Plan for deployment and administration
Your deployment will go more smoothly with some preliminary planning. The following table lists some of the items to consider before you start the actual deployment process.
| Item | Description | Considerations |
|---|---|---|
| Environment discovery | A detailed description of your organization’s environment in terms of number of users, groups or teams, and the number and type of business units or divisions. Identify current data that you would like to bring into customer engagement apps (Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation), and your overall data storage requirements. Include a business requirements analysis that describes your organization’s expectation or requirements for a service level agreement (SLA). An SLA is an agreement between two or more parties describing the deliverables, support, and communication that each party will provide to the other. Specify your policies related to security and privacy. | Is there enough overlap in customers and products across business units to be able to work in the same data? What type of security policy does the organization already have in place? Are there any special requirements in this area? Is there a plan for business growth that could affect the number of users? Plan for enough time to do this discovery; information that comes out of this exercise can affect the way you implement the service. |
| Single sign-on | An authentication process that enables a user to access multiple systems or services through a single set of sign-on credentials. For example, implementing single sign-on for an organization’s network environment means that after a user signs in to the network, that user does not have to enter credentials again when accessing customer engagement apps. Note: For Microsoft 365 subscribers, the environment must be in the same tenant as your Microsoft 365 subscription. A user account in Active Directory can only sync with one tenant. | There are additional requirements to implement single sign-on, therefore, consider how important it is to your organization. More information: Manage user account synchronization |
| Integration with Microsoft 365 applications | You can significantly enhance your company’s online, collaborative experience by integrating Microsoft 365 applications with your subscription. This requires a separate purchase of an Microsoft 365 subscription You’ll have the best integration experience if your Microsoft 365 subscription and environment are in the same tenant. For full Microsoft 365 feature integration with Dynamics 365 and Customer Engagement (on-premises), you'll need Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 or later. Skype for Business PSTN calling and conferencing requires Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5. Other Microsoft 365 plans are not supported. For more information on licensing and pricing, see:- Dynamics 365 pricing - Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide |
More information: What is Office 365? |
| Administrative roles in the Microsoft Online Services environment | A number of administrative roles are available to assign to users if you manage your subscription in the Microsoft Online Services environment. Administrative roles define administrative responsibilities related to subscription management activities, for example, billing administration, password administration, and user management administration. | Consider the available administrative roles and the needs of your environment to identify the roles you want to use and the users you will choose for each role. The global administrator role is the highest level role, having all the permissions to manage any part of the subscription process. We recommend that you assign this role to more than one person so that someone is always available to manage all aspects of the subscription. Note: Administrative roles cover all subscription management functions within the service. These aren’t the same as the security roles that you assign to users, which are required and govern access to resources in the service. See “Security roles” in this table. |
| Security roles | Customer engagement apps uses role-based security. The security role assigned to a user determines the tasks the user is permitted to perform and the data that the user is permitted to view. | Every user must be assigned at least one security role to access customer engagement apps. Note: Security roles aren’t the same as administrative roles in the Microsoft Online Services environment, which cover subscription management and related activities in the Microsoft 365 admin portal. See: Administrative roles in the Microsoft Online Services environment in this table. |
| Importing data | Customer engagement apps offer a wizard to help with importing data from other applications and services. | If you import data from other systems, consider the way you’ll process the data to minimize errors. More information: Import data (all record types) |
| Product updates | Some releases will include optional product updates that you can choose to enable. | Product updates may affect existing customizations in your environment. Review the documentation associated with each product update before you enable it in a production environment. Additionally, some product updates, such as the sales and service process forms, can’t be removed or easily reverted to the previous functionality. Therefore, you should give careful consideration before you enable a product update. Tip: If you’re unsure whether you want to enable a product update in an environment used in production, sign up for a trial subscription to evaluate the new functionality. More information: About trial environments |