Uncover hidden insights in your forecasts

Important

This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.

Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically This feature is released. Feb 3, 2020 This feature is released. Apr 1, 2020

Business value

To ensure sales managers can provide leadership with meaningful forecast numbers that they trust, the forecasting capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales offer great flexibility. Sales managers are empowered to take snapshots to freeze a forecast in the moment and to analyze forecasts, gaining a deeper understanding through changes that occur between snapshots.

With deal flow analyses, comparing two snapshots visually, sales managers can easily view changes in forecasted values as well as the underlying records that contribute to the change. For example, if a sales manager's team forecasted to close 100,000 deals, but only closed 80,000, the sales manager can investigate which deals slipped and why to get a deeper understanding and inform future planning.

Feature details

  • Take advantage of snapshots: Trigger snapshot creations before or after adjustment periods end. Empowers sales enablement managers to offer automated snapshots.
  • View snapshot history: Explore a log of all snapshots taken per forecast and manage these as needed. Empowers sales enablement managers to develop valuable learnings for the organization.
  • Benefit from deal-flow and snapshot visualization: Visually compare two forecast snapshots to better understand how and why forecasting has changed over time.
  • Take advantage of cumulative trend chart: Inspect forecast projections visually across a timeline chart.

Know how the forecast is changing over time

See also

Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales (blog)

Analyze deals flows between snapshots (docs)