Enable Dynamics 365 Apps or not

To always enable or to not, is something I am always fighting with.

As you are probably aware, when making a new environment there is the option to enable dynamics 365 apps.

Regardless if you enable this setting when making the environment, it is Dataverse (Rebranded from CDS), the same engine behind the scenes. As fair as I am aware. Yet this decision is irreversible to even add later on. Why is this the case?

Let's compare the two and focus on the Auto-Post functionality and only custom model driven apps.

As stated on Microsoft's article "Posts require a Dynamics 365 app, such as an app for Dynamics 365 Customer Service." So I create two environments with and without Dynamics 365 enabled. It appears to be the case, you cant find posts anywhere in the timeline GUI to utilize this feature. But the kicker is that in the environment without D365 enabled, the schema shows all the same entities that control the post functionality are available (Image #1). The only thing different when you compare both schemas is that the posts entity, on the non-enabled environment, does not have all the Navigation Property's for each regarding entity as the enabled environment has. Thus, when you go to make try to create a record on the Posts entity, it will always fail because you can't set the regarding. This is not true for everything as the non-enabled environment has only around 500 entities while the enabled environment has around 1000.

Image #1 (D365 Disabled)

Image #2 (D365 Enabled)

When comparing more between the environments I also pulled all the D365 app that came initially installed from the admin center into a list. Below shows the only difference between the two. Each of these shows available to install on the non-enabled D365 environment. In my research the Unified Routing is what controls the posts. Could be wrong about that but thinking, maybe these are what make up the D365 environment I started to download. This was not successful for each as I get dependence errors. Below is my error when trying to download "Unified Routing - Assignment".

Unified Routing - Assignment error:

msdyn_OmnichannelAssignment

NotProvided

Solution manifest import: FAILURE: The following solution cannot be imported: msdyn_AgentAvailabilityStatus. Some dependencies are missing. The missing dependencies are : <MissingDependencies><MissingDependency><Required type="2" schemaName="msdyn_name" displayName="Name" parentSchemaName="msdyn_capacityprofile" parentDisplayName="Capacity Profile" solution="UnifiedRouting (1.0.0.3684)" /><Dependent type="10" schemaName="msdyn_capacityprofile_msdyn_agentcapacityprofileunit_capacityprofileid" displayName="msdyn_capacityprofile_msdyn_agentcapacityprofileunit_capacityprofileid" parentSchemaName="msdyn_capacityprofile" parentDisplayName="Capacity Profile" /></MissingDependency><MissingDependency><Required type="2" schemaName="msdyn_name" displayName="Name" parentSchemaName="msdyn_presence" parentDisplayName="Presence" solution="OmnichannelBase (1.5.0.5900)" /><Dependent type="10" schemaName="msdyn_presence_msdyn_agentstatus_currentpresenceid" displayName="msdyn_presence_msdyn_agentstatus_currentpresenceid" parentSchemaName="msdyn_presence" parentDisplayName="Presence" /></MissingDependency><MissingDependency><Required type="1" schemaName="bookableresourcecharacteristic" displayName="Bookable Resource Characteristic" solution="msdynce_Scheduling (9.0.0.0)" /><Dependent type="92" displayName="Microsoft.Dynamics.OmnichannelReferenceDataSyncPlugins.Plugins.PostOperationUpdateBookableResourceCharacteristicsAsyncPlugin: Update of bookableresourcecharacteristic" id="{16289786-b035-ee11-bdf4-000d3a5ac1a9}" /></MissingDependency><MissingDependency><Required type="1" schemaName="bookableresourcecharacteristic" displayName="Bookable Resource Characteristic" solution="msdynce_Scheduling (9.0.0.0)" /><Dependent type="92" displayName="Microsoft.Dynamics.OmnichannelReferenceDataSyncPlugins.Plugins.PostOperationCreateBookableResourceCharacteristicsAsyncPlugin: Create of bookableresourcecharacteristic" id="{7c4b5e7b-bc31-ee11-bdf3-000d3a34e8d2}" /></MissingDependency><MissingDependen...

Agent Productivity Tools

appprofilemanager

Dynamics 365 ChannelExperienceApps

Dynamics 365 Channel Integration Framework

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Analytics

Dynamics 365 Customer Service Intelligence

Dynamics 365 Sales Conversation Intelligence

Dynamics 365 Sales, Enterprise Edition App

Dynamics Sales Embedded Package

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Hub

Omnichannel for Customer Service - Base

Omnichannel for Customer Service - CCaaS APIs

Power Apps App Copilot PVA Bot

Power Apps SharePoint Integration App

Power Pages CRM Core

Unified Routing - Assignment

Unified Routing for Records

With all that... Is there any harm in always enabling? Why do Auto-Posts not work in none D365 enabled when all the resources are there? If I don't enable D365, am I missing out on usable feature (like the Posts)? If I do enable, am I taking away something that only the non-enabled had?

Let me know your thoughts on this and if you have any question about my rambling let me know.

Categories:

Dynamics 365 general

Hey @sstewarta

Nice & interesting topic. So far, when deploying D365Apps you get:

- More entities allowed with the posts (500 in Dataverse vs 1000 in D365)

- More internal solutions (as you can see by the dependencies missing)

What you see on the list is a set of Apps from AdminCenter. However this spands a bit more as there are solutions that might not be visible on the admin Center (but maybe on the SolutionHistory or on the Make.PowerAPps.com portal)

So, if you enable D365 apps, doesn't seem you're "taking away" rather than adding more solutions + properties to the standard functionality.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that some customers might want to deploy Dataverse environments (noD365) whenever they want to have a reduced functionality, or they don't want to see the standard apps deployed (IE, they want to see only the 2-3 custom apps they create and not the SalesHub/CustomerServiceHub)

Regards,