As I prepare for my Dynamics 365 certification in sales (MB2-717), I am creating blog posts based on my revision. I hope that collectively these posts may prove useful to anyone also preparing for the MB2-717 exam. In this post I will review product bundles.

A bundle is simply a group of products that can be sold as a package. If you sold BBQs maybe a product bundle might be a BBQ grill, BBQ charcoal and a BBQ tool set. By doing this you’d hopefully encourage customers to purchase a greater number of products. Bundles are similar to the old style kits found in earlier versions of “CRM” although bundles have effectively replaced kits as they offer greater functionality.

Once created bundles can be used on opportunities, quotes, orders and invoices. (They are entered as product line items.) Like products, bundles support product relationships enabling cross-selling, up-selling, substitutions and accessories. Bundles have individual pricing.  This means that the bundle will need a price list item, as an individual product would.

You create product bundles in the Families & Products option in the product catalog. Which can be found under settings in Dynamics 365.

The ADD BUNDLE option is the command bar. (As shown below.)

Adding a bundle is very like adding a product, as with products you define a product ID, unit group, default unit, price list etc.

Having created the bundle, you can add the products that make up the bundle. For each product in the bundle we set the quantity to include, the units and if the product is required or optional.

Note: Optional products are priced separately. Meaning they will need to exist in your price list as price list items in addition to the bundle that contains them.

Notice that the BBQ product in my bundle is showing that it has properties. I described product families and properties in an earlier post! The BBQ charcoal is associated with a product family that has an associated property.

Below you can see that I have selected the customize option. In my example the property that exists allows the size of the bag of fuel to be defined. You can see that I have opted to default it to 5KG. I could also change editable to “No” to fix the size of the bag of fuel for this bundle.

It is important to be aware that like with products a bundle needs to be activated before it can be used. (And that all of the products in the bundle will also need to be active.)

Once a bundle has been published (activated) the products within the bundle cannot be changed.

It is also important to consider price lists. As the bundle will need to be added to that price list. The price for the bundle will be derived from the bundle price NOT the sum of the prices from the individual components.

Additionally bundles can be offered as suggestions on opportunities. As it is possible to add products and product bundles as relationships.

Below you can see how a bundle would show within an opportunity. Notice that the BBQ bundle has been added in my opportunity. Below the bundle you can see a breakdown of the products that make up the bundle. Also notice that the prices for the individual product is £0, this is because the total price to be charged (£59.99) is against the bundle.

Note: The price on my products within the bundle was £0 as they were all required products. And their quantity could not be amended. Optional products will show with an itemised “opportunity line amount”. To achieve this they will need to be in the price list as separate price list items. The advantage of optional items is that the quantity can then be maintained to exclude them from the bundle. (Or increase the quantity to be purchased.)

Also notice that the BBQ Charcoal has properties that can be edited. This is because BBQ charcoal is part of a family that has one or more properties defined.

Suggestions may also be available related to the bundle or the products within the bundle. (Just as with “normal” products.) You can see a demonstration of this below. As an example I have created two cross sell suggestions, when buying a caravan. One is a Gas BBQ (A product) the other is my BBQ bundle for a charcoal BBQ.

You may also need to be aware that the product bundle can be part of a product family and can therefore inherit properties directly from its family. In the example below my bundle has properties and the products within the bundle have additional properties.

I hope you can see that the concept of product bundles is quite straight forward but like other parts of the product catalog their creation may take some planning. As you need to consider price lists, product relationships, product families / properties, optional / required items etc. Because of this your revision will benefit from you experimenting with various combinations to ensure you fully understand the functionality connected with bundles.

I hope this post has given you a good introduction to the concepts connected with bundles and therefore helped you prepare for the MB2-717 exam.
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