Event Management in Dynamics 365 for Marketing

Modern marketing is all about offering value and services to existing customers and prospects using various techniques. And to achieve this, any business needs the support of third-party marketing tools or hires an agency to handle event management, email marketing, and surveys, etc. The goal is to get a good number of leads to manage as well as nurture them until conversion.
In the context of this, Dynamics 365 for Marketing is designed to fulfill all those marketing requirements of the business. A feature that sets apart Dynamics 365 for Marketing is its integrated event management tools.  The event management feature helps you every step of the way, from initial planning and budgeting through promotion and publication, attendee registration, webinar broadcasting, final analytics, lead generation, and evaluation of ROI.
In this blog post, we will give you the basic idea of how the planning and publishing of the Event Website happen using Dynamics 365.

Event Record

The first thing to do while creating an event in Dynamics 365 for Marketing is to set a root record. This will track the information regarding the event and will provide you with the business process timeline for guidance.
One can view the list of all event records in the Event work area.

Event Work Area

Information regarding an event is organized into five tabs – General, Agenda, Registration & Attendance, Additional Information, and Post Event. All of them, have some necessary and business-critical data fields which are essential for an event.

event management in Dynamics 365 for marketing

Setting an Event Website

Creating an Event website is often a standard business practice for many organizations because it creates a buzz among potential customers with moderate cost, publicity, and advertising, new leads capturing, and much more.
The event site in Dynamics 365 for Marketing can fetch all the details and the graphics from each published event. It will also encourage the users to register their account, edit profile, register themselves as well as others for an event, choose session passes, view their event schedule, and modify or cancel an event registration. Below is the site map for the Event Website.

event management in dynamics 365 for marketing

Hosting an Event Website

When you install the Dynamics 365 for Marketing for the first time, the event website is installed onto your Dynamics 365 Portals solution. It is ready-to-use and is an out-of-the-box solution. Because the website is made using Agular Framework you can host anywhere rather than Dynamics 365 Portals only.

Following are the hosting options:

  • Dynamics 365 native portal (no longer available)
  • Angular site hosted by Dynamics 365 portals
  •  Angular site hosted externally

Hosting your website using Dynamics 365 Portals is easily customizable. Here, all the information and images are retrieving from the event record. The payment gateway can be build using Dynamics 365 entities and is customizable according to the third-party payment provider.

Set registration options

Registration is in two ways

  • Event-Level
  • Session-Level

Event-level registration sign in the registrants for the event itself and all the sessions happening. While, in the session-level registration, the registrants select specific sessions they prefer to attend according to their schedule.
To choose the session-level registration, navigate to the Agenda tab and set the option “Allow registrants to create their own agenda” to Yes. Passes and online payment option is not possible for this type of registration.
Visitors can also register themselves as anonymous registrants without creating a profile, only if you enable the option.
Your site is ready to go-live if all the details such as payment, sessions, speakers and other event details are present. Publishing of the site is one-by-one based on the entities as all of them have distinctive information.

Adding Custom fields

By default, registration form only includes first name, last name, email address furthermore pass type (paid events with at least one pass). You can add additional fields as per your requirement. You can choose which custom fields to add to each event, and your registration records will include the values submitted by registrants.
Go to Custom registration fields. Events>Event> Custom registration fields

So, make the following settings:

  • Owner: The name of the user who owns this record.
  • Text: The field label, exactly as it will be shown on the form.
  • Is Required: Sets whether Dynamics 365 Marketing should require registrants to specify a value for this field. Set this to Yes to mark the field as required.
  • Type: Sets the type of input field created on the form. Simple text creates a text field where registrants can type a value. Boolean creates a checkbox (yes or no option); Single choice creates a drop-down list, where registrants can choose just one value; and Multiple choices create a set of checkboxes, where registrants can enable as many options as they want.
  • Choices: This setting is only shown when the Type is set to Single choice either Multiple choices. Enter each available option here, with options separated by a carriage return.

 

custom registration field

After you set the field, assign them to the events as needed.

Go to Registration & attendance tab > Add new event custom field

new event

 

A new page opens, and hence make the following settings:

  • Custom registration field: Select an existing custom field that is now set up for your instance.
  • Event: This is the event where you will add this custom field. The current event will appear here.
  • Order: Enter an integer to control the position of this field (relative to other custom fields). The lowest values display first in the registration form.

 

new custom field

Setting Online Payment

Customers feel safe and secure with the online payment option. To enable online payment, you must agree to the third-party payment provider for authenticating and capturing the payment details.
Creating a payment gateway depends upon how your website is hosted. We will continue payment gateway in our next blog.
This is just an overview of how you can create an event website and what is event management in Dynamics 365 for Marketing. For full-length understanding, please feel free to contact us at sales@intech-systems.com.

(Images Courtesy Microsoft)

Unified Interface in Dynamics 365

What is the Unified Interface?

Unified Interface in Dynamics 365 is all about cleaner user experience and a friendly interface. The new and improved UI updates the aspect and feel of the software with a uniform design that is used across all devices and Dynamics platforms.
For example, with the Unified Interface, dashboards and views are constant, no matter which module is being accessed irrespective of any devices.

Why has the Unified Interface been introduced?

The main agenda of introducing new modern UI is to deliver a consistent experience to the Dynamics 365 CE users across all devices. Another aspect of change is due to more connected and diverse apps being implemented in different scenarios. And, this makes a requirement for the apps to be designed only once and should be quick, easily accessible across various device platforms.

 


New UI in D265

 

What are the enhanced features?

 

features of UI

 

There are few notable changes in the new UI that you might have also marked.

  • Navigation Tab

First and foremost, the thing you will notice the change in UI is in the navigation bar. The new UI has the navigation on the top with the menu on the left.

 

navigation in UI

 

The new Navigation Menu is always present and easier than ever to navigate without losing the ever-elusive hover using mouse required in Web Client. It can be collapsed to create more working space in the app. In either model, the users know exactly where they are and where they can navigate to with ease.

 

Navigation in UI

All sitemap structural components are still part of the new menu

  • Groups
  • Items
  • Areas

 

Navigation in UI

 

The new Navigation Bar is more at a place than ever. Branding and corporate identity are essential to any organizational culture. The improvements reduce any obstacles to brand color allowing the brand to shine via existing theme color support across the whole top Navigation Bar.

 

brand color in UI

 

  • Dashboards

The new dashboards embedded across all device types. Power BI reports now can be accessed within Dynamics 365 from mobile.  Moreover, improved charts and users can access dashboards specifically to the entity where they are working in.

dashboards in UI

 

Improved Timeline Control has reduced density and allows users to see all activity types in a single view. The calendar is the newest View Control – allows for a more intuitive and natural way to look at date-based record sets. Furthermore, Relationship Assistant gets its own space to help users by leveraging AI capabilities to make them more productive.

 

dashboards in UI

 

With new UI dashboards, there will not be any struggle with data range filters.

 

date range in UI

 

  • Views and Subgrids

Based on the needs and requirements, users can adjust the screen and get the best user experience.  Similarly, views and Sub-Grids dynamically adapt to the available space changes from:

  • Form factor
  • Screen or Window size
  • Zoom level

 

views in UI

 

  • New Forms

New forms will remove unnecessary colors and backgrounds. Additionally, tab navigation is on top and easily visible. Besides, SDK customization will not be hampered by the new design with column layout continue as configured.

forms in UI

 

  • Business Flow

The new Business Flow Process is very compact with great improvements. It takes up less space and moreover, users can view the completed stage with the filled circles which in old UI was very complex to understand.

business flow in UI

 

Unified Interface performance improvements

During its Business Applications Summit in June 2019, Microsoft highlighted a series of statistics to demonstrate how the Unified Interface improves performance and reliability. These included:

performance in UI

 

Why you should move to Unified Interface?

 

benefits of UI
The new Unified Interface is a positive change to align Dynamics 365 with the Power Platforms strategy. Also, it will help your system to be on track with the latest features and enhancements. Microsoft confirmed the derogate of the legacy web interface in September 2019. It will continue to provide support until Oct 2020, but after this, it will no longer be available.
If you want to know more or to get advice on migrating to the Dynamics 365 Unified Interface, please get in touch: sales@intech-systems.com

Image Source: Microsoft

Dynamics CRM v/s Dynamics 365 – How do they differ?

It is nearly the end of 2019, and by now we are sure you undoubtedly understand Dynamics 365. Incepted in 2016, Dynamics 365 completely rebranded Dynamics CRM under the name of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement. Because it is the combination of CRM and ERP, further it’s evident, Dynamics 365 is the future of Microsoft Business Application. With the revisions making the solution more appealing to the business.

How do they differentiate?

Both solutions are composed to serve the same purpose, be it on-premise or on the cloud. However, Dynamics 365 has more enhanced features and capabilities which are not available in Dynamics CRM such as machine learning and AI.
Below are the few features which differentiate Dynamics 365 from Dynamics CRM.

AI and Machine Learning:

Dynamics 365 leverages the benefits of AI and machine learning to help business users to derive more insightful and required details. It allows the user to perform further important tasks by helping them with understanding the data and generate more intelligent, contextual analysis, and prediction.
Dynamics 365 is introduced with the capabilities which allow the software to learn without having to explicitly programmed to do so.

Power of Power Platforms:

Be it Power BI, Power Apps or Power Automate (then Flow) – Dynamics 365 users have the perks of each. With Power BI, users can connect to the dashboards and create reports. Power Apps help the user to create and design apps without any logical and longing code. Power Automate enables the user to create automated workflows between programs including third-party apps.

LinkedIn Connect:

With Microsoft’s acquiring LinkedIn in 2016, Dynamics 365 holds deeper integration with the tool and possesses enormous benefits. Sales reps and recruiters get access to LinkedIn 500+ million professionals. It helps the users to connect with the right personnel.
With the latest update in Dynamics 365, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms will enable users to automatically sync leads from multiple LinkedIn accounts with Dynamics 365 so that they can trace, nurture and analyze them.

Editable Grids:

Users can make inline modifications to the records both on mobile and web interface without having to open the complete record.

Email Engagement:

With this functionality, users can easily track the emails sent via Dynamics 365 and monitor whether the mail is received, opened, clicked on or the attachment has been viewed.

Relationship Insights and Relationship Analytics:

Both features are related to customers. Relationship Insights helps users to be precise about the deadlines, meetings, or any missed opportunities, etc. by scanning through emails.
On another hand, Relationship analytics will analyze the customer’s data to give users a better and clear understanding of business relationships.

Sandbox:

In Dynamics CRM, the customers receive only testing and development sandbox for 25 or more licenses, for the customers less than 25 licenses have to purchase one. However, in Dynamics 365, the business receives one sandbox as standard, no matter how many licenses are purchased.

Backup and restore:

Dynamics 365 users can perform their secure data backup and restores according to their data recovery plans. Backup to an on-premise environment is also possible.

What is the licensing structure?

The licensing term is the same for both the solutions. Dynamics CRM users must pay for the features which they are not using, which is not the case with Dynamics 365. That means users can have a custom pricing model based on the functionality needed.
Dynamics 365 has only two levels of access

  • Full Users
  • Team Members

Giving full users more access to less cost and saving customers money on licenses for light users. Whereas, in Dynamics CRM there are four different levels of access.

Planning to switch?

If you are using Dynamics CRM on-premise, you can continue to use it till you need it. If you are thinking of switch to Dynamics 365 on-premise, you can go for it. Similarly, you can think of migrating to the cloud environment of Dynamics 365.
In any case, our experts are here to guide you through the transition. Do you have any questions for us? Feel free to contact us at sales@intech-systems.com at any time.

    Join our mailing list for news updates, invitations, and more