In Dynamics CRM we have three types of User Subscription Licenses (USLs); Professional, Basic, and Essential

1. Professional users has full rights to 'everything' in CRM
2. Essential users has rights to custom entities primarily
3. Basic users sits sort of in-between, in terms of use rights

Note - A fourth USL (Enterprise) is available. Its equivalent to Professional plus Dynamics Marketing, Social Care (specific markets) and Unified Service Desk.

Each of the above licenses has a different price point; if Professional is 4X then Basic is approximately 2X, and Essential is X. Hence its often of interest to the customer to 'get the right mix' between Professional and Basic users, ending up with the optimal average price point.

The Basic user has full access to eg the Account, Contact, Lead, and Case entitites, but have read only/limited use rights to certain entities, eg. Opportunities. Using the Security Role settings in Dynamics CRM you can control what a user can access. Hence mapping the two - the Use Rights of the Basic user to the available Security Role settings - is interesting.

Use Rights for the Basic USL

Appendix A in the "Licensing and Pricing Guide, June 2014" maps CRM Online Use Rights to the Pro, Basic and Essential USL's. 

Security Roles

A security role in Dynamics CRM defines how different users, such as salespeople, access different types of records. To control access to data, you can modify existing security roles, create new security roles, or change which security roles are assigned to each user. Each user can have multiple security roles.

To access the security roles click Settings -> Administration -> Security Roles

In the "New Security Role" dialog you can control what a user with that new role can do in CRM using the various tabs and settings (priveleges and scope) in the dialog.

The tabs are

• Core Records
• Marketing
• Sales
• Service
• Business Management
• Service Management
• Customizations
• Custom Entities

The access right/priveleges are

• Create - create a record
• Read - read a record
• Write - make changes to a record
• Delete - delete a record
• Append - associate a record to another record
• Append To - associate entity record to this record
• Share - give access to a record to another user while keeping your own access
• Reparent - assign a different parent to entity record

The scopes are

• None Selected = No access is allowed
• User = This access level gives a user access to records he or she owns, objects that are shared with the user, and objects that are shared with a team of which the user is a member
• Business Unit = This access level gives a user access to records in the user's business unit
• Parent: Child Business Unit = This access level gives a user access to records in the user's business unit and all business units subordinate to the user's business unit
• Organisation = This access level gives a user access to all records within the organization, regardless of the business unit hierarchical level to which the instance or the user belongs

Mapping Use Rights to Security Role settings for the Basic USL

In the table below I've taken the first steps trying to map the Basic USL to CRM Security Role settings. Please note: the below table is a my personal suggestion and by no means authoritive.

The tab has six columns:

1. "Appendix A - Subject" = The left most column ("Use Rights" in the Appendix A above, sorted alphabetically
2. "Basic"  = Appendix A - Basic User Use Rights (1=Full, 0=None)
3. "Focus" = What I consider being the deciding context
4. "USL" = Lists if Basic user has Full or Read access to the entity to the left (the "Focus" Column) according to the simple chart (an interpretation of Figure 5 in the Licensing and Pricing Guide)
5. "Security Tab" - name of the tab in CRM Security Roles where the setting is to be done
6. "Security Setting(s) - suggested" = which settings I suggest you look at on the tab

See also

• Create or edit a security role - link
• CRM Online Service Description - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft-dynamics-crm-online-service-description.aspx

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (CRMOL) and Microsoft Social Listening (MSL) are Better Together – you can add MSL data into CRMOL Dashboards and record forms for convenient and proactive social insights

In this blog post I'll take you through the steps needed to setup the integration between the two services.

Pre-requisites

• In CRMOL you must have the security role of System Customizer or Systems Administrator
• MSL must be deployed in the same tenant as CRMOL (Important)
• MSL is setup with Search Topics (please see my blog post "Are you listening?" for how-to)
• Your CRM org is configured with Spring Wave Updates (Click Settings > Administration > Install Product Updates)
  

One time Setup

1. Login to Dynamics CRM Online
2. Click Settings > Administration
   
   
3. Click Microsoft Social Listening Configuration
   
   
4. Select the MSL Solution to connect to in the drop down (1) and then click Select (2)
   
5. Now you are all set to use MSL widgets in CRMOL

Configuring a CRM Online Dashboard

You can easily configure a CRM Online dashboard to display information from MSL.

Create a new dashboard

1. Click Settings > Customizations > Customize the System
   
   
2. Dashboards > New
   
   
3. Choose a Layout > click Create
   
4. Click the MSL widget "Insert Social Insights" (note: this widget will only appear, once you have performed the setup above)
   
5. Setting each MSL widget in the dashboard up is a three step guided process. First step is to decide between a Search topic (1) or a Search topic category (2) - for definitions please see notes at the end of the blog post
   
6. In this example I'll pick a Search Topic and click Next (in the above screen) to step ahead to step #2 - "pick a seach topic" (the below screen). I pick the search topic "CRM Online" in the list and click Next
   
7. Finally MSL prompts you for how you want your widget displayed in CRM. Click the drop-down to pick a visual. In my example I'll go for the "Sentiment Share of Voice"
   
   
   
   
   
8. Click Finish to finalize the widget, and repeat for the rest of the widgets in the dashboard.
   x
   The completed dashboard could end up looking like this
   
   You see the sentiment distribution, the sentiment history, the sources history (Twitter, Facebook etc) and a nice summary. Any part of the dashboard is clickable and will take you to MSL for further analysis.

.
 
Configuring CRM Entity Forms

Its equally easy to configure a CRM Online form to display information coming from MSL. In this example I'll create a new entity and modify the form to display a social insights widget

Create an entity and edit the form. Once you are in the Insert tab, you will see the new Social Insights control.

1. Click the Social Insights control to display the "Add Social Insights" dialog
   
   
   
2. Optional: change settings for the control (eg # lines)
   x
   Click OK
   
   
   
3. The control is inserted to the form
   
4. Click Save and Publish
   x
5. The configuration is completed the first time you bring up a new record
   x
   Create a new record
   
6. Click Configure Social Insights
   
7. The steps for configuring Social Insights on a form are similar to the steps on adding social insights to a dashboard
   
8. The form could look like this
   
    
   Note: The user who is accessing CRM needs to have a MSL license assigned or else they will get an error on the page.

Notes

• Search Topic = the individual search term in MSL
• Search topic category: When you create a search topic in MSL you are placing that under a category and the entire category will be summarized
• A sentiment can only be specified for a search topic, so if you select search topic category no sentiment analysis will be displayed in CRM

More blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening

• Are you listening - link
• Are you learning? Analyzing using Microsoft Social Listening - link
• Understanding Average in Microsoft Social Listening - link
• New in Microsoft Social Listening - Location Analysis - link

My collegue Paul Collinge has performed numerous Office 365 Network assessments and reactive visits to resolve issues for customers and to him its apparent that the vast majority of issues are seen time and time again.

Hence he has compiled his top 10 tips for you to optimize your O365 network performance and prevent issues from occurring in future.

1. TCP Window Scaling
2. TCP Idle time settings
3. Latency/Round Trip Time (RTT)
4. Proxy Authentication
5. DNS performance
6. Proxy Scalability
7. TCP Max Segment size
8. Selective Acknowledgement
9. DNS Geo location
10. Application Level troubleshooting

Read Pauls full blog post "Top 10 Tips for Optimising & Troubleshooting your Office 365 Network Connectivity" here

On TechNet you can also find a brilliant article on how client computers connect to Office 365 tenants, depending on the location of the client computer and Office 365 tenant datacenter.

For example, when you sign in to Office 365, you’re usually connected to the closest datacenter in your region. Then, say you open an email - to show you what’s in the email - a second connection might be opened between that datacenter and the datacenter where your tenant is. Datacenter-to-datacenter connections are very fast, so using that type of connection to get your email content from the Exchange server is quick.

Read the full article "Reference: Client connectivity" here

Trialing CRM Online has never been easier. Just click http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=252780 and your are only minutes away from a great trial experience

1. If you do have an Office 365 tenant already please use the "Sign in" button at the top right corner to ensure your CRM Online trial is added to your existing tenant. That way you can use the same login for all services.
2. Indicator of the simple process of signing up for a trial
3. We will need to know a few things - thats it

Once you've provided the info the trial should be up and ready for you in one or two minutes. Try it now.

Free eBooks

Below you'll find a list of FREE eBooks to get you started with your trial experience

Recommended reading

I've organized the links in sections

• Getting Started - here you'll find suggested thing to try out - eg import your contacts to make the trial relevant, and try how simple it is to setup business processes that support the way you run your business
• Service - if your business is service oriented why not try out all the great feature of the CRM Online Service module; Service Level Agreement management, Knowledge Base and more
• Better Together - CRM Online works great with Office 365 - explore how in this section
  • In the eBook "Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 Integration Guide" you'll find instructions on how to setup the CRM Online / SharePoint Online Server Side Synchronization, so you can store your CRM account related documents in SharePoint Online

• Mobile - Included in every CRM Online license is the greatest tablet and phone apps in the market. Take your CRM Online on the road.
• Connectors - I've you want CRM Online to talk to your ERP system we have the connectors for you
• Administration - manage users, subscription and more
• Social Listening - a great new addition to Microsoft Online Services that can help you understand the 'voice of the market'. Its included with CRM Online if you have 10 or more Pro licenses

Getting Started

• What's changed in CRM 2013? (PDF)
• Start working in CRM (PDF)
• Dynamics CRM: Bring in your contacts (PDF)
• Dynamics CRM: Create or customize dashboards (PDF)
• Dynamics CRM: Business Processes (PDF)
• Dynamics CRM: Change A Business Process (PDF)
• Create your first Microsoft Dynamics CRM marketing campaign (PDF)

Service

• What's new in CRM customer service (PDF)
• Meet your service goals with SLAs and entitlements (PDF)
• Give great customer service with CRM (PDF)
• Use KB articles to help your customers (PDF)
• Quick ref card for customer service reps (PDF)

Better Together

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook Installing Guide for use with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (DOCX)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 Integration Guide (PDF)

Mobile

• Go mobile with CRM for tablets (PDF)
• Go mobile with CRM for phones (PDF)
• 5 cool things you can do with CRM for tablets (PDF)

Connectors

• Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Installation Guide (PDF)
• Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Configuration Guide for Microsoft Dynamics AX (PDF)
• Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Configuration Guide for Microsoft Dynamics NAV (PDF)
• Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Configuration Guide for Microsoft Dynamics GP (PDF)
• Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Configuration Guide for Microsoft Dynamics SL (PDF)

Administration

• Manage your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription guide (PDF)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation Guide for CRM Online and CRM 2013 (on-premises) (ZIP)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Provider Planning and Deployment Guide (PDF)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online security and compliance planning guide (PDF)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on-premises) to Microsoft Dynamics Online Migration Guide (PDF)

Social Listening

• Dynamics CRM: Introducing Microsoft Social Listening (PDF)
• Microsoft Social Listening for CRM (PDF)

Come join us - CRM Online is there to help your business objectives.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM) is great for generating Leads and Microsoft Dynamics CRM (CRM) is great for working the Lead-to-Opportunity process.

So why not have the two sync Contacts, Leads, Opportunities and more between them?

Enter the "Dynamics Marketing Connector for Dynamics CRM".

• connects both MDM and CRM thereby allowing marketing data to be synchronized between these two applications
• leverages a managed solution for CRM which customizes a CRM organization to support the connector

The Dynamics Marketing solution is installed using the normal solution installation process for CRM. It customizes entities (see table below) and add a Security Role - "Dynamics Marketing Connector" - which you must assign to a user for the purpose of Dynamics Marketing Connector Integration

The following table outlines the changes made by the solution.

Synchronizing MDM with CRM

In order for the synch to happen automatically, you need to complete three steps

1. Download and install required connector resources
2. Make sure "Integration Services" are availabe to you
3. Configure the MDM-CRM Connector

To download the connector resources (the "Microsoft Dynamics Marketing - CRM Connector.msi") and more click here

The files will be downloaded to your PC in the folder you specify, eg. "Downloads"

Installing the Connector

1. Navigate to where you downloaded the files, right-click the file "Microsoft Dynamics Marketing 16.1 - CRM Connector.msi" (1) and click Install

2. In the dialog click Next

Note

• After running the installation with the default options, the resource files will be located here on your local machine: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics Marketing\Connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

3. Optional - Browse to a new location for the installation files

Click Next

4. Click Finish

To install the solution in your CRM

1. Click Settings and then Solutions

2. Click Import

3. Click Choose File

4. Navigate to the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics Marketing\Connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and select the file DynamicsMarketingConnectorSolution_managed.zip

5. Verify you selected the correct file and click Next

5a. Optional - click View solution package details

5b. Optional - have a look at the entities etc being synchronized

6. Click Close and verify the solution has been installed

To be able to configure the connector the so called "Integration Services" need to be enabled. These services are only deployed in your MDM instance by Microsoft upon request

You can check whether the services are enabled by navigating to Settings -> Integration Options in MDM

• The Status indicator at the top of the "Settings" page is should be a blue checkmark
• If the Status indicator is red, the "Integration Services" have not been yet deployed for your MDM instance

Requesting the Integration Services to be deployed

If you require the "Integration services" to be deployed, you must file a Service Request through your Office 365 portal.

In the "Office 365 admin center" click Support in the left navigation panel

Select "Service Requests"

Click "+" to create a new Service Request (SR) with the following settings:

1. Issue Type = "Technical Support"
2. Service = "Dynamics Marketing"
3. Service Area = "Connector"
4. Problem area = "Connector Setup installation"
   
5. Title = (type a title for your SR)
6. Description = (include a description - good idea to include the URL of your MDM instance)
7. Contact Name
8. Contact Phone Number
   
   

A member of the support team might call you to verify the request details. As soon as the connector service has been deployed, you will see the blue checkmark and then you can complete step #3 - configuration of the Connector.

The remaining steps for configuring the connector are

1. Configure a connector user in CRM
2. In MDM specify the CRM Endpoint and the credentials of the CRM Connector user
3. In MDM enter an Azure Namespace and allow MDM to configure the Service Bus with two Queues that are secured to establish the connection channel between CRM, the integration service and MDM.

After the "Dynamics Marketing Connector for Dynamics CRM" solution is installed in your CRM, you must create a 'connector user' in CRM. This user must be assigned the “Dynamics Marketing Connector” security role. The "Dynamics Marketing Connector" security role is created when the Dynamics Marketing solution is installed in Dynamics CRM.

Create a new user

1. Log in to Office 365 as an admin, click Users and Groups, Active Users and then "+" to create a new user

2. Provide the required information and finish. In my example I call the user "MDM Connector"

Assign Sercurity Role to User

After creating the user in O365, you must next navigate to CRM and assign the security role “Dynamics Marketing Connector” to the user

1. Click the "..." menu and then CRM

2. Click Settings -> Administration -> Users 

3. Click the Connector user and then Manage Roles

Assign the role "Dynamics Marketing Connector" to the user.

 
Configure a CRM Endpoint

To facilitate access to CRM from MDM via the Connector Service you must define a CRM Endpoint in MDM. The account you enter for the endpoint is used by the "Integration services" to create and change entities in the CRM system. 

1. Navigate to MDM

2. Click Home -> Settings -> click Integration Options to open the "Integration Settings" page

3. In the "CRM Endpoint" section (1) click the Configuration button (2) to open the "Configure CRM Account for Access by the Connector Service" dialog

4. Provide the URL for your CRM Service (1) and the credentials of your Connector account (2). You can click Verify (3) to test that the credentials you have entered are valid. Click Submit to save and close

 
Configure an Azure namespace to serve as the transportation channel

In order to complete the Connector configuration you need to provide an Azure Namespace that you own.

Note:

• If you do not have an Azure subscription yet you can click here

With your Azure Subscription in place all you need is a Service Bus Namespace and the associated Management key.

1. Log in to Azure, click Service Bus and then click Create to create a new namespace

 
2. Provide a name for your namespace (eg. "MyNameSpace110").

Make a note of the namespace name as well as the generated management key ("DEFAULT KEY") - you'll need them later

4. Return to MDM and the "Settings" page

In the "Service Bus" section (1) click the Configuration button (2) to open the "Configure Windows Azure for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing" dialog

5. In the "Configure Windows Azure for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing" dialog

1. Enter the service bus namespace in the "Azure Namespace field"
2. Enter a name for the "Queue from Dynamics CRM", eg "CRM2MDM"
3. Enter a name for the "Queue from Dynamics Marketing ", eg "MDM2CRM" 
4. Click Configure Azure ACS to open the "Provide Credentials for configuring the Azure Service Bus " dialog

IMPORTANT september 2014:

The above confuration dialog has changed since the original post - authenticating through the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Access Control (also known as Access Control Service or ACS) is not longer facilitated throught the interface as shown above (the "Configure Azure ACS" button has been removed).

You need to use PowerShell now. Please see comment by Christian Abeln below,  the 'See also' section, and the december update at the very end of this post.

 
6. In the "Provide Credentials for configuring the Azure Service Bus" dialog you must provide a number of administrative credentials in order to setup the secured trust relationship between the integration service and your CRM system through your Azure service bus. None of these administrative credentials will be ever stored. They will be used for an automated configuration, which eases the configuration immensely.

• Type or paste the Azure Management key in the "Management Key" field (1)
• Enter the CRM Certificate issuer name in the "Dynamics CRM certificate issuer name" field  (2) - You can find the issuer name from your CRM Online system under Settings / Customizations / Developer Resources (its crm4.dynamics.com in Europe)
  
• Download the certificate file from CRM (see screenshot above) and save it to your local machine
• Upload the certificate file in the third field on the Azure service bus configuration dialog (3)
• In the bottom two fields enter the credentials of an administrative account of your CRM system (4)

7. Click OK to save and close the "Provide Credentials for configuring the Azure Service Bus" dialog and return to the "Configure Windows Azure for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing" dialog (Azure service bus configuration is now done)

8. Click Submit to save and close the "Configure Windows Azure for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing" dialog (the configuration of the communication channel is now complete)

9. Verify in the "Services" sections in the Integration settings page that you now have three service roles running:

1. "MDM Listener" - listens for messages in the Azure Service Bus queue that indicate changes to make to data contained in Dynamics Marketing
2. "MDM Publisher" - publishes messages to the Azure Service Bus queue to indicate changes that need to be made in Dynamics CRM
3. "CRM Listener" - listens for messages that indicate a change needs to be processed in CRM. This role retrieves the messages from the Azure Service Bus queue and then executes a request against the CRM Organization Service to complete the change

Initial Synchronization

The final step for your configuration is the initial synchronization.

On the "Settings" page, scroll down to the "Initial Synchronization" section (1) and click the arrow button (2) - and wait until this step has completed.

You might need to refresh the "Settings" page a few times until the step is marked as complete.

I wont go into details about the entity mapping between MDM and CRM here, but to get an indication about some of the synchronized entities please refer to the below bullets (MDM left - CRM right):

• Company <-> Account
• Contact <-> Contact
• Lead -> Lead
• Opportunity <- Opportunity
• Campaign -> Campaign
• Marketing List -> Marketing List

So Accounts and (Marketing) Contacts you can create in either MDM or CRM and the new entity will sync to the other. Leads 'born' in MDM will sync to CRM (and then updates to fields will flow either way). Opportunities  'born' in CRM will sync to MDM (and then updates to fields will flow either way).

To test you can create a Marketing Contact in MDM and verify its created in CRM as well

1. Create a marketing contact in MDM - eg. Michael Schmidt from the company MSDAS

2. Open CRM and verify the contact has been created there too - please note that the Owner of the contact is "MDM Connector" (3) - the user you created above

3. Now to test the opposite synch direction add the (missing) title of the contact in CRM

4. Open MDM and verify that the title is synchronized from CRM to MDM

I hope you are as exited as I am about the wonderful services from Microsoft Dynamics and what they can do for your business

See also

• Get the best of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM - link
  
• Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Spring '14 CRM Connector Setup (video) - link
• Walkthrough: Configure Microsoft Azure ACS for integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 - link
• How to Configure Social Listening in CRM Online - link

Update November 2014

For the creation of the Azure ServiceBus using PowerShell, please make sure to use the argument 1 for the parameter –CreateACSNamespace

> New-AzureSBNamespace -Name YOUR_NAMESPACE -NamespaceType Messaging -Location "YOUR_LOCATION" -CreateACSNamespace 1

For the parameter –CreateACSNamespace using ‘1’ means is True and using ‘0’ means False (see also "Service Bus Authentication and Authorization" - link)

Thanks to my collegue Mihail Cretu for pointing this out

Note December 12

If you are having trouble getting the MDM Listener and MDM Publisher services to work (start) in a brand new MDM Organisation please check if you have set the Default Currency (Settings -> Site Settings -> "Financial Options" -> "Default Currency") for your MDM Organisation (thanks to my collegue Rodrigo Cristelli Lugarinho for the input)