As I prepare for my MB2-716 exam I’m producing a series of blog posts that collectively should help others revising for the MB2-716 Certification. (Microsoft Dynamics 365 customization and Configuration.) This time I will look at how to configure administration settings.
I often like to begin by looking at the skills measured statement. This time the specific statement I will address is shown below. (With administration settings highlighted as they will be the focus of this post, later posts will expand on documentation etc.)
Configure Microsoft Dynamics 365 settings
- Configure auditing, document management, and collaboration; configure administration settings; perform data management tasks; perform user management; implement themes
Administration Settings
The administration area of Dynamics 365 settings contains many of the options we use when configuring Dynamics 365.
The administration area of the settings options gives access to various options. Including;
- Announcements, manage companywide announcements.
- Auto-Numbering to define how cases and other entities should be assigned unique numbers.
- System Settings many settings are controlled within the system settings option. (more details later!)
- Languages lets you install language packs when working in a multilingual organization.
- Privacy Preferences allows the administrator to define if users in the organization can participate in the customer experience improvement program.
- Product Updates, sign up for email alerts on product updates.
- Yammer Configuration, enable Yammer collaboration in Dynamics 365.
- Microsoft Social Engagement Configuration. Connect your installation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 to a Microsoft Social Engagement solution.
Note: Be aware if you enable Yammer you cannot disable it. Yammer replaces the CRM out of the box posts / wall functionality.
There are some differences in the Administration options between on-premise and online! Notice how the screen below (from an online instance) has some additional options. Including;
- Subscriptions Management, will navigate you into Office 365 to manage payment / billing options, purchase licenses etc.
- System notifications, view any details of scheduled outages etc.
- Resources in Use, shows how many of the 300 available custom entities are in use. Plus contains links to view storage usage.
- Data Performance, review, analyze and optimize data access. (Note, at the time of creating these notes details on this option were limited.)
- Mobile Offline configuration, Dynamics 365 contains the ability to enable off line with the mobile client.
System Settings
System settings is an important option as it gives access to a lot of options which drive system behavior. Such as how email processing works, default currency, enabling auto save, skype integration etc etc. Part of your revision should involve spending time going over the options in each tab in system settings so you are every familiar with the capabilities. (Getting hands-on time is always important!)
You could face questions on the exam on any system setting. Make yourself familiar with as many settings as possible!! Below I highlight a few of the newer ones. This is not to suggest I believe these will come up in the exam. I list them here simple to bring your attention to some of the newer options. Even the most experienced of you will do well to review the system settings in detail as you will no doubt find a few new options or be reminded of settings you’ve long since forgotten about!
General Tab
Dynamics 365 contains a new concept of an app model. In the general tab you can define the name of the default app and if this should be shown in the app switcher.
Mobile Tab
A new tab called “Mobile” exists. Here you can enable / disable conflict detection when using mobile offline synchronization. (Note: This option only applied to online Dynamics 365 instances.)
Previews
With online instances you can enable a number of preview features. These are new features that allow you obtain insight into features planned for full relaese in later versions of Dynamics 365. Care should be taken wit these features as that should only be used for development / test purposes. This is because they are likely to change (or even be removed) when in later Dynamics 365 releases.
Auto-Numbering
There are nine entities in CRM which are enabled to auto-numbering. Those being contracts, cases, articles, quotes, orders, invoices, campaigns, categories and knowledge articles. You cannot add more entities to this list using this out of the box numbering but you can configure how the numbering should operate for each of these entities.
Note:
Earlier versions of CRM only had 8 entities available for auto-numbering. Categories are a newer option. These can be used when ccategorizing entity records in Microsoft Dynamics 365. They help you tag the records so that you can easily search them. Use the Category entity to create and manage a hierarchical structure of categories in Dynamics 365, and then associate entity records to one or more categories.
I hope this quick introduction to the administration settings in Dynamics 365 will have helped in your exam preparation. In my next post I will build on this concept and look at the business management configuration options.
NEIL PARKHURST 
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