I'm registering a new 2013 on-line and I notice that there are two license types:
1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
2. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional
What's the difference between them (in short)? I've read the description and I get the impression like "this one is yellow and the other is a car", so I simply can't compare.
According to this article, there are three (not two) different models and only one allows customizing the system (so it's only that one that there's any point showing to the customers).
What's up with that?!
In short, the headlines are:
All three licences allow access to CRM from all available clients eg browser, outlook, tablet, phone. (This is a big difference from the 2011 ESS CAL).
All three licences allow read access to all data, including custom entities. (subject to Security Roles of course).
Essential allows read/write access to activities, activity feeds and custom entities.
Basic allows everything in Essential, plus read/write to Accounts, Contacts, Cases, Leads. Also access to reports, and to create personal charts and dashboards.
Pro allows everything. Most notably Sales and Marketing (Opportunity, Quote etc, Campaign, Marketing List), plus service management (facility/equipment and all that).
Pro is needed to build customisations, but not to use them, which is where I think some confusion has arisen.
If you are talking about user licences there appears to be three distinct types.
It was a bit confusing however my general belief is:
1) Professional
This would be the Administration users who need to customize the system, build processes, templates, administer CRM, and run marketing campaigns.
2) Basic
Would be suitable for general users (ie:- ones that just need to work with entities but don't need to do much else). They can't do marketing campaigns which might restrict people who are given this licence. However your day to day staff should be fine with this as they have general access to entities as well as Reports and Dashboards etc.
3) Essential
Has very little access to core entities (even Account and Contact) so unless you have a client who wants to work with only custom entities then this seems like a pointless licence.
Related
Is there any possibility to create sub-users under a user account using one license, but taking into account they need to have full access to the main functionalities of the CRM.
No. Even by sharing a user between multiple people you would likely be breaching your licence terms.
Without understanding why you would want to do this, if the reason is cost, I would suggest investigating Power Apps and Team Member licences. They are a cheap way to access Dynamics data, although can be restrictive.
In PowerApps entity list page, we have default five fields Entity, Name, Type, Customizable & Tags
What does the Type field mean, I couldn't find any article related to this! Even Microsoft docs is a no go!!
I do know that Custom is the Type assigned to the tables created by us, whereas the default tables are grouped into two - Managed & Standard (refer screenshot).
But under what criteria do they get separated into the two groups?
This Standard type is part of Common Data Model (CDM) and PowerApps nomenclature:
CDM provides standard entities common across most industry domains – Sales, Purchase, Customer Service, Productivity among others. Leveraging the years of experience with Dynamics business applications and Office 365 and working with thousands of enterprise customers we have defined and implemented these standard entities that will connect to Microsoft’s first party business applications and support a broad ecosystem of ISV and customer solution development.
Learn more about CDM.
Managed is something like First party integration apps like LinkedIn, AI, Teams, etc. You will see publish prefix like msdyn_, li_, etc to see some identities. (maybe some third party Managed entities will follow this route, I'm not sure though).
I see some ADX portal like legacy entities marked as Standard rather than Managed, and some vice versa. I would say some sausage is being made, too early to look into that & that why documentation is missing.
I am currently investigating possible tools with which to develop a workflow solution for a company that would be used by the staff to process incoming work and ensure incoming work is routed to the correct people for evaluation and are authorised by the relevant managers before work commences, and that the work is signed off when complete.
Is Microsoft Power Automate the right tool for this kind of work, or is it [simply] a tool for automating ones own personal tasks? I'm looking for something that could be used to develop a tool that would be used by everyone in the company.
I've looked at the various videos but it looks like it might be just something for automating ones personal tasks rather than building something to be shared. Is this correct or can it be used as a software development tool for developing a custom solution for a company?
Look at Business Process Flows (BPFs).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/business-process-flows-overview
The following text is from "Why use business process flows?" on the above link:
Business process flows provide a guide for people to get work done.
They provide a streamlined user experience that leads people through
the processes their organization has defined for interactions that
need to be advanced to a conclusion of some kind. This user experience
can be tailored so that people with different security roles can have
an experience that best suits the work they do.
Use business process flows to define a set of steps for people to
follow to take them to a desired outcome. These steps provide a visual
indicator that tells people where they are in the business process.
Business process flows reduce the need for training because new users
don’t have to focus on which table they should be using. They can let
the process guide them. You can configure business process flows to
support common sales methodologies that can help your sales groups
achieve better results. For service groups, business process flows can
help new staff get up-to-speed more quickly and avoid mistakes that
could result in unsatisfied customers.
You can create broad, or detailed, BPFs, to cover company wide business processes. You can also call on separate normal flows, validations, and more. There are a lot of ways you can use a BPF to move things forward in a company.
Power Automate (aka MS Flow) is a low code/no code business workflow management or process orchestration software, getting more power with Robotic Process Automation & Virtual Agents inclusion.
The concept is having variety of connectors for all the available SaaS solutions (name anything like Dynamics, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Twitter, Facebook, Exchange mailbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, etc) to act as both Trigger and Action to achieve what we want. At worst case we can use REST APIs to complete the project setup.
Community demo the usefulness of it by showcasing the automation of personal stuffs but it has more. MS Flow is the alternate for Dynamics CRM 365 workflow and SharePoint workflow as well. Definitely it’s an enterprise candidate to solve company wide problems like onboarding, approvals, and many other workflow solutions.
Personally I would look at Azure Logic Apps for that level. It has just about the same connectors as MS Flow , but with the addition of better management, troubleshooting and extensibility capabilities and you get all the benefits of security in Azure and compliance good stuff that companies would need
I'm trying to set up our software development company on Dynamics CRM 2016. I've customized almost everything I need such as accounts, leads and processes. However, It still feels that the CRM is designed for company with tangible products and shipping, etc...
Is there a way to setup Dynamics CRM for professional service company rather than product company?
This is not correct.
You can perform many actions that a professional service provider business model contains. For example, you can create and/or schedule:
Phone calls
Tasks
Appointments
Emails
You can also use marketing module for your services. Campaigns and quick campaigns.
You can gather leads, work upon those unqualified leads and convert them to opportunities.
You can also record invoices for your services as your products.
And so on ...
And the best part is that Microsoft has provided so many customization and development options in Dynamics CRM that you can almost use the XRM platform to just manage any type of relationship management. So, you can customize or even add new entities and relationships to suite your particular business needs.
One thing to keep in mind: First, always try to map your business requirements on the existing CRM processes so that you can take advantage of the out-of-the-box provided processes and reporting.
Update
The deployment/set up procedure for Dynamics CRM is same for all business domain. However, you may customize and extend Dynamics CRM, put those extensions and customizations in one or more solutions and then import those solutions over the target instances.
Update
You may override product price on quote (for example) by double clicking the product grid record on the quote form. See below image:
I've used Visual Studio Online Team Services as a code repository and want to know if it is possible for Microsoft Employees to see the code you upload if they wanted to.
The privacy policy doesn't address this specifically that I can see but it does say that Microsoft can use your data for advertising purposes and they can share it with third parties. If "data" means my proprietary code that would be good to know.
Customer Data will be used only to provide customer the Online Services including purposes compatible with providing those services. For example, we may use Customer Data to provide a personalized experience, improve service reliability, combat spam or other malware, or improve features and functionality of the Online Services. Microsoft will not use Customer Data or derive information from it for any advertising or similar commercial purposes. “Customer Data” means all data, including all text, sound, video, or image files, and software, that are provided to Microsoft by, or on behalf of, you or your end users through use of the Online Service. Customer Data is not Administrator Data, Payment Data, or Support Data. For more information about the features and functionality that enable you to control Customer Data, please review documentation specific to the Online Service.
No, not merely if they "want to". Microsoft does provide a clause that allows them access if it's required for security or site operation:
From time to time, Microsoft employees need to obtain access to customer data stored within Team Services. As a precaution, all employees who have or may ever have access to customer data must pass a background check, which verifies previous employment and criminal convictions. In addition, we permit access to the production systems only when there’s a live site incident or other approved maintenance activity, which is logged and monitored.
(From the Visual Studio Team Services Data Protection Overview document.
That being said, this is the most liberal interpretation of this access. I worked as a senior software engineer on the VSO version control team and there's no possibility for me to get access to customer data. If you complain about a bug in our git repository handling, I'm going to ask you if you can give me a copy that I can use to reproduce - I can't just go get it. And if you decline, then I will not be able to get your data.
So while yes, we Microsoft engineers do have the theoretical ability to get to your files, there are significant policy and security safeguards against access and abuse.