Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales Archives - FMT

The release plan (formerly release notes) for the 2019 release wave 2 describes all new features releasing from October 2019 through March 2020 for Dynamics 365. You can either browse the release notes online or download the document as a PDF file. New for wave 2: The Power Platform (PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI) features coming in the 2019 release wave 2 have been summarized in a separate release plan. 2019 release wave 2 overview The 2019 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 brings new innovations that provide you with significant capabilities to transform your business. The enhancements to Dynamics 365 applications include hundreds of new capabilities across the business process applications: Sales Marketing Customer Service Field Service Project Service Automation Finance and Operations Talent Retail Business Central The 2019 release wave 2 enhances artificial intelligence capabilities to help organizations accelerate their transformation of customer service, sales, and marketing […]

Today’s B2B marketer has a plethora of marketing tools to leverage, and nowhere is data and technology more prevalent than in B2B marketing. Let’s go through four B2B marketing trends poised to have the greatest impact through the remainder of the year and on.   An Omnichannel Experience We’ve heard multi-channel marketing thrown around for the past couple of years. Organizations transitioning from the multi-channel framework to an omnichannel strategy is a trend worth mentioning. With an omnichannel marketing approach look to see established marketing teams have success across digital environments extended reach regardless of channel or device. The days of siloed digital engagement and activities are gone, and companies are understanding the importance of creating a unified and consistent brand image no matter which channel they are using to engage their audience. Below we created a quick snapshot of what we’re talking about which includes only a handle of […]

Marketing automation – the name really doesn’t do the technology justice. While it’s true that a marketing automation platform can help you automate marketing campaigns, these robust systems are capable of so much more and benefit many areas within an organization outside of marketing. Sales is one such beneficiary, particularly when marketing automation is paired with Microsoft Dynamics 365. In recent years, the internet and social media have changed buyer behavior, which has in turn changed how companies sell to their buyers. Consider these sales statistics: • Today’s buyers are anywhere from two-thirds to 90 percent of the way through the buying process before they reach out to a vendor. (Forrester Research) • 50 percent of qualified leads are not ready to purchase immediately. (Gleanster Research) • The average sales cycle has increased 22 percent over the past 5 years due to more decision makers in the buying process. (Sirius […]

You might be wondering: Is your organization getting enough out of its CRM system? There are a couple reoccurring themes that we as FMT Consultants often encounter when working with our customers in moving Dynamics CRM On-Premise to D365. If you are considering the move for your CRM environment, you might want to pay attention to some of these factors as they are real opportunities for you to effectively modernize your business processes: 1. Customizations From Custom Entities to Workflows to Plugins to ISVs to XRM, chances are, you’ve got some level of customization going on in your CRM system. As long as you have CRM 2013 or later, cross your fingers, you’ll be able to upgrade customizations without issue: Version compatibility Solutions exported from an earlier version of Dynamics 365 can be imported into later versions as shown in the following chart. Upgrading without issue, unfortunately, is oftentimes not […]

With the new Dynamics 365 July 2017 9.0 Update, Microsoft has rolled out several exciting new features and enhancement for CRM. In this article, we will review 3 of these features which can improve you Dynamics CRM: Unified Client Interface, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and the Multiselect Option Set. 1. Dynamics 365 Unified Client Interface With the new Unified Client interface, users will be able to have a single experience across all different UI’s like Web, Mobile, Outlook & Tablet! This UCI will be rolled out first to the Business Edition & later on for the enterprise Edition! The idea behind this is that the era of web vs. mobile is over and now the UI will adapt to the screen in use. You will also have the same customization options in each. Content will be presented in a way that will reflow into different states of the control as the space available to it […]

Back in 2013, Microsoft added a nifty Autosave feature to CRM 2013 during the Polaris or UR 12 release for CRM which is still here today in Microsoft Dynamics 365. How does it work? Essentially you don’t have to manually save your work anymore! Instead, every 30 seconds after a field changes and if you’re still on the form, the record is automatically saved to the server. The only time you will ever need to manually save a record again is when you first create it! Afterward, you never have to click on any save button ever again. Now you’re all wondering how one might add this Auto Save functionality to your Dynamics 365 CRM. Just follow these two simple steps: Go to the Dynamics 365 Menu and navigate to Settings > Administration > System Settings Under the General tab, on the first line, you will see “Enable autosave on […]

  The relationship between buyers and businesses are changing, engaging your prospects at every stage of the buying cycle is now essential to closing more deals. Watch this video to discover how you can deliver customized, memorable experiences and start turning every lead into a loyal customer with marketing automation. We'll explore: What is it and who uses it Why marketing automation is an essential tool How to shorten your sales cycle with marketing automation If you want to learn more about how your organization can take advantage of marketing automation to help you keep prospects and customers better engaged, feel free to reach out to us by submitting the form below. We'd love to hear from you!

If your organization is currently running an on-premise or hosted CRM deployment, it’s seriously time to start planning the move to Dynamics 365 on the Microsoft Cloud. Here are three reasons why the cloud version of CRM makes sense for you: You don’t want servers anymore If you’ve ever stood up an on-premise version of CRM before, you know that you’ll need at least a SQL Server and a Windows Application Server. The supported versions of SQL or Windows Server range from 2008R2 to 2016, you need to create service accounts for things like the VSS Writer Service and the Async Service—not to mention you’ll probably need the E-mail Router and Reporting Server Services set up. I haven’t even mentioned a single Account or Customer yet and there is already all this complexity that needs to be managed. With Dynamics 365, an organization can be provisioned literally in minutes and […]

Have you ever tried to connect to CRM Online using a Java Application? Turns out it’s much simpler than you would expect. By leveraging the Azure Active Directory Library, you can easily authenticate any user for your external application to perform any CRM Operation through the Web API. Here are the required components: CRM Online (Trial will still work) Azure Active Directory OAUTH 2.0 Authorization Endpoint Application ID A Java IDE (Maven project is recommended for the dependencies) Here’s a quick summary of how this actually works: Obtain the access token, by using the OAUTH 2.0 Authorization Endpoint. Build the connection with your Dynamics CRM URI, and set the request method and properties with the access token. Finally, depending on the Request type, you build the JSON Object and write it to CRM or save it to view. Let’s dig deeper and get into the details: First, you need the […]

Have you ever wondered who in your organization is utilizing your Dynamics CRM application most effectively?  On the other hand, have you ever wondered who is NOT using the system?   If your organization is on Dynamics 365 (online) or Dynamics CRM online, then you have the metrics that you need to target your Power Users and those users that may need additional training.  This is particularly useful information when first implementing a CRM application within the organization and measuring adoption rates.    The Organization Insights dashboard has six charts that provide the metrics that are viewable by three different slices of time from the past i.e. 2 hours, 48 hours or 30 Days. 1.Unique Active Users (chart below shows 2-hour increments) that have performed an operation (e.g. Retrieve, Create, Update) 2. Most Active (unique) Users that performed a Read operation.    This chart shows the top 10 users that […]

By now, most everyone is familiar with CRM applications. In fact, most companies, large and small, use a CRM tool, module, software or platform for customer information tracking and reporting. Certainly, the majority of companies only ever consider CRM as an internal use system but what about CRM portals? Using CRM as an internal “System of Truth” has many business benefits such as: Grow sales with your potential customers Segmenting and targeting your customers specifically Drive referrals from satisfied customers Use reporting features to make better decisions for: Forecasting Marketing communications Contact campaigns All of the above is largely known today but there are many more advantages with CRM portals. With CRM portals, there is potential to create an information hub to bridge the connection between partners, customers and you. Typically, this is accomplished with a webpage frontend that interacts with only those parts of your CRM system you want […]

Easily create seamless mobile applications without typing a single line of code! Included in Microsoft's latest Dynamics 365 solution and Dynamics CRM 2016 Online, Microsoft PowerApps and Flow allows you to easily design your app, connect to a variety of business solutions you are already using, and create workflows in just a few clicks. In this video, we will be building a custom mobile application from scratch to show you just how simple it is to create a solution that can help you work less, and do more. If you want to get started on your custom mobile application today, let us know by filling out the contact form below, we'd be happy to help!