is an enterprise level CRM system and Microsoft Teams is an industry leading communication and collaboration tool. You are most likely familiar with both cloud-based products offered by Microsoft. In this post, I would like to describe a powerful integration that is available when you use these two products together.
In recent years, Microsoft has adopted a strategy of eliminating “context switching” or the need for a user to jump to another application to get the information needed to do their job. This strategy is achieved in a powerful way by allowing organizations to embed Dynamics 365 records inside of a Teams channel without any additional licensing. Here is one use case:
Use Case: Embed an Opportunity Record in Teams
Opportunity records in a CRM system often contain the most important information. For many companies, CRM opportunities are the jobs, projects, or products that bring in the revenue. Modern CRM systems allow complete customization of the fields and forms related to opportunity records.
In the case of ThesisTech, our CRM opportunities represent our sold and unsold projects related to the consulting services we provide. Our opportunity records are highly customized and contain all the information required for any given project including project scope, client overview, project approach, specifications, files, WBS (work breakdown structure), hours, invoices, client emails, and more.
We share all this critical information with our project teams by embedding the Dynamics 365 CRM opportunity record form inside a Teams channel as a new tab. This connection is created through a few quick clicks in Teams or in Dynamics 365.
Once connected, each team member can see all tabs and data related to the project. The type of access granted to each project team member reflects their security role in the organization as it relates to this project.
Business Benefits realized through this integration:
1. Improve Team Efficiency
Project team efficiency is improved significantly by creating a single location for all project related information. The Dynamics 365 CRM record inside of puts this information at the fingertips of each team member in a well-organized manner.
The need for accessing different locations for key information and documents goes away. The need to constantly communicate key project information to team members via email or other means is virtually eliminated.
2. Improve Team Effectiveness
When all project information is found in a single location, the collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Teams become even more effective. Everyone sees the same data and this data is “live”.
Project teams are more effective when they are on the same page during each phase of the project. The quality and timeliness of project delivery also goes way up when team members have full access to all important project information.
3. Unlimited Tabs of Relevant Information
The Dynamics 365 CRM system is highly customizable which means the information that can be shared inside of Microsoft Teams is virtually limitless. How this information is organized and presented is up to you.
My favorite way of organizing project information in Dynamics 365 is to have a specific opportunity form tab for each subject. This approach makes things easy to find and avoids the clutter that often occurs in a CRM form with a bunch of unrelated information mashed together.
4. Use Security Roles to Secure Confidential Information
There are times when a project team does not need to see all information related to a project. For example, you may not want the financial details of a project available to everyone. This situation can be addressed by using Security Roles inside of Dynamics 365. Roles can be used to drive which tabs or fields appear based on the user’s role on the project.
5. No additional licenses required
Another great benefit of the Dynamics 365 and Teams integration is that no additional licenses are required. Project teams members who do not have a Dynamics 365 license can still see and use the information from Dynamics when it is embedded in Teams.
Summary
Dynamics 365 records, forms, and lists can be embedded inside of a Microsoft Teams channel. This approach increases team efficiency and improves collaboration by combining all relevant data into a single location. This integration can be achieved without any additional licensing.
About the Author
Brian Busscher is Founder and CEO of Thesis Technologies which pursues a mission to “help you get your systems right.” If you would like to learn more about Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Teams, please contact one of our consultants at (888) 705-7253.
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