Understanding Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement DNA

To understand why Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is closely linked with the no-code / low-code concept, first, we must look at the platform’s key components to see what it is and what it is built on.

We know that, technically, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, and Project Operations) are model-driven apps built by Microsoft, so they are known as first-party applications. And so, as in all model-driven apps, the core component of the applications is Dataverse.

To quote the official definition from Microsoft, Dataverse is a Powerful data service and app platform to quickly build enterprise-grade apps with automated business processes.

Without going into too much detail about Dataverse, it is important to highlight the aspects that make it up:

Figure 1.1 – A high-level Dataverse description

As we can see in the preceding diagram, Dataverse offers different capabilities for the design and modeling of applications, including aspects of great importance such as security or business logic, with capabilities ranging from no-code to pro-code.

Now, considering Dataverse is a relatively new concept, let’s review the origin of this product to understand how closely it relates to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.

The XRM concept was used since the first versions of Dynamics CRM to describe the platform’s ability to model and bring to life applications that respond to different business needs in an agile, integrated, secure, and easy-to-maintain way. The definition coined by Microsoft in 2015 was XRM is a business applications framework designed to accelerate the development of line-of-business (LOB) applications through reusable applications services that can be adapted and extended to create many unique applications.

With the launch of Power Apps, Microsoft understood that it had to formalize this concept under a specific product, so Common Data Service was born. After a first attempt to build this framework from scratch, in the Common Data Service 2.0 version, Microsoft took as a base what Dynamics CRM had been having for years as the core of its applications. Finally, and after some stumbling around for a name change, Common Data Service was renamed Dataverse.

For this reason, what we know today as Dataverse is a core part of that XRM framework for building applications with a no-code/low-code approach that we have known since the first versions of Dynamics CRM. Therefore, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement has all the conditions and capabilities to be extended, without code, by using Power Platform.

To find out what Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement looks like inside, and how we can extend it without code, we simply have to access the maker portal (https://make.powerapps.com) and select the Solutions section:

Figure 1.2 – The Solutions area in the makers portal

Here, we can see the different native Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement solutions and even create one from scratch. Once created, we can add the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement components we need.

Now, you understand what the core component of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Apps is and how Dataverse makes it a no-code/low-code platform.