Plan for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Deployment and Administration

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 CRM data that you would like to bring into Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, 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 CRM 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 of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online?

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 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in 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 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Single sign-on is available only to customers who manage their Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription through the Microsoft online services environment. There are additional requirements to implement this feature, therefore, consider how important it is to your organization.

For more information about single sign-on, see Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Enterprise Planning Guide and Prepare for single sign-on.

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 in the Microsoft online services environment, 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 are not the same as the security roles that you assign to users in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Security roles in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online are required and govern access to resources in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service. See “Security roles in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online” in this table.

Security roles in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 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 in order to access Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Note
Security roles are not the same as administrative roles in defined in the Microsoft online services environment. Administrative roles in the Microsoft online services environment cover subscription management and related activities in the Microsoft online services portal subscriptions area. See: Administrative roles in the Microsoft online services environmentin this table.

Importing data

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online offers a wizard to help with importing CRM data from other applications and services.

If you are importing data from other systems, consider the way you will process the data to minimize errors. For more information, see, see Importing Data Overview.

Product updates

Some Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online releases will include optional product updates that you can choose to enable.

Product updates may affect existing customizations in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online instance. Review the documentation associated with each product update before you enable it in a production environment. Additionally, some product updates, such as the new sales and service process forms, cannot be removed or easily reverted to the previous functionality. Therefore, you should give careful consideration before you enable a product update. For more information, see Installing Product Updates.

Tip
If you are unsure whether you want to enable a product update in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online instance used in production, sign up for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online trial subscription to evaluate the new functionality. For more information, see Sign up for a trial instance.