New Microsoft Dynamics 365 Schema Project Aims to Simplify CRM Projects

The idea is fairly simple: Get the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community to share its implementation challenges and triumphs, and collect the solutions for easy access - say, solutions collected in a single schema, specific to a vertical.

That is the purpose behind the Dynamics 365 Schema Project, a joint effort by Cambridge Online Systems Ltd.  and Develop1 Ltd, both in the UK.

Next month, Microsoft is set to launch Dynamics 365, the solution platform that will eventually replace a significant portion of the current Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP product lines, and will include a few other applications.

"The challenge is that within implementations, depending on the industry, there are often different customizations required as they store and use different data," said Dynamics CRM developer and consultant at Cambridge Online Systems Ltd. in the UK, in a blog post announcing the project. "This can be time consuming for an implementation and also challenging to create."

Critchley and Scott Durow, a Dynamics CRM MVP and solutions architect at Develop 1 Ltd, introduced the Schema Project to address that challenge.

The Project is designed for the community to work together - using Dynamics CRM's out-of-the-box schema for the Account and Contact entities initially - on an open-source schema for these record types. In the future, that schema could also feed into the Common Data Model (CDM) of Dynamics 365, according to Critchley. CDM is the foundation for the integration and interoperability between Dynamics CRM, AX, Project Madeira, ...