Sandboxes are for playing around and testing customizations and features. Production environments are where you do your actual work. Now let’s dig in a little deeper into how to work with sandboxes, and how to move your sandbox content into a production environment if/when you want to!

One of Microsoft’s primary goals when updating old features or developing new ones for its fleet of business productivity apps is right there in the name: Productivity. One thing that can lead to slowdowns and hang-ups is navigating between a bunch of different pages. Even aside from the slowdowns, it just doesn’t feel as good for the user. A relatively new feature to Dynamics 365 CRM is Focused View. This feature is aimed at reducing the number of screens users have to jump between when working with different record types.

Access and security in Dynamics 365 CRM is a pretty big topic and can be a complex undertaking when you get into the granular details. It is the system administrator’s responsibility to configure and assign access and security, but proper setup impacts every single user, and it’s not a bad idea to have a general idea of how you and your coworkers are given access.

When we zoom out and look at it in broad strokes, your admin gives you access to CRM in three main ways: security roles, business units, and field-level security.

In CRM, the command bar is the strip at the top of page that contains a bunch of different functions for the page. Recently, Microsoft has implemented an improved functionality for customizing the command bar to the Power Apps designer for CRM apps.

The first batch of new features will soon be available for Power Platform and the entire Dynamics 365 suite. 2023 Release Wave 1 will continue to enhance the way you work with your business data, create personalized lead engagement efforts, optimize your sales cycle, and support industry-specialized functions. Preview access is now available, allowing you to test and validate features in a sandbox environment, and will become generally available in April.

Often, there are too many disconnected apps at play in the workplace, so the challenge is to ensure that any additional app you add to your tech stack is multifaceted and adds tangible value to your work process. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems provide useful tools to teams who attract leads, build rapport with opportunities, and support current clients. Here are a few of the ways that CRM apps within the Dynamics 365 suite can be more than just a CRM.

Understanding the sales funnel and knowing how to navigate each phase is key for businesses to attract, win, and keep high-quality leads and build long-term customer relationships. Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing are the cloud-based solutions that can help you meet every type of customer right where they are, with exactly what they’re looking for at any point in the sales funnel.

Manufacturers value efficiency, automation, and the ability to forecast orders, sales, inventory, and other important elements of their business. Considering these values, it’s perhaps a curious thing, or maybe not so curious, that many manufacturers use their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for customer relationships management (CRM) activities, or else they don’t use any solution for CRM at all. Considering the myriad benefits of CRM functionality—from lead and opportunity management, contact and account management, data analysis, automated marketing campaigns, event management, branded landing pages and forms, email creation, and so much more—it’s a wonder how a business could get by on the limited customer relationship functions a typical ERP provides.

Acquainting yourself with all the apps and technology required to perform your job responsibilities is a hefty task, let alone using your tech stack with peak efficiency. That’s why it’s so beneficial when applications work together to help you do your job. Enter Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 applications. Built to seamlessly and natively integrate with each other, these business and productivity apps make it easier to transition from one to the other throughout your workday—sometimes without having to actually open another screen.

The Dynamics 365 suite of cloud-based business applications are always being improved as user needs are identified and the cutting edge of technology advances. The coming upgrade is Release Wave 1 of 2022, scheduled from April through September. Some of the foci for these updates across applications include leveraging data, AI, and ideal timing to create better experiences throughout the sales and marketing experience, simplifying onboarding, increasing productivity, optimizing collaboration, and improving connectors and integrations. Here’s an overview of what’s coming to Dynamic 365 apps—Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Business Central—for this release wave.

As the new year rings in, many people make resolutions—new habits, self-improvements, changes for the better. Whether or not you ascribe to New Year Resolutions, here’s a change your business can make to kick off this year and build up your bottom line: invest in CRM. A Customer Relationship Management system is a tool that, when added to your tech stack, can return massive ROI by improving your sales and marketing performance and potential. In fact, in 2014, every dollar spent on CRM returned between $5.60 and $8.71 (Nucleus Research).

Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps organizations offer end-to-end customer support services across multiple channels to meet customer needs, wherever they may be. The app tracks customer issues through cases, manages performance and productivity in the workspace dashboard, tracks customer requests across channels, and provides customers with assisted and self-service through a variety of scenarios.

With the upcoming 2021 Release Wave 2 updates, the app will see overall enhancements to AI insights, embedded analytics, collaboration tools, and bolstered case management abilities.

Engaging a customer at the opportune times is a tricky, time-consuming business; yet, this is a necessary act for many businesses to build and retain a loyal and satisfied customer base. Gathering touchpoint data, analyzing customer actions, anticipating customer desires, and sending proper emails or other communication at the right moment—what if all this effort and toil could happen automatically based on the customer’s actions? Fortunately, automation for a broad range of purposes, even across several Microsoft applications, can be easily established.

This blog will demonstrate just one example of Microsoft applications—such as Dynamics 365 Marketing, Microsoft Bookings, and Power Automate—interacting seamlessly to provide optimal, efficient business solutions for you, and a cohesive, satisfying end-to-end experience for your customers.

Plans were recently published for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 2, slated for release this fall. This update will feature hundreds of enhancements and improved functionalities, including robust integrations with Microsoft 365 products. These significant new capabilities will strengthen the features made available by Release Wave 1, which was rolled out earlier this year.

Gathering customer feedback is one of the most effective means to improving your company’s products and services. Successful companies—those who wish to build resilience, foster a growth-mindset, and earn and maintain customer loyalty—listen to and deliver on what their customers desire.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is an online survey platform that can be used with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing that can help any business create and manage simple, effective surveys as part of their journey toward resilience, growth, and customer loyalty.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is an enterprise feedback management application built into the ecosystem of Dynamics 365. Customer Voice enables organizations to take in feedback from their customer base and incorporate their voice into the decision making of business practices and processes.

Ensuring that every customer interaction adheres to brand standards should be the primary goal for all marketers and survey makers. New personalization features released in Dynamics 365 2021 release wave 1 give survey makers new ways to brand Customer Voice surveys and personalize the survey experience.

Whether you call them support incidents, tickets, cases, or another term, most organizations need a way to effectively manage and track all support activities related to their customers. Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides support teams with comprehensive tools to capture and store support related information while guiding support staff through the remediation process to final resolution.

For organizations already using other Dynamics 365 apps like Sales for CRM capabilities, Dynamics 365 Customer Service allows them to store and update client info in the same database as Sales data meaning it is easy to keep all prospect and client data up to date in the same system.

Customer Satisfaction surveys can have a major impact on both sales and customer service operations. Allowing customers to provide meaningful insight into their interactions with your organization can positively influence process changes and impact the bottom line.

With Dynamics 365 Customer Voice (formerly Forms Pro), organizations can create comprehensive customer satisfaction surveys and distribute them directly to contacts from Dynamics 365 apps like Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Service.