welcome to dynamics 365 essentials for
IT whether you're looking to adopt
business applications or have existing
CRM and/or ERP systems in-house or maybe
you're using cloud-based services or
both in the next few minutes I'll give
you an overview of Dynamics 365 our
business application platform in the
cloud I'll explain the components the
underlying architecture the integrations
for your existing data apps and business
processes and I'll cover top of mine
questions regarding data governance
security compliance and more so let's
first start by addressing what Microsoft
Dynamics 365 is you can think of
Dynamics 365 as a set of connected
modular SAS applications and services
designed to both transform and enable
your core customer employee and business
activities not only does it combine CRM
and ERP capabilities but Dynamics 365
integrates your data business logic and
processes for example this is the
difference between having separate
siloed sales and marketing functions
versus creating automated integrated
intelligent sales and marketing
capabilities that efficiently connect
prioritize and convert your sales leads
into paying customers it's built on
Microsoft Azure which offers both the
trusted platform and a broad ecosystem
of services and it's natively integrated
with your familiar productivity apps in
Microsoft 365 which also gives you a
unified way to manage users and services
together with Microsoft 365 and Azure
Dynamics 365 offers a dramatically
updated experience which is unified
adaptable intelligent and modern central
to Dynamics 365 is the common data
service and it's common data model
schema this provides a foundation for
data integration across all Dynamics 365
applications and services productivity
and collaboration apps in Microsoft 365
as well as your in-house and even SAS
applications and other clouds more on
this in a moment the applications within
Dynamics 365 are adaptable to your
business as well as your specific
departmental needs our goal is to meet
you where you are and we've designed
each
location to work great on their own so
you can decide which to start with and
at the same time each is assigned to
work even better together this
adaptability also extends to how your
users want to work the apps in Dynamics
365 follow responsive design principles
and our browser-based they're accessible
from anywhere on any device and there is
also a rich array of mobile apps
available your users can choose to work
in email or in Microsoft teams enjoying
an integrated experience with Dynamics
365 and as an IT professional you still
have ultimate control over how the
services and applications are configured
to meet your business and security needs
with the admin tools that we provide out
of the box also you can use the
Microsoft Power Platform to build custom
and automated experiences around your
data and processes using power bi power
apps and power automate with zero to
minimal coding this has the added
advantage of allowing even your users to
safely build custom app experiences on
their own by leveraging the
point-and-click app creation experience
and power-ups that's similar to building
a PowerPoint and the visual workflow
engine and power automate importantly
built-in intelligence allows your
business users to derive fast and
actionable insights which can be
optimized even further with additional
AI services built on Azure or by
leveraging purpose-built AI insights
apps like customer insights also power
bi gives you a powerful data
visualization and analytics tool and you
can use ai builder to apply machine
learning to improve your business
insights and processes you can then go
the next level by modernizing how your
business interacts with applications by
visualizing insights in real-world
scenarios through the addition of mixed
reality for example you can scale
on-the-job training to help your
employees get hands-on guidance to
improve their skills with Dynamics 365
guides now as a technical decision maker
or influencer for your organization
business value aside you might be
wondering what all of this means for how
you run your IT and business operations
today if you're coming from on-prem
operationally there are lots of
advantages to adopting a SAS solution in
terms of reducing your infrastructure
costs and access to the continuous
innovation offered with Dynamics 365
and as you entrust your business to us
we give you visibility into overall
service performance affecting your
tenants and auditability over activities
and the services that you adopt you also
get to decide what systems and data you
would prefer to stay on premise versus
moving them to the cloud I'll share more
on systems integration and how we help
in a moment first let me address some of
the areas where you may have questions
let's talk about availability because
dynamics 365 natively runs on Azure it
benefits from Microsoft's expansive
cloud fabric and data centers globally
to give you peace of mind we operate our
services to meet a 99.9% level of
availability you can learn more at a kms
/d 365 SLA and if your users are spread
across different locations you can host
your Dynamics 365 services and your data
and preferred data center regions around
the world in proximity to your users to
reduce latency in terms of security and
privacy it's your data and you own it we
don't mind it for marketing or
advertising importantly we give you
granular admin controls to define
individual access or security groups and
you can also specify access rules within
the specific fields used in our app
experiences to remove sensitive
information from view and for example to
set read-only access equally we give you
encryption options for example you can
use your own encryption keys to protect
data from unauthorized access viewing or
export and as you add users to Dynamics
365 services and if necessary connect
with your existing directory services
you can take advantage of identity based
security with a Active Directory to
implement single sign-on for users
across applications portals and services
as well as multi-factor authentication
and intelligent conditional access
policies now let's talk about compliance
as you would expect dynamics 365 is gdpr
compliant and supports major global
government regional and industry
regulations the services within Dynamics
365 comply with applicable data
protection and privacy laws and are
built from the ground up to address your
most rigorous security and privacy needs
with our compliance framework of
Industry verified controls built into
the service we make it
year for your organization to both
comply to existing standards or respond
to new standards and regulations as they
arise that said this is still an area of
shared responsibility as a customer you
can use our service trust portal and
compliance manager to assess your
current state of compliance learn about
recommended controls to implement
against a specific raela tory
requirement and identify which controls
Microsoft has in place or is working on
to learn more about Dynamics 365
security and compliance you can download
the guide at a kms /d 365 security
compliance of course one of the biggest
questions for most of you will be how
does Dynamics 365 integrate with your
existing environment let's revisit the
common data service that I mentioned
earlier data is arguably the most
valuable business asset you have yet
spread across applications departments
and services many data and compute
services have data and logic
capabilities that are just jointed from
each other and this often requires you
to build unique data and logic stacks
for each application and because of this
it can be a challenge to build
integrated experiences or even analyze
the data across the apps this is where
the common data service or c.d.s comes
in using c.d.s your apps and processes
can interact with a single set of data
shapes and business logic let me explain
c.d.s is a heterogeneous storage service
for both structured tabular data and
unstructured data such as images or log
files
it runs in Azure and it's shared by
Dynamics 365 applications Microsoft 365
and the power platform c.d.s understands
the shape of your data and it even
understands how to best store different
types of data it will automatically
place image assets in blob storage and
text readings in tabular data for
example it will shape phone number data
into a specific type of text string that
might be used for making phone calls
then beyond the shape of your data CD s
also understands the business logic over
that data here CD S will aggregate
values and associated activities for
example in the case of a customer it
might maintain related relevant data for
that customer including minimum maximum
average transaction size and the sum
total
to support a consistent way of shaping
and connecting your data we've
open-sourced the schema we use in CDs
this is the foundation of what we call
the common data model or CDF the common
data model defines entities attributes
semantics metadata and relationships to
provide consistency and how data is
defined and connected across your
applications and our partners across
industries like healthcare retail
financial analytics education and
automotive have helped extend the CDM
with industry specific common
interoperable schemas the CD S is also a
powerful source for analytics that you
can integrate with other data sources
using power bi data flows you can also
export data from CD s into an azure data
Lake or even your own preferred location
for analysis conversely you can
transform your data into CDM form using
power bi data flows making it ready for
CD S or other services to access then to
integrate your systems and business
processes with Dynamics 365 and the
common data service there are hundreds
of pre-built connectors covering popular
data platforms and apps to allow you to
connect to your existing systems for
both read-only processes such as
one-time batch operation and readwrite
communications such as order fulfillment
these connectors take care of which app
API is to call how to authenticate and
how to pass data back and forth between
applications with shared workflows this
now makes it easier to query interact
with and exchange information whether
that's Dynamics 365 data or data within
your office collaboration tools internal
databases or even external systems such
as Adobe an S ap or maybe professional
and social network such as LinkedIn and
Twitter you can also create your own
connectors for your internal apps and if
you'd like more granular control
Microsoft Azure provides the developer
tools and language of your choice to do
more custom development so what's next
as you consider how to enable your
business transformation and a connected
intelligent business application
strategy that spends each department and
organization Dynamics 365 provides a
complete technology stack across
applications services and tools all of
which are designed to work better
together you can leverage your
investment in Microsoft 365 with native
integration
and with our available connectors and
the power platform you can create custom
app experiences and automate processes
in a far more accessible connected way
in a fraction of the time all with zero
to minimal code and less risk that said
help is at hand if you are migrating
from existing systems or need more help
integrating customer third-party apps
with our fast-track onboarding services
along with our authorized partners we
can work alongside your internal teams
to maximize your onboarding success and
minimize time to value you can find out
more at AKMs Ford / fast-track dynamics
365 and please keep checking back to our
Dynamics 365 essentials series to learn
more about adopting specific dynamics
365 applications and services within
your organization and for a deeper dive
on the power platform thank you for
watching