Business Central Free of Charge

12/11/2022 Marko Totovic Business Central, Conference, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Directions EMEA, Dynamics 365, dynamics 365 Business Central, Essential, License, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Premium, Team Member, Teams

Directions EMEA has just been finished, and there was a lot of good news. One is access to the Business Central environment with the Microsoft 365 license. Now statement ‘free of charge” is partially correct.

What does it mean? You cannot get the Business Central environment free of charge as you must buy a minimum of one full user to get access (the whole article is about the cloud option). But when you have access to the environment, you can get free-of-charge access for all your users with Microsoft 365 license. This is huge news. As far as I know, there is no business solution (minimum, no global solution) to which you have free access. Of course, Microsoft will not cannibalize itself, and this access has some limitations, but this is a fantastic thing and can dramatically increase this solution’s use in the future.

You can find details in the following table about what you can use in Business Central with which license type. I hope it is helpful.

Reminder about D365 Sales Professional

31/10/202228/10/2022 Marko Totovic CRM, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SaaS D365 Sales Professional, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 Sales, limits, trial

As I started to write about Dynamics 365 Business Central with Sales Professional series, you will probably need a few directions on how to test it and about limitations (when to accept them or to go to the Sales Enterprise). As I already wrote about it two years ago, I just wanted to remind you as this is something you will need if you want to track what I’m writing or more about my session in Directions EMEA.

There are two posts you should read if you are interesting for this topic:

Limitations and Dynamics 365 Sales Professional vs Enterprise

How to install demo environment with Dynamics 365 Sales professional

See you in the following blog posts or in Hamburg.

Dynamics 365 SMB Ecosystem Map – October 2022

27/10/202227/10/2022 Marko Totovic Business Central, CRM, Dynamics 365, ERP, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Power Platform, SaaS Customer Service Professional, D365 Sales Professional, Dynamics 365, dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft, Sales Professional, SMB

You already know Microsoft publishes new releases two times per year (wave 1 in April and wave 2 in October). You can find all news in Microsoft’s release plans. There is also an amazing ecosystem map by Vadim Korepin about all solutions in Dynamics 365 family.

But as I’m most connected with SMB solutions inside Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, I wanted to share more details on what is available for SMB users and companies from Microsoft Dynamics 365 family. Three business applications (Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sales Professional, Customer Service Professional) covered ERP and CRM parts but with plenty of features. I’m sure no other vendor currently can offer more for SMB customers worldwide.

You can look at and download the Ecosystem map for Dynamics 365 SMB solutions I created (resolution is 3840×2160):

I hope this SMB ecosystem map will be helpful for you, and we will have more features and maybe even more solutions here in the future.

Business Central and D365 Sales

26/10/2022 Marko Totovic Business Central, Conference, CRM, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Business Central, Conference, Directions EMEA, Dynamics 365, dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 for Sales, Integration, Microsoft, Sales Professional, sessions

I know it has passed since I wrote the first part of this topic, ‘Where is a limit in Business Central CRM capability and when integrating it with D365 Sales (part 1),’ and people expect the second part. But as I’ll speak about this topic on Directions EMEA this year, I decided to postpone the following parts after this event. I would like to keep it interesting and show many of these topics in my session. Of course, as I cannot go so deep into details in 45 minutes, I’ll continue here with publishing my point of view related to this topic.

In the meantime, if you will attend Directions EMEA in Hamburg this year, I warmly invite you to come to my session and discuss this. My session will hold on November 10, 2022, from 11:15 to 12:00 in Room: Hall Y4 – Dynamics 365 Sales Professional for Business Central Users.

But I promise I’ll continue with this topic here in my blog.

Where is the limit in Business Central CRM capability and when integrating it with D365 Sales? (part 1)

08/08/202208/08/2022 Marko Totovic Business Central, CRM, Dynamics 365, ERP, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Business Central, CRM, D365, D365 Business Central, D365 Sales, D365 Sales Professional, D365BC, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 for Sales, ERP, License, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, ui

We know that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (previously NAV) is primarily an ERP solution. But even so, this product has some customer relationship management capabilities. And name ‘Business Central’ probably comes because this solution can provide all business activities in one solution. But as this is primarily an ERP solution, the biggest strength comes in ERP, and in other areas, such as CRM or HRM, the level of functionalities is significantly lower. But let us make an overview of what is already in Business Central, but we can say it can be treated as CRM.

First, what we can find are a good customer and contact management. Still, as customers play an essential role in every ERP solution, we can emphasize more about contact management where we have some basic information about contacts and some segmentation.

You can also find some level of creating and tracking opportunities and sales quotes and interactions. You can also have some possibilities to make direct phone calls from BC or send an email. This is more or less what we have, but this is not a small number of functionalities.

Today I’ll not go into details about all these features. I just wanted to show some basic information about them and explain on a high level in which situation you should think about an additional and full CRM solution. As a full and independent CRM solution, I’ll focus on Dynamics 365 Sales Professional:

First, naturally, if you don’t have enough functionalities, you will take a specialized CRM solution, but let’s talk in detail on another occasion.
Second, the price can be an issue. If you have pure CRM users, they still need to pay $70 or even $100 for the license as they must pay a BC license even if they need only CRM capabilities. Sales Professional full license price is $65, and you can get full CRM. But with the new attach license for Dynamics 365 Sales Professional, BC clients can add a full CRM solution for an additional only $20.
Third, as I mentioned in the beginning, Business Central is still primarily an ERP solution, meaning its UI is built for ERP and not for CRM. Even if you have many CRM features, when we compare usage of these features, this is definitely not even close to being useable as in a regular CRM solution.

*^{Dynamics 365 Sales Lead to Opportunity Business Proces Flow}*

Today I wanted just to make a high-level overview, but in future texts, I’ll try to be more accurate about when CRM in Business Central is enough for you and when you should think about integration with Dynamics 365 Sales.

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional vs Sales Enterprise

27/05/202027/05/2020 Marko Totovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Business Central, CRM, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 for Sales, License, Microsoft, price, Sales Professional, ui

In my previous post (video), you could learn how to create Dynamics 365 Sales Professional demo environment. If you are experienced with Dynamics CRM solutions you can recognize differences between this solution and enterprise version, but if you are newbie I would like to introduce you with all differences you can find there.

On the first place, we can split them to the two types of clients:

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise – full sales capabilities
Dynamics 365 Sales Professional – core sales functions at a reduced rate for businesses with simpler sales force needs

But if you want more details and especially if you need to promise something to your client, you should have details. Let’s start with details. First list is list of all features Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise has, and Sales Professional has not:

Access via Portal or API
- Non-employees only: Work Orders
- Non-employees only: Opportunities
Entities (Create, Update, Delete)
- Max 15 Custom Entities
- Competitors
- Embedded Intelligence
- Forecasting
- Product Families
- Product Hierarchies
- Product Relationships
- Quick Campaigns
- Sales Goals
- Sales Hub
- Sales Literature
- Territories
Entities (Actions)
- Business card scanning as add-on (10 users/month: pooled at tenant level)
- Business Units (Define and Configure)
- Knowledgebase (create, update, publish, configure, search)
- Teams (Define and Configure)
General System Use (Actions)
- Max 5 customized Business Processes Flows
- Max 2 customized Forms and Views per entity
- Max 15 custom Workflows
- Max 5 custom reports, charts, and dashboards
- Without custom system reports, charts, and dashboards
Additional Services and Software
- Dynamics 365 Gamification (Player & Admin)
- Microsoft Forms Pro
- Microsoft PowerApps
- Dynamics 365 Sales Insights
- Max 10 ISV solutions

If your conclusion is that Sales Professional doesn’t have a lot of features it is not a true. Sales Professional has a pretty big number of very good features and it can cover probably the most of SMB company requests.

But let’s add some of advantages of Sales Professional. This list is maybe not so big, but quality of this list is more important than quantity:

Price: full price is 65$ and this is 30$ less then enterprise version
Attach license to Business Central; if you already have Business Central, you need to pay only 20$ for license. As you already have integration in Business Central with D365 Sales, it is a real benefit both a price and functionalities.
UI is better (mostly in configuration) as this is intended for SMB customers.

If you need core CRM functionalities and solution easy to implement, Sales Professional is the right solution for you, but if you need all CRM functionalities you should choose Sales Enterprise.

As I see Sales Professional as a great opportunity for small companies and especially for those who already use Business Central, I’ll be focused on this solutions with the following posts (probably mostly videos).

How to create trial environment for D365 Sales Professional

05/05/202005/05/2020 Marko Totovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Power Platform, SaaS CRM, D365, D365 Sales, D365 Sales Professional, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, SaaS, Sales Professional, Small Business, SMB

Here I am after a while. I’ve just started new video series about great new product Dynamics 365 Sales Professional. I’ll create probably dozens of different videos about functionalities and configuration, but in this first one I’ll start with how to create a trial environment.

If you didn’t already hear for this solution, just to know this is the great Microsoft CRM solution especially for small and midsize organizations and it is available as full SaaS solution.

Now, I hope you will enjoy in this first video, and I’ll notify you as soon as I publish the new one:

Microsoft Social Engagement – part 2

10/12/2018 Marko Totovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM CRM, Customer Engagement, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Dynamics 365 for Sales, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Social Engagement, Social Insights, Social Listening, Social Network

As is promised in the previous blog, I’m continuing with writing about Microsoft Social Engagement.

In this blog I will show you how to setup Microsoft Social Engagement. After that you will see how to connect it with your social networks, how to track posts, how to post on it, as well as you will see results of all those activities.

Setup

If you want to start with Setup in Microsoft Social Engagement you first have to make connections to your social networks.

For that, you will need these social networks usernames and passwords, and of course all admin rights (in a case if there is a fan page which you want to connect).

First step is going in to the Settings, and by clicking on the button ’+’ you will see a popup menu where you must choose which network you want to connect. After that, simply type in all necessary data.

After you’ve connected all your social networks, you can proceed to the next step.

Just to know, this step is optional. In a case if you use Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, you can connect it with Microsoft Social Engagement. Again very simply, you just have to click on a ’+’ button, and after that you will have to select name of your Dynamics 365 instance. On the end, the system will do by itself the rest of the connecting.

When you have done all these things it will be time to start with defining what you will follow.

Now, you have to find Search Setup on the menu and again simply click on ’+’ button. With that, you will start to make definitions. First you will define Categories (as your business require), after that you will define Topics in these Categories, and at the end you will define exact words which you will follow. In all these definitions there is one restriction made by Microsoft… you can define words which will not have more than 10,000 mentions in one month by their opinion. This is nicely shown by one chart which you will see immediately on entering in the Search Setup.

Social Center

When you finish with all these configurations, you will have to do some additional config as well. But this time you will need to define your tracking in social center, and this will be one of the main places in this tool where you will spend your time.

Before we start with Setup, I will tell you a few things about Social Center. This is place where you can see your posts, posts where you were mentioned by your followers (or by people who just mentioned you). From here you can have direct Messaging with your Social Networks, you can directly post from here, and of course you can Like, Share, Comment, Mark, link to Dynamics 365… and all of Social Network activities. As I told you, this is place where you will spend most of your time working with this tool.

To Setup a new stream you just have to click again on ’+’ and after that you have to enter all necessary data: Name, Filters and Color.

When you have done all these things you have one new stream which you will follow at this moment.

As I mentioned you can answer on message, do all activities (like, share, retweet…), directly post. You will do all those things right here on stream, except posting.

For posting you have to click on a ’Publish’. After that, you will choose if you are going to use Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Then that you will do exact same thing as for Social Network, you will write a post, choose some photo if you like, and Post it.

Your posts will be available on your stream and you can see all thins which are going on around your post.

Dashboard

You will spend most of your time in Social Center, but Dashboard is still most important for you. On the Dashboard you will see all important information’s about your brand and you will find out how you can improve your activities on Social Media.

Here you will see how your Conversations are going on, what about your Sentiments on your posts and mentions on social networks, Locations, so that you can focus on some specific type of Marketing on some locations and of course you will see which of Sources are the best, and what you will have do to beater of other one.

Now I will pass through few important things to follow.

Sentiment: Here you can see how much people are satisfied with your brand or product, and you can do something do make your customers more satisfied.

By saying sentiment I mean that this tool have some type of ML and AI and it knows some language’s, so it can understand what is positive comment or post, and all that what is negative, all others which he did not have understood Microsoft Social Engagement will show as Neutral sentiment.

Phrases: Microsoft Social Engagement is tracking which phrases are most mentioned with words which you have categorized on the beginning. By having this information, you can always do breather categorization of words which you want to track on Social Media.

Authors: By knowing which authors are mentioning you the most on Social Networks you can make some type of partnership with them, or you can offer something to them so they can make beater commercial for your brand.

Sources: By following all sources where your brand is mentioned you will know where you are the best, and where you have to improve yourself.

Language and Locations: By following on which Language is your brand most mentioned you can understand how you have to position your advertisement, and which language is most important for your brand, al that Location is the same thing, but with it you can track weary precisely your customers (followers).

But more about Location and rest of functionalities in Microsoft Social Engagement you will read in my next blog (last in this series about Microsoft Social Engagement).

Microsoft Social Engagement – Introduction

29/11/201829/11/2018 Marko Totovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Buzz, CRM, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Dynamics 365 for Sales, Microsoft, Social Engagement, Social Listening

Imagine you have a production business and global presence… or you have global or regional services offering. Probably the most important information you need is a feedback from your clients… and this is necessary as soon as it is possible. Why? If you get a late feedback, there is a big chance you will lose a huge amount of money. Sometime it is important to get a small information what you need to change, but very soon, not too late. And, where you can get the best possible feedback in 21^st century? Of course, on a social networks. Social networks will provide the fastest possible noise.

If you want to follow all those social activity automatically, this Microsoft tool – Social Engagement is perfect for you. With Microsoft Social Engagement, you can connect your business with all popular social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn…).

You can find how big buzz is about your new posts, you can find out your followers are happy (they show positive or negative sentiment)… Of course, regarding this, you can track locations, countries, cities, different markets… However, the question is how you can use this information in your advantage.

Social Insights connects you with what your followers say about you or your products, services etc. You can grow a Brand Reputation using all the information you’ve collected using Social Insights. After you grow your brand reputation, you can start Social Care and focus on positive phrases and feelings of your followers.

After all important thing is Social Selling, which you will grow using all this tools, and you will have satisfied customers and followers.

In next few texts I’ll prepare until the end of year, you will understand how to use this amazing tool.

Dynamics 365 for Marketing – Check for Errors

12/02/201812/02/2018 Marko Totovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM CRM, D365, D365 for Marketing, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 for Marketing, Marketing, Microsoft Dynamics, testing

As I’ve already wrote, Dynamics 365 for Marketing Public Preview has been announced. Also, in my previous blogs I wrote about Click Dimensions Marketing solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, and this time I want to take an opportunity to show you something new in this new D365 for Marketing Public Preview solution.

I have been testing Dynamics 365 for Marketing for a while, and I’ve found one interesting feature named as ‘Check for Errors’. This feature looks like really good functionality because you can check if everything is fine with your Marketing Customer Journey, or Email Template, or something else before you go live with it.

Checking process will take only a few seconds, and until this checking done, you can’t do any other thing, but still it is only a few seconds. 🙂

Error 1

After system has checked your configuration, it comes with even better things. As the first, system shows you a notification bar where you can see where to look for an error.

Error 2.PNG

After going to the place where error is, the system will show where your error is placed, or if there is a few more errors you will see the places where they are, as in my example.

Error 3

In my example I have one error in two campaign parts. With going to the properties of each campaign part, you will see exactly where you did a mistake.

Error 4.PNG

After testing a little while Dynamics 365 for Marketing Public Preview, I’ve found this interesting thing, and I wanted to share it with you. This shows that the new Dynamics Marketing app is very interesting for using and testing.

Totovic Dynamics 365 Blog

Author: Marko Totovic