
Dynamics — Microsoft’s mixture buyer relationship administration and enterprise useful resource planning platform for gross sales, service, challenge administration and operations — isn’t only for giant organizations. Dynamics 365 Enterprise Central is aimed toward small and midsize companies and has lots of the similar instruments, options and integrations.
Soar to:
Enterprise Central in Outlook Excel and Energy Automate
Outlook
Small and midsize companies can discover Enterprise Central inside Outlook. Whenever you get an e-mail from a provider, you’ll be able to click on Contact Insights on the Outlook toolbar to get particulars, like buy historical past, overdue invoices, whether or not you often give them a reduction and paperwork that could be related to the dialog, all in a pane inside Outlook.
SEE: Study methods to share your calendar in Outlook.
You possibly can obtain and skim an bill in Outlook, submit it into Enterprise Central straight from Outlook and get AI-powered strategies of line objects to presumably embrace, or see the gross sales quote when it is advisable reply to an bill question.
Excel
There’s a Dynamics Workplace Add-in that allows you to use Excel to investigate knowledge from Enterprise Central. You possibly can even edit the information in Excel in case you spot a mistake within the buyer or product particulars and push the change again to Enterprise Central. You possibly can do the identical with Microsoft Groups, bringing in knowledge as an Adaptive Card or trying to find enterprise contacts straight from inside Groups.
In order for you much more integration, Viva Gross sales takes knowledge forwards and backwards between Groups, Outlook and CRM techniques like Dynamics and Salesforce utilizing synthetic intelligence.
Energy Automate
You need to use Energy Automate to arrange a workflow that sends a message on Microsoft Groups when a brand new deal is signed and recorded in Enterprise Central, so everybody is aware of concerning the buyer.
Happily, this course of doesn’t want programming experience, which might be uncommon in smaller organizations. At present in preview for US and EU prospects, the pure language choice in Energy Automate allows you to create this sort of workflow by describing what you need it to do.
Nevertheless, establishing workflows between Enterprise Central and Energy Automate requires the cloud model of Enterprise Central; it gained’t work with the on-premises model.
Microsoft 365 customers get the fundamentals
In 2021, Microsoft modified the license phrases for Dynamics 365, so anybody with a Microsoft 365 license within the group can see Dynamics content material inside Microsoft Groups. And as of November 2022, the identical is true of Enterprise Central.
Smaller organizations typically have extra constrained budgets and don’t need to purchase licenses for individuals who gained’t spend a lot time working in Enterprise Central — despite the fact that the data in there about prospects, enterprise knowledge and enterprise processes will probably be helpful in quite a lot of work conversations.
As Microsoft Company Vice President for Enterprise Functions Advertising Emily He advised TechRepublic final 12 months, “Groups is a gathering place the place individuals come collectively to get work executed, however whereas they’re getting work executed, additionally they have to entry assets.”
In response to Forrester’s Complete Financial Affect report on Enterprise Central, advantages like elevated visibility into operations and the best way “determination makers (can) view key enterprise knowledge, experiences and metrics in actual time” can provide them extra confidence they know the precise state of the enterprise.
Groups’ customers with a Groups license by way of a Microsoft 365 Enterprise or Enterprise subscription can set up the Enterprise Central app and see content material that colleagues who do have entry to Enterprise Central paste right into a Groups channel, with no need a license themselves.
SEE: Study the whole lot it is advisable find out about Microsoft Groups.
Enterprise Central content material will present up as an Adaptive Card if it’s an intel, a doc like a gross sales order, a easy record (one you’ll be able to’t drill into utilizing a separate particulars web page) or ListPlus information like checking account reconciliation statements that convey collectively a number of information that it is advisable see collectively.
This may increasingly find yourself with extra employees asking for entry to Enterprise Central, which is able to allow them to seek for prospects, distributors and different enterprise contacts from inside Groups in addition to permit them to see further particulars or open the total web page in Enterprise Central from a hyperlink in Groups
Nevertheless, you want a Enterprise Central license for these choices in addition to to edit Enterprise Central knowledge. With out it, you solely see the main points which might be seen on the compact model of the cardboard, and you’ll’t click on to get further particulars from Enterprise Central even within the app in Groups (Determine A).
Determine A

Managing Enterprise Central integration
To handle the Enterprise Central integration, it is advisable activate Microsoft 365 entry within the Enterprise Central settings, because it’s off by default. Till you try this, even employees with Enterprise Central entry could not see playing cards for hyperlinks they paste into Groups.
In Enterprise Central, select Settings | Admin Heart | Environments, and decide the Enterprise Central atmosphere you utilize.
On the Atmosphere particulars web page, underneath Entry with Microsoft 365 licenses, click on Modify and alter the slider to On. Then, click on Save.
You might need to select what permissions these Microsoft 365 customers must work with Enterprise Central knowledge. In the event you don’t need customers to put in the Enterprise Central app in Groups themselves you’ll be able to deploy it routinely.
As well as, chances are you’ll want to ensure URL previews are turned on within the Groups messaging coverage, which might be edited within the Staff Admin Heart. In any other case, customers will solely see hyperlinks, not the playing cards with particulars from Enterprise Central. That is on by default, however you might need modified the coverage.
Updates to Enterprise Central
Launch wave 1 of Enterprise Central (out there since April this 12 months) makes it simpler for directors to arrange entry to Microsoft 365 customers with a brand new step-by-step wizard that handles all of those particulars.
Sharing knowledge into Groups from Enterprise Central can be simpler on this launch. Earlier than, you wanted to click on on Share to Groups within the Enterprise Central internet consumer, which used a for much longer URL in comparison with manually copying a hyperlink manually to the Enterprise Central object or report and pasting that into Groups. Microsoft simplifies this course of and places a greater thumbnail view of Enterprise Central info into the playing cards that present up in Groups.