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Common Terms
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So far in this activity, we have looked at the concepts and features of Dynamics 365 for Sales.
We navigated through the application, explored its features and introduced the sales process.
This step provides you with a table of common terms and definitions used in the application. Understanding these terms will help you on your Dynamics 365 for Sales journey.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Account | An account represents a business or organisation. Sometimes this is a customer or a vendor. In some organisations, this might be a different grouping, for example, a family. Typically, an account will have related contact records. |
| Activities | An activity is a type of entity that offers tracking and scheduling options. By default, the system will have activities such as email, appointment and phone call already configured. An administrator can add additional custom activities to meet additional needs of the business. |
| AI | Artificial Intelligence used for analytics in Dynamics 365 for Sales. |
| Business Process Flow | A business process flow (BPF) is a type of automation in the Power platform. The BPF is placed on an entity form and offers users guidance and a predictable action plan for gathering data. Administrators can add additional automation based on triggers from the user’s interaction with the BPF. |
| COLAC | In Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, these are the primary entities to support the Sales and Customer Service applications and well as custom applications built on the Power platform. These entities are Contact, Opportunity, Lead, Account, and Case. |
| Contact | A contact represents a single individual. A contact will often have many related records such as an account and activities. |
| Customer | A customer can be either an account or a contact. Typically speaking, in a business to business scenario, this is an account; in a business to consumer scenario, this is a contact. |
| Data Model | A data model is the definition of the data and its relationships within the Dynamics 365 Power platform. |
| Entity | An entity is a container for data, similar to a table in a traditional database. Each entity contains a set of attributes. |
| Field | A single piece of data for an entity, several types are available from text to currency and numeric values. Sometimes called an attribute. |
| Lead | In Dynamics 365 for Sales, you use leads to keep track of business prospects that you haven’t yet qualified through your sales process. A lead can be an existing client or someone you’ve never done business with before, it is the entry to a new potential sale. |
| Opportunity | Like a lead, an opportunity is a potential sales transaction. Typically, an opportunity is a more viable prospect than a lead, and it will contain more information and be tracked for a longer period of time. |
| Product Catalogue | A collection of records that interact with opportunities, quotes, orders, and invoices to facilitate management of products, price lists, discounts, product families for sales transactions. |
| Records | A record is how a user sees data in Dynamics, often this is via a form or a view. |
| Sales Hub | The Sales Hub application is also known as Dynamics 365 for Sales. |
| Security Role | This is the definition of a user’s access and privileges in Dynamics. A user’s experience in an application is the result of the combined privileges of their collection of security roles. |
| Sitemap | The user’s navigational experience is defined by the Site Map. |
| Solution | A solution is a collection of customisations that can be moved from one instance to another. For example, you can create a solution in your test environment and move it to production. |
| Unified Interface | The unified client is the newest user experience in Dynamics, it was designed from the ground up with accessibility in mind. The responsive design allows makers to design once and deploy once to all users regardless of the way they consume Dynamics. |
| User | A user is a licensed individual that can interact with data in Dynamics. |
| View | A view is sometimes also referred to as a grid or a list. It is the collection of records of a single type in Dynamics. Views can be read-only or editable. Views respect the user’s security roles and only display the data the user has privileges to interact with. |
In the next step, you will be introduced to an overview of a data model.
This article is from the online course:
Dynamics 365: Customer Engagement for Sales
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Dynamics 365: Customer Engagement for Sales
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