Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator v2.2 now generally available (GA) - Enhancing nonprofits ability to show impact

In partnership with the Customer Steering Team and partners, Microsoft continues to evolve the Nonprofit Common Data Model and Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator. In November 2019, version 2.2 of the Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator is generally available via AppSource. This release continues the momentum to help nonprofits turn program goals into action by raising the level of transparency, accuracy, and measurable impact that they communicate back to funders and supporters. With a focus on aligning to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are arming partners and customers with an actionable way to instantly measure and report on program impact aligned to the SDGs.   

Nonprofit organizations can improve interoperability between siloed internal and external systems using the semantic rich, native integration between Azure Data Lake and the Nonprofit CDM.  This integration layer will reduce time spent mapping and transforming data, and improve collaboration between Business Analysts, Database Administrators, and IT staff so they are better equipped to deliver meaningful insights for the organization. 

Specifically, this release includes the following new capabilities: 

• Nonprofits' increase abilities to track and report on outputs, outcomes and impactby aligning the Nonprofit Common Data Model and Nonprofit Accelerator to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including a connector to the SDG Goal, Target and Indicator library.
• Increased transparency and shared learning from program delivery by extending the Nonprofit Common Data Model with new common Indicator Library entities including measurement item, measurement item relationship and measurement item usage.   
• Enhanced user experience via model-driven applications incorporating Indicator Library entities into the Program Delivery app.
• New documentation including how-to guides, user guide, a walkthrough guide and sample data
• Improved interoperability of ecosystem solutions by supporting partnersaligning their solutions with the Nonprofit Common Data Model and Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator. 

We have also continued to improve the solution package options and resources available to partners to leverage the Nonprofit Accelerator.  The solutions have been extracted in the GitHub repository and all Nonprofit Accelerator assets (managed and un-managed solutions, sample data packages, reference documents, SDK extension, Flow Templates, CDM Folder Model templates, etc.) are packaged into a release. 

This release includes new data and data attributes in the Nonprofit Common Data Model, enhancements to the sample applications, updated sample data, new templates and documentation as highlighted below. For more information, see NFP Accelerator 2.2 - Release Notes.docx on GitHub.

In order to accelerate your data integration projects and align with the Microsoft Common Data Model, we have also published the Nonprofit Common Data Model as a JSON file that can be used to create CDM folders in Azure Data Lake Storage gen2. The nonprofit template (model.json) along with the Common Data Model Folder Setup Instructions can be found in GitHub. 

Delivery Framework data model extended to accommodate libraries

The Nonprofit Common Data Model was extended to include three data entities - Measurement Item, Measurement Item Usage, and Measurement Item Relationship - that support housing and referencing libraries within the context of a Delivery Framework. These extensions will enable organizations to easily store and reference standard indicators (i.e., internal, external, and industry standard), outcomes, and other standards across Delivery Frameworks which will simplify the logframe creation process and improve organizational reporting capabilities.    

Partners and nonprofit organizations can build Canvas, Model Driven and Dynamics 365 apps using the Nonprofit Common Data Model. For a full list of data entities and data attributes, see the NFP Accelerator v2.2 - Nonprofit Reference and NFP Accelerator v2.2 Entity Matrix documents on GitHub or the Visual Entity Navigator. Below is a summary of the data entities and data attributes now available:

This release includes the following Nonprofit CDM changes:

• 3 Measurement data entities
• 45 Measurement data attributes  

The total number of data entities and data attributes that are now part of the Nonprofit CDM include: 

• 86 Data entities – 37 Nonprofit, 29 IATI, 1 Volunteer Management, 3 Measurement, and 16 extensions to existing CDS Core and First Party Application Data entities
• 1,300+ data attributes  

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is now a standard indicator libraries

The Nonprofit Accelerator and CDM were enhanced to accommodate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) following multiple internal Microsoft and external requests to align.  Partners are particularly interested in creating analytics and insights solutions that include SDGs, 

Organizations will now not only be able to report on their outcomes with respect to internal and external (e.g., donor) indicators, but also SDG goals, targets and indicators. This will help improve interoperability by providing a common language among nonprofit and for-profit organizations working in the social impact space. 

Solution options

Depending on the partner and organization needs, the Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator can be implemented in multiple ways with dependencies to consider with each solution. These solution packages can be referenced on GitHub. The solution package options include: 

• NonprofitCore – This contains the essentials for the nonprofit accelerator including views, forms and data entities and has no dependency on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is only dependent on Microsoft’s Common Data Service.
• NonprofitSales – This solution contains the additions to the Nonprofit Core solution that leverage Dynamics 365 Sales module, including campaign, lead, opportunity and product. This solution depends on:
  • Nonprofit Accelerator - NonprofitCore and NonprofitSales solution packages
  • Dynamics 365 modules – Dynamics Sales
• MicrosoftDynamics365VolunteerManagement – This solution contains additions to the NonprofitCore and NonprofitSales solutions and leverages Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) to support volunteer management scenarios. This solution depends on:
  • Nonprofit Accelerator – NonprofitCore, NonprofitSales, and MicrosoftDynamics365Volunteer Management solution packages
  • Dynamics 365 modules – Dynamics Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA)
• MicrosoftDynamics365IATI – This solution additions to the NonprofitCore and NonprofitSales solutions to improve the IATI compliance, including: IATI xml file export and the non-embedded sync process features. This solution depends on:
  • Nonprofit Accelerator – NonprofitCore and NonprofitSales solution packages
  • Dynamics 365 modules – Dynamics Sales
• Nonprofit Measurement – This solution adds to the NonprofitCore to improve the way way of measuring nonprofit programs. This solution has no dependency on Microsoft Dynamics 365 but does depend on:
  • Nonprofit Accelerator – NonprofitCore

This illustration visually explains the solution components and dependencies:

For more information, on GitHub reference the following:

• NFP Accelerator 2.2 - Entity Matrix.xlsx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 - Nonprofit Reference.docx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 - Sales Metadata Reference.xlsx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 - Core Metadata Reference.xlsx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 – Anchor Metadata Reference.xlsx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 – IATI Metadata Reference.xlsx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 – Volunteer Management Metadata Reference.xlsx
• NFP Accelerator 2.2 - Measurement Metadata Reference.xlsx
• To install the solutions, see the NFP Accelerator 2.2 – Package Deployer Guide.docx and .zip files in GitHub.