Microsoft Dynamics 365 Reviews & Insights

Score7.4 out of 10

954 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Microsoft Dynamics 365 are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Lead Generation Capabilities: Users have appreciated the software's easy lead generation functionalities, enabling them to generate leads via emails, phones, and campaigns while automating the process.

Intuitive: Reviewers find the user interface intuitive, suitable for both new and experienced users without requiring extensive training.

Customization: Customers have highlighted the software's robust customizability features, allowing them to tailor Dynamics to their specific business needs with ease.

Customer Service: Some users noted that the software effectively guides sales representatives through the sales process and facilitates quick quoting, enhancing interactions with customers.

Integration: The integration with Microsoft Outlook was found to enhance the overall user experience by some reviewers.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Reviews

12 Reviews

Information Technology

A giant data storage without much insight into lead management

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

February 21, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the main CRM used not only by the sales and marketing departments of our company but also across the whole organization. Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps us to record the contact information of leads and customers, it also shows from which web page the leads fill in the form.

Pros

Integration with Outlook and Office 365
Simple, easy to navigate interface
Nice function to create filters to group different contacts into lists

Cons

I feel like this CRM is nothing more than a big database. I wish it would be more integrated with web analytics, so I can check which pages the contact has visited.
We also have this issue of duplicate leads, meaning the same contact filling out different forms but it shows two different entries in the CRM. The cross checking can be time consuming because we have a big amount of leads.
I would like more autonomy to customize the CRM to my benefits rather than having to hire a consultant for that.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are looking for a giant database to store up all your contact information, turn to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. But if you are a sales and marketing professional who hopes to understand more about the leads and their journey behaviour on the website, then I think you should turn to something else.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (Information Technology and Services company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

How we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 5, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage leads, opportunities and accounts.

Pros

Integrates with Outlook. Therefore we can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Outlook to correspond with customers.
Workflows make automation of tasks possible.
The online version allows access to data from any browser on any device from anywhere.
The windows app is very convenient for use on tablets and small devices.

Cons

Certain UX features are lacking, like multi select lists.

Likelihood to Recommend

Actually it is becoming more suitable for many scenarios because Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a framework that is customizable and expandable.

Moshe Raab

Director of Software Development at GBI Intralogistics Solutions (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

View profile

MSCRM Manager Review

Rating: 4 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We actually utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM in an unorthodox fashion. We have all the servers in our home office and we utilize business units as different offices across our client base. So we have different offices all on the same CRM system, but maintain curtaining with user roles and business units.

Pros

I believe that it's a very robust system with tons of capability.
I like the workflows.
The advanced find tool allows users to do complicated queries.

Cons

Because of its robust nature, it's not that intuitive. Novice users have struggled using it.
The look is too bulky and clunky. There are too many windows and areas to store the same information.
The Outlook add-in doesn't work great.

Likelihood to Recommend

There are better and more intuitive tools on the open market. In fact, my company is moving away from Microsoft Dynamics CRM and built our own CRM system from the ground up. If you have very tech savvy, heavy users, Microsoft Dynamics CRM works well. If you are dealing with less tech savvy folks who want a simple system, Microsoft Dynamics CRM maybe too much for them.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (Financial Services company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Why Try Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 1, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage clients, prospects and referral resources. We also use it to create a pipeline and track wins. The marketing department is a heavy user of the product, but management across the organization also uses it. Prior to implementing CRM, we had no insights regarding existing relationships and pursuits between offices. Now everyone across the firm can see what relationships exist, the status of those relationships and if we are currently pursuing an opportunity with an account.

Pros

Effectively track relationships firm-wide.
Manage the sales pipeline.
Track mailings and event registration and attendence

Cons

Enable more than one relationship owner so that relationships are more easily seen without having to update and look in "Who knows who"
We've experienced a lot of bugs in the Outlook version of CRM. When we use the web version this isn't an issue.
Make "Advanced Finds" easier to pull - these can get complicated.

Likelihood to Recommend

We use the CoreMotives plug in for mailing campaigns and this has been a great tool for marketing - I highly recommend it.

How can Microsoft Dynamics CRM be configured to suit my business needs?
How customizable is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?
How can I simplify the interface (can I remove sections that I don't need)?

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (Accounting company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Accidental Administrator loves CRM

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 27, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

CRM is used across 75% of our organization to manage and track interactions with our clients. CRM is our source of truth for client communications and interactions allowing all users to know what is happening in the care and maintenance of our clients needs. We track leads all the way through sales into clients and subsequent sales to existing clients with processes througout the system. Utilizing the many features built into CRM as well as custominzing the system to meet the needs or our company.

Pros

Workflows for automating processes that were once manual.
Giving a full and comprehensive view of where the client is at any particular time.
Allowing our users to collaborate on clients giving the best service possible.
Highly customizable to meet the needs of our specific industry and company.

Cons

The need for javascript to do some form control work. This does get better in 2013 and above.
Global search is missing in 2011. This does come into play in 2013 and above.
Sharepoint addin for document repository is slow to load and could use some changes to make it more stable.
Ability to copy records is missing for most entities.
Administrative management of user created/changed settings, views, charts and dashboards is missing.
Activities that you can complete throughout a workflow could be increased. For example the ability to do recursive workflows.
The ability to add dialogs and workflows to the ribbon should be easier. The coding necessary now does not make it practical for super user type administrators.

Likelihood to Recommend

We have found it does not work well for our call center. However for the rest of the organization it works very well. User adoption is always an issue and the changes that are brought forward from 2011 to 2013 are a big difference so if you can start on 2013 user adoption will likely be better. I would suggest ensuring you know who will be administering and customizing the application as there is a lot of customization that will need to be done to meet the needs of any company. Take advantage of the templates that are out there for your industry to make this starting point easier. Find a good 3rd party vendor to help you implement. Make sure this vendor has done work in your industry before so that they understand the unique needs of your company. Know the limitations between running CRM online and on-premise. If you can swing the cost of the hardware I would suggest on-premise as you have better access to your data and process that can link into CRM.

Jennifer Manteufel

Application Systems Administrator III in Information Technology at Navitus Health (Insurance, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Microsoft CRM 2011 Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 4, 2013

Pros

Microsoft CRM is easily customizable allowing companies to quickly implement business logic and processes.
Microsoft CRM has a robust API that allows developers to build advanced customizations.
Microsoft CRM framework allows 3rd party solutions to be quickly and easily integrated into CRM.

Cons

The new dialog process feature is great, but is lacking a few features like field validation on the dialog and more control over displayed pages.
Not sure if this changes in CRM 2013, but running workflows from ribbon buttons is not intuitive. The user has to navigate to the workflows area to determine if the workflow completed successfully. It would be nice to have the workflow run synchronously.
More ability build to views on the new connection feature would be great.

Likelihood to Recommend

What are your requirements? What process are you trying to capture (sales, helpdesk, etc)? What is your budget? Is there a system currently in place? Do you need to integrate with an external app like an ERP system? Are you currently looking at other procducst like Salesforce.com?

Steve Rauda

Senior Systems Analyst in Information Technology at CHR Solutions, Inc. (Telecommunications, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

CRM can it truly help manage your sales in your own way or is it just another clunky Microsoft monster?

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 4, 2013

Pros

It allows your data to be displayed in a way that the average user can view easily and navigate around within in an intuitive way. The way different items, Entities, are tied together and always accessible via links is extremely easy to view a number of records, and a number of different types of records very quickly and easily. It makes managing the data so easy for the IT professional and the relatively proficient user alike.
The ability to do Advanced Find queries is a huge asset. They are easy to learn how to do and extremely easy to save, recall, and customize. Once a user learns just a few ins and outs of the method of setting one of these queries up, they can do some powerful queries that someone without database access or knowledge wouldn't normally be able to accomplish. Then the results can be exported into a variety of different formats very simply.
The ability to customize your CRM experience is pretty impressive. With JavaScript alone we have worked some miracles with forms showing fields depending on values in others, setting formatting, hiding based upon user Roles, etc. The JavaScript customizations are simple to use and can do just about anything you can think of for a form.
Workflows are another great tool that you can use to make things happen depending on values or updates of records or fields. You can do all sorts of things with Workflows. You can send emails, create new records, modify records, set up reminders, etc. These are another powerful customization tool available to users. The beauty of these is that you don't have to be a programmer to understand and use them. Once you get the way they work figured out, and the structure of setting them up, you can do a lot of great things without programming knowledge and in an easy format.
You can link to SSRS reports from within CRM. There is a reports section where you can set up various reports that the user can choose from and display, or run, at will. This is a very handy tool as you can create the most complex or simple report and any user can pull it up at will.
The ability to set up reports and run workflows from custom buttons from within a record is extremely helpful. You can create your own buttons that can run complex things very simply. You can also display those by user role as well. Again this goes back to the wide array of customization that is possible.

Cons

Most of the personal customization is done through JavaScript. The way that CRM lets you view the JavaScript is not in a way that you could work or develop within at all. I have to take the JavaScript that exists and copy and paste it to a JavaScript editor. I use Notepad ++. I do my development in there and then when I'm done I copy and paste it back into the CRM screen. Then I have to publish it and see if it worked as I planned.
I think it would be much more helpful to have even just a simple JavaScript editor within CRM. The screen you insert this into has no formatting and is tiny. A bigger workspace and a little bit of editing capabilities would be a very nice addition.
Some capability of a test environment would be nice. Any changes via JavaScript or workflow is done in the live database. So if I make a JavaScript change and it doesn't work the first time, everyone of the users can see the error right away if they are in the Entity I'm making the change within. The ability to test the customizations without having them be live right away would be a huge help.
I am only a moderate programmer. There is an SDK that you can download or comes with CRM. You have the ability to create "Plug Ins" at will. These can be very big and powerful additions or small and helpful. But there is no good documentation that I have been able to find about how to use the SDK. I see references to it online all the time but I can't figure out how to access and use it. It would be nice if there was more clear documentation about how to access the information that is contained within the SDK.

Likelihood to Recommend

I was not involved in the set up or implementation process but as a current user I would say that I am impressed with how much we can do within CRM. We have been able to consolidate a lot of processes and streamline many others by working them into our CRM implementation. It is definitely designed for a sales based business. It is to help process, track, and manage the sales process. While we have managed to create many customizations and functions that are spin offs of the sales process, the basic building blocks of the program are to track sales.

Chris Jensen

Analyst / CRM Administrator in Information Technology at Partners Rx (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - The good, the bad and the ugly

Rating: 7 out of 10

November 26, 2013

Pros

Tracking, filtering, reporting are handled well.
Finding and merging duplicates works seamlessly.

Cons

There should be a way to have multiple office addresses under a single account. When adding new contacts, you should be able to choose from a list of office locations. Having multiple accounts (one for each office location) does not work in my situation. I'm forced to re-enter address info for all contacts that are not in the main office location.
Email campaigns should be simpler and more flexible. It's easy to define filters for the Marketing List, but then there are too many steps to coordinate that list with the Campaign and the email template being used. It would also be nice if you could start/stop/resume during the send process, and it would be nice to be able to set a threshold of how many messages are sent per minute/hour, so that each campaign could be optimized based on importance/priority.
Storage space fills up very quickly if you use email campaigns or track a lot of emails. Sometimes I only need a record of having sent/received a message, I don't need all the text for routine or campaign messages. It would be helpful if there was an option to "retain all text" or "retain header info only" when creating/tracking email. I could save a ton of storage if I had that feature.
Workflows have not yet produced the results that I envisioned, but with more effort, perhaps they will. It could be a very powerful tool.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend Microsoft Dynamics CRM to a colleague with the caveat that they use proper due diligence when testing/evaluating to be sure the system has all the key features they need. We are very pleased with the company and the overall cloud delivery for updates, etc. We have no complaints about up-time or general reliability (however we do get temporary error messages that can be frustrating and hard to diagnose a root cause).

Debbie Bovee

Account Manager in Sales at Savvy Training & Consulting, Inc. (Professional Training & Coaching, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Review from a Beginner

Rating: 5 out of 10

November 26, 2013

Pros

The ability to fluently add leads via Excel CSV file makes the process seamless and easy to manage.
Marketing lists, campaigns and events make the organization process simpler when tying together marketing efforts.
Merging duplicate contacts creates easy-to-manage contact lists without dupes.

Cons

The ability to tie together marketing efforts with sales revenue is a rather difficult process to incur.
Activities and closed activities should be easier to customize.
Charts are tough to adjust and make appropriate for marketing efforts.

Likelihood to Recommend

I have not experienced another CRM system, so I would ask the reps what they can provide and what other systems have that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is better than.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

CRM great for reporting and analysis

Rating: 4 out of 10

November 18, 2013

Pros

Reporting.
Information Storage and Archiving.
Client Tracking.

Cons

Need to provide the ability to past screenshots into the body of an email rather than only add as an attachment.
Speed of attaching documents.
Space issues.
Ability to search within in attachment rather than just in the subject or body of an email.
Ability to add multiple contacts to the regarding of an email.

Likelihood to Recommend

My recommendation would be dependent upon how the colleague was planning on using this tool. Other departments within our organization have experienced great success with this tool. It's reporting capabilities are excellent.

I would ask that person what their specific goal is and what their reporting needs are. From there I would ask additional questions.

Verified User

Supervisor in Product Management (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Loading Reviews List....

CRM can it truly help manage your sales in your own way or is it just another clunky Microsoft monster?

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 4, 2013

Pros

It allows your data to be displayed in a way that the average user can view easily and navigate around within in an intuitive way. The way different items, Entities, are tied together and always accessible via links is extremely easy to view a number of records, and a number of different types of records very quickly and easily. It makes managing the data so easy for the IT professional and the relatively proficient user alike.
The ability to do Advanced Find queries is a huge asset. They are easy to learn how to do and extremely easy to save, recall, and customize. Once a user learns just a few ins and outs of the method of setting one of these queries up, they can do some powerful queries that someone without database access or knowledge wouldn't normally be able to accomplish. Then the results can be exported into a variety of different formats very simply.
The ability to customize your CRM experience is pretty impressive. With JavaScript alone we have worked some miracles with forms showing fields depending on values in others, setting formatting, hiding based upon user Roles, etc. The JavaScript customizations are simple to use and can do just about anything you can think of for a form.
Workflows are another great tool that you can use to make things happen depending on values or updates of records or fields. You can do all sorts of things with Workflows. You can send emails, create new records, modify records, set up reminders, etc. These are another powerful customization tool available to users. The beauty of these is that you don't have to be a programmer to understand and use them. Once you get the way they work figured out, and the structure of setting them up, you can do a lot of great things without programming knowledge and in an easy format.
You can link to SSRS reports from within CRM. There is a reports section where you can set up various reports that the user can choose from and display, or run, at will. This is a very handy tool as you can create the most complex or simple report and any user can pull it up at will.
The ability to set up reports and run workflows from custom buttons from within a record is extremely helpful. You can create your own buttons that can run complex things very simply. You can also display those by user role as well. Again this goes back to the wide array of customization that is possible.

Cons

Most of the personal customization is done through JavaScript. The way that CRM lets you view the JavaScript is not in a way that you could work or develop within at all. I have to take the JavaScript that exists and copy and paste it to a JavaScript editor. I use Notepad ++. I do my development in there and then when I'm done I copy and paste it back into the CRM screen. Then I have to publish it and see if it worked as I planned.
I think it would be much more helpful to have even just a simple JavaScript editor within CRM. The screen you insert this into has no formatting and is tiny. A bigger workspace and a little bit of editing capabilities would be a very nice addition.
Some capability of a test environment would be nice. Any changes via JavaScript or workflow is done in the live database. So if I make a JavaScript change and it doesn't work the first time, everyone of the users can see the error right away if they are in the Entity I'm making the change within. The ability to test the customizations without having them be live right away would be a huge help.
I am only a moderate programmer. There is an SDK that you can download or comes with CRM. You have the ability to create "Plug Ins" at will. These can be very big and powerful additions or small and helpful. But there is no good documentation that I have been able to find about how to use the SDK. I see references to it online all the time but I can't figure out how to access and use it. It would be nice if there was more clear documentation about how to access the information that is contained within the SDK.

Likelihood to Recommend

Chris Jensen

Analyst / CRM Administrator in Information Technology at Partners Rx (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience