The are incredibly useful tools for any organization. Whether you’re are looking to drive sales, enhance your customer experience, or boost your marketing impact, this flexible and customizable set of solutions can take your business to the next level. But, as with any cloud-based business solution, the full power of these applications can only be experienced by organizations that have fully adopted them into their business processes, which means always being able to access them. For business with users working in the field without a dedicated internet connection, this can sometimes pose a challenge. How can the full power of Dynamics 365 CRM still be utilized while working offline?
It's a problem that our consulting team recently tackled for a client — a business with a sales team often working from remote, rural areas without easy access to an internet connection.
The good news is we were able to build and implement a solution that allows users to fully access, create, and update Dynamics CRM data while offline, but it wasn’t quite as simple as one might think. That’s why we’ve put together this handy guide to help users looking to access the offline capabilities Dynamics 365 enable the feature for their business.
A Few Things To Note Before You Get Started
First, in order to use Dynamics 365 CRM while offline, you must have the . You will not be able to access data offline using a web browser, or the D365 CRM app for Outlook. That means you’ll need to be using a mobile phone or tablet if you want to take advantage of this capability. Second, users using Dynamics 365 Data offline should keep in mind that the data being accessed is the data that was downloaded to your offline device while you were online. As well, any data that is created or updated will only sync with your CRM data once you reconnect to the internet.
With that in mind, here is our step-by-step guide to enabling access to offline Dynamics 365 CRM data.
How to Enable Offline Data Access for Dynamics 365 CRM
1) Select the ellipses on your CRM app from the app selector page and then click “OPEN IN APP DESIGNER”:
Note: you can enable any D365 model-driven app for offline data.
2) Select the ellipses next to the entity you want to make available in offline mode and click “Edit”:
Note: you can repeat this action for all entities you want to make available in offline mode.
3) Click “Edit table properties” from the Edit table window:
4) Click the “Advanced options” dropdown then select “Can be taken offline” and click Save:
5) Navigate back to your CRM app and open Advanced Settings:
6) Select “Mobile Offline” from the Settings dropdown menu:
7) Open “Mobile Offline Profiles”:
8) Create a new Mobile Offline Profile or edit an existing one. Add the entities you would like to make available offline to the MOBILE OFFLINE PROFILE ITEM DETAILS subgrid, then add users to the USERS subgrid who you would like to give mobile offline capability.
9) After you have made all your changes to the Mobile Offline Profile, click “PUBLISH”:
10) Navigate back to your app selector and click the ellipses again. Select “OPEN IN APP DESIGNER”:
11) Select the ellipses from the top menu bar and click “Switch to classic”:
12) Click the Properties tab on the right side panel and select “Enable Mobile Offline”. Add the Mobile Offline Profile to the Mobile Offline Profiles section:
13) Click Save and then click Publish.
14) Download the Dynamics 365 for Phones app from your mobile device’s app store and login using your Microsoft credentials after download.
15) Once you login and select the D365 model-driven app you configured for mobile offline, you should see a pop-up asking you to download data needed for offline mode. Click “Download”:
16) You should now see a bar at the bottom of the app screen indicating how much data has downloaded so far:
17) You can also view the status of your offline data by click on the menu item in the top-left corner of the app then by selecting the offline menu icon:
18) This page will tell you if your offline data has fully downloaded:
By following these simple steps, you can empower your team to continue utilizing the full capabilities of Dynamics 365 CRM, even without an internet connection. It’s an extremely useful solution for businesses with users on the go.
If your business is interested in developing more ways to make your Dynamics 365 CRM solution work more efficiently for with your unique business processes, our team is here to help. Our provides our clients with easy access to help and training along with periodic solution reviews that address problems before they arise and adapt your solution to your businesses evolving needs. to learn how we can help.
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