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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Gain hands-on experience working with the architecture, implementation, deployment, and data migration of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
Key Features
- Explore different tools to evaluate, implement, and proactively maintain Dynamics 365 for CE
- Integrate Dynamics 365 CE with applications such as Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Power Automate
- Design application architecture, explore deployment choices, and perform data migration
Book Description
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement (CE) is one of the leading customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that help companies to effectively communicate with their customers and allows them to transform their marketing strategies. Complete with detailed explanations of the essential concepts and practical examples, this book will guide you through the entire life cycle of implementing Dynamics 365 CE for your organization or clients, and will help you avoid common pitfalls while increasing efficiency at every stage of the project.
Starting with the foundational concepts, the book will gradually introduce you to Microsoft Dynamics 365 features, plans, and products. You'll learn various implementation strategies and requirement gathering techniques, and then design the application architecture by converting your requirements into technical and functional designs. As you advance, you'll learn how to configure your CRM system to meet your organizational needs, customize Dynamics 365 CE, and extend its capabilities by writing client-side and server-side code. Finally, you'll integrate Dynamics 365 CE with other applications and explore its business intelligence capabilities.
By the end of this Microsoft Dynamics 365 book, you'll have gained an in-depth understanding of all the key components necessary for successful Dynamics 365 CE implementation.
What you will learn
- Explore the new features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE
- Understand various project management methodologies, such as Agile, Waterfall, and DevOps
- Customize Dynamics 365 CE to meet your business requirements
- Integrate Dynamics 365 with other applications, such as PowerApps, Power Automate, and Power BI
- Convert client requirements into functional designs
- Extend Dynamics 365 functionality using web resources, custom logic, and client-side and server-side code
- Discover different techniques for writing and executing test cases
- Understand various data migration options to import data from legacy systems
Who this book is for
This book is for consultants, project managers, administrators, and solution architects who want to set up Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement in their business. Although not necessary, basic knowledge of Dynamics 365 will help you get the most out of this book.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 446
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
Copyright © 2020 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
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Commissioning Editor:Kunal ChaudhariAcquisition Editor:Ashitosh GuptaContent Development Editor:Divya VijayanSenior Editor: Mohammed Yusuf ImaratwaleTechnical Editor: Jane DsouzaCopy Editor: Safis EditingLanguage Support Editor: Safis EditingProject Coordinator:Kinjal BariProofreader: Safis EditingIndexer:Pratik ShirodkarProduction Designer:Jyoti Chauhan
First published: March 2020
Production reference: 1060320
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ISBN 978-1-83855-687-7
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Contributors
About the author
Mahender Pal is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE solution architect, trainer, and author. He started working with Dynamics CRM 3.0 and has used Microsoft Dynamics products professionally for more than 12 years. He loves to contribute to the community and has been awarded the Most Valuable Professional award 7 times. Mahender is the author of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Application Design and Microsoft Dynamics 2015 Application Design, for Packt Publishing, both of which cover developing xRM solutions using Dynamics CRM.
About the reviewers
Joergen Schladot is Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE and Power Platform solution architect and Dynamics CRM senior consultant with 6 years of experience. Joergen leads the Dynamics 365 CE and Power Platform team at Sycor GmbH, a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner based in Germany, where he helped to develop a Microsoft Dynamics App Source solution for the life sciences industry.
He has been working in the CRM business since 2011 and helps customers to implement their business processes with the help of Dynamics 365 CE, Office 365, and since the beginning of 2019, also on basis of the Microsoft Power Platform. Besides being a Microsoft Certified Professional, he is a Professional Scrum Master and is an IREB Certified Professional for Requirement Engineering.
Rita Pereira is a Dynamics consultant with more than one year of experience in sales, customer service and field service across different industries. Her experience includes customization, administration (Dynamics and Office365), client support, and expertise with some Microsoft ISVs. Before that, she worked as a data analyst for multiple companies in the UK.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
Dedication
About Packt
Why subscribe?
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewers
Packt is searching for authors like you
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Introduction to Dynamics 365 CE
Technical requirements
Introduction to Dynamics 365
Introduction to Dynamics 365 apps
Sales 
Marketing
Customer Service
Field Service
Project Service
Finance and Supply Chain Management
Talent
Retail
Introduction to Dynamics 365 CE
Dynamics 365 CE features
UI enhancement
Custom apps
Inbuilt Sitemap Designer
Editable grids
Business process flow enhancement
MultiSelect Option Set
Dynamics 365 app for Outlook 
Dynamics 365 app for phone
Virtual entities
Relevance Search
Understanding deployment options
Cloud
On-premise
Hybrid deployment
Dynamics 365 CE clients
Web client
Unified Interface client
Mobile client
Dynamics 365 CE for Outlook
Dynamics 365 CE app for Outlook
USD client
Custom client
Understanding subscription options
Setting up a Dynamics 365 online trial
Summary
Implementation Methodology
Understanding project management
Understanding project management methodologies
The Waterfall methodology
The Spiral methodology
The Agile methodology
The Scrum methodology
Product backlog
Sprint planning
Daily standup
Sprint review
Backlog refinement
RAD
Requirement planning
Developing a prototype
Testing
Release
Microsoft Sure Step
Microsoft Sure Step – projects 
Microsoft Sure Step – phases
Kanban
Feature Driven Development
DevOps
Choosing a methodology for Dynamics 365 CE
Summary
Requirement Gathering and Analysis
Technical requirements
Understanding requirements
Business requirements
Functional requirements
Non-functional requirements
Requirement gathering and analysis
Requirement gathering
Interview
Open-ended questions
Closed-ended questions
Questionnaire
Open-ended questionnaire
Closed-ended questionnaire
Workshops
Brainstorming
Prototype
Analysis
Analyzing documentation
Analyzing existing application
Fit-Gap analysis
Fit-Gap analysis for Dynamics 365 CE 
Out-of-the-box features – Fit-Gap analysis
Configuring Fit-Gap analysis
Customizing Fit-Gap analysis
Extending Dynamics 365 CE – Fit-Gap analysis
ISV solution – Fit-Gap analysis
Preparing a project plan
Defining the project scope
Project objectives
Project requirements
Acceptance criteria
Exclusions
Phases
Project activities
Respective teams
Project cost
Schedule
Assumptions
Risks
Identifying roles and responsibilities
Details schedule
Identifying milestones
Summary 
Preparing Functional and Technical Design Documents
Technical requirements
Understanding functional and technical design
Functional design documents
Technical design documents 
Preparing an FDD
Introduction
Document purpose
Project details
Target audience
Terminology
Assumptions
Risks
Dynamics 365 CE setup and configuration
Administration settings
System settings
Data management settings
Business unit hierarchy
Field-level security profiles
Security roles
ER diagram
Dynamics 365 CE entity design
Customer
Contact
Auto service
Auto service line
Case
Vehicle
Manufacturer
Model
Year
User reports
Preparing a TDD
Introduction
Proposed technical design
Infrastructure architecture
Solution architecture
Users
User interface
Application layer
Integration layer
Integration architecture
Application architecture
Development environment and release strategy
Data migration
Dynamics 365 CE extensions
Scripting
Plugins
Workflow tasks
Summary
Configuring Your Dynamics 365 CE Organization
Technical requirements
Understanding Dynamics 365 CE configuration
Configuring personal settings options
General
Synchronization
Activities
Formats
Email Templates
Email Signatures
Privacy
Languages
Configuring administration settings
Announcements
Auto-Numbering
System Settings
General
Enable Auto-Save
Set the full-name format
Set whether reassigned records are shared with the original owner
Set custom Help URL
Use the new Unified Interface only (recommended)
Timeout settings
Enable embedding of certain legacy dialogs in a Unified Interface browser client
Auditing
Marketing
Customization
Outlook
Reporting
Calendar
Goal
Sales
Service
Synchronization
Mobile Client
Previews
Language
Subscription Management
System Notification
Resources In Use
Yammer
Virtual Entity Data Sources
Configuring business management settings
Fiscal Year Settings
Business Closures
Queues
Sales Territories
Sites
Currencies
Relationship Roles
Rollup Queries
Goal Metrics
Facilities/Equipment
Resource Groups
Services
Subjects
Connection roles
Automatic Record Creation and Update Rule
Configuring service management settings
Routing Rules Sets
SLAs
Entitlement
Configuring data management settings
Duplicate Detection Settings
Duplicate Detection Rules
Duplicate Detection Job
Bulk Record Deletion
Data Import Options
Data Maps
Templates for Data Import
Import
Sample Data
Configuring document management settings
Document Management Settings
SharePoint Document Locations
SharePoint Sites
OneNote Integration
OneDrive for Business
Setting up email configuration
Email Server Profile
Mailboxes
Migrate Email Router Data
Email Configuration Settings
Server-Side Synchronization Monitoring
Summary
Customizing Dynamics 365 CE
Technical requirements
Understanding Dynamics 365 CE customization
Understanding solutions
Publisher
Version
Import
Export
Unmanaged solutions
Managed solutions
Working with entities
System entities
Custom entities
Creating a custom entity
Communication and Collaboration
Data services
Auditing
Outlook and mobile
Help
Setting up a primary field
Understanding entity attributes
Single Line of Text
Multiple Lines of Text
Option Set
Multiple Option Set
Two Options
Image
Whole Number
Floating Point Number
Decimal Number
Currency
Date and Time
Lookup
Customer
Understanding field types
Understanding form types
Main forms
Quick view forms
Quick create forms
Card forms
Customizing the entity view
Setting up security options
Users
Teams
Security role
Privileges
Access levels
Business units
Field security profiles
Hierarchy Security
Positions
Access team templates
Changing navigation
Customizing dashboards and charts
Dashboards
System dashboards
Personal dashboards
Chart customization
System charts
Personal charts
Summary
Extending Dynamics 365 CE
Technical requirements 
Extendibility architecture
The presentation layer
Client-side extensions
Business entity component
Command and ribbon buttons
Web resources
Business intelligence extensions
Custom applications
The platform layer
Dynamics 365 CE web services
The Web API
The Organization service
The Discovery service
Plugin assemblies
Custom workflow assemblies
Business entities
The database layer
Configuration database
Organization database
Implementing client-side logic
executionContext
Using an event handler
Using an event handler in code
formContext
data
attributes
entity
process
ui
Control
formSelector
navigation
process
quickForms
tabs
gridContext
Xrm
Understanding client-side events
Entity form events
OnLoad
OnSave
Entity field events
OnChange
PreSearch
Grid events
Tab events
IFrame events
Knowledge base search control events
Process flow events
Creating web resources
Working with the Web API
Implementing server-side logic
Using the Organization service
Retrieve
RetrieveMultiple
QueryByAttribute
QueryExpression
Create
Update
Delete
Execute
Implementing custom logic using plugins
Writing a sample plugin
Deploying plugin code
Debugging plugin code
Summary
Integrating Dynamics 365 CE with Other Applications
Technical requirements 
Dynamics 365 CE integration options
On-demand data integration
Batch processing
Using the Dynamics 365 CE SDK
Creating a console application to import data 
Integrating Dynamics 365 CE with Power Automate
Integrating Dynamics 365 CE with PowerApps
Summary
Business Intelligence and Reporting
Technical requirements 
Dynamics 365 CE BI capabilities
Excel reporting
FetchXML reporting
SQL reports
Power BI reports
Using Report Wizard
Writing a custom report in Visual Studio
Deploying a report
Adding grouping to a report
Adding a filter to a report
Adding pre-filtering support
Adding a parameter to a report
Writing Power BI reports
Deploying a Power BI report to Dynamics 365 CE
Summary
Testing and User Training Planning
Technical requirements
Preparing a test plan
What is a test plan?
How to write a test plan
Introduction
Testing approach
Test deliverables
Risk
Conducting manual testing
Analyzing requirements review
Writing test cases
Conducting test cases
Logging bugs
Retesting defects
Conducting automated testing
Scoping automated testing
Selecting the correct tool
EasyRepro
FakeXrmEasy.365
xrm-ci-framework
Moq
Preparing for testing
Executing test scripts
Reporting
Conducting UAT
Why UAT is important
Preparing an end user training plan
Why we need end user training
Benefits of end user training
Conducting end user training
Dynamics 365 CE training references
Dynamics 365 CE SDK
Dynamics Learning Portal
Microsoft Training Partners
Summary
Migration and Upgrade
Technical requirements
Upgrading to Dynamics 365 CE
Dynamics 365 CE upgrade activities
Preparing an assessment report
Backing up your environment
Cleaning your Dynamics CRM database
Reviewing the customization
Code review
Upgrading solutions
Upgrading code
Migrating data
Importing data into Dynamics 365 CE
The Dynamics 365 CE import wizard
SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365
Summary
Deployment and Go-Live Support
Technical requirements
Deploying Dynamics 365 CE solutions
Manual deployment
Exporting solutions
Automated deployment
SolutionPackager 
Package Deployer
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Developer Toolkit
Dynamics 365 Build Tools
PowerApps Build Tools for Azure DevOps
Preparing a go-live checklist
Configurations required before go-live
Post-go-live support
Maintaining Dynamics 365 CE
Dynamics 365 CE backups
Index maintenance
Installing SQL Server updates
Installing updates for Dynamics 365 CE
Summary
Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think
Preface
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is about implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement for your customers. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is one of the leading customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, helping companies to effectively communicate with their customers and allowing them to transform their business strategies. It provides different apps that can be used for different purposes.
Who this book is for
This book is for users, administrators, and consultants who wish to implement Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement for their businesses. This book will guide you through new features that Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement has to offer and help you implement them in your organization and for clients.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction to Dynamics 365 CE, provides basic details about Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.
Chapter 2, Implementation Methodology, explains different project implementation methodologies.
Chapter 3, Requirement Gathering and Analysis, covers different techniques for requirements gathering and analysis.
Chapter 4, Preparing Functional and Technical Design Documents, explains how to prepare functional and technical design documents for your project.
Chapter 5, Configuring Your Dynamics 365 CE Organization, covers configuring different Dynamics 365 CE settings.
Chapter 6, Customizing Dynamics 365 CE, introduces ways to customize the Dynamics 365 CE application.
Chapter 7, Extending Dynamics 365 CE, covers writing code for the Dynamics 365 CE application.
Chapter 8, Integrating Dynamics 365 CE with Other Applications, covers integrating Dynamics 365 CE with other applications, such as Power Automate and Power Apps.
Chapter 9, Business Intelligence and Reporting, introduces the business intelligence capabilities of Dynamics 365 and covers how to create reports.
Chapter 10, Testing and User Training Planning, explains how to plan and perform testing for your project.
Chapter 11, Migration and Upgrade, introduces migration techniques and different upgrade paths.
Chapter 12, Deployment and Go-Live Support, explains how to deploy your project to production and how to provide go-live support.
To get the most out of this book
This book assumes you are familiar with earlier versions of Dynamics CRM and have programming knowledge. You should have access to a Dynamics 365 CE environment or you can set up a Dynamics 365 CE trial instance to work with different chapters. This book has the following software and hardware requirements:
Software/Hardware covered in the book
OS requirements
Visual Studio 2012 or later
Windows 7 SP1 or later
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows 7 SP1 or later
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Report Authoring Extension
Windows 7 SP1 or later
SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio 2012 or later
Windows 7 SP1 or later
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Introduction to Dynamics 365 CE
This chapter will help you get started with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE), as well as help you understand its business applications and their uses. You will learn about the history of the Microsoft Dynamics family, as well as about the products that were part of the Microsoft Dynamics family before Microsoft Dynamics 365. You will also learn about the various Dynamics 365 CE editions, which will help you understand which edition is most suited for your organization.
Then, you will learn about the different apps that are available as part of Dynamics 365 and their uses. Later, we will discuss the different deployment options that will be useful for Dynamics 365 CE implementation planning. We will also discuss the different ways we can access Dynamics 365 CE based on our user requirements. Finally, you will be able to set up a quick trial for Dynamics 365 CE online.
The main topics that we are going to discuss in this chapter are as follows:
Introduction to Dynamics 365
Introduction to Dynamics 365 apps
Introduction to Dynamics 365 CE
Understanding deployment options
Dynamics 365 CE clients
Understanding
subscription options
Setting up a Dynamics 365 online trial
Technical requirements
This chapter doesn't have any technical requirements; we are merely helping you get started with Dynamics 365 CE. We will be covering the introduction of earlier versions of Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to give you an added advantage in this area.
Introduction to Dynamics 365
If you are new to the Microsoft Dynamics product family and haven't worked with Dynamics before, you can consider it a collection of business applications. Now, you might be wondering, what a business application is? This is a piece of software that is specially built for automating business activities. In this case, business activities mean the processes used in the various departments of a business. These processes are dependent on the type of business you are doing.
For example, if you are running a service-based company, your process automation will be related to the services that you provide to your customer. An automobile service company can use business applications to manage their daily service requests, handle roadside assistance inquiries, deal with maintenance requests, and workorder generations. Similarly, if you are running a company that deals in sales and purchases, then your process automation will be more specific to sales, such as handling customer inquiries, managing leads, and providing quotations to customers.
Now that you have enough knowledge of a business application, let's go back to our main topic, that is, Dynamics 365. In 2003, the Microsoft Dynamics family included two types of business applications: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and CRM. Within these two applications, Great Plains (GP), Axapta (Ax), Navision (NAV), and Solomon (SL) came under the ERP category, while Dynamics CRM was the only product in the CRM category. These applications can be seen in the following diagram:
Microsoft released Dynamics 365 on November 1, 2016 for its online customers. Dynamics 365 includes different tailor-made business applications for your business needs. It also provides a strong platform called Power Apps, so you can customize these business applications based on specific business needs, and has out-of-the-box features for building new applications.
Dynamics 365 intelligent business applications can be used to digitally transform your business. Here, digital transformation does not just mean utilizing advanced technological machines for your business but using Dynamics 365 apps to enhance different business processes so that your business operations can be optimized to their maximum level. These processes could be as simple as interacting with your clients in a more organized manner, providing them with a 360-degree view of their data using Business Intelligence (BI) so that they have a better understanding of their sales, or using its artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to get more data insights so that a more personalized experience can be provided to its customers.
Now that we have a good understanding of Dynamics 365, let's start discussing different Dynamics 365 apps.
Introduction to Dynamics 365 apps
Instead of individual applications in the earlier version of Microsoft Dynamics, Dynamics 365 broke down the functionality of its applications into smaller apps and brought them under a single roof. The following diagram explains the different apps under Dynamics 365:
The aforementioned apps include different functionalities and can be used for different purposes. We'll take a closer look at these different apps in the following subsections.
Sales
The Sales app can be used to implement an end-to-end sales process. This app provides generic guided sales processes that help users close their sales quickly and manage their customers, leads, opportunities, orders, invoices, and other sales records. Leads can be captured using different sources, such as cold calling, campaign responses, websites, or incoming emails. The sales process that's started by the leads ends with generating an invoice after fulfilling the customer's order.
This app is equipped with different components that help salespeople define their goals, monitor lead progress, and move leads from one stage to another stage based on the lead score. The Sales app has inbuilt reporting capabilities that allow the salespeople to get the most up-to-date information and provide a 360-degree view of their customer's data. It supports salespeople in building strong relationships with organizations and delivers great service experience. The following is a screenshot of the Leads entity form for the Sales Hub app:
Apart from the traditional Sales app, which is similar to the sales module in earlier versions of Dynamics 365, it has a new Sales Hub app that is built on the Unified Interface Framework (UIF).
Marketing
The Dynamics 365 Marketing app brings long-awaited features for Microsoft Dynamics family users, such as an email editor, event management, and multi-channel campaign support. Previously, most Dynamics customers had to utilize third-party tools or the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM) application.
MDM was a separate cloud application, but with the release of Dynamics 365, Microsoft also announced that the MDM tool wouldn't be available for new customers from November 2016. Later, from May 2018, they finally discontinued this product and announced a new marketing tool for Dynamics 365.
The Dynamics 365 Marketing app is not available with Dynamics 365 plans, but it is available for purchase separately under a different plan, which is based on the number of contacts recorded in Dynamics 365 CE. This app also works seamlessly with other Dynamics 365 apps as it shares the same Common Data Model (CDM) for storing customer data as the other Dynamics 365 apps. This app is built on the Unified User Interface and can be used on different devices, such as mobiles, tablets, and desktops. It includes features such as multi-channel campaigning, event management, webinars, and a drag-and-drop email editor for sending personalized emails and lead scoring.
Customer Service
The Customer Service app is similar to the service module that's present in Dynamics CRM. This app provides features that will help you provide better customer service experience to your clients. This app has built-in features for creating and managing cases, case routing, product management, service scheduling, knowledgebase management, and case entitlement management, has a service calendar, and also has business intelligence features for a 360-degree view of customer cases.
The following is a screenshot of a case form in the Unified Interface client. Here, you can see how sections such as Summary, Details, and Case Relationships and command buttons are rendered:
If you open a case form (you can open an existing case record by navigating to Service | Cases) in the web client, you will be able to see how the different command buttons such as New, Cancel Case, and Save & Route are presented there and how they are presented in Unified Interface.
Apart from the Customer Service app, Dynamics 365 also has a Customer Service Hub that was built using the UIF.
Field Service
The Field Service app is another way of providing better customer service. This app is all about providing services to customers at their current location. These services include work order management, interactive resource scheduling, customer assets management, inventory management, and handling orders. The Field Service app reuses the same core entities from the Sales, Marketing, and Service apps. This app has inbuilt reports that can be used to measure key performance indicators and customer interaction.
The Field Service app is also built using the UIF and provides a responsive design experience to customers and service technicians across various devices, such as desktops, mobiles, and tablets.
Project Service
The Project Service app is built for project-based companies and provides a full suite for project management, allowing you to successfully start and finish a project. The Project Service app allows you to plan a project, get project approvals, track project costs, make entries in the project timesheet, and project resource planning and management. This app also has inbuilt reporting capabilities so that you can track the performance of the project, which helps in delivering the project on time and at the appropriate cost.
Finance and Supply Chain Management
The Finance and Supply Chain Management apps in Dynamics 365 are from the ERP category. These apps are replacements for earlier ERP products in the Dynamics family, such as AX, GP, and NAV. Both the Finance and Supply Chain Management apps include features for managing the financial and operational activities of an organization, such as accounts payable and receivable, inventory management, and assets management.
If required, these financial and supply chain management processes can be customized based on any specific needs. These apps also include business intelligence features that help in getting operational insights on financial and supply chain management from customers.
Talent
If you work in a company that deals with human resource management, then this Dynamics 365 app can definitely help you manage all your HR operations. Talent has inbuilt features for managing how a new resource is hired, managing jobs, leave management, salary management, and skills management.
This app also helps recruiters utilize their LinkedIn data by integrating Dynamics 365 for Talent with LinkedIn.
Retail
The Dynamics 365 app for Retail helps retailers fulfill the continuously changing demands of their customers. It can also be used by e-commerce business organizations. It provides end-to-end retail solutions and works seamlessly across multiple channels, along with finance and operation apps. Retail includes features such as multi-channel support, merchandising, business intelligence, customization options for retail processes, loyalty management, and inventory management.
This app also helps retailers utilize their social media capabilities by helping them gain new customers and provide them with personalized experiences.
Now, we know about all the apps for Dynamics 365 and how old modules from Dynamics CRM are available. Every app in Dynamics 365 has significance, where the Sales app is important for a customer to implement their end-to-end sales process, while the Marketing app is required if you wish to promote your product and services to increase your sales. If your customer is a service-providing company or project consulting organization, they can use the Project Service Automation app to effectively manage their projects.
Now that you've learned about all the apps, we can discuss Dynamics 365 CE in more detail.
Introduction to Dynamics 365 CE
After Dynamics CRM 2016 update 8.1 (in earlier versions, it was known as Dynamics CRM), we got the service update 8.2 release and Microsoft rebranded Dynamics CRM to Dynamics 365 CE. Just like other versions, Dynamics 365 did not come with a major release but with a service update for their online customers that was applied to on-premise customers as well. Dynamics 365 CE is a combination of sales, marketing, customer service, field service, project service apps, and other services. It is a new generation intelligence CRM application. All first-party apps, such as Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, and Product Service Automation, are highly customizable and extendable, and all these apps provide out-of-the-box integration support for different Microsoft projects, such as SharePoint, OneNote, Microsoft Flow, Power BI, Azure, and Microsoft Teams. Using its out-of-the-box service support, it can be integrated with any other application if we write custom code or use customer connectors.
Dynamics 365's inbuilt business intelligence capability gives you real data insights and helps you make data-driven decisions. Dynamics 365 also utilizes Power BI and AI capabilities to provide real-time data insights that help you make logical business decisions.
Dynamics 365 CE is now part of the Power Platform. Basically, the Power Platform is a web and mobile application development platform that utilizes the capability of Azure Cloud Services. All the Dynamics 365 CE first-party apps are developed using the same platform. Dynamics 365 CE not only provides end-to-end solutions to boost your sales, manage your marketing activities effectively, and provide a personalized customer service experience to your customers, but we can use its Power Platform capabilities to develop customized apps that cater to your specific business needs. These apps can be used across various devices (such as mobiles, tablets, and desktops), which increases their user adaptability.
The Power Platform includes the following three main applications:
Power
Apps
:
Provides us with a visual designer so that we can design our apps using rich Power Apps controls. We can also use this to connect to different business applications. We can build two types of apps in Power Apps. We will discuss this in more detail in
Chapter 8
,
Integrating Dynamics 365 CE with Other Applications
.
Power
Automate
: H
elps us develop a workflow so that we can automate our activities. We can also connect to different applications using hundreds of connectors in just a few clicks. We will be working with Power Automate in
Chapter 8
,
Integrating Dynamics 365 CE with Other Applications
.
Power BI
: I
s the next-generation business intelligence app that provides users with an interactive experience so that they can get and share data insights across your organization. We will be working with Power BI in
Chapter 9
,
Business Intelligence and Reporting
.
While discussing the Power Platform, some other important terminologies I want to mention are CDM and Common Data Service (CDS). CDM is where we can store our data in different common business entities. These business entities include common business entities such as account, contact, and lead opportunity, but, if required, we can create new custom entities and extend existing entities. Further, data that's stored in these entities can be shared with different applications. CDS allows us to store data in business entities based on the CDM. We can use CDS to build an application in Power Apps. When creating an application in Power Apps, CDS helps us set database, security, and business logic for our application.
Dynamics 365 CE features
Dynamics 365 v 9.0 brought many exciting changes to Dynamics 365 CE customers that improved its productivity and user adaptability. We'll discuss some of these new features in the following subsections.
UI enhancement
I've been working with CRM since version 3.0 and I have seen drastic changes to the CRM UI with every new major release. Similarly, this service update also brought new UI changes to Dynamics CE users. If you have already worked with the earlier version, you might be aware of the frustrating amount of unnecessary spaces on the entity forms. The new UI has removed the unnecessary spaces and improved the fonts.
In the following screenshot, you can see that the border is added around sections and that the gap between the columns is also minimized:
Another drastic change is the new Unified Interface design for Dynamics 365 apps, which gives the same user experience across various devices. Microsoft has already announced that from September 2019, the legacy web client will be deprecated. All customers need to move to Unified Interface before October 1, 2020.
Custom apps
We know that Dynamics 365 CE is now a part of the Power Apps platform. Power Apps is a collection of different services and connectors so that you can build custom mobile and web apps for your business. The Power Apps platform provides you with an inbuilt designer that contains a set of controls that you can simply drag and drop. This means that by using Power Apps, you can build non-code apps, but, if required, we can write code so that we can interact with other applications and external databases. It has many inbuilt connectors and, if required, we can also build custom connectors.
When I say Dynamics 365 CE is part of the Power Apps platform, it means all the aforementioned features can be used in Dynamics 365 CE for building no-code apps. We can build custom apps using Power Apps; such apps are known as model-driven apps. Power Apps also provides a custom app editor, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once our app is ready, we can use the buttons highlighted in the preceding screenshot (from 1-4) to Save,Validate,Publish, and Play our new app, respectively.
We can select different components such as Site Map, Dashboards, and Entity details from the windows on the right-hand side. Once selected, we can configure their properties accordingly. When our app is ready, we can save and validate it to check for errors. We can use the Publish button to make the app available to users and the Play button to see what it will look like. We can also control the custom app's security using Dynamics 365 CE security roles and control what the user can access.
Inbuilt Sitemap Designer
Sitemap is an XML file that is responsible for controlling the navigation of Dynamics 365 CE. If you have worked with Dynamics CRM before, do you remember how many times you have used the custom Sitemap editors to improve your navigation based on user requirements? Or did you have to manually edit the navigation features in Visual Studio? Of course, you can still use these now, but Dynamics 365 CE also has an out-of-the-box Sitemap editor.
The following screenshot shows the different commands we can use to Add, Delete, Cut, or Copy Sitemap components:
As you can see, if we want to add a new component to Sitemap, then we can pick it from the Components section (1) or we can configure their properties from the right-hand side Properties window (2). Once our Sitemap changes are completed, we can Publish our changes and use the Save And Close button to close the Sitemap editor. We can use the Sitemap editor to control navigation based on the user's security role.
Under the Properties tab, if you scroll down, you will be able to see the Privileges option under the Advanced section. We can use the privilege property of the subarea to check whether the current user has a specific privilege on some entity, if required. Privilege is the basic security unit in Dynamics 365 CE and defines the actions a user can perform.
Editable grids
This was a long-awaited feature. Previously, users had to use third-party frameworks or develop their own editable grids using client-side code. We got an inline editable grid capability in the previous version of Dynamics 365 CE, but it was limited to line item entities such as opportunity products, quote orders, order details, and invoice details. However, it wasn't possible to customize these grids. With the release of editable grids, we can now apply editable grid capabilities to both grids and sub-grids.
The following screenshot shows the editable grid enabled for the Active Accounts view. Here, you can see how it is rendered based on the grouping:
Editable grids also support JavaScript and allow us to have an event associated with each grid. We can apply groups based on the column of the grid. Most of the columns can be used in the editable grid and these grids are available for all the clients.
Business process flow enhancement
A business process flow is a visual representation of various stages a record can have. It can be used with the system or a custom entity. Dynamics 365 CE provides an inbuilt business process flow for generic business scenarios, such as, the lead to the opportunity sales process, phone to case process, and case to work order process. Dynamics 365 CE brought many new features to the business process flow. One of them is the new business process flow editor, as shown in the following screenshot:
While designing processes, we can simply drag stages, conditions, data steps, workflows, or action steps to the canvas from the right-hand side property windows and configure their properties using the Properties tab. Then, we can use the action step to run the workflow on demand. This can be very useful in some scenarios, such as when notifying a user or team using the workflow on a particular business process stage.
We can use the command buttons to Add, Remove, Cut, Copy, Paste, or Delete stages. Business process flows can now be displayed in floating mode, but this feature is only available in Unified Interface apps. Another good thing about the business process flow is that it's now an entity, which means we can refer to it just like other entities in views, charts, dashboards, and site map.
MultiSelect Option Set
This is another exciting feature that Dynamics 365 CE has introduced. Here, we can create a multi-select option field by setting the data type to MultiSelectOption Set in the new field creation window. Once a field has been created, we can see the multi-select options, as shown in the following screenshot:
After selecting each option, they will be displayed in the text field, as shown in the preceding screenshot. When you close the tab, the values will be separated by a semicolon. This field is available for both new Unified Interface apps and the web client. This field can be added to a variety of forms, such as the quick create form, main form, and quick view form, as well as on views.
Dynamics 365 app for Outlook
Although this app was introduced in an earlier version of Dynamic CRM, Dynamics 365 brought new changes to it. The new Dynamics 365 app for Outlook utilizes the UIA, which means it works seamlessly across different devices. While using this app in Outlook, you will find its existing features along with the new Unified Interface design. Now, it allows us to check tracked emails and appointments within Outlook, which is a great feature to include.
Dynamics 365 app for phone
Dynamics 365 app for phone has also been updated with the Unified Interface design to provide a user-responsive design experience. Navigation for Dynamics 365 app for phone has changed, as shown in the following screenshot:
Let's look at another great feature that's been introduced by Dynamics 365.
Virtual entities
Virtual entities allow you to render data in Dynamics 365 that isn't part of the Dynamics 365 database. Previously, if we wanted to show data from outside of Dynamics CRM, we had to develop complex custom integration, but now we can easily display custom data in Dynamics 365 using data providers. Data that's available under virtual entities is read-only and for display purposes. Virtual entities have limitations; for example, they can only be used for organization entities, which means you can't utilize the user-owned entities' security features in virtual entities. However, you can utilize an existing calculated field for any calculation. This must be done in external data sources, but this is still a great feature from an integration point of view.
Relevance Search
Another new feature that's been added to Dynamics 365 CE is Relevance Search, which allows you to search records across multiple entities. This search utilizes the Azure search index. When Relevance Search is enabled in Dynamics 365 CE, we can select an entity that we want to include in the search. After that, the enabled entities data is synced to the Azure search index. Later on, while you are searching for data, your search is performed against the Azure search index.
The great thing about this search is that it can look for the search text in the documents attached to notes, emails, and appointments. Using Relevance Search can provide faster results as it is using Azure technology, but while selecting entities for Relevance Search, keep the sensitivity of the data in mind as your data will go out of your Dynamics 365 CE organization.
In the following screenshot, you can see the Relevance Search result for the text HIMBAP. Here, we can see all the record types where it found the HIMBAP text from the sample data:
This search is only available for Dynamics 365 CE online: it's not available for on-premise use. Relevance Search only works with text information, which means you can't search for data on numeric or date fields.
Microsoft also announced that users will be getting a Dynamics 365 CE online release twice a year, during April and October.
So far, we have learned about the top new features of Dynamics 365 CE that can help our customers improve their business efficiency and implement a better customer experience. All these new features can increase a user's productivity in their day-to-day work.
Now that we are well aware of Dynamics 365 CE and its features, we'll discuss the deployment options for implementing Dynamics 365 CE. In the next section, we are going to discuss all the possible options for implementing Dynamics 365 CE for our customers.
Understanding deployment options
Dynamics 365 CE is for everyone, whether you want to utilize a cloud infrastructure, or you want to reuse your existing infrastructure for Dynamics 365 CE. In a broad way, we can deploy Dynamics 365 CE using the following options.
Cloud
This is the easiest and simplest option if you wish to utilize Dynamics 365 CE capabilities by taking out a Dynamics 365 subscription from Microsoft. Dynamics 365 CE online is hosted on Microsoft Azure datacenters, which are located across the globe. Microsoft has datacenter regions in the United States, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, and Oceania.
When you buy a subscription for Dynamics 365, you select your country region and, based on the region, your Dynamics 365 CE organization is hosted on the nearest datacenter. For example, if I buy a Dynamics 365 CE organization, my organization will be hosted on the India datacenter. Selecting Dynamics 365 CE cloud means you don't need to do any infrastructure investment. You don't need to bother installing software or patches for Dynamics 365 CE. All the required infrastructure and software will be hosted on Azure, and Microsoft will take care of Dynamics 365 CE for you.
All the maintenance work is carried out by Microsoft itself, whether that's making daily backups of your Dynamics 365 CE organization or installing patches. You only need to set up the client's machine to access Dynamics 365 CE cloud. It can be accessed using any of the popular browsers and from anywhere in the world by just connecting to the internet. This is very useful when your organization or users are scattered around the world. You don't need to configure something extra to make your Dynamics 365 CE organization available to them. Microsoft provides SLA with 99.9% uptime for your organization so that you don't have to worry about your organization's downtime.
Although you can't access Dynamics 365 CE Azure SQL database, we can use the Dynamics 365 Data Export Service by Microsoft to synchronize the Dynamics 365 CE database to our own Azure subscription. This service is a free service that is available in Microsoft AppSource. In some cases, we have limited control over troubleshooting in Dynamics 365 CE online and we need to work with Microsoft support to resolve issues, especially if it is related to the SQL server.
Some of the Dynamics 365 CE services are only available to Dynamics 365 CE cloud, which is another bonus of going with the cloud option. Services such as Data Export Service, Customer Insights, Field Service app, Marketing app and Project Service, Relevance Search, and Advanced Service Analytics are not available for on-premise users.
On-premise
In the case of on-premise Dynamics 365 CE, since the deployment is done on your own premises, you need to take care of the infrastructure and software requirements for Dynamics 365 CE. You can reuse your existing infrastructure if it is compatible with Dynamics 365 CE. Depending on the number of users and workloads, it can be deployed on a single application server, a SQL server, or it can be installed on multiple servers. The following diagram represents a typical medium-size deployment:
On-premise deployment is best suited for organizations that don't want their data to leave the premises because of data sensitivity. In the case of on-premise deployment, you are responsible for any maintenance activities, such as patch installation and daily backups, which means you need to have an IT team to take care of these activities. You also have full access to your SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reporting servers. On-premise deployment is only accessible from your premises, which means that if a user wants to access Dynamics 365 CE from outside of your premises, they won't be able to unless they have a VPN set up that will reach your network or you have set up an Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) that implements claim-based authentication.
Hybrid deployment
Hybrid deployment utilizes both Cloud and on-premise
