As I revise for the MB2-710 exam I am creating posts covering all aspects of my revision. Hopefully collectively they may help others prepare for the MB2-710 certification. (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Online Deployment.)

In this post I will look at user management.

As always, before we start let’s remind ourselves of the skills measured statement for the MB2-710 exam;

• Manage users
  
  • Identify the methods to add users to Dynamics CRM Online; assign Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online licences to users; assign security roles; enable and disable users; describe non-interactive users; mark a user as non-interactive; identify administrative roles
    

Adding Users to Office 365

CRM users are added / managed in Office 365. Although security roles and some additional information can be added from the CRM web interface.

To add a new user, go to Office 365 admin where you can create accounts and assign a CRM license.

Below you can see that after clicking add user a dialog opens that lets me enter their name and give them a user name.

Next you can optionally add contact information. In a test environment you may commonly skip this stage but often in a production environment this information has significance. For example, if you are using the Field Service module of CRM that the address entered here can be used would routing the user to a job. It is important to know that this information can only be amended in Office 365. In the user administration in CRM these details will be readonly.

When a user is first created you have several options regarding passwords. Including an auto-generate option. You can also decide if the user must change the password when they first login.

Next we assign a role to the user. This role should not be confused with the CRM security role that we will discuss in a second! This is their role with Office 365, from a CRM point of view all most all of your user will have a role of “user”. When your CRM instance is created the Office 365 Global administrator will be assigned the system administrator role in CRM. You may need to assign additional CRM administrators and if you need them to also administer users then you would set them as a global administrator.

Note: It is possible for a CRM user to be a CRM administrator without being a global admin in Office 365. If you do this you should be aware that whilst they can administer CRM they cannot maintain users. This includes not being able to test and approve mailboxes in CRM.

Next we assign one or more product licenses to the user. And when assigning the CRM license you may have some options connected with add-on products.

Having entered all of the details we click add, after a short pause the user will be become available in CRM. Notice that after creating the user we can opt to send the email we defined in an email if required.

Maintaining Users

Maintaining any of the details regarding the user is done from the “edit a user” option. A list of users will be presented and when you have selected the required user you can edit the settings as shown above. The layout differs slightly from the screens used when adding a user but essentially the options are the same.

Assign Security Roles in CRM

Having added the user to Office 365 and assigned a license they will exist in CRM. BUT at this stage they will not yet be able to access CRM. This is because they need to be assigned a security role in CRM. All users will be created without a CRM role in this way. With the exception of your Global Admin when the CRM instance is first created, as they will be granted the System Administrator role in CRM by default.

To assign a role in CRM you load CRM (as the CRM administrator) go to settings and select the security option.

We can then select the “Users” option to administer any additional options and assign a security group.

If when you first go into this option, your new user doesn’t exist give it a few seconds and click refresh. Users appear in CRM quickly but not instantly after they have been added in Office 365!

The suer record in CRM will look like this. Notice that several fields are read-only. These will be details that you defined in Office 365 and will need to change their values in there. But other fields are specific to CRM, for example you can define a site, territory and manager. Plus, importantly you can set a user’s business unit. The business unit will have defaulted to your root business unit but if you have multiple business units defined your first task might be to assign the user to the correct one.

We can now use the manage roles option to allow the addition of one or more security roles to the user. Once completed the user will be able to access CRM.

Enable / Disable Users

In CRM on premise enabling and disabling users is performed in the web application. But with CRM online we use the Office 365 admin portal.

When the user was created in Office 365 we assigned a CRM license to the user, to disable the user all we do is remove the license from the user in Office 365.

After a short pause the user will become disabled in CRM, meaning they can no longer log into CRM. At this point it is worth considering what will happen to any records owned by the user in CRM! Well, these records will still show as being assigned to the disabled user. Meaning they will need to be reassigned to a new user. (If required.)

You can re-enable a user. When re-enabled they will have the same security role as previously assigned.

It is important to know that users are not and cannot be deleted from CRM.

Non-Interactive Users

Non-interactive users are a “special” type of user that does not interact with CRM via any CRM client. These are useful for programmatically accessing CRM, maybe for integration with an ERP system. (Such as Dynamics GP, NAV or AX.)

You can have a maximum of 5 non-interactive users.

Non-interactive users do not consume a license.

We change a user to be a non-interactive user within CRM, select the user and in the admin section change their access mode to “Non-interactive”. Other options include “Read-Write” (default) and “Administritive”.

NOTE: To setup a non-interactive user, you first create a user with a license. Then edit their access mode to be non-interactive. Then return to Office 365 and remove the license as it is no longer required.

I hope this post has helped you understand the basics of user management that you will need to know for the MB2-710 deployment exam. As always it is very important to get some hands-on practice with the product, these notes are just a guide!
J