Introduction to Predictive Lead Scoring
Problem Definition: An organisation is always looking for improving its sales or efficiency of work. If an executive can foresee which lead is most likely going to be converted to an opportunity it would help the executive to focus and prioritise the leads accordingly. Predictive lead scoring uses a predictive machine learning model to calculate a score for all open leads. The score helps salespeople prioritize leads, achieve higher lead qualification rates and reduces the time that it takes to qualify a lead. Using this score, you can: Identify quality leads and convert them into opportunities Spend time on leads that have low scores and convert them into possible opportunities For example, say an executive has 2 separate leads named Lead 001 and Lead 002 in his/her CRM to work upon. Post implementation of lead scoring model, scoring model applies a score of 90 for Lead 001 and 30 for Lead 002. By looking at the score, you can predict that Lead A has a greater chance of being converted into an opportunity, and you can engage it. Also, there are other factors that can help you to improve the score such as by referring at the top reasons influencing the score and deciding whether to improve this score. Important Notes and Prerequisites before using predictive Lead scoring: Advanced Sales Insights features must be enabled in your CRM system Your CRM must have minimum of 40 qualified and 40 disqualified leads within the past 18 months If you’re using predictive lead scoring that pertains to a version prior to 2020 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365, delete the model. Otherwise, the previous version of the model will be applied on all leads in your organization, and the newly generated models won’t have any effect on the leads From 2020 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365, the application writes the lead scoring related data to msdyn_predictivescore table and has stopped writing to the lead table. This table is common for both lead and opportunity scoring. You can add custom fields to generate an accurate model for predictive lead scoring. The custom fields can be specific to your organization so that you can decide the impact of the outcome. Lead Scoring Grading: You can set the grading points structure as per your feasibility. The figure below shows that the grading points are editable. Lead Scoring Widget: This widget displays your lead score depending on the factors mentioned in your model. Below is the location on your lead form where lead scoring widget is visible. One would see the below image when you do not have a published working Lead scoring model in the system. Once you have the working lead predictive logic implemented, you will see the lead score widget as below. The image reference https://docs.microsoft.com/ Conclusion: PredictiveLead scoring would help organisations to focus on high scoring leads and also would let business understand the reasons behind low scoring or low success rates of lead conversion to an Opportunity. This would immensely help the organisations to take appropriate steps in improving the performance Thank you, Ashitosh for bringing this topic to light.
Why were Modern Approvals introduced for Project Operations?
Problem Definition: Time entry approvals usually used to be an issue while approving when they were bulk in number. When the Project Managers (PM) used to approve more than 100-to-200-time entries, a lot of them used to get stuck in the queue and there used to be a rigorous process to go back and check which time entries are approved and which are still pending to be approved even after approving all of them. Solution: Microsoft has introduced Modern Approvals for such issues and so has introduced it for Project Operations. The way it works is, first we need to enable it on the Project Operations environment. PN: once enabled, cannot be disabled. Then we need to set threshold. This threshold decides the number of time entries to be approved synchronously. The prescribed Threshold from Microsoft is 5. Now when the project managers approve a set of time entries, let’s say for e.g., 100-time entries they are all put in an approval set and are tried to approve again and again until all the time entries are approved successfully. Below is where you can check the project related approval sets. Nevertheless, there can be some instances where there are failures in approving the time entries. These failures logs are also maintained in the approval set logs. When the time entries are approved, and the approval set record is created, it is in the active state and can be viewed in the active approval set’s view over the project. As soon as all the time entries in the approval set are approved, the state of these approval sets become inactive and can be viewed in the inactive approval set’s view over the project. Conclusion: Modern approvals have turned out to be a boon for the project managers when it comes to this tedious process of time entry approvals and can now trust the system that all the time entries will be approved successfully.
Unwinding Sub-Contracting in Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Problem Definition: Sub-Contracting was a much-needed functionality in any project management platform which Project Operations was missing. With the latest updates from Microsoft, we now have Sub-Contracting feature available which can leverage creating contracts for the Sub-Contractors\Vendors with whom we work. Solution: Let’s look upon how do we enable this feature on Project Operations environment and create a Subcontract. Please follow the below steps to enable, configure and then create a Sub-Contract for a vendor. PN: This feature is still in preview and hence, there are continuous updates coming from Microsoft to enhance this feature. Enabling: The first step is to enable the Sub-Contracting feature in Project Operations. In order to enable this feature, Step 1: Navigate to Settings Area and then go to Parameters and Open the Parameter record as shown below. Step 2: Click on “Enable SubContracting” from the Feature Control button in the Ribbon Control. Just remember, once this feature is enabled, it cannot be disabled. There is no harm with that said in enabling this feature. When the Sub Contracting is enabled, you shall start seeing Purchasing section in the Projects Area as shown below. The above 2 steps will enable SubContracting feature on your Project Operations environment. Also, this feature is only available for now on the Project Operations Lite deployment version. This will also slowly get enabled for the integrated deployments of Project Operations. Configuration: There are some configurations that we need to do or I must say some details that are required to create the Sub Contracts should be present. Let’s look at what are those. Config 1: Create an account of type Vendor. Config 2: Attach the related Resources (So called Contacts here) to the Vendor created as shown below. Config 3: Create a Vendor Price List. Create a Contract: Let’s start creating a Sub Contract. Step 1: Navigate to Purchase Section on Project area ,click on Sub Contracts and click on New Button as shown below: Step 2: Fill in the information in General Tab as shown below. Step 3: Create the Subcontract Lines and fill in the details in the Quick Create form that opens up as shown below. Step 3: Add a Sub Contracting Price List as shown below: Your Sub Contract is ready. Now when you assign the resource from a Vendor onto the project, this Subcontract comes to light. When there are now time entries from this resource the subcontract shows actuals over it.
Project Task opening issue resolved by Microsoft in Dynamics 365 Project Operations
We often used to face issues while opening the Project Tasks in Project Operations (PO). We had to play a lot of tricks in order to open the schedule. Microsoft is consistently putting in efforts on making Project Operations, one of its successful tools to enrich it with tons of brilliant features and make it more user friendly. One of the major feature resolutions provided in the latest release provided by Microsoft was for opening the Project Tasks (Schedule) Seamlessly. Of course there are certain tweaks to be made in order to make it work in your browser. In this blog we will look at those tweaks and settings that would be needed to enable that feature.
Upgrade to Dynamics 365 Project Operations from Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation
Some exciting news for the users who are planning to upgrade from Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation (PSA) to Dynamics 365 Project Operations (PO). Its been a long awaited news Dynamics community and PSA/PO fans are waiting for. Well Microsoft has pulled up the curtain on how the release will happen. First news before we look in to how the upgrade will work is that it will work for Dynamics 365 Project Operations Lite Deployment customers only. It will be released with 2021 release wave 2. The release will happen in 3 stages: Stage 1: December 2021 Microsoft is targeting the customers that do not have any dependencies on WBS Structure or any of the related entities to WBS. Stage 2: In April wave, Microsoft intends to support the customers who have less than 500 tasks in WBS Stage 3: Post April wave, customers who have bigger projects or more than 500 tasks will be taken up. Conclusion: Transformation has begun and is soon going to be available. Customers can slowly start to migrate based on where they actually stand with the project size and needs.
Quick Tip: How to apply non-working hours from Calendar Template in PSA / Project Operations
Problem Definition: It is generally thought by Project Operations / PSA (PO/PSA) users that the non-working hour cannot be copied via 1 Template resource to another resource when the Calendar Template is assigned. It is only assumed that the working shifts and the weekends marked are the only ones that gets copied. But that is not the case. There is a minor catch in how we do it. Following tip will help you make the non-working hours copy when a Calendar template is applied to a resource that contains a template resource which has the non-Working hours in the Work hours. Solution: Perform the following steps to get to the required solution mentioned in the Problem Definition. Step 1: Add a non-working hour in the template of the resource by following the screenshots below: Step 2: Click on the Template Resource and add a non-working hour as shown below in the Screenshot. Step 3: Select the Date range that you want to mark as non-working days. Mark them as all day. In my case, I have selected 12-July as the non-working day. The Calendar gets marked with a non-working day as shown below. Step 4: Navigate to the Calendar Template again and Remove the Calendar Tempalte Resource and Save the Calendar Template as shown in the below screenshot. Step 5: Re-add the same Calendar Template Resource again and Save the Template. Step 6: Navigate to the Resource entity and select the resources whom you want to apply the Calendar Template and apply as shown in the below screenshot. Step 7: Final step to validate if the resource which was applied with the Calendar Template is having those non-working hours as the Calendar Template resource had. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA/PO for last 4 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation. This helps in keeping all the ONLY ACTIVE projects in the view and the ones that needs our action and attention.