As I prepare for my Dynamics 365 certification in sales (MB2-717), I’m 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 explain how to access help.
Below you can see that the help center is specifically mentioned in the stills measured;
Help might not seem like a large topic! In fact it is a pretty simple one BUT at some point you are going to need help on using Dynamics 365. And I would encourage you to dig into the help pages as part of your revision. You’ll find a mass of information to help you discover new things about Dynamics 365.
We have several concepts to help, including;
- Default help pages
- Custom help pages
- Learning path
Initially I will describe the default help. Before trying to use this you may need to check you have opted out of the learning path. (As it is often enabled by default.) To do this you select the “user options cog” and then opt in or out as required.
Default Help
Within Dynamics 365 the help function is contextual meaning you will be diverted to an appropriate area of Microsoft Docs “docs.microsoft.com” that will hopefully provide some content relevant to your current activity. Microsoft Docs is the home for all Microsoft documentation for end users, developers and IT professionals.
Tip:
Recently Microsoft Docs has been expanded to include a new approach to training. Check out, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/learn/
Within Microsoft Dynamics 365, help is available using a single button click. Clicking the “?” icon at any point will open a browser window into Microsoft Docs.
To illustrate the point, above I was looking at a view of leads. Clicking “?” loaded the following page;
As I was looking at leads the main content presented gives me an explanation on how to create a lead. Notice that in the right hand navigation I could then jump to more detail about leads. Like how to qualify a lead and then how to manage the resulting opportunity. (I hope you see there can be a wealth of reading material here for anyone revising for the MB2-717 exam!)
Additionally I have highlighted the title bar because clicking on these links lets you jump into different sections of Microsoft Docs. For example clicking on customer engagement takes me to an “opening” page that will allow me then to jump to loads of information about everything related to Customer Engagement. Anyone revising for MB2-717 might want to look at the “Sales” section!
I do have some favourite areas that I often use with the help Microsoft provide! Some examples are below. I am sure if you explore Microsoft.Docs you’ll find many valuable pages that you’ll return to again and again!
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/dynamics365/#pivot=business-apps&panel=customer-engagement – This page is a good starting point
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/dynamics365/get-started/whats-new/index — Here you can view what is new in the latest releases.
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/dynamics365/get-started/whats-new/customer-engagement/important-changes-coming — Here we can see details of any planned deprecations.
Custom Help Pages
System administrators can enable the use of custom help pages if required. In system settings that can define a url for the custom pages and also opt to add a parameter to the url. The parameter could be used to help identify when the help should be contextual. For example when viewing accounts the url would change to be something like https://<<Your url>>/?typename=account&userlcid=1033.
Learning Path
The third help option we have is the learning path. This provides users with a tailored help experience which can be made specific to the business processes / workflow within an organisation. As an example, you can see below that when an admin first logs into Dynamics 365 the Learning Path offers useful help to configure the organisation. Meaning the help is contextual based on users role and current activity.
As mentioned with custom pages the learning path needs to be enabled by system administrators. Then users can opt or out of the learning path from their personal options.
Learning path, like custom help pages, enables organisations to create their own help pages. Learning path differs from custom help in that it can offer help to users when they open a page, perform an action or select the help button.
Learning path is only available if you are using Dynamics 365 online. This is because content is hosted in Azure.
To be able to author learning path pages, firstly the administrator must turn on the system setting that enabled authoring. And all the users who will become authors will need to be added to the learning path authors group. (You do this in Office 365 admin.)
Users enabled for authoring of learning path pages can do so in the content library which is found within the training area of Dynamics 365. (Shown below.)
Creating learning path content is a large topic! I am unsure how much detail we need to understand for the MB2-717. But regardless it is an interesting subject to research. The link below will take you to Microsoft’s documentation on configuring the learning path.
Hopefully this post has given you a good overview of the help[ functions in Dynamics 365. You will need to be aware of these for your MB2-717 exam. And importantly using the help should also provide useful information about all aspects of Dynamics 365. Enjoy.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 