Five Deprecated Features to Replace Before Transitioning to the Unified Interface

To ensure a smooth transition to the Unified Interface, preparations should include identifying if any components in your Dynamics 365 environment are at risk of breaking, or will no longer be available, when users move to the new experience. This will include reviewing existing plugins and custom scripts but if your organisation has been using Dynamics Online for many years, this may also require mapping some processes from deprecated features.

Removal of the legacy Dynamics 365 web client in 2020 will also mean the end for other previously deprecated features which are not available the Unified Interface. Here we've highlighted five features, deprecated since 2017, to replace before transitioning your environment to the new experience.

1. Service Scheduling

Designed for customer service scenarios, this feature pre-dated the release of Dynamics 365 Field Service. It has since been replaced with Universal Resource Scheduling in the new UI to handle resource scheduling for any service activity.

RELATED: Service Scheduling Guide

2. Standard SLAs 

Another feature designed for customer service, the original Service Level Agreement has been replaced by 'enhanced' SLAs. These use separate entities and offer extended capabilities including the option to pause on-hold cases for a time while awaiting a customer response. 

3. Dialogs

Before the introduction of guided process flows we had Dialogs to standardise processes. As Dialogs are not available in the Unified Interface, a guided flow will often be the best solution to assist users with step by step instructions through any repeatable process. These can be supported with conditional branching logic and other controls to apply bespoke processing rules and methodology. In other scenarios, an embedded Power App could prove a better alternative. 

READ MORE: Replacing Dialogs with Guided Process Flows or Power Apps

4. Contract Entities

Contracts, Contract Line Items and Contract Templates have been replaced by Entitlements to provide greater control over the type, and the amount of support, a customer is entitled to receive. Capacity can be stated in terms of the number of cases, or available hours.

In addition to tracking the dates that a customer is entitled to receive support, the Entitlements entity will handle contracts that stipulate a maximum number of cases and / or a maximum consumption of support time. Entitlement terms can be defined across multiple channels which can be product specific and restrict support to named contacts only.

READ MORE: Contracts, Entitlements & the Unified Interface

5. Mail Merge

In 2016, server-side document generation using Word and Excel templates was introduced enabling standardised documents or customized data tables to be produced. As a result, the earlier mail merging feature has been deprecated which included the mail-merge Word add-in and mail-merge templates.

Check the full list of deprecated features

Next Steps

Contact Preact if you are unsure if these, or any other, deprecated features are being actively used in your Dynamics 365 Online environment. If you need any assistance mapping your processes to the new functionality, or transitioning to the Unified Interface we'll answer your questions and support this process.

About Preact

Preact is a UK based Microsoft Gold Partner for CRM and Cloud Business Applications implementing and supporting CRM solutions since 1993.

Check our blog for more information about Microsoft Dynamics 365 and CRM.