the rise and is turning into a requirement in order to work with most companies.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the computer-to-computer exchange of business documents. It allows businesses to send documents to one another using an electronic format. This standard template can then be read by different systems to locate information. The most common documents that are sent using the EDI template are purchase orders, purchase invoices, advance ship notices, bills of lading, inventory documents, shipping documents, payment documents, and even some custom ones.

The Benefits of EDI

Reduced Costs
By sending a document using EDI, a company can reduce its costs on printing, reproduction, storage, filing, and document retrieval. This also frees up the individual to focus on more important tasks.

Improved Data Quality
One of the most common areas for human error is data entry. By using EDI to import the data from the document into the system, there is less room for error resulting in better data quality.

Shorter Business Cycle
Companies using EDI will have a shorter business cycle because they receive the documents quicker. A transaction that use to take up to five days to complete can now be completed within an hour. Orders and payments will be processed a lot quicker which will increase the cash flow of the company.

Improved Data Security
EDI is a secure way to transmit data from one computer to another. Encryption and decryption programs along with passwords are used to ensure that the data is safe while being transmitted.

Ease of Auditing
Since EDI is transmitting all the data into the system, there is less room for any errors so therefore auditing will become much easier. Reports can be created for all the EDI transactions and then presented to the auditor, making the whole auditing process quicker and easier.

Strategic Business Benefits
Adding EDI into your current Dynamics GP environment will strengthen businesses and create strategic business benefits. Using digital transactions, businesses can always be up-to-date with all the transactions statuses. This knowledge will help the business to make better and faster business decisions going forward.

Contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to get started today

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.

Setting up the native SharePoint integration in Dynamics 365 can greatly benefit your organization. SharePoint allows users to store files, organize them, and provide ease of access to their colleagues. One of the biggest upsides of enabling this integration is that SharePoint offers much more storage space then D365 Sales, so you do not need to worry about your D365 instance running out of storage, thereby incurring steep costs to increase storage limits.

D365 SharePoint integration allows records in D365 Sales to have their own folders in SharePoint, this ensures all files have their own place in the system. This blog will walk you through the step-by -step process on how to setup your D365 SharePoint integration.

Before you get started, ensure you meet the following criteria so the process runs smoothly.

Requirements:

• Dynamics 365 Sales License with System Admin Access
• Office 365 Global Admin Access

Once you have verified the requirements, log into your Dynamics 365 for Sales web client and go to the Settings tab, in the drop-down menu select Document Management.

Power BI 101 Series: Jobs Dashboard with Power BI

Let us guide you through the end-to-end process of building a Jobs Dashboard using Power BI in our upcoming webinar. Follow along as we walk you step-by-step, through connecting and importing your data into the dashboard. Some of the things you’ll learn from this webinar are:

Job profitability
Deferred revenue and work in process by job
Outstanding purchase order commitments by job

Date: Thursday January 24, 2019
Time: 2:00PM - 3:00PM EST
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR TODAY!

One of the newer modules in the Dynamics 365 family, Field Service, leverages the latest technology offered by Microsoft and combines it into one powerful solution. D365 Field Service is an integrated solution with your current D365 environment, enabling you to be field ready with your already configured environment, filled with customer data.

D365 Fields Service has tools to help organizations optimize their resources, effectively manage team members and automate work order creation to save you time and money. Field Service can even be used with IoT devices to alert you of an issue even before your customers are aware there is one.

In D365 Field Service, Work Order Management, Service Scheduling and Resource monitoring are 3 key capabilities provided by D365 Field Service.

Work Orders in D365 Field Service are records that track service jobs. Work orders can be created automatically based on set criteria from your opportunity or case records or created manually. Within a work order you can track specific incidents types, estimated time required to complete a job and create the bookings for the work orders With Work Orders stored in D365 you also can create rich reports to identify which phases of your services can be improved upon.

Scheduling Service has never been easier with D365 Field Service. With the Field Service Schedule Assistant, all you must do is specify your criteria and the system will find the best resource to get the job done. Field Service considers factors such as skill set, availability and even current location of your resources to help make the best decision possible. If you want to get even more efficient, you can setup up resource scheduling optimization to let the system handle all the scheduling for you.

As a current customer of Skype for Business, Microsoft is inviting you to make the switch to Microsoft Teams. The upgrading phase might take some time, but Microsoft is here to help and provide the right level of support and guidance every step of the way. There is never a one-size-fits-all-solution so Microsoft has created two pathways that customers can take. Continue reading to learn more about both pathways and which one would be better for your company.



Upgrade Basic: Is designed for smaller organizations that use Skype for Business for the IM (instant messaging) only or IM + basic meeting functionality. A company who requires a simple deployment can expect a timeframe of 30-45 days for the process to be completed. Microsoft has provided 10 steps for a successful upgrade of moving the entire organization from Skype for Business to Teams.

Step One: Notify your Key Stakeholders
Step Two: Prepare your organization for Teams
Step Three: Know your Skype for Business Users
Step Four: Notify your users that they’ll be upgrading from Skype for Business to Teams
Step Five: Activate the user upgrade notification
Step Six: Remind your users that they’ll be upgrading from Skype for Business to Teams
Step Seven: Upgrade users to Teams
Step Eight: Monitor Teams usage against your baseline
Step Nine: Measure user satisfaction
Step Ten: Maximize your ROI with Teams

Click Here for more information
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/upgrade-basic

Upgrade Pro: Is designed for larger corporations that require a more complex deployment such as with hybrid or voice. This route is divided into three different phases and will require a longer duration to complete the upgrade process. It allows the company to run Microsoft Teams alongside Skype for Business until Microsoft Teams is ready for the business. In order to ensure this is successful, Microsoft will also provide resources to prepare both technical and everyday users.

Click Here for more information
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/upgrade-pro

Pre-Upgrade: The Pre-Upgrade phase will prepare your company for Microsoft Teams. This phase will introduce Teams into your organizations' workflow by using Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams together. Allowing employees to begin learning how to use the Teams application. Employees will have a lot of time to test out Teams at their own pace and slowly start to migrate all their activities, contacts, and calendars. You’ll get to experience the value of Microsoft Teams and help your corporation speed up the process of Teams becoming ready for your company. Read the pre-upgrade checklist below to see if your organization is ready for the upgrade phrase:

Days 1-7: Create your upgrade plan to help ensure your organization is set-up for long term success
Days 8-15: Evaluate your organization’s readiness for Teams
Days 16-60: Run a pilot to confirm that your organization is read and inform your optimal journey to Teams
Day 60 until upgrade: Deploy Teams in coexistence with Skype for Business

Learn more about Microsoft Teams by downloading our whitepaper Microsoft Teams Cheat Sheet: Meet the Hub for Teamwork in Office 365. This whitepaper contains all the benefits of Teams and why you should make the switch. Find out why Microsoft has made Teams the primary focus for its intelligent communication platform.

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”.

The reign of Skype for Business is coming to an end as Microsoft turns its focus on its newest vision for future intelligent communication, Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft had made Skype into a very successful communication platform since its purchase back in 2011. The application was characterized as the most reliable and easy to use communication platform and was very successful in both the business and consumer markets.
Skype for Business is going to be replaced by Microsoft Teams as its primary communication hub in the Office 365 suite. Microsoft Teams offers plenty of features that will allow businesses to communicate with one another easily and efficiently. Microsoft is going to grow this platform into something even bigger than Skype for Business.

With the Skype-to-Teams customer experience journey, you can see that by the end of 2018 Teams will offer the same features as Skype for Business. Corporations can begin the transition from Skype for Business over to Microsoft Teams, by using both platforms together. Microsoft recommends for firms to use Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams side-by-side until your company can solely rely on Teams.

Current and Updated Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams Capabilities Roadmap https://aka.ms/skype2teamsroadmap

Learn more about Microsoft Teams by downloading our whitepaper Microsoft Teams Cheat Sheet: Meet the Hub for Teamwork in Office 365. This whitepaper contains all the benefits of Teams and why you should make the switch. Find out why Microsoft has made Teams the primary focus for its intelligent communication platform.

Download our Whitepaper on Microsoft Teams Click Here to get started today

Power BI 101 Series: Purchasing Dashboard with Power BI

Join our Webinar and learn how to create a Purchasing Dashboard with Power BI for your business. In this webinar, we’ll be showcasing all the different tables, connections, and calculations needed for this dashboard. Have instant access to accurate and detailed information such as the open PO commitments or purchase orders with line details. View all your key metrics and KPI’s in a single dashboard and drill into them such as the vendor spend by a period. This dashboard is meant to ensure your business can monitor and discover any spending trends.

Date: Wed Dec 19, 2018
Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM 
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR TODAY!

Have a dashboard that is the envy of your colleagues? Created a view that would benefit your office mate? Is there a Dynamics 365 User that cannot access a record of yours and needs to, but security provisions are preventing him from doing so? If any of these apply, I encourage you to read on.

Sharing personally created views, charts, dashboards, and even records in Dynamics 365 could not be easier. Follow the steps below, and within seconds you will see just how simple it is to grant and give access to components within D365.

To Share Records:

1. Navigate to the entity that contains the records you want to share.

2. Select the records to share.

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.

DocuSign for Dynamics 365 brings all the benefits of the DocuSign electronic signature solution to your finger tips inside D365. With a seamless integration into Dynamics 365, you can access DocuSign functions directly from your form’s tool bar. Some of the key functions include the ability to sign and get signatures, track document status, and dynamically pull data from records.

The most known function of DocuSign is the ability to capture electronic signatures which are encrypted and secure, allowing for accelerated turn around on getting those all-important signatures. Consider all the sales transactions in your pipeline which are slated to close, why not simplify the process for you and your customers by providing the option to sign electronically. DocuSign takes the hassle out of the traditional pen and paper approach by allowing users to sign on any device and have it integrated back to D365.

An added benefit is that elements of your DocuSign documents can be dynamically populated from your D365 records. This is a real timesaver, eliminating the need for your team to customize the document each time it needs to be sent to a new customer. In addition to being time saving, it also eliminates human error along the way, providing you the confidence of knowing the document was sent correctly the first time.

A final noteworthy feature of the DocuSign/Dynamics 365 integration is the ability to track the progression of your email and document. This level of transparency provides 100% visibility into the entire process, affording you piece of mind every step of the way.

To find out more about DocuSign for Dynamics 365 or to implement it for your business, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. today!

Ever find that two or more of your Dynamics 365 contacts are related and want a quick way to record that relationship? Or have a Contact that is related to an Account record even though it is not directly associated? Well look no further because we have your answer.

Connections in Dynamics 365 are a great way to link records together without any hassle. Sometimes you may want a quick way to link records together without having to spend hours coming up with a custom solution to satisfy this everyday requirement. Connections is your answer for that, whether it be linking records of the same type or of completely different record types.

To connect two records together, all you need to do is click on the Connect button in the tool bar.

This will open the new connection window.

From here, lookup the record you wish to connect to by clicking the name field and then selecting search for more records.

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.

What’s new in the October 2018 release webinar for Business Central?

Back in October, Microsoft launched a massive update for Business Central and we want to tell you all about it. In this webinar, we’ll be reviewing the updates and demonstrating how they can change the way you run your business. We’re excited to share the newest updates in Business Central and keeping everyone informed of the latest industry news. Some of the updates that we’ll be discussing are:

1.New Search Experience
2.List enhancements and smart list smart list-type functions
3.New G/L entry user experience 

Date: Wednesday November 21, 2018

Time: 2:00PM-2:30PM EST

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR TODAY!

Power BI 101 Series: Sales Reporting Dashboard with Power BI Webinar

In the third part of our webinar series, we’ll be demonstrating how to build a Power BI sales reporting summary from scratch. The sales dashboard will provide not only an overview of your business’s sales performance but also make it easier to drill into sales performance analytics. You will learn all the steps needed to connect your sales data from within Microsoft Dynamics and transfer it into Power BI. Watch us step-by-step as we show you all the calculations needed to make a sales reporting dashboard. By the end of this webinar, we'll show you how to create the following:

1.Sales by Product Line
2.Customer by Location 
3.Sales by Customers 
4. Top Salespersons 

Date: Wednesday November 14, 2018

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM EST

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR TODAY!