Customer Engagement & Dynamics CRM Forum

We are debating internally on whether we want to rebuild Dynamics CE from the ground up (out of box with minor customizations), or try to figure out what our original implementation partners did.  We have one of our processes running on the Auto Record Creation process which is going to be deprecated, so we need to do something with that.  We also don't have the original source code for several other processes, and we are wanting to change the way we do some of them, so we are going to have to rebuild those as well.

When we started our D365 journey 2 years ago, we didn't know anything.  We have only implemented the CE for our customer service emails, which create cases for us.  We are wanting to expand to our Sales team, but there are some things that we have to fix first.

Now that we know what our processes should do, and the team understands the capabilities of CE, would you start from scratch with a brand new install and customizations, or would you try to clean up the garbage left behind?  It took us about 4 months from requirements to implementation, and we have the time now if we were to start from scratch.

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Tina Silver
Sr BSA, CSM®
SR Smith, LLC
Canby OR
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If you have the time and internal skills I would vote for start from scratch.
The major challenge here will be Data migration - I would get an external resource for the actual task, but the main thing to remember is that for it to be seamless, column types and properties have to match.

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Donal McCarthy
Digital Marketing Administrator
BrightWork
Galway
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Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2021 10:55 AM
From: Tina Silver
Subject: Advice needed on rebuilding or trying to fix

We are debating internally on whether we want to rebuild Dynamics CE from the ground up (out of box with minor customizations), or try to figure out what our original implementation partners did.  We have one of our processes running on the Auto Record Creation process which is going to be deprecated, so we need to do something with that.  We also don't have the original source code for several other processes, and we are wanting to change the way we do some of them, so we are going to have to rebuild those as well.

When we started our D365 journey 2 years ago, we didn't know anything.  We have only implemented the CE for our customer service emails, which create cases for us.  We are wanting to expand to our Sales team, but there are some things that we have to fix first.

Now that we know what our processes should do, and the team understands the capabilities of CE, would you start from scratch with a brand new install and customizations, or would you try to clean up the garbage left behind?  It took us about 4 months from requirements to implementation, and we have the time now if we were to start from scratch.

------------------------------
Tina Silver
Sr BSA, CSM®
SR Smith, LLC
Canby OR
------------------------------

I concur with Donal. Your internal devs will have even a deeper understanding of the product capabilities (and limitations) and more thoroughly understand your business processes. You will also have the benefit of owning, administering, and modifying your own source code. The real question is how do you handle the 2 years of data in your current systems. If you don't have many custom or modified entities, then it would be a good opportunity to do some data clean up, but if there are a lot of custom entities and fields, then a full data migration can be a challenge in itself.

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Jeff Woodard
Chief Technical Officer
Transportation Financial Services, Inc.
West Palm Beach FL
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Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2021 10:55 AM
From: Tina Silver
Subject: Advice needed on rebuilding or trying to fix

We are debating internally on whether we want to rebuild Dynamics CE from the ground up (out of box with minor customizations), or try to figure out what our original implementation partners did.  We have one of our processes running on the Auto Record Creation process which is going to be deprecated, so we need to do something with that.  We also don't have the original source code for several other processes, and we are wanting to change the way we do some of them, so we are going to have to rebuild those as well.

When we started our D365 journey 2 years ago, we didn't know anything.  We have only implemented the CE for our customer service emails, which create cases for us.  We are wanting to expand to our Sales team, but there are some things that we have to fix first.

Now that we know what our processes should do, and the team understands the capabilities of CE, would you start from scratch with a brand new install and customizations, or would you try to clean up the garbage left behind?  It took us about 4 months from requirements to implementation, and we have the time now if we were to start from scratch.

------------------------------
Tina Silver
Sr BSA, CSM®
SR Smith, LLC
Canby OR
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HI Tina,

I think I replied privately on accident before. Centric has a fantastic team of Dynamics resources, including our national practice lead and Architect Carrie Butler. I would suggest I get you on a short call (phone a friend) with her to discuss your challenges and let her ask some questions to help you make the recommendation on next steps. Feel free to give me a call or send an email to chat.

Thank you


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Sarah Weber
Centric Consulting
Cincinnati OH
513.257.3395
Sarah.Weber@centricconsulting.com
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Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2021 10:55 AM
From: Tina Silver
Subject: Advice needed on rebuilding or trying to fix

We are debating internally on whether we want to rebuild Dynamics CE from the ground up (out of box with minor customizations), or try to figure out what our original implementation partners did.  We have one of our processes running on the Auto Record Creation process which is going to be deprecated, so we need to do something with that.  We also don't have the original source code for several other processes, and we are wanting to change the way we do some of them, so we are going to have to rebuild those as well.

When we started our D365 journey 2 years ago, we didn't know anything.  We have only implemented the CE for our customer service emails, which create cases for us.  We are wanting to expand to our Sales team, but there are some things that we have to fix first.

Now that we know what our processes should do, and the team understands the capabilities of CE, would you start from scratch with a brand new install and customizations, or would you try to clean up the garbage left behind?  It took us about 4 months from requirements to implementation, and we have the time now if we were to start from scratch.

------------------------------
Tina Silver
Sr BSA, CSM®
SR Smith, LLC
Canby OR
------------------------------

Hi Tina

I must say that I mostly disagree with starting. I've recently been through this scenario.

Unless you're data is so bad, fixing is usually mush easier. I've just been through an exercise where used the existing instance as the base for redevelopment. There was no data migration (which can be a major issue, even with the help of Kingswaysoft or CozyRock or the XRMToolbox Data Transporter (what a saver that is) necessary, except for correcting a few issues that had been left behind from previous attempt at a rebuild (by someone else).

We copied to current production instance as our Dev and UAT beginning instances and went from there and when all good promoted to Production. In this case, the customer preferred one final import to Production instead of staged updates (against my advice because of "training" - there were 100 users). I did however promote some new entities to Production (so they could be prepopulated by a select user in preparation for live). You must however have a dedication to testing the changes in UAT.

Yes, it means constant communication with the developer(s) (I did 95% of the dev by myself so was a little easier to keep control of the process - just used one of my other people for a few Ribbon Workbench changes required).

So, if your data is good (which i gather it basically is) avoid the data migration issues which can be very frustrating.

If you want to discuss it more, hit me up.

Pete

Peter Hale

peter@naish.com.au

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Peter Hale
Naish Pty Ltd
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Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2021 10:55 AM
From: Tina Silver
Subject: Advice needed on rebuilding or trying to fix

We are debating internally on whether we want to rebuild Dynamics CE from the ground up (out of box with minor customizations), or try to figure out what our original implementation partners did.  We have one of our processes running on the Auto Record Creation process which is going to be deprecated, so we need to do something with that.  We also don't have the original source code for several other processes, and we are wanting to change the way we do some of them, so we are going to have to rebuild those as well.

When we started our D365 journey 2 years ago, we didn't know anything.  We have only implemented the CE for our customer service emails, which create cases for us.  We are wanting to expand to our Sales team, but there are some things that we have to fix first.

Now that we know what our processes should do, and the team understands the capabilities of CE, would you start from scratch with a brand new install and customizations, or would you try to clean up the garbage left behind?  It took us about 4 months from requirements to implementation, and we have the time now if we were to start from scratch.

------------------------------
Tina Silver
Sr BSA, CSM®
SR Smith, LLC
Canby OR
------------------------------