Client of ours (HVAC manufacturing sales, 70 staff) runs Dynamics 365 Sales. Their contact data is a mess: the same person exists up to three times. When a customer contact changes roles or moves company, a new record gets created instead of the old one being updated. Reps in the field see three entries for one buyer and don't know which number is current. They guess. Sometimes they guess wrong in front of the customer.

Built-in duplicate detection catches exact matches and nothing else. 'Mike Smith at Acme' and 'Michael Smith, Acme Corp' sail right past it.

How do you actually keep contact data clean? Is this a process problem (who owns the record when someone changes jobs), a tooling problem (third-party dedupe/merge), or the eternal CRM tax everyone pays? What's your source of truth for external contacts - the CRM or the M365 directory? Their IT guy and their sales ops guy give different answers and both are very confident.

We are getting close to going Live with D365 and I, as the administrator, do not feel prepared to get the most out of this software. I am looking for training (other than Microsoft Learn) that can help with everything from basic administration to development. The training from the consultant we used can barely even qualify as training so as I said I just do not feel prepared.

I appreciate your suggestions.

I have been tasked with doing research on what it would take to start using Git as part of our development process for our Power Pages site. As far as I understand currently, the only way to do that is by turning the Sandbox (Dev) environment (that contains only unmanaged solutions currently) into a Managed Environment (which as far as I can tell will not convert our solutions to manager?) and then using Pipelines to export Managed Solutions to our Staging and Prod environments. I haven't seen much documentation on this being the process most developers follow though, and outside of needing a premium license, I haven't seen anyone mentioning any potential downsides to this.

Is there a reason the process I outlined above is not a good idea, and it would be recommended to go with a different process?

Our current process is creating a new solution for each update we want to make that contains the elements that changed, exporting that manually, importing it manually, publishing all customizations, and then testing. Due to this we have tons of different solutions, and this seems like a bad process.

For Dynamics partners working with Business Central, I've noticed a shift in their customer conversations.

It used to be about 'just' replacing an on-prem ERP. Now it feels more like creating a foundation for everything that comes after: AI, automation, integrations, analytics, and ongoing cloud services.

We interestingly also see that many customers aren't asking "Should we move to Business Central Online?" anymore. They're asking "How do we modernize without disrupting the business?"

That changes the partner-conversations as well. Moving to Business Central becomes less about a one-off migration project and more about enabling future capabilities and long-term customer growth.

Curious to see if your customers are still planning big "rip-and-replace" projects, or if they're seeing it as a more of a phased modernization approach?

Best Dynamic365 customer portal solutions for a mid-size B2B company?

Hi everyone,

I recently started learning Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) development and have been following the Microsoft Learn learning path:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/build-finance-operations/

For about a month now, I haven't been able to access the Launch VM/Lab environment. It suddenly disappeared from all the exercises, and because of that I can no longer practice the technical side of F&O development in Visual Studio (creating tables, forms, classes, enums, extensions, etc.).

I've already tried:Different browsers, Incognito mode, Different Microsoft accounts

Unfortunately, the VM is still unavailable. I also noticed that several other learners are reporting the same issue, and Microsoft moderators have indicated that the F&O Learn lab VMs are currently unavailable with no ETA.

Could anyone suggest where I can practice F&O development now?

I'm specifically looking for a way to get hands-on experience with: Visual Studio development, X++, Creating tables, forms, enums, classes, Extensions and data entities

I'm currently learning on my own, so I'm looking for any legitimate options, such as:

Free or low-cost practice environments

Trial or sandbox environments

Any other alternatives that developers use for learning

I'd really appreciate any recommendations. Thanks in advance!

I am on a journey to learn Unified Routing as asked by my manager. and as discussed in my previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dynamics365/s/99CZKAWxVr

I am learning and documenting whatever I have learned so that others find it easy, as there are not many resources around it on youtube.

I just found out Unified Routing Doesn't Pick the best Agents. It eliminates the rest agents. and my biggest query was "How does it assign work item when there are multiple agent who are available and equally capable", which i have talked about it in one minute......

https://youtube.com/shorts/5jQRtNt4EzQ?feature=share

what do you think?

Hello everyone,
I am facing a problem in the dev environment. In the entity account i have a custom field  called « new_siret ». Each time i created a new account using the api the field is always null. All the other fields are there except that one. I checked everything (plugins, workflows, flows, business rules) but there is nothing affecting it value.  So i added « Prefer : return=representation » and the value in respone is null.
{

"@odata.context": "https://mycrmorg.crm12.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.2/$metadata#accounts(name,new_siret,aps_testapi)/$en…/$entity%22),

"@odata.etag": "W/\"42939765\"",

"accountid": "dc8f43c2-3484-f111-ab0f-70a8a5507408",

"name": "BNP PARIBAS",

"new_siret": null

}

{
    "new_siret":"66204244900550",
    "name":"BNP PARIBAS",
    "address1_line1":"Test",
    "address1_postalcode":"92000"
}

And here is the json i send. By the way this problem only appear in the dev environment. i tested the same request in the UAT environment and it worked fine.

Can anyone help me solve this.

Anyone else deal with a plugin that's worked fine for months, then just breaks after a major update with zero warning in the release notes? How are you catching this stuff before it hits production?

Hi Guys,

Is there a dedicated space/subReddit where specifically the sales/BD Reps inside the Microsoft Ecosystem hangout?

Or is this the subReddit meant to post Sales/BD related posts too!

I operate a small commercial real estate company and am looking to integrate a CRM to manage all the contacts in my business (1000s) along with basic property level planning and management (Insurance certificate follow-up and schedules to contact property managers for various items. Noting too detailed, not like a real CRE Management Software)

We use MS Business suite and outlook and was recommended Dynamic 365 Sales (because I’d like to use the same ecosystem for all of our software’s as the company grows and we eventually integrate CoPilot)

I’m no expert so I want hear the community’s feedback on which path I should go down.

I am doing the 365 Sales trial and I find it is the least user friendly platform I’ve ever experienced.

Should we use Power App to make a custom dashboard and platform?

Should I keep trying to figure out 365 Sales?

Should we pay a consultant to set it up for us?

Should I use Business Central?

Or any other recommendation I haven’t considered?

Feel free to give me any recommendation or feedback.

Thanks in advance

When I started Learning "UR". I basically couldn't understand why we are making routing so complex. WORKSTREAM felt like an alien term to me. And since my project is new, I was told to "Learn and explain" it to all the team members including seniors, who had no idea about it.

It took me so much effort to learn and understand it, so i made a mental-model video and upload it on Youtube, hope it help someone.

[https://youtu.be/jSgEbuDIM7U\]

I also have decided to keep uploading about tough concepts, career advices from seniors, my mistakes during real project and all.

Thanks for reading.

Part 5 is up. This one moves from building your own objects to extending Microsoft's: a tableextension on the Customer table, a pageextension on the Customer Card, and both sides of the event pattern (subscribing to base app events and publishing your own integration event).

Part 5: https://medium.com/@albertassaad/al-development-in-business-central-part-5-table-extensions-page-extensions-and-events-4a1c535c60c5

Earlier parts:
Part 1 (Docker container setup): https://medium.com/@albertassaad/setting-up-a-microsoft-dynamics-365-business-central-sandbox-container-on-windows-for-local-778b7319c3b6
Part 2 (VS Code + first AL project): https://albertassaad.medium.com/setting-up-visual-studio-code-and-creating-your-first-al-project-for-business-central-c6c12482d3f0
Part 3 (publishing extensions): https://medium.com/@albertassaad/publishing-al-extensions-to-a-local-business-central-container-using-visual-studio-code-152322bfe181
Part 4 (tables, pages, codeunits): https://medium.com/@albertassaad/building-your-first-real-al-objects-tables-pages-and-a-codeunit-in-business-central-4e1bfe3823f9

Code: https://github.com/AlbertAssaad/CustomerExtension

Feedbacks are welcome

​

****

A few weeks into a new role at a public company running D365 F&O. For the past six months, AP account reconciliations have been done manually in an Excel workbook: bank transactions and AP GL transactions loaded side by side, matched line by line.

This is a zero balance account, so the actual bank statement balance is always $0. The AP GL balance on its own is not zero. For example, January's AP GL balance is $13,500 CD, while the bank statement balance is $0. In the workbook, that $13,500 washes out to zero once matched against the offsetting ZBA transfer activity. This process has gone through a proper monthly approval process, so it's not sloppy, just manual.

I've now been asked to move this into D365's native Bank Reconciliation feature (not Advanced Bank Rec). The AP GL transactions are already in the system, posted through normal AP processing.

I tried entering $0 as the ending balance, since that's the actual bank statement balance for a ZBA. But D365 won't let the reconciliation complete, since the GL side shows $13,500 CR and there's nothing to clear it against since the offsetting transfer transactions aren't in the system.

Has anyone reconciled a ZBA in native Bank Rec without loading the offsetting bank-side transactions? What balance did you use, and how did you get the recon to actually complete?

Hi Guys,

I was able to fetch some really good quality responses on my last post as a service partner!

I have follow up question here….

I was able to fetch some really good responses in my last post around Dynamics Market…
(I m pretty confident this subreddit also consists of other founders, leaders/executives at some great partners!

How’s the Azure marketplace? (Or infrastructure market)

Previously we have been involved in reselling licenses, mostly SMB market: (Bundles)
1. Business Basic
2. Business Premium
3. Business Standard

How about extending this to a broader Azure world? (From SAAS to PAAS/IAAS)

Hey there, I wanted to know how you are managing GDPR at your orgs, especially between customer insights - journeys and Sales Hub

Currently our system works like this. on the contact table we have a GDPR lawful basis field. for contacts located in GDPR regions (like europe, uk, canada) we require the GDPR lawful basis field to be set to consent received/legitimate business interest before a user can change the contact's email preferences to allow (donotemail/donotbulkemail). This prevents users from direct sales outreach without the GDPR fields properly set which enable contact preferences. on the marketing side currently we are working with one compliance profile that is non-restrictive for the commercial purpose. we market to contacts and we have the feature switch on to respect the contact record's contact preference fields (donotemail, donotbulkemail). This makes sure our GDPR setup is enforced for contacts in customer insights journeys.

We are now in the process of implementing leads which will be used more for sales/marketing and will replace some early stages on our opportunity process. that feature switch from before only applies to contacts, so we are planning on having the marketing team use an exclusion segment when they market to leads but want to consider what others are doing at their orgs.

Our sales team uses Saleforce for CRM but quotes and billing live in a separate tool, Dynamic, so keeping everything aligned takes more manual work than we would like. We have had cases where a quote was updated after approval, but the billing team was still working from the old version, leading to invoice corrections and unnecessary work here and there. How are you keeping quoting and billing in sync across separate platforms?

I'm helping a small company (less than 100 employees but growing) decide on an ERP. Being a formula based manufacturer (process/batch) of this size seems to be a niche. Anyone have similar experience and recommend either appropriate manufacturing plug-ins or other ERP alternatives?

Company is leaning towards MS Dynamics Business Central but starting to find out that may not be an appropriate fit. Will either need well maintained plug-ins for the manufacturing or instead need to go with MS Finance & Supply Chain Management which is very costly.

Some background on the company:

The company has one facility for production (might have multiple soonish), and produces beverage enhancers. There are multiple warehouses across the US and at least one in Europe. Products are often shipped between warehouses. There is an online presence via Amazon and in the future perhaps other platforms such as Shopify. There is one physical POS (and maybe could have more in the future).

Looking for one system to capture customers (usually distributors + contacts), orders, recipes for the beverage enhancers (top secret), help plan production lines (currently only have 3) for a large number of products, keep track of inventories and in which warehouses (same product can have many labels to support US, Europe, Asia, etc.).

Hubspot is being used for marketing purposes. It works well but open to being replaced if there is as good of an alternative. A good integration with Hubspot would suffice.

Quickbooks Desktop with Advanced Manufacturing was originally used and was great. Unfortunately, had to move out of that and are currently in a bad ERP implementation.

Looking through the FY27 incentive changes, some things became clear:

• Core CSP incentives for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 have disappeared.
• Growth incentives have increased significantly.
• Azure largely keeps its base incentives but adds stronger growth tiers.

Microsoft is sending a pretty clear message with this: maintaining existing customers is no longer what they're primarily rewarding. Acquiring customers, expanding workloads, and driving adoption seem to be the focus.

If you're a CSP partner, do you expect this to change how you prioritize customer success, upselling, or sales efforts? Or is it mostly business as usual?

Hi everyone. I’m trying to learn Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and prepare for the MB-310 certification, but I’m running into a problem finding a hands-on environment. I only have a personal Microsoft account (no work or school tenant) and my budget is limited. I’ve already looked into Microsoft Learn but recently I Can't access the Launch lab button, so I’m specifically looking for a sandbox where I can freely explore the application, Most of the options I’ve found cost hundreds of dollars. Does anyone know of a legitimate, low-cost provider (monthly subscription or course) that includes access to a Dynamics 365 Finance sandbox? Any recommendations or advice from people who were in the same situation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, I'm still relatively new to Dynamics, and every time I create a segment, I wonder how I know which
field to select. Is there a reference or documentation where I can look this up?
Example:
I want to create a segment that shows all contacts who clicked on a specific link in a specific email. I’ve
selected “Behavioral Segment” and chosen the email, but how do I define the link? Should I use “Link
Name,” “Link Text,” or “Target URL”? Do all roads lead to the correct one? How do I know which one is correct?
This example is probably quite easy but what about really complex Segment Definitions? How do I know what it References?

I'm curious to hear from anyone working with Dynamics 365 in the UAE real estate sector.

What are the biggest operational challenges you've encountered when managing:

• Property sales
• Leasing
• Tenant management
• Maintenance
• Multi-company operations
• VAT compliance

Have you relied on standard Dynamics 365 features, customizations, or an ISV solution?