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Dynamics 365 Community / Blogs / Dynamics 365 FastTrack Blog / From CI‑Data to CI‑Journeys...

From CI‑Data to CI‑Journeys: How BU Separation affects Insights and Activation

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Ashwini Puranik Profile Picture Ashwini Puranik

​​​​​​​Introduction

Large organisations often operate across multiple regions, brands, subsidiaries, or business lines — each with distinct customer ownership, data governance rules, and marketing autonomy. Microsoft Customer Insights supports this reality through two separate but related capabilities:

  • Business Unit Separation in Customer Insights – Data (CI‑D) 
  • Business Unit Scoping in Customer Insights – Journeys (CI‑J)


These capabilities allow organisations to isolate customer data, insights, and marketing execution.
This blog focuses on how Business Unit Separation works in Customer Insights - Data and practical hand‑off between Customer Insights – Data (CI‑D) and Customer Insights – Journeys (CI‑J) when Business Unit (BU) controls are enabled. It explains exactly how items created in CI‑D surface and behave in CI‑J, and what changes when BU controls are turned on in one or both applications.

Quick primer

  • CI‑D is where profiles are unified and insights (segments, measures and other insights) are created.
  • CI‑J is where those insights could be activated through emails, and journeys.

Sample Customer Insights – Data and Journeys Use Cases

1. Create segments in CI-D and activate in CI-J
  • CI-D: Build segments based on transactional data.
  • CI-J: Activate segments for journeys.
  • Example: Send special offers to customers who spent > $100 last month at Contoso Coffee.

2. Create measures in CI-D for attribute branching / conditional content in CI-J

  • CI-D: Create measures based on transactional data.
  • CI-J: Use measures for attribute branching or conditional content in journeys.
  • Example: Send different offer emails to customers based on their spend from last month.

3. Create measures from prediction models in CI-D for personalization in CI-J

  • CI-D: Use a prediction model to recommend products and create a measure for this recommendation.
  • CI-J: Use this measure to send personalized emails with recommended products.
  • Example: Send a personalized email suggesting a product predicted for a customer based on their behavior.

4. Create measures in CI-D to build contact-based segments in CI-J

  • CI-D: Create measures based on transactional data.
  • CI-J: Use these measures to create contact-based segments using CustomerId backstamping.
  • Example: Create a segment of contacts who bought an Apple phone last week.

What BU separation enablement means in Customer Insights - Data 

When Business Unit separation is enabled:​​​​​​​

  • A new ‘business unit separator’ step appears in profile unification setup where:
    • For each source, you select the column that contains BU information.
    • Map each of these value to the corresponding Dataverse Business Unit’s default team.
Example: e‑commerce source → businessunit column → value “UK” mapped to United Kingdom business unit (default team)

Points to note: Each BU value — across all data sources — must map to only one Dataverse Business Unit.
Value synonyms like UK and GB cannot both be mapped to the same business unit, and must each map uniquely. This rule prevents conflicts that would otherwise break unification logic or accidentally merge profiles across BUs.
  • A new role of Marketing Contributor is introduced which allows marketers to work within a specific business unit, creating BU‑scoped measures and segments.

  • The existing CI-D roles (Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor, Viewer) remain unchanged and continue to operate across all business units, regardless of whether BU separation is enabled.

Summary of behavior across some key areas when Business Unit separation is enabled: 

Area

Behavior
Input data for profile unification

BU identifier required;
Missing values default to root BU

Profile unification

Happens within each BU
Activity unification

Activities inherit the profile’s BU
Marketing Contributor role

Builds BU-scoped segments and measures of specific types using data that has a relationship to unified profiles only. This ensures that the business unit associated with the data can be accurately determined.

Please note that marketing contributors cannot create measures of the Customer Attributes type.

Please review the other details of the role here.

Default roles (Admin(Owner)/Admin/Contributor)

Can create insights across all BUs;
Records carry owning BU

Predictions
Model scores are not BU‑scoped

Reversibility

Once enabled, BU separation cannot be disabled


What BU scoping enablement means in Customer Insights – Journeys


For details about BU scoping, please refer to this FastTrack blog.

I can’t help but highlight one of the common pitfalls with segmentation in CI-J without business unit scoping. When business unit scoping is disabled and a marketer creates a segment, there is a common misconception that the segment will include only the data the user can access based on their security role. 

In reality, the segment executes in a global scope and includes all contacts, including those the marketer cannot see. As a result, the segment count is often higher than expected or than what the marketer can preview.

Enabling business unit scoping ensures that the segment is limited to the creator’s business unit, helping to avoid unexpected or accidental cross–business unit campaigns.

How CI-D items appear and work in CI-J

This is the key integration path. When BU controls are on, CI‑D writes ownership on each insight record; CI‑J then respects ownership at design‑time (what is selectable) and run‑time (who gets processed). The following tables comparisons so you can see, item by item, what shows up in CI‑J and how it behaves.


FeatureCI-D (when BU separation is enabled)CI-J (when BU scoping is enabled)
Profile Unification
Profile unification happens within BU. Each profile is BU owned.

NA
Profile Unification when Contact (Lead, Opportunity, Account) table from underlying Dataverse are ingestedProfile unification occurs within a business unit (BU). As a result, even if the same contact (lead, opportunity, or account) exists in different business units and meets the unification criteria, it will not be unified into a single profile across BUs.

NA
CustomerId Backstamping
(only when Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Account table from the underlying Dataverse is ingested and all  pre-requisites are met)

NACustomerId backstamping process is BU agnostic and will stamp the Customer Profile Id as identified by CI-D.
Segments created in CI-D by the Marketing Contributor role
Data: Segment will contain data only from the creators BU and each records will have the same owning BU.

Visibility: Within CI-D, these insights will be available for viewing and editing to the other Marketing Contributors from the same BU and to the existing roles (Editing: Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor.
Viewing: Viewer).

Segment definition in CI-J table ‘msdynmkt_segment’ will be owned by the creator Marketing Contributors’s BU.
Segment will be visible in CI-J to users with access to the corresponding BU.
Segments can be used only with the journeys owned by the same BU.
Segments created in CI-D by exiting roles (Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor)
Data: Segments will contain data from all BUs, but each record will have an owning business unit, inherited from the profile.

Visibility: Within CI-D, these insights will be available for viewing and editing to the existing roles and will not be visible to the Marketing Contributor role.

Segment definition in CI-J table ‘msdynmkt_segment’ will be owned by root BU. Segment will be visible in CI-J to users with access to the root BU.
Segments can be used only with the journeys owned by the root BU, and will run only for records belonging to the root BU.
Measures of type ‘Customer Measure – Table’ created in CI-D by the Marketing Contributor role

Marketing contributors could create measures using data that has a relationship to unified profiles.

Data: Measure will contain data only from the creators BU and each record will have this owning BU.

Visibility: Within CI-D, these insights will be available for viewing and editing to the other MC from the same BU and to the existing roles. (Editing: Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor.
Viewing: Viewer).

Customer Measure – Tables will be hydrated into Dataverse and available for use in CI-J.

Measure metadata will be visible across all BUs and can be used in segment/journey from any BU.

Data usage will be scoped by segment/journey based on owning BU of each record in the measure.
Measures of type ‘Customer Measure’ created in CI-D by the Marketing Contributor role

Marketing contributors could create measures using data that has a relationship to unified profiles.

Data: Measure will contain data only from the creators BU and each record will have this owning BU.

Visibility: Within CI-D, these insights will be available for viewing and editing to the other MC from the same BU and to the existing roles. (Editing: Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor.
Viewing: Viewer).

NA
This type of measure is not hydrated to Dataverse and hence will not be available in CI-J.
Measures of type ‘Customer Attribute’ created in CI-D by the Marketing Contributor role

Marketing Contributor role is not permitted to create this type of measure.NA
Measures of type ‘Business’ created in CI-D by the Marketing Contributor role
Marketing contributors could create business measures using data that has a relationship to unified profiles.

Data: Measure will contain data only from the creators BU and each record will have this owning BU.

Visibility: Within CI-D, these insights will be available for viewing and editing to the other MC from the same BU and to the existing roles. (Editing: Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor.
Viewing: Viewer).

This type of measure is not hydrated to Dataverse and hence will not be available in CI-J.
Measures created in CI-D by the exiting roles (Admin (Owner), Admin, Contributor)

Measures will contain data from all BUs.

If the insight is calculated for customer profiles, for example: customer measures, customer attributes then each record will have an associated owning business unit inherited from the profile.
If the insights are not for customer profiles, for ex: business measures, then each records will be owned by the root BU.

Within CI-D, these insights will be available for viewing and editing to the existing roles and will not be visible to the Marketing Contributor role.

Measures of type ‘Customer Measure – Tables’ will be hydrated into Dataverse and available for use in CI-J.

Measure metadata will be visible across BUs and can be used in segment/journey from any BU.

Data usage will be scoped by segment/journey based on owning BU of each record in the measure.


Limitations and Considerations of business unit separation in Customer Insights - Data


​​​​​​​Hierarchy & Modernized Business Units:

  • Parent-child business unit hierarchies and modernized business units are not supported.

Configuration:

  • Once enabled, business unit data separation cannot be disabled.

Segments & Measures:

  • Project attributes are not supported for the segments created by the Marketing Contributor role.
  • Marketing Contributor role cannot create measures of type ‘Customer Attributes’.
  • Marketing Contributors can only use the ‘Build your own’ option to create measures and segments.

Application capabilities:

  • The Marketing Contributors role’s access is limited to specific pages: Tables, Customers, Measures, Segments, and Exports.
  • Tables page: Only data where business unit separation is clear (e.g., Profiles, UnifiedActivity) is visible to Marketing Contributor role.
  • Customers page: Marketing Contributor role cannot search for customers; Customer cards show limited customers for the BU of the Marketing contributor. They also cannot see measures and activities on the customer card.
  • Exports: Can run exports only for segments they own, using connections shared by admins.

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