Get the most out of Dynamics 365 CRM by using this extensive guide on best practices for entities and solutions. These tips will help you become a more proficient D365 CRM user, regardless of experience level.

Before delving into best practices, let’s clarify the core concepts:

Solutions

Think of solutions as containers that hold all the customizations, extensions, and configurations you’ve made to CRM. These can include things like Custom fields, Custom entities, Workflows, and Dashboards.

By packaging all these things together in a solution, you can easily:

• Share your customizations with others.
• Move your customizations between different CRM systems.
• Keep your customizations organized.

Entities

Tables, also known as entities, are the fundamental building blocks for storing and managing data. They act as containers holding information about various aspects of your customer interactions and business processes.

Each table consists of rows that represent individual records and columns that define the specific data points associated with each record.

Now, let’s explore the best practices for solutions:

Publisher

• Create a publisher with a finalized prefix based on the client rather than using the default.
• All custom solutions should use the created publisher.

Deployment and Management

• Use a service account to deploy production solutions.
• Use managed solutions in production for consistency and prevention of accidental modifications.
• Use unmanaged solutions for development and testing for greater flexibility.

Organization and Naming

• Apply consistent solution naming conventions for easy identification and organization.
• Track changes and versions of each solution for future reference and rollback options.

Updates and Patches

• Use solution patches for minor updates to existing solutions instead of creating new ones.

Modular Design

• Divide your solution into smaller, modular components based on functionality or business units.
• Implement version control for your solutions using source control systems like Azure.

Development and Testing Environments

• Have separate environments for development, testing, and production.
• Avoid making changes directly in the production environment without thorough testing.

Testing and Validation

• Conduct thorough testing in the development and testing environments before deploying changes to production.
• Test different scenarios, including data migration and user acceptance testing.

Following these best practices will help you to develop, deploy, and manage your Dynamics 365 CRM solutions more effectively and efficiently.

Let’s explore the best practices for entity:

• Create organization-type entities instead of user/team-owned entities when no specific owner is needed.
• Avoid enabling options that cannot be turned off later, such as activities, attachments, emails, feedback queues, etc., unless necessary.
• Establish clear and consistent naming conventions for entities with meaningful and descriptive names.
• Only create custom entities when existing ones don’t meet your needs.
• Consider using out-of-the-box entities or customizing existing ones before creating new ones.
• Only include necessary fields in an entity to avoid cluttering and ensure efficient data management.
• Follow a consistent naming convention for fields and attributes for clarity and ease of use.
• Define and assign security roles carefully, limiting access to entities based on user roles and responsibilities.
• Regularly review and update security roles to ensure proper access control and avoid unauthorized access.
• Establish relationships between entities based on business requirements and avoid unnecessary connections that could complicate the system.
• Validate data before importing to maintain data integrity and avoid errors.
• Enable audit tracking for entities that require it to capture and monitor changes to records.
• Document the purpose, usage, relationships, security configurations, and any specific considerations for each entity for future reference and understanding.

By following these best practices, you can optimize your entity management in Dynamics 365 CRM, ensuring data accuracy, efficient data management, and appropriate access control, ultimately leading to a better user experience and improved system performance.