Fundamentals of CRM with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

Book description

Explore the latest features of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform's out-of-the-box tools to build custom business solutions for your organization

Key Features

  • Discover impressive Dynamics 365 features to transform your business and increase productivity
  • Leverage the platform's extensibility to meet your organizational needs
  • Understand how Power Platform powers Dynamics 365 and enhances its integration capabilities

Book Description

Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a vast array of tools and applications to meet various Customer Engagement requirements. This Customer Relationship Management (CRM) guide covers the latest advancements in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform that help organizations adapt to changing market conditions for agility and resilience.

With this book, you'll explore the core platform functionality of Dynamics 365 and explore its wide range of components for transforming your business with new services and capabilities. You'll learn the basics of configuration and customization to enhance the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and create solutions and custom applications by leveraging features such as apps, portals, automation, and business intelligence. As you advance, you'll understand how Power Platform drives Dynamics 365 and how various integration capabilities add value by providing a comprehensive view of data aggregated across different systems and data sources. Finally, you'll delve into core administration concepts that will help you to manage extensions added to the platform.

By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to tailor Microsoft Dynamics 365 to fit your organization's requirements and tweak the platform to meet your business needs.

What you will learn

  • Get to grips with Power Platform for building and enhancing Dynamics 365 apps
  • Integrate Dynamics 365 CRM with Microsoft 365, Azure, and other platforms
  • Discover how you can customize existing entities and create new ones
  • Explore various security features and grant users access to CRM data and functions
  • Find out which CRM attributes are used to automate operations with programming
  • Use internal and external social data to help users to make informed decisions

Who this book is for

This book is for customers and project stakeholders, new functional consultants, business administration users, and project managers looking to get up and running with the latest features of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. This guide will help non-developers become acquainted with a no-code approach to customization and configuration. A basic understanding of relational data and customer management concepts will help you get the most out of this book.

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright and Credits
    1. Fundamentals of CRM with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
  3. About Packt
    1. Why subscribe?
  4. Contributors
    1. About the author
    2. About the reviewer
    3. Packt is searching for authors like you
  5. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
      1. Download the color images
      2. Conventions used
    4. Get in touch
      1. Reviews
  6. Section 1 - Platform Structure and Extensibility Capabilities
  7. Getting Started with Dynamics 365
    1. Understanding what Dynamics 365 really is
      1. Scalability
      2. Extensibility
      3. Ability to integrate with other systems
      4. Ease of use
    2. Global data center locations for Dynamics CRM Online
      1. Advantages of choosing Dynamics 365 Online
    3. Customizing Dynamics 365
    4. Opening a free 30-day trial of Dynamics 365 for Sales
      1. Trial provisioning
      2. Tenant access through the Office 365 Admin console
      3. What is a sandbox instance?
    5. Configuring a domain name for your environment
    6. Integrating with Office 365 E3 trial services
    7. Summary
  8. Dynamics 365 Platform Structure
    1. Experiencing the platform evolution
    2. Modularity for everyone
      1. Dynamics 365 for Sales
      2. Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
      3. Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation
      4. Dynamics 365 for Field Service
      5. Dynamics 365 for Marketing
    3. Dynamics 365 application elements
      1. Modular design
      2. Entities
      3. Processes
        1. Dialogs
        2. Workflows
        3. Actions
        4. Business process flows
      4. Dashboards
      5. Reports
    4. The extensibility options
    5. Understanding platform navigation
    6. Exploring the modular concept
    7. Summary
  9. Section 2 - Default Modules Available with the Platform
  10. Dynamics 365 Sales Application
    1. Reviewing the Dynamics 365 Sales app
    2. Understanding Sales-specific entities
      1. Leads
      2. Opportunities
      3. Quotes
      4. Orders
      5. Invoice
      6. Competitor
      7. Products
      8. Sales Goals
    3. Standard Sales processes
      1. Lead to Opportunity Sales Process
      2. Opportunity Sales Process
      3. Sales Literature
    4. Reviewing Sales dashboards
      1. Sales Activity Dashboard
      2. Sales Activity Social Dashboard
      3. Sales Dashboard
    5. Leveraging Sales reports
    6. Marketing features
    7. Summary
  11. Dynamics 365 Customer Service
    1. Exploring the Dynamics 365 for Customer Service app
      1. Dynamics 365 Customer Service
      2. Customer Service Hub – Service area
      3. Customer Service Hub – Scheduling area
      4. Customer Service Hub – Service Management area
    2. Understanding the Customer Service entities
      1. Cases
      2. Queues
      3. Services
      4. Scheduling
      5. Knowledge Articles
    3. Understanding Service Processes
    4. Understanding the Customer Service dashboards
      1. Interacting with Streams and Tiles
      2. Standard dashboards
        1. Customer Service Representative Social Dashboard
        2. Customer Service Performance Dashboard
        3. Customer Service Manager Dashboard
        4. My Knowledge Dashboard
        5. Knowledge Manager
        6. Connected Customer Service Dashboard
    5. Service Reports
    6. Summary
  12. Dynamics 365 Field Service
    1. Solution features of Dynamics 365 for Field Service 
      1. Installation
      2. Regular maintenance
      3. Break-fix scenarios
    2. Dynamics 365 for Field Service – the classical web UI
    3. Dynamics 365 for Field Service – the Unified Interface app
    4. Understanding core entities in Field Service
      1. Accounts and contacts
      2. Work orders
      3. Incident types
    5. Handling scenarios in Field Service
      1. Creating and capturing work orders
      2. Scheduling resources
      3. Fulfilling/completing the work order
    6. Working with agreements
    7. Supporting entities in Field Service
      1. Customer assets
      2. Inventory and purchasing
    8. Other supporting integration scenarios
    9. Summary
  13. Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation
    1. Overview of Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation
      1. PSA users/personas
      2. PSA applications
        1. Project Resource Hub
        2. Project Service app
    2. Understanding the PSA core entities
      1. Accounts and Contacts
      2. Leads, Opportunities, and Quotes
    3. Understanding Project Service Automation scenarios
      1. Creating and managing projects
      2. Creating and managing project schedules
      3. Project estimation
      4. Scheduling resources for projects
      5. Tracking project progress
    4. Summary
  14. Dynamics 365 Marketing
    1. Dynamics 365 for Marketing
      1. Marketing users/personas
      2. The Marketing application
    2. Understanding the core marketing entities
    3. Understanding customers 
      1. Managing customer segments
    4. Marketing execution 
      1. Creating marketing communications
      2. Creating and managing customer journeys
      3. Managing social media posts
    5. Event management
      1. Creating and managing events
      2. Handling event registration
    6. Internet marketing
      1. Deploying the Marketing portal 
      2. Creating a landing page
    7. Creating and managing Surveys
    8. Summary
  15. Section 3 - Customization, Configuration, and Extensibility
  16. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Power Platform
    1. Understanding the Power Apps way
    2. Users/personas leveraging Power Apps
      1. Power Apps for makers/creators
      2. Power Apps for application users
      3. Power Apps for administrators
        1. The Power Apps admin center
        2. The Power Platform admin center
      4. Power Apps for developers
    3. Creating Power Apps
    4. Comparing canvas versus model-driven apps
      1. Creating a canvas app
      2. Creating a model-driven app
    5. Understanding CDS
    6. Leveraging Power Apps Portals
    7. Leveraging Microsoft Power Automate flows
    8. Summary
  17. Customizing Dynamics 365
    1. Exploring the solution package
      1. Components of a solution package
      2. Types of solutions
        1. Unmanaged solutions
        2. Managed solutions
      3. Solution publisher
      4. Solution layering
      5. Default solution
      6. Solution segmentation
      7. Solution cloning and patching
    2. The elements that make up an entity definition
      1. Renaming an entity
      2. Changing entity settings and properties
        1. Description
        2. Entity type and ownership
        3. Collaboration
        4. Creating and updating settings
        5. Dynamics 365 for Outlook
    3. Business versus custom entities
      1. Business entities
      2. Custom entities
    4. Extending entities
    5. Recording images
    6. Quickly viewing and creating entity forms
      1. The entity form
        1. The main form
        2. The quick view form
        3. The quick create form
        4. The card form
      2. Customizing forms
        1. Tabs
        2. Sections
        3. iFrames
        4. Sub-grids
        5. Fields
        6. Global options sets
        7. Spacers
        8. Other inputs
    7. Presenting data to the user
      1. Views
      2. Charts
      3. Dashboards
    8. Defining entity relationship types
      1. One-to-many (1:N) and many-to-one (N:1) relationships
      2. Many-to-many (N:N) relationships
    9. Working with composite fields
    10. Using calculated fields
    11. Taking advantage of rollup fields
    12. When to use SLAs and the timer control
      1. Standard versus enhanced SLAs
      2. How SLAs are applied
    13. Enabling geolocation and mapping
    14. Creating a new solution package scenario
      1. Creating the solution package
      2. Creating a new entity
      3. Extending the entity
      4. Configuring the entity form
    15. Summary
  18. Building Better Business Functionality
    1. Understanding processes
    2. Using alternatives for dialogs
      1. Replacing dialogs with Business Process Flows
      2. Replacing dialogs with Canvas Apps
    3. Learning about workflows
      1. Understanding real-time workflows
      2. Using Flow instead of workflows
    4. Using actions
    5. Using business rules
      1. Understanding the limitations of business rules
    6. Learning about Business Process Flows
      1. Creating Business Process Flows
      2. Triggering workflows on Business Process Flow stage change
    7. Leveraging Excel
    8. Learning about document templates
    9. Document generation templates
    10. Leveraging search correctly
      1. Searching in a view
      2. Searching across the entire organization
      3. Understanding Advanced Find
      4. Searching using voice on mobile
      5. Understanding Relevance Search
    11. Summary
  19. Section 4 - Integrations
  20. Out-of-the-Box Integration Capabilities
    1. Configuring email integration
      1. Configuring Dynamics 365 App for Outlook
    2. Configuring server-based SharePoint integration
      1. Configuring Dynamics 365 SharePoint integration
    3. Configuring OneDrive for Business
    4. Integrating OneNote
    5. Leveraging virtual entities to present external data
      1. Defining a data source
      2. Configuring a new virtual entity
    6. Leveraging Sales Insights features
      1. Free Sales Insights
        1. Assistant
        2. Auto capture
        3. Email engagement
      2. Advanced Sales Insights
      3. The Sales Insights application
    7. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
      1. Starting the initial configuration
      2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator controls
        1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead controls
        2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account Controls
      3. Adding controls to entity forms
    8. Summary
  21. Custom Integration Capabilities
    1. Using Power Automate
      1. Power Automate – Flow reborn
      2. Power Automate connectors
      3. Power Automate templates
      4. Conditional decisions
      5. Leveraging mobility with the Dynamics 365 platform 
      6. Enforcing security through configuration
      7. Recommendations on using connectors
        1. Using the CDS Connector instead of the older Dynamics 365 Connector
        2. Using the right CDS Connector for the job
          1. Personal automation versus Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
    2. Leveraging Azure Logic Apps for enterprises
      1. Logic Apps and Power Automate – similar but different
      2. When to use Logic Apps
    3. Leveraging the Power Apps Data Integration service
      1. Simple no-code integrations
        1. Data Integrator connections
        2. Data Integrator connection sets
        3. Data Integrator projects
        4. Data Integrator templates
      2. Benefits and challenges of data integration
    4. Summary
  22. Section 5 - Administration
  23. Core Administration Concepts
    1. Introducing the Settings area
    2. Exploring the Settings area
      1. Product
        1. Behavior
        2. Features
        3. Languages
        4. Privacy + Security
      2. Business
        1. Business Closures
        2. Calendar
        3. Connection Roles
        4. Currencies
        5. Queues
        6. Regional Formatting
        7. Relationship Roles
      3. Users + Permissions
        1. Business Units
        2. Hierarchy Security
        3. Mobile Configuration
        4. Positions
        5. Security Roles
        6. Teams
        7. Users
      4. Audit and logs
        1. Audit log management
        2. Audit settings
        3. Audit summary view
        4. Entity and field audit settings
        5. System Jobs
      5. Templates
        1. Access team templates
        2. Article templates
        3. Contract templates
        4. Data import templates
        5. Document templates
        6. Email signatures
        7. Email templates
        8. Mail merge templates
      6. Email
        1. Email settings
        2. Email tracking
        3. Mailboxes
        4. Server profiles
      7. Integration
      8. Data management
        1. Auto-numbering
        2. Automatic record creation policies
        3. Data import wizard
        4. Data maps
        5. Duplicate detection rules
        6. Duplicate detection settings
      9. Encryption
      10. Resources
    3. Leveraging a unified experience
    4. Managing users scenario
      1. Creating a new security role
      2. Assigning a role to a user
    5. Summary
  24. Other Books You May Enjoy
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Product information

  • Title: Fundamentals of CRM with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
  • Author(s): Nicolae Tarla
  • Release date: October 2020
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781789950243