What is this thing?

Dynamics 365 is a platform on which you can build your business operations. It spans a great deal of common functional areas (sales, marketing, customer service, etc…) and what is not included out-of-the-box you can build on the xrm development platform using a series of click-and-drag user-friendly business logic tools or by writing your own code from scratch. If you don’t want to do any of that, then there is a healthy market of third party add-ins that will extend Dynamics with a few clicks and a credit card.

It’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed with everything that falls under the Dynamics 365 umbrella and their associated tangential technologies. I’ve got a list below of what’s included with d365 and even I’ll admit this isn’t comprehensive.

No one uses everything

No one uses everything that’s included but most implementations use a handful of these features together to build something unique that fits a particular business needs.

So, how do you get started? Most people like to start with kicking the tires a bit on the technology. You can do that right now by signing up for a free trial. Do that and review the list below as a brainstorming exercise, then forget about software for awhile. The real work comes down to identifying exactly what you want the system to do and what current state you’re trying to improve. For this, you can put all the technology on the back burner until you identify your own specific needs then, once you know what you want, find the best component(s) for the job.