Dynamics 365 Sales and privacy laws and regulations

The European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives significant rights to individuals regarding their data. Refer to the Microsoft Learn General Data Protection Regulation Summary for an overview of GDPR, including terminology, an action plan, and readiness checklists to help you meet your obligations under GDPR when using Microsoft products and services.

You can learn more about GDPR and how Microsoft helps support it and our customers who are affected by it.

  • The Microsoft Trust Center provides general information, compliance best practices, and documentation helpful to GDPR accountability, such as Data Protection Impact Assessments, Data Subject Requests, and data breach notification.
  • The Service Trust portal provides information about how Microsoft services help support compliance with GDPR.

To help comply with privacy laws and regulations, we've made it possible to edit read-only records in Dynamics 365 Sales.

The following table shows the states in which the Dynamics 365 Sales records become read-only.

Entity State
Quote Active/Closed
Order Fulfilled/Canceled/Submitted/Invoiced
Invoice Paid/Canceled/Closed

A system administrator can export read-only quote, order, and invoice records, update them, and import the updated records back to Dynamics 365 Sales.

It's also possible to update the read-only records programmatically with the SDK for Dynamics 365 Sales.

Update read-only records through export or import

Important

Only an administrator or an impersonating user with administrative privileges can perform this action. Other users will get the following error message if they try to import records: Business Process Error: Cannot perform the action because the record is read only

Note

This article provides instructions for exporting personal data from the device or service and can help you meet your obligations under GDPR. For general information about GDPR, see the GDPR section of the Microsoft Trust Center and the GDPR section of the Service Trust portal.

  1. In your sales app, go to the list of records. For example, go to Sales > Quotes.

  2. Open the view that shows all the records regardless of their state. For example, open the All Quotes view.

  3. Select the records that you want to export, and on the command bar, select Export to Excel > Static Worksheet. More information: Export data to Excel

  4. In the file that you exported, make the necessary changes.

  5. To import the updated records back into Dynamics 365 Sales, in your sales app, in the list of records, select Import Data. More information: Import data into Dynamics 365 Sales

Important points

  • As a system administrator, you can edit any read-only field but changes won't reflect for the locked fields.

  • Non-admin users can't edit an active quote. However, an admin user can edit and save an active quote, although it's read-only for non-admin users.

  • If configured, Plugins, Business processes and workflows run on fields getting updated or becoming editable.

  • If there is Dynamics 365 Sales integration with any third-party system, there's a chance that the privacy-related changes are overwritten if the correct sequence of updates isn't followed. It's the responsibility of the system administrator of Dynamics 365 Sales to follow the correct order.