Data Flows, Email Templates, Entitlements, and More

JourneyTEAM discusses how to use popular Dynamics 365 features to increase productivity, streamline processes, and improve efficiency in a recent Dynamics 365 Learning Forum.

November 15, 2021

The use cases of Dynamics 365 are seemingly endless. Whether it’s used as a CRM or ERP system or a productivity platform, it’s helped thousands of businesses worldwide eliminate sales and marketing siloes, better integrate business data, and simplify the management of users and services.

Earlier this year, JourneyTEAM hosted a Dynamics 365 Learning Forum where members of our team shared how they’ve used Dynamics 365’s tools to improve business processes and solve unique client problems.

From creating custom email templates to building a brand new grouping and editing quote product, JourneyTEAM developers share how they’ve taken advantage of the platform’s robust tools.

Using Power Automate to Migrate Data

Previously known as Microsoft Power Flow, Power Automate enables users to streamline repetitive tasks and create low-code solutions that link systems together. One of the most popular uses for the solution is for data migration, a time-consuming, repetitive, and error-prone process.

Recently, Nevin Anderson, a JourneyTEAM developer, was assisting a client with a large data migration project. Throughout this process, Nevin realized they were repeating the same steps, again and again, lengthening the process. He wanted to find a way to simplify the process which is when he turned to Dataflows.

Nevin found that creating a new Dataflow within Power Automate and importing an Excel spreadsheet provided more flexibility with customization (column naming, mapping, headers, etc.). Because the imported spreadsheet was live, users no longer had to continuously import data from Excel into Dataflows, saving valuable time.

From there, Nevin was able to easily build Dataflows without repeating steps. Additionally, he set up a frequency timer that programmed Power Automate to read the spreadsheet and integrate any new data. The solution does not bring in the entire spreadsheet with each read, only new information which allows teams to avoid bringing duplicate data into Dataflows.

By streamlining the data migration process, Nevin and other team members can spend more time analyzing and acting on data.

Email Templates and Dynamic Content

Dynamics 365 includes a variety of beautifully designed email templates that contain prefilled data that users can customize. These templates help to reduce the time users spend re-entering information into email messages or campaigns.

Already familiar with the benefits of the email templates, one of our clients wanted to expand the functionality further as they were sending an enormous amount of automated emails out every week. Each of these emails had to be translated into over one hundred languages to satisfy the company’s diverse client base.

In response, one of our developers, Kevin Powell, created a customized email template. Users could select which languages an email needed to be translated into and tag certain translators. Translators could then access the email, translate it, and send it back to the appropriate individual within the Dynamics 365 portal.

Using this customized template, users spent significantly less time re-entering information and more time communicating with clients.

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Seeing Related Records by Multiple Lookups

Users who create lists within Dynamics 365 typically rely on lookups to find a specific value or entity from an existing list. While the tool is helpful in quickly finding information, it does have its limitations.

For example, a major university in Idaho essentially wanted to create a “lookup within a lookup”, enabling them to delve deeper into information rather than searching for it themselves. The preconfigured settings within Dynamics 365 require users to perform multiple lookups in order to find information which was incredibly time-consuming. The university wanted to avoid this, which is why they turned to us.

One of our JourneyTEAM developers, Kalie Leavitt, was able to create this “lookup within a lookup” feature by utilizing Dynamic’s component control. This enabled her to program the platform to display colleges and universities associated with specific departments, helping the university to save valuable time and avoid digging through multiple records to find information.

Grouping and Editing Quote Products

Featured on Dynamics 365’s Quote, Opportunity, Invoice, and Order forms is an editable Products grid. This grid enables users to edit product information inline without switching platforms or looking up individual orders.

While the out-of-the-box functionality is robust, one of our clients wanted to go a step further. Essentially, they were looking for a custom group and quote product that allowed for more customization.

To help with this, two of our JourneyTEAM developers, Josh Buahin and Derek Finlinson, turned to React, specifically its Fluent UI components. Together, they created a highly customizable product. Some of the new customization options include:

• Drag-and-drop items into different groups.
• Move groups into a specific order.
• Change the multiplier on a group and apply it to all products within a group.
• In-line editing.
• Integrate a templatized product group.
• Add the same product to a different group.
• Specify the view and product grid in Power Apps.
• Search for products by multiple fields/parameters.
• Adjust GPM to different fields which are then applied to all products.

These new features helped our client create more detailed forms significantly faster and from a single window.

Customer Service Entitlements

Microsoft users have access to several customer service tools within Dynamics 365. To start, the customer service hub provides a comprehensive overview of all customer issues to helpful knowledge articles. This tool and more enables business teams to create a robust customer service solution that quickly and accurately resolves customer complaints.

A JourneyTEAM developer, Logan Andersen, shows us a popular tool included in the suite of customer support products is customer entitlements. These agreements allow teams to specify the type of support customers are entitled to, whether it be a specified number of hours or the number of cases open and solved.

These agreements can be customized to customers’ specific needs such as the allocation type, start and end dates, total terms, and restriction terms. Additionally, users can associate a service license agreement (SLA) to an entitlement, providing support reps with easy access to all customer information.

Maximize the Power of Dynamics 365 with JourneyTEAM

Whether business teams are looking to streamline data migration or create customized products or forms, JourneyTEAM enables teams to do this and more. By providing organizations with customized support, teams can easily integrate Dynamics 365 processes and tools into their existing technology stack with ease.

Contact a JourneyTEAM representative today to get started.