In Dynamics CRM the modules were represented as a vertical navigation area in CRM 2011 and was reworked into a horizontal, partly collapsible navigation bar in CRM 2013. Starting with CRM 2015 SP1, which was only available online, and now in CRM 2016 the horizontal navigation bar now expands to reveal both areas as well as related entities.
Modules in dynamics CRM are as below.
1. Sales
2. Service
3. Marketing
Sales:
Sales module further contains the following system entities.
i. Accounts
ii. Contacts
iii. Leads
iv. Opportunities
v. Competitor
vi. Invoice
vii. Order
viii. Quote
Accounts:
The account entity is one of the entities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 to which most other entities are attached or parented. In Microsoft Dynamics 365, an account represents a company with which the business unit has a relationship. Account can have only one account as its parent, accounts can have multiple child accounts and child contacts.
Contacts:
A contact represents a person, usually an individual, with whom a business unit has a relationship, such as a customer, a supplier, or a colleague.
The contact entity is one of the entities that most other entities are linked to, contact can be a parent to every other entity except accounts and contacts. The contact entity stores all information about a person such as an email address, street address, telephone numbers, and other related information.
Leads:
A lead entity represents an individual that is identified as someone who is interested in receiving specific information about the products or services offered by the company.
A lead is used to track contacts or accounts that are potential customers, but who have not yet been qualified.
A lead is kept separate from customer and opportunity data until the lead is qualified.
Opportunities:
The opportunity entity represents a potential sale to new or established customers. It helps you to forecast future business demands and sales revenues. You can create a new opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics 365 to monitor an inquiry from your existing customer.
An opportunity must be associated with one account or contact. An account and a contact may have links to multiple opportunities.
Competitor:
A competitor is another company that offers competing products and services. Each competitor record in Microsoft Dynamics 365 can contain detailed information about the competitor that includes a company profile.
With competitor tracking, you can find competitors and analyze their sales strategies, their products, and what contracts they win. This functionality includes adding and maintaining competitor records, and storing competitor documents.
Quote:
A quote is a formal offer for products or services proposed at specific prices and related payment terms that is sent to a prospective customer. A quote can have a due date, effective dates, and the requested delivery dates. If a quote is created from an opportunity, Dynamics 365 will use the products associated with the opportunity as the basis for the draft.
Order:
A sales order (order) is a quote that has been accepted. This entity is called “order” in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 application. The schema name for this entity is Sales Order.
Invoice:
An invoice is an order that has been billed. The schema name for this entity is Invoice.
Service Management:
One of the more powerful but often overlooked features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the Customer Service module, which allows you to manage and track customer service activity in your organization. Apart from Accounts and Contacts there are few more entities in Service Module.
1. Cases
2. Knowledge Base
3. Contracts
4. Entitlement Entities
5. Queues
6. Calendar
7. SLA KPI instance
Cases:
The Case entity provides incident-based tracking for issues that may arise from customers. It is designed to track the process from the initial intake of an incident, tracking the details throughout the remediation process, and through final resolution. You can assign cases to CRM users or teams.
For more powerful automation and collaboration, cases can also be added to queues. By using the incident management APIs, you can create reports to measure statistics, such as individual customer service representative statistics and the average length of time that incidents remain active.
Knowledge Base:
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online & on-premises) introduce a new knowledge management system that lets you create rich knowledge articles with support for embedding external multimedia contents, such as images and videos, as links.
You can use the SDK to programmatically create and manage knowledge articles, create major and minor versions of the articles, translate the articles into multiple languages, and schedule the publishing and expiration of the articles.
After you enable knowledge management for an entity using the web client, you can insert and configure a knowledge base search control in the entity form to display relevant knowledge articles from Dynamics 365.
Contract:
A contract is an agreement to provide support during specified coverage dates or for a specified number of cases or length of time. The contract entity is used to track customer service agreements.
You can create contracts for existing customers that specify the type of service and terms that apply to each customer. New contracts are created based on the contract template. You can create contracts only for existing accounts and contacts. A contract has the status of “Draft” until it is invoiced. You can change the contract template until the contract status changes. Each new contract is assigned a unique ID that can’t be used for another contract unless it is being renewed.
Entitlement Entities:
Entitlements specify the support term based on number of hours or number of cases. The customer’s support level can vary based on the product or service that the customer has purchased. Customers who’ve purchased different products can be entitled to different support levels.
This information helps the customer support agents verify what the customers are eligible for and create cases for them accordingly. Use entitlement templates and entitlement template channels to create entitlements prefilled with the basic information like the start and end date, service level agreement (SLA), allocation type, and total term.
Queues:
Queues are instrumental in organizing, prioritizing, and monitoring the progress of your work while you are using Microsoft Dynamics 365.
As a central location for work management, queues assist you in processing cases, responding to service calls, or sending out product information to prospective customers. Programmatically, a queue is a collection of queue items. A queue item serves as a container for an entity record, such as a task, an email, or a case that needs processing.
Customizable entities can be enabled for queues, Queues may be public or private. Private queue items are only visible to the members of the queue, private queue is automatically created for each new user or team. A queue can contain multiple entity types, such as tasks, emails, or cases. This helps improve productivity and track the entity and attribute data changes for future analysis and reporting.
Calendar:
The Service Calendar is separate from the other CRM Calendar. This is where all the scheduled Service Activities appear. By default the Service Activities that you own will sync to your Outlook calendar if you have the Outlook Client installed.
SLA KPI (Service Level Agreement Key Performance Indicator):
Define the level of service or support that your organization agrees to offer to a customer by using service level agreements (SLAs) in Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Include detailed items to define metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) to attain the service level. KPIs help you get timely warnings on your team’s issues while providing support. You can associate an SLA with an entitlement so that when an entitlement is added to a case, the associated SLA is also applied. You can associate only SLAs that are created for the Case entity with entitlements.
Marketing Entities:
The marketing entities let you perform detailed campaign planning, manage the creation and execution of a campaign, and assess a campaign's performance.
Following are the Entities in Marketing Module
1. Campaign
2. List
Campaign:
A campaign in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is designed to accomplish a specific result, such as introducing a new product or increasing market share. The main way to accomplish this result is through communicating the benefits of a product or service to people and businesses. Campaigns often include more than one communication method, such as print advertisements, promotional discounts, and direct mail.
A campaign can be thought of as a container in which a business keeps planning tasks, campaign activities, and campaign responses. It has a list of related products, sales literature, and a set of marketing lists of existing or potential customers. This information is used to plan and track the results of a marketing campaign throughout its life.
Lists:
In Microsoft Dynamics 365, list management and the list (marketing list) entity help you create lists of potential customers or existing customers for marketing purposes. Typically, a list is a potential target for a campaign. There are two types of lists: static and dynamic.
Static: To add the members to a static list, use the Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Messages.AddListMembersListRequest message.
Dynamic: The members for a dynamic list are selected dynamically based on the Fetch XML query criteria during distribution of a campaign activity or a quick campaign.