Ever find that two or more of your Dynamics 365 contacts are related and want a quick way to record that relationship? Or have a Contact that is related to an Account record even though it is not directly associated? Well look no further because we have your answer.

Connections in Dynamics 365 are a great way to link records together without any hassle. Sometimes you may want a quick way to link records together without having to spend hours coming up with a custom solution to satisfy this everyday requirement. Connections is your answer for that, whether it be linking records of the same type or of completely different record types.

To connect two records together, all you need to do is click on the Connect button in the tool bar.

This will open the new connection window.

From here, lookup the record you wish to connect to by clicking the name field and then selecting search for more records.

Once the Lookup window opens, find the record you wish to connect to by adjusting the Look for and Look in settings. You can use the search feature to help you narrow down items in the list.

Once you have located your desired record, select the record and click add.

Once the connect to record has been added, choose the relationship (role) which associates it to the current record. You may add additional details in the description field to further describe the relationship.

Once all the information has been added, hit save and close to create the connection.

To view Connections which have been associated to a record, click the down arrow next to the record name in the command bar, and select Connections.

Now that you know how Connections work, you can link multiple records together with ease. To learn more about the Connections feature please reach out to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Are you juggling two CRM systems because you have an overwhelming amount of data in your existing system, and you do not even know where to begin as you make the transition to Dynamics 365? Data importing aside, is a bigger concern loss of data and/or data integrity? Or do you have salespeople attending events and need a quick and easy process for getting all the data which has been gathered into D365?

Your search is over. Importing data is an important task you will need to perform at one point or another. Whether it be when your Dynamics 365 environment goes live or later when you need to bring in data which has been collected in another application. No matter how you slice it, the need will arise! You can import data into standard and customized fields of out of the box and custom entities in Dynamics 365. Not only that, you can also include related data, such as activities and notes. To assure data integrity, you can enable duplicate detection to prevent importing duplicate records.

A few pointers as you prepare your data for import:

Export data from your existing system in one of the following formats: comma-separated values (.csv), XML Spreadsheet 2003 (.xml), Compressed (.zip) or text files. Or save an Excel file, which has had data entered into it, as a .csv or .xml.

Once you have your raw data ready, the next thing you need to do is to prepare your data import template. There are a handful of ways to create a template for your data import into Dynamics 365.

1. Use Preconceived Templates. Go to Settings > Data Management > Templates for Data Import > Find the template for the entity you want to perform a data import for.

2. Create an Advanced Find Query. Perform an Advanced Find query, add the necessary columns, and then Export to Excel. Once exported replace the existing data with your own data.

3. Use an Existing Entity View. Navigate to the desired entity, select your preferred view, then select Export to Excel from the command bar. Once exported replace the existing data with your own data.

4. Create Your Own Template. In Excel, create your own template by adding column headers, which represent field names.

Once you have the template ready, you can copy and paste your data into the template. Be careful, Dynamics 365 is picky on formatting, make sure you paste as plain text.

Now you are ready to import your data. Go to Settings > Data Management > Imports and from the navigation area choose Import Data.

Browse to the location where you have saved the file, and select Next. On the next screen, confirm that the file is correct and select Next again.

Choose to have the system map the data automatically, the first selection in the list. Conversely, you can also use a Customized Data Map. After making your selection, select Next.

Choose the entity that you are mapping to.

The system will detect the fields. Verify that they match as you intended. For any fields that do not map automatically or are flagged, select the field that you want to map it to, or if needed, create a new field at that time. Once completed, select Next.

Verify the import file again and select Next.

On the next screen make your desired selections. To save the data map you have created, to use in the future, enter a descriptive name in the Data Map Name field shown below. Select Submit to execute the import. You can check the status of the import or view errors by navigating to Settings > Data Management > Imports.

And with that you have the basics of how to successfully import data into Dynamics 365. We have only scratched the surface with this amazing tool, if you need assistance or would like to learn even more about importing data, please feel reach out to our support team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Did you know that there is an auditing feature which comes standard out of the box with Microsoft Dynamics 365? All you need to do is enable and configure it to your needs and going forward all enabled actions will be logged. Auditing allows organizations to easily track high level record changes, granular field level changes, and user log in within the system.

By default, auditing is not turned on in Dynamics 365, so if you are interested in this feature you will need to enable and configure your auditing preferences. D365 provides the flexibility to enable/disable auditing at the organization, entity and attribute levels. It is worth mentioning that to audit at the field level, auditing must be enabled for the organization and the entity.

Enable auditing at the organization level

1.  Auditing setup is under the Settings Tile. Click on Auditing and go to Global Audit Settings. To enable auditing, if not ticked already, tick the box Start Auditing.

2.  After either ticking the box to start auditing or confirming it is ticked, you will then need to choose specific entity categories that you want to enable auditing for. In this step, you are simply defining the entity clusters, you will still need to enable auditing for each entity you want to audit within the grouping. Do note that as you hover over each group, a tooltip appears which defines the included entities.

Enable auditing at the entity level

To enable auditing at the entity level, go to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System. Expand the Entities tab and select the entity that you want to turn on auditing for.

The Auditing checkbox is unchecked by default for all entities, once checked, you will be prompted that all fields in the entity are enabled for auditing. If you don’t want a field to be audited, you can either disable auditing on a field-by-field basis or mass select fields and edit their audit setting (enabled or disabled).

Check auditing history

Audit history is stored under each record, you can simply open a record in Dynamics 365 and click on the drop down beside the record on the top navigation bar. You will be presented with an “Audit History” where you can view all audited data changes.

You can also access a summary of all audited data by navigating to Settings > Auditing > Audit Summary View.

The ability to retrieve and display the audit history is restricted to users who have certain security privileges: View Audit History and View Audit Summary. There are also privileges specific to partitions: View Audit Partitions and Delete Audit Partitions.

The following list identifies the data and operations that can be audited:

• Create, update, and delete operations on records
• Changes to the shared privileges of a record
• N:N association or disassociation of records
• Changes to security roles
• Audit changes at the entity, attribute, and organization level. For example, enabling audit on an entity
• Deletion of audit logs
• When (date/time) a user accesses Microsoft Dynamics 365, for how long, and from what client

If you need assistance or would like to learn more about the auditing feature in Dynamics 365, please reach out to our support team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We are always happy to help you increase the productivity of your Dynamics 365 environment!

What if your most depended upon customer service rep leaves the company and no one else on the team has the level of knowledge he had on various topics? Or at the most granular level, wouldn’t it be incredibly useful if canned suggestions surfaced when opening a service case for a customer?

There is no reason to spend excess time and money researching and troubleshooting the same (or similar) issues repeatedly. Plan ahead and build a knowledge base which withstands the test of time (and turnover) and is shareable both internally and externally.

Knowledge Articles in Microsoft Dynamics 365 provide the ability to create articles with versioning and translation functions. Building a base of Knowledge Articles allows Customer Service Reps to reference and utilize the information to deliver accurate and consistent information to customers, while following the organization’s processes.

By providing access to the article directly from a Case record, the rep can link the article to the case, thereby documenting its inclusion as a step for resolution. Not only can the rep use the information as an assist to themselves, they can opt to share the article with their customer, who may prefer to “do it themselves.”

Knowledge Articles not only benefit reps, who now have answers at their fingertips, those that administer the articles also have something to gain. Analytics are measured which provide article insights for content managers. A couple key stats are how many views each knowledge article has, and the Cases which have been associated to the article. These statistics allow administrators to not only evaluate which articles provide the most value, but ultimately it may provide intel into where there may be a bigger issue which needs attention.

It is worth mentioning that the topic discussed herein is an updated feature which has gone through a handful of iterations throughout the years with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This most current version introduces some major improvements and enhancements over previous iterations. Do note, that while you can continue to use the legacy Knowledge Base Articles, it is good practice, and a Microsoft recommendation, to transition to the Dynamics 365 Knowledge Articles, as they provide improved capabilities and translation support. Microsoft has confirmed that the legacy Knowledge Base Articles will be deprecated sometime in the near future.

If you need assistance or have any questions about either writing a knowledge article or linking articles to cases, please reach out to our support team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We are always happy to help you increase the productivity of your Dynamics 365 environment!