Keeping your staff in the loop with in-app notifications for Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM

The scenario

We are often asked questions such as ‘When X happens within Dynamics 365 CRM, can we get the system to send an email to someone to let them know they need to do something?’.

I, just like the next person, can see the benefits of keeping the right people in the loop around a process and email naturally seems like the most logical place for this to happen.

Our argument as Tecman is, if you build a solution that is sending emails to notify people that they need to look at the system to action something, then aren’t we just encouraging staff to look at their mailbox rather than Dynamics 365 CRM?

A customer might say ‘But without emails, how will we know if something within Dynamics 365 CRM needs my attention or needs to be picked up by someone in my team?’

So, what's the answer? 

One of our solutions to this problem is to use in-app notifications. What are in-app notifications I hear you ask? Well, the clue is in the title. Instead of getting Dynamics 365 CRM to send emails or notifications to Microsoft Teams, we instead notify them within the app.

The great thing about this is that it keeps staff focused on Dynamics 365 CRM and removes the requirement for them to be switching back and forth between applications.

What does it look like? 

In-app notifications can be configured and customised for any event within Dynamics 365 CRM. Essentially, when that event is triggered, a notification is displayed with the CRM system itself.

Hopefully, you are thinking ‘I see what you are saying, but we are interested in notifications for more than out of the box tables. Also, in your screen shot, the notifications are only for when records are assigned, what more can it do?’

Well, the answer to that is you can have a notification triggered by anything within Dynamics 365 CRM. So instead of sending an email when something happens, we instead create an in-app notification.

Additional examples might be;

• When a case is raised against an account I own
• When a task I am the owner of is updated.
• When an opportunity I own is marked as won.
• When something specific happens on a custom record I am linked to.

In the examples above, I have used the scenario of when I am the owner, but it doesn’t have to be a particular person that is notified, it could be members of a specific team.

You might be asking ‘Can I turn this on or off for specific people?’ The answer is yes and no. The notifications are created with Power Automate, so it’s more of a backend setting than a user setting. You can’t turn off specific notification for specific people, but you can enable them all or disable them all for a specific person if you want to.

Also, it is worth noting that staff can decide if they want to see notifications, this is managed by the settings within the notification bell within Dynamics 365 CRM.

What can Tecman offer in this area?

Tecman have already built a template solution that sends a notification to the new owner when any of the following records are assigned.

• Lead
• Contact
• Accounts
• Opportunity
• Quote
• Sales Order
• Task
• Phone Call
• Appointment

If your business doesn’t require a notification from one of the tables above, you can simply turn the Power Automate flow off for that specific trigger. We can as also build new ‘in-app notification’ flows to suit the needs of your business.

If you feel that in-app notifications would benefit your Dynamics 365 CRM solution, please reach out to your customer engagement manager for more information.

Or if you're new to Tecman or Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, please feel free to get in touch.