Leave the spreadsheets to your data analysts, and appreciate the effectiveness that charts provide. Dynamics 365 comes with a handful of charts out-of-the-box which you can pair with corresponding views to surface data visually. Like most companies, you likely have unique measures which the standard charts do not account for. That is where the flexibility and ease of creating your own charts in D365 shines. Dynamics 365 provides a variety of chart types allowing you to create column, bar, pie, funnel, and many more chart types, to fulfill your business needs.

Charts interact with the view which is chosen, and the data reflected in the chart is refreshed when you toggle between views. So, if viewing My Opportunities, the chart will depict that information, if you switch the view to All Opportunities, the Chart will change to reflect the data of the newly selected View. Similarly, you can switch Charts to display the View data in another way.

There are two types of Charts which can be created, system charts and personal charts. System Charts are created by a System Administrator or System Customizer, and are available to everyone in the organization. Personal Charts are those that a User can create for themselves, and are only viewable by that User (or Users they “share” the chart with), and what this blog will focus on.

Creating a Personal Chart

To create a chart, navigate to the entity (Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities…) for which you want to create a chart and choose the view which best demonstrates the data you want to visualize. Click the charts pane to expand this section.

Creating views and charts are a meaningful way to analyze and visualize your data, but they often live in multiple entities in Dynamics 365, and truth be told, you probably overlook or do not use them to their fullest potential. Custom dashboards in D365 give you the ability to pull together a variety of views and charts into one place, providing you a single stopping point to easily view metrics which span multiple entities.

Dashboards can be made up of views, charts, web resources and iFrames, allowing you to build your own collection of business intelligence metrics.

There are two types of Dashboards which can be created, system dashboards and personal dashboards. System Dashboards are created by a System Administrator or System Customizer, and are available to everyone in the organization. Personal Dashboards are those that a User can create for themselves, and are only viewable by that User (or Users they “share” the Dashboard with), and what this blog will focus on.

Creating a Personal Dashboard

You can create a personal dashboard by going to the dashboard area of Dynamics 365, and selecting an existing Dashboard and performing a “Save As” or create a new one. You are presented with layout choices, select one and click Create.

Ever had your boss ask you to pull a report which meets a specific set of criteria or sat scratching your head trying to pull up a record, but could not recall the exact details? With Advanced Find in D365, you can find exactly what you are looking for in just seconds. Advanced Find is the most powerful and robust tool in Dynamics 365 for searching. Using intuitive, user friendly features, you can quickly create queries and search your entire D365 database with ease.

At first glance Advanced Find may appear a bit intimidating, however once you become familiar with it, you will find yourself using it all the time, and wonder how you ever worked without it.

Continue reading to learn everything you need to know to get started using Advanced Find today!

The Advanced Find button is simple to locate, no matter which screen you are on, because it is housed in the D365 navigation bar.

Once you click on the  Icon, a window like the following will appear.

Isn’t it maddening to fill out the same fields, with the same info, when creating a child record directly from its parent form? Well -- Stop Doing It! Let the system fill out those fields automatically for you, instead of eating up your own time on it!

One of the “quiet” features of Dynamics 365, that will significantly save you time and protect data integrity, is Field Mapping. The purpose of field mapping is to copy certain values (e.g. address fields) from a record to an associated record (e.g. a contact created from an account)

The following details how simple it is to create field mapping relationships.

In Customizations, locate the Account Entity, and go to the “1:N Relationships” node.

Ever have the problem of scrolling down a long list of options only to miss what you were looking for? What if there was a way to limit your option choices based on values previously selected? Well now there is!

Dependent options in Dynamics 356 gives users the ability to filter down a long list of option values to just a handful of choices based on previously selected parent fields. This feature dynamically updates the options users see based on pre-set business logic.

Take the following transpiration data model as an example.

Traditional Option Set

Traditional option sets simply display all the options for each field without any consideration for previously selected option values. This method is cumbersome when it comes to long lists and can feel very redundant when looking through lists where some of the options obviously shouldn’t be there based on previous values selected.

Wouldn’t it simplify things if you could go to one record and see everything you need to see? Ever find yourself heading into a meeting, and wish you could quickly “ramp up” on all interactions with the Customer? Getting the total picture in one place, enabling you to see every touchpoint, this is the benefit that sub-grids afford you.

One of the great things about Dynamics 365 is that it allows you to customize entity forms to display the information most relevant to your business. You will quickly find that providing your users with the ability to see, at a glance, a subset of related records when viewing a lead, contact or account record provides immeasurable value.

For example, your salespeople may benefit from seeing all tasks related to an account directly on the account record. Instead of having to navigate to a separate page or running an advanced find query, you can easily set this up by adding a task sub-grid to the account form.

To add a sub-grid to your account form, open the D365 form editor directly from the account record’s ribbon menu or by opening the general customizations menu, navigating to the account entity forms, and selecting the account main form.

Once you’re in the form editor, select the section that you want to add the sub-grid to, switch to the form editor’s Insert tab, and click the Sub-Grid button.

If it was only as easy as 1,2,3.

At the end of the day, everybody needs customers. Whether it’s a B2B company or a B2C company you need to have some demand for your product or services that you provide. You need to get your name out to the masses somehow, you need to have a website, blog, and your company needs to be on every social media platform out there so people can find you.

Though it can be challenging to identify the right lead, B.A.N.T. is one of the more reliable lead ranking strategies. While your salesperson is on the phone with the new lead, they should go through the B.A.N.T. process to determine the quality of the lead. Here’s a breakdown of B.A.N.T: