Data Migration Part IV : Data Cleansing

Data quality is determined by 3 key factors: Accuracy, Completeness and Relevancy/Validity. Data Quality is the most important aspect for any enterprise as it enables a business to make more informed decisions, better audience target, effective usage, and better user experience.

As an enterprise, any opportunity to improve on Data quality should be leveraged and Data Migration is one the best time to do a reset and clean the data. So let’s look into what are a few common data quality issues and how we deal with them when using Dynamics 365. Continue reading “Data Migration Part IV : Data Cleansing”

Dynamics 365 : Data Migration demystified-Part I

Data migration is often overlooked in Project implementation primarily because the project team is focussed on application development and customization which takes away the priority of data integration and data migration. As data migration is planned to be the last activity on the project it also gets most impacted from any budget cuts and application scope increase. 

Talking about the budget, many implementation’s approaches to data migration is for data migration to be done using the Import and Export feature of Dynamics 365 CE over the weekend before Go Live, this works sometimes but is a recipe of disaster in most cases. 

When implementing Dynamics 365 Project, configuration and customization to meet the users need is only half the battle. Data migration is key to getting the right head start for users to start using the application. In this blog series, I will focus on data migration, the challenges, strategy, Process, Tools and my own learnings over the years. Let’s start with what is Data migration?

Continue reading “Dynamics 365 : Data Migration demystified-Part I”

Migrate Adxstudio portals to Dynamics 365 Portals

It’s been a more than a month since legacy Adxstudio portals support officially ended.  Many customers and partners are still using Adxstudio Portals and yet to migrate to Dynamics 365 Portals or its short-term alternatives( Microsoft Open Source Portals, xRM Portals Community Edition).

As there are multiple Portals available, there is always a question on which one to migrate to, we currently have 4 different versions of Portals:

    • Dynamics 365 Portal Capabilities is the only viable long-term option, it’s Dynamics 365 Online dependent and only available as Software as a Service solution. This is the version you want to be using.
    • Microsoft Open Source Portals is the 8.3 version of Dynamics 365 Portals, it’s completely open sourced and released under MIT license. This is a one-time release and no future bug fixes, updates or patch will be provided. It is suited as a stepping version before upgrading to CRM Portals. I wouldn’t recommend being on this version unless you and your team has an in-depth understanding of the Portals and can self-support.
    • xRM Portals Community Edition is the githubbed version of Microsoft Open Source Portals, it is hosted by KPMG Adoxio and supported by Adoxio and Portals community, This is the version for customers or Partners who need sometime before moving to Dynamics 365 online or are waiting for new releases/features on Dynamics 365 Portals. This is not an on-premises option for Dynamics Portals but a short-term interim self-hosted option.
    • Adxstudio Portals, Though the support for Adxstudio Portals has ended, if you happen to have a perpetual license you may continue to use the product knowing it’s not supported.

The only long-term option is to upgrade to Dynamics 365 Portals. Dynamics 365 Portals and AdxStudio Portals don’t have same Portal website offering, some of the key differences are: