Dynamics CRM - MDM Seller Portal Collaboration Service Plan

Article
02/19/2016

Recently there have been inquiries regarding CRM and MDM with regards to the Seller Portal Service Plan. Some find that the licensing details and conditions can be more prominent/comprehensible and made available directly in portal. Therefore, we want to highlight the design of the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Sales Collaboration service plan.

The information about the licenses is captured in detail in the CRM licensing guide – available in public access.

To quote from the guide:

a. “Each CRM Online Professional USL includes rights to Microsoft Social Engagement Professional, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Sales Collaboration, Unified Service Desk, survey results, and Parature Knowledge Management” and

b. “Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Sales Collaboration is included with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional USL or as a standalone USL. However, customers need at least one USL for either Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Enterprise or CRM Online Enterprise in order to access Microsoft Dynamics Marketing with a Sales Collaboration user.”

This plan cannot function whiteout the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service being provisioned in the Office 365 tenant, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance needs to be integrated with the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing instance, the Seller Portal solution needs to be installed and configured in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance and the Seller Portal feature must be enabled in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing.

CRM Help & Training:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/dynamics/crm-customer-center/view-and-manage-marketing-communications-with-the-microsoft-dynamics-marketing-seller-portal.aspx

MDM Help & Training:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/marketing-customer-center/Dynamics-Marketing-for-Dynamics-CRM-users.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/marketing-customer-center/Use-the-Seller-Portal-to-see-and-manage-which-messages-are-reaching-your-contacts.aspx

If this feature is enabled for an Office 365 user and the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service was not provisioned in the Office 365 tenant, then the feature will attempt to provision but it will end up in a never-ending process as it cannot find the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service to complete its configuration.

The Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Sales Collaboration feature was designed to help Sales people which operate in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in their day-to-day activities, to utilize the data provided by the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service to run a more efficient sales process. For a more detailed explanation, please see a very informative presentation made by one of our program managers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsXq55ztKNQ.

This feature also helps Office 365 Administrators to better manage the license volume for the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service, meaning if a Microsoft Dynamics CRM user requires only to query certain Marketing information from Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, the Office 365 Administrator may assign to the respective user the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Sales Collaboration service plan. Please see below screenshots:

Fig. 1:

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Fig. 3:

Fig. 4:

If the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service wasn’t provisioned on the Office 365 tenant, I would recommend unchecking the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Sales Collaboration license and reassigning the license if and when the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing service has been purchased or got in trial state. To remove the license please see the following print screen:

If by any chance you have a customer that manages the Office 365 user licensing with PowerShell, please first download and install Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals RTW , Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell (64-bit version) (More info: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj151815.aspx) and follow below steps:

1. Connect to your Office 365 tenant

Connect-MsolService

2. Retrieve service plan of CRMSTANDARD subscriptions

Get-MsolAccountSku

3. Retrieve service plan of CRMSTANDARD subscriptions

Get-MsolAccountSku | Where-Object {$_.SkuPartNumber -eq 'CRMSTANDARD'} | ForEach-Object {$_.ServiceStatus}

4. Define parameter disabled while assigning subscriptions with disabled service plans

$disable = New-MsolLicenseOptions -AccountSkuId dynamics4support:CRMSTANDARD -DisabledPlans MDM_SALES_COLLABORATION, NBPROFESSIONALFORCRM

5. Set the user license service plan on disabled

Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName vladz@dynamics4support.com -LicenseOptions $disable

Dynamics CRM - MDM Seller Portal Collaboration Service Plan

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