Summit Preview: Succeeding as a new Dynamics 365 administrator

Community Summit North America is coming up in just a few weeks, between October 13 and 17 in San Antonio, Texas. In the lead up to the event, MSDW connected with Lawrence Reid, a Texas-based CRM administrator at the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, who is set to present a session. 

Reid’s work with CRM systems began well before Microsoft launched its Dynamics product line. He gained certification as a CRM consultant and built his skills as a developer, trainer, and installer. As time went on, Reid pivoted more to a leadership role, participating in Toastmasters, achieving a Project Management Professional certification, becoming a Scrum Master, and becoming an International Institute for Business Analysis Certified Business Analyst Professional. 

At this year’s event Reid is set to talk to delegates about the key skills for those just starting out as Dynamics 365 administrators. 

“I’ve been in the CRM space for a long-time [and] I’ve done these presentations at other places. People ask: how do I break into the industry. I don’t see anything in [other presenters’] decks about how you land your first job and how to be successful in that. The gist of the session is how to be successful as a new administrator for your first Dynamics 365 organization. It doesn’t have to be daunting,” he told MSDW. 

Reid arranged his talk around 10 priorities for those just starting out. Initially, new administrators need to understand the current CRM setup. For instance, this might involve understanding the features that are enabled for Dynamics 365 Sales or Customer Engagement, as well as Power Platform.  

Security is a close second because of how central it is to any successful business operations. 

“Does everyone have system admin rights or are there just one or two admins?” Reid noted. “You may need to understand subsystems to break out tasks and you may need elevated rights over a regular user as a developer.” 

Reid will also talk about the importance of skills related to cleaning up data for new CRM professionals. Even 2% of duplicate entries can quickly cause problems in the system, he says, so understanding data cleansing has long-term benefits. Backup and data recovery also factors into a successful CRM solution, he explained. The session will explore long-term health and maintenance considerations like monitoring disk space and detecting performance problems. For instance, it may make sense to take a monthly snapshot of the system for long-term oversight. Adopting very detailed documentation can be helpful too.  

Reid explained that his session will explore the basics of integration, customization, and automation, from a non-developer perspective. 

[The session will talk about the] basics of customization and integration…It’s not a developer class by any means but will teach you about moving something like a field. User training and adoption [is a key theme]. If you don’t have a recurring training methodology, it’s never successful. You need to make sure it’s broken down into chunks like a one-hour webinar to get them interested and using the tech.  

At this year’s event, Reid also anticipates a lot of discussion of AI. “Everybody needs to understand the abilities of the tools like Copilots. Copilot in CRM is not the same one as in Excel, or in other tools. It is a key point to understand for anybody at this point, whether an IT person or an end user. Understanding what the different generative AI tools can do and how to leverage those to your advantage [is really important],” he said. 

For those who are still considering whether to attend Community Summit, Reid urged members of the community to factor in the benefits of in-person experiences.  

“The connections you make might be lifetime connections and are very important for career building,” he said. “Talking to someone through a virtual class, Teams, or Zoom isn’t the same as looking at them eye-to-eye.”