Microsoft recently announced that Internet Explorer Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported by Microsoft 365 applications. Don’t panic – Internet Explorer users have until August 17, 2021 before the tried and true browser is officially retired, however it is important for organizations using Dynamics 365 and Office 365 to begin developing a plan to use another browser for day to day access.

Many programs including Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 utilize Active Directory to conduct authentication, but this blog will focus on Dynamics 365 Business Central Online and how it uses Active Directory to create seamless integration between most of Microsoft’s products.

Project management has always been a tricky problem for traditional accounting software to manage. Dynamics 365 Business Central offers options for managing projects using a process called Jobs.

Automation of accounting processes is an important part of any robust ERP solution. The ability to set automatic schedules that can either be kicked off manually or remotely can refine processes that would otherwise take excessive time and effort to handle. As a result, a lot of modern accounting systems have automation capabilities that build scripts to eliminate manual work. Dynamics 365 Business Central is no exception to that rule and has its entirely own system of workflows to help take out as much administration time as possible.

Coming soon, the Customer Journey entity will see a revamp making it even easier to create and manage automated marketing campaigns. These campaigns range from a simple email blast to an extended drip campaign that reacts to how the target interacts with the campaign content. Learn more about building more complex customer journeys here. Here is a glimpse at what’s coming to early release in September and general availability in October.

Since Microsoft originally released Microsoft Teams as a successor to Skype for Business, they have been consistently improving the application with regular updates designed to make communication and collaboration easier for organizations of all sizes. With the recent situation surrounding COVID-19, many organizations have begun to rely more heavily on Microsoft Teams to help their staff communicate and collaborate while working remotely.

We’ve put together a few of the most beneficial features Microsoft Teams has to offer to organizations looking to take advantage of the communication app in a more effective way.

Twice each year, Microsoft gathers all projects under the umbrella of the Dynamics 365 label and hashes out a roadmap for every moving piece of the suite. The result is a huge document covering all Dynamics apps including Marketing, Sales, Finance and Operations, Human Resources, Commerce, Fraud Protection, Business Central, and Customer Voice, and a number of smaller subdivisions under each of these apps.

The May 2020 Update for Dynamics 365 Marketing was recently released. With this release come new features, performance upgrades, and bug fixes. If you have been watching Dynamics 365 updates closely, you’ll know there have been regular, monthly updates over the last 6 months.

The May release marks the final point in the Dynamics 365 Marketing 2020 release wave 1 plan. All features mentioned in release wave 1 plan are now generally available to all Dynamics 365 Marketing implementations. So what are the new features you should be aware of? Let us go through them.

The main way SharePoint manages their documents is through document libraries which keeps documents organized through the column system. As part of their annual August update, SharePoint Online will be bring some changes to this column system which may clear up some headaches that have always been associated with the feature.

Microsoft Teams gives users the ability to record their meetings. Recording meetings can be useful for training sessions or webinars that you want to reuse in the future. When a meeting is recorded in Microsoft Teams, it is automatically uploaded to Microsoft Stream, the default video player application in Microsoft 365. It is very easy to share videos uploaded to Microsoft Stream with members of your organization, but there is currently no way to share videos in Microsoft Stream with external users. So what should you do if you need to share a recorded Teams meeting with someone outside of your organization? This blog will go through the easiest workaround.

Microsoft Forms provides multiples ways to customize forms in a way that make them your own or adhere to brand standards. Updating a form theme or background with custom images or colors will help legitimize the form for your audience and make it look more appealing.

To increase the availability of portal software, Microsoft has recently replaced their older Dynamics 365 Portals with the new Power Apps Portals. The new program is designed to be an easier to use option with less coding needed for companies that want to create portals for their customers to access information Power Apps Portals can be used for a wide variety of purposes. Because it connects natively with Microsoft’s Common Data Service, Power Apps Portals can provide any information stored on the Microsoft Dynamics suite.

An accounting team may be able to successfully enter sales orders or compile financial reports, but an outside sales team may struggle to interact with prospects remotely. For under-utilized departments like sales that are stuck at home, now is the perfect opportunity to train them on CRM processes that will improve their performance and data tracking when they have the chance to hit the field again.

Smaller retailers like hair salons, auto repair shops, boutiques, and other small to midsize retailers who don’t have dedicated teams to implement advanced COVID-19 response operations can utilize appointment booking software like Microsoft Bookings to safely open their business to their customers.

Digital marketing technology and strategies are constantly evolving. With new technologies, many new marketing strategies develop quickly to help make use of the new mediums we now have access to. One such marketing strategy, drip marketing, is a modern way to market to a specific set of potential customers through targeted emails with relevant information that can help convert them into an opportunity and ultimately a customer.

Microsoft’s new marketing platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing, can help provide businesses with the tools they need to execute complex marketing strategies like drip campaigns.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is an important part of the Dynamics 365 Suite. It is used to manage leads and opportunities and facilitate more conversions for your business. There are license types that are currently offered which can be somewhat confusing to a first-time buyer who may not know all the different options available to them.

Within Microsoft Teams, Teams are the highest level of organizations for groups of users. Teams can be used to communicate with groups of people, store relevant group files, or even just post notifications. Typically we see Teams be created for departments, project teams, specific office location staff, or group interests, but Teams can be created for just about any group type.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and its subsequent spread around the world, many companies and employees are taking the responsible step to have employees work from home to combat further spread of the virus, a concept known as social distancing. Companies of all sizes may struggle to adequately prepare staff to work remotely full-time. They may not have the equipment or the tools to access work resources remotely.

Microsoft has announced that it is offering 6 months of free licensing for certain cloud applications to help organizations respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Licenses available with this offer include Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Apps portals, and Power Virtual Agents. This announcement follows a previous offer for six months of free Microsoft Teams licensing for organizations who have not already implemented Office 365.

Utilizing an integration between Dynamics 365 Portals or Power Apps Portals, Dynamics 365 Marketing can provide a front end to interact directly with a potential customer. Marketers can use marketing pages built on these portals to engage with their audience by registering for events, filling out forms, or performing other marketing actions and have it sync directly with the marketing platform behind it. This blog will explain how exactly the integration between Dynamics 365 Portals and Dynamics 365 Marketing works and what can be accomplished with it.