Moving to Dynamics 365

Posted on: March 23, 2017 | By: Jim Bertler | Microsoft Dynamics CRM

By now, organizations using Microsoft Dynamics CRM online have seen the initial transition to Dynamics 365 platform that took place back on November 1, 2016.

You may have gotten a recent notice in your inbox: Scheduled Update – Dynamics 365 is Coming Soon! or saw the upgrade available to the December 2016 update in your Office 365 admin panel. Microsoft has begun blasting these notices out the past few weeks; they are getting antsy to get everyone moved to the new Dynamics 365 platform. This update will bring CRM up to date with the latest capabilities and fully transition CRM to the Dynamics 365 platform. Along with this update, most organizations are beginning to see renewal notices for their subscription, with corresponding new pricing levels.

Let’s begin by reviewing key items with the CRM 2016 December update. This update introduces several new features, along with the capability to add new functionality like Project Service and Field Service. For most organizations, upgrading to the December 2016 update should be relatively painless.

A few of the new Dynamics 365 features include:

• Editable grids; Have you ever wanted to just edit information right in a view instead of opening each record. Now you can!

• Improvements to process flow bar; New status reasons like Finished and Abandoned and ability to trigger workflows within the process flow steps.

• New Dynamics 365 App for Outlook; A robust web enabled app that provides much greater functionality between CRM & Outlook in a web app that can be accessed on Desktop or Mobile device.

• A complete list of items can be reviewed here

 

A couple of things to consider before scheduling the upgrade include:

• Make sure that all code is up to date, and form errors are addressed. Not sure what this means? Give Logan Consulting a call and we can help with this.

• Be ready to update Outlook Clients; This update should work with the existing 2016 Outlook client, but we have seen some issues, so be ready to update to the latest version.

• We have noticed issues right after upgrades with form access. This is usually resolved by clearing the local browser cache.

If you have any questions on how to prepare or schedule this very important update, please contact us here. We can answer questions and guide you through this process.

 

    Regarding the new Field Service and Project Service functionality, these are new modules that require separate licenses from Microsoft to enable the functionality. If you’re business has extensive Field Service requirements, this might be a great fit for full scheduling, routing, inventory control, billing and deployment of resources.

If you’re business is Project based, such as a professional service or consulting firm, this is a new module that allows handling of project based business, from the start of the opportunity to management of resources, time & billing, and invoicing.

Finally, the issue of subscription renewal under the Dynamics 365 platform has caused quite a bit of confusion as Microsoft transitions to this platform, and existing subscriptions expire. It would take an extensive article to cover the numerous pricing models, so our suggestion is to simply call Logan Consulting! We can guide you through this process, and provide some options which are not easily discovered on the Microsoft site.

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