Should CRM Users Be Measured on Data Quality KPIs?
Most Organisations agree that high-quality data is essential for getting value from Dynamics 365. Accurate customer information supports better reporting, improved customer experiences, more reliable forecasting, and increasingly more effective AI-driven insights. Yet many Organisations continue to struggle with incomplete records, duplicate data, missing activities, and inconsistent data entry practices. This raises an interesting question: Should CRM users be measured on data quality KPIs? Consider a situation many Organisations have experienced. A sales team is expected to maintain customer records, update opportunities, and log key customer interactions in Dynamics 365. However, users are primarily measured on revenue, pipeline growth, and sales performance. As a result, CRM updates are often treated as a secondary task. During a quarterly sales review, leadership discovers that several opportunities forecasted as active were closed weeks earlier, while others had not been updated since the previous reporting cycle. Customer records are missing key information, activities have not been logged consistently, and reporting accuracy begins to suffer. The issue is often viewed as a reporting problem, but in reality, it starts with the quality and consistency of the data being maintained in Dynamics 365. To address these challenges, some Organisations introduce data quality metrics such as: Record completeness Duplicate record reduction Activity logging compliance Opportunity update accuracy Customer data validation rates Supporters argue that what gets measured gets managed, and that data quality should be considered part of everyone's responsibility. Others believe that introducing data quality KPIs may create an additional administrative burden, reduce user adoption, and shift focus away from core business objectives. There is also the question of whether users should carry the full responsibility. Modern Dynamics 365 environments include validation rules, duplicate detection, business process flows, Power Automate workflows, and governance frameworks that can help improve data quality. Some Organisations, therefore, argue that technology and governance should do more of the heavy lifting rather than relying solely on user behaviour. From your experience: Should CRM users be measured on data quality KPIs? Have data quality metrics improved CRM adoption or data accuracy in your Organisation? What KPIs have been most effective? Is data quality primarily a user responsibility, or should technology and governance frameworks carry most of the burden? Have you found a balance that improves data quality without creating additional friction for users? I'm interested in hearing how different Organisations balance user accountability, adoption, and data quality within Dynamics 365 environments.
Excel Nested Arrays: Find the Nesting Depth of Uniform and Ragged Arrays ARRDEPTH() & ISRAGGED()
Hey everyone! I’ve been diving deep into Excel’s new nested arrays features lately, and I absolutely love the flexibility they bring to data structuring. However, managing them can get a bit tricky, so I figured I’d build some specialized tools to handle them seamlessly. Public Interfaces & Arguments =ISRAGGED(array) Argument Description Default Behavior array Target nested structure to validate. Required =ARRDEPTH(array, [is_ragged]) Argument Description Default Behavior array Target nested structure to measure. Required [is_ragged] TRUE: Scans all branches for the deepest path. FALSE: Speed test on the first path only. FALSE (Omitted) TL;DR (What makes it tick): Function Name Type What It Does ARRDEPTH Public UI Returns nesting depth. Supports deep checking or fast linear testing. ISRAGGED Public UI Structural validator. Returns TRUE if array branches have uneven nesting. ANALYZE_NESTING Hidden Core Engine Multi-process recursive parser that tracks tree structure geometries. LINEARDEPTH Hidden Utility High-speed depth checker that evaluates the first element path exclusively. You can get both functions from my GitHub Gist: https://gist.github.com/Medohh2120/9cdf939036942c9672c57ccd6de696d3Adoption idea: start Copilot Notebooks with one notebook per customer account (sales team example)
I'm a PM on Copilot Notebooks at Microsoft. One pattern we've seen work with sales teams is to start narrow: one notebook per customer account, with the account's CRM notes, decks and emails added as references, shared with the account team. Meeting prep, the team's input and meeting follow-ups (via Capture in OneNote) then all live in one place. Why it works well as a first notebook: It has a clear, ongoing purpose, so people come back to it every week. The content already exists (CRM notes, decks, emails), so nobody starts from a blank page. The whole account team benefits, so sharing it feels natural. Here's a two-minute story of what that looks like: https://youtu.be/Al2VddNfC-o (The story and companies are fictional, inspired by real workflows; some features may be in preview; illustrations and narration were made with AI tools.) Question for champions: when you roll out Copilot Notebooks, what do you recommend as someone's first notebook: per project, per customer or per team? Getting started with Copilot Notebooks: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/get-started-with-microsoft-365-copilot-notebooks
Feature Request: Enhanced Text Field Support in Custom Fields for Premium Plans
Hello Microsoft Planner Team, As an Engineering Manager at LinkedIn, I've recently started using Microsoft Planner Premium for my engineering team's sprint management. While the custom fields feature has been incredibly useful, I've encountered significant limitations with the "Text" field type that are impacting our workflow. Current Issue: I created a custom field called "Scrum Notes" to capture detailed sprint-related information. However, when I enter multi-line text, it automatically converts to a single line, making it difficult to read and organize structured notes. Feature Requests: I would like to request three enhancements for custom fields with "Text" type: Multi-line Text Support: Enable newline characters (\n) to be preserved when entering text in custom fields. Currently, all text is collapsed into a single line, which severely limits readability for longer notes. Expandable Text Preview: Display up to 300 characters in the Grid view with an "expand" or "show more" option when clicked. This would allow teams to see a preview without cluttering the view, while still being able to access the full content when needed. Rich Text Formatting: Add support for basic text formatting (bold, italics, bullet points) within text-type custom fields, similar to the formatting available in the Comments section. This would significantly improve the organization and readability of notes, especially for technical documentation like scrum notes, technical decisions, or implementation details. Use Case: Our team uses the "Scrum Notes" field to document: Sprint planning decisions Technical implementation notes Blockers and dependencies Action items from standups Without multi-line and formatting support, these notes become difficult to parse, forcing us to use external documentation tools, which defeats the purpose of having centralized task information in Planner. Impact: These enhancements would make Microsoft Planner significantly more powerful for engineering teams and other technical users who need to capture detailed, structured information directly within their project management tool. I'd appreciate any feedback from the community on whether others are experiencing similar limitations, and if there are any workarounds currently available. I've also submitted this feedback through the in-app feedback mechanism. Thank you for considering this enhancement!Power BI and Fabric team ownership in extended engineering models
When an internal BI team already owns Power BI and additional engineers support Fabric development, how do you divide responsibilities? For example, should the extended team own data pipelines and notebooks while the internal team owns semantic models and reports, or is it cleaner to assign ownership by project? We have encountered this at Datatobiz when implementation work moves into ongoing development and support. Thoughts?
Is using Planner for tracking OKRs a good idea?
So our team has been trying to use Planner to track OKRs. We set up buckets for each objective and tasks for key results. It kinda works for a small team but now that leadership wants to roll it out company wide, its getting messy. Theres no way to show progress rollups from team-level OKRs to company-level ones, no percentage tracking on key results, and managers cant see a consolidated view across teams. Has anyone found a decent way to make Planner work for OKR tracking at scale?Excel - single window, more files
How difficult it is to convince Microsoft team to fix major problems? I've recently switched to new Excel and I'm ...amazed. We used to be able to open multiple files, sheets in the same window. Opening multiple windows was possible as well. Now everything, even the same sheet is in new window. Every new window has it's own tool ribbon. Which is taking space. Ribbons do not synchronize - also slowing down the work. I get that there is and idea behind it. Probably more stable, easier to code or something entirely different that I do not know. But this is so annoying to work with. Is it possible to convince Microsoft that they should find a solution to problem they created?Ability to send an email to Planner and create a Task
Is this on the roadmap? Our organization is starting to lose the battle of using Planner instead of Trello, pretty much because of the sole feature that Trello allows you to send an email to a specific email address and it will automatically create a Task. It is quite a simple model: Email Subject = Task Title Email Body = Task Description Email Attachments = Task Attachments This would be a massive win for adoption. Looks like this is the entry with the most votes, but there are about 100 of them that individually are asking for the same/similar functionality: https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum/suggestions/13076007-ability-to-add-email-as-planner-task
I designed an OS-tan mascot for Microsoft PC Manager! (PC Manager-tan)
Hello! I’m a huge fan of Windows 11 and a daily user of Microsoft PC Manager. Since the app is so incredibly light and useful, I thought it would be fun to give it a face. So, I designed an "OS-tan" style mascot character for it: "PC Manager-tan"! I wanted to share my concept art and ideas with the community. Here are some of her design details: [Design Inspiration & Colors]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Signature Colors: The green and blue color scheme is heavily inspired by the official Microsoft PC Manager logo. Hair Details: She has a blue 'ahoge' (cowlick) and a blue heart hairpin to represent the distinct dots in the app's logo. Outfit: A Full-Body Style energetic cleaning assistant wearing a cozy cable-knit sweater, a green plaid skirt, and round glasses. Slogan: "We'll clean up your PC for you" [Her Equipment & Skills]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digital Broom (Boost): Her main tool. With one click, she aggressively sweeps away unnecessary RAM usage and temporary files. Sandbox Claw Glove (Security): A mechanical claw she uses to safely catch malware and inspect system health. AI Utility Bag: A handy bag filled with all the convenient AI tools she needs to assist the user. I had a lot of fun making this, and I hope you guys like her! What do you think? It would be amazing if the MS dev team actually saw this! 😂How we’re using Microsoft 365 to reduce merchant QBR prep from hours to minutes
Hi Champions, I wanted to share a practical adoption pattern we have been working on for account teams that prepare recurring customer or merchant business reviews. One workflow we kept seeing was quarterly business review prep: an account manager starts with a CSV or TSV export, then manually rebuilds similar scorecards, summaries, PowerPoint slides, and follow-up notes for many accounts. It is important work, but a lot of the prep is repetitive. We built https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/WA200010195as a Microsoft 365 agent to explore how much of that workflow can stay inside the tools business users already use. The current workflow is: - Start from a merchant performance export in CSV or TSV format, either from OneDrive or pasted directly in chat. - Generate executive QBR scorecards for one merchant or multiple merchant accounts in a batch. - Include payments-oriented metrics such as transaction volume, authorization rate, top decline reason, chargeback rate, interchange downgrade, and loyalty spend lift. - Create a PowerPoint scorecard for each account. - Organize the run in OneDrive with an index, per-account status, and an optional ZIP bundle. - Draft a follow-up email that the user can review and send from Outlook. The adoption lesson for us has been that Copilot and agents land best when the workflow is narrow, familiar, and already painful. “Prepare this quarter’s account reviews from the export I already have” is much easier for business users to understand than a broad AI promise. I would be interested to hear how other Champions are approaching similar recurring review workflows. Are your teams using Microsoft 365 Copilot or agents for business-review prep, customer success workflows, sales/account planning, or operational reporting? For anyone curious, the app is listed on Microsoft Marketplace here: https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/WA200010195.
