Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integration Services

What a Dynamics 365 integration usually has to connect

Companies on Dynamics 365 tend to be Microsoft shops through and through. Email runs on Outlook, chat on Teams, files on SharePoint, reporting on Power BI, and somewhere in the building a SQL Server database still powers a line of business app written fifteen years ago. Dynamics 365 Sales or Customer Service sits in the middle, and the job is to make it agree with everything around it.

The most common requests Tepia receives:

• ERP alignment: accounts, products and orders shared between Dynamics 365 Sales and Business Central or Finance and Operations, including credit holds that should stop a rep from promising delivery.
• Legacy systems: a homegrown estimating, scheduling or production system on SQL Server that needs to read and write CRM records.
• Field and customer apps: technicians, reps or customers who need a mobile app that works with Dataverse data.
• Collaboration: case escalations or large opportunities that post to a Teams channel with a link back to the record.

Tepia starts by inventorying every system that touches customer data, because most Dynamics problems are really ownership problems between two or three of them.

Integration options on the Microsoft stack

Microsoft gives you many ways to move data, and they overlap. Tepia chooses per data flow based on volume, latency and who will maintain it after launch.

Tepia commonly pairs Power Automate for admin owned steps with Azure Functions for the heavy lifting, so business users keep control of simple rules and engineers own the parts that need tests. See our ERP integration services for more.

When Power Apps is not enough for your team

Power Apps is a reasonable first step for internal forms, and Tepia often recommends keeping simple ones. Teams outgrow them in predictable ways: a canvas app slows down as screens and data sources pile up, field staff lose signal in basements or rural sites, or customers need an experience that looks like your brand rather than a Microsoft form.

In those cases Tepia builds a custom app that still treats Dataverse as the system of record. Technicians sign in with Entra ID, the app caches the records they need for the day, and changes sync back through the Web API with conflict rules agreed in Design. Customer facing apps can use a separate identity provider while a backend service on Azure writes to Dataverse on their behalf.

A typical example: an HVAC distributor whose counter staff and outside reps both work from Dynamics. Counter staff are fine in the model driven app on a desktop. Outside reps need an iPad app that shows the account’s open orders, recent returns and stock at the nearest branch in two taps, even in a customer’s mechanical room. Tepia builds that app on the same Dataverse tables, so sales managers keep one pipeline and one set of reports.

Our comparison of Power Apps vs a custom app walks through the tradeoffs, and our SSO and identity integration page covers Entra ID setup in depth.

How Tepia approaches Dynamics 365 integration

Tepia runs its six phase process with Microsoft specifics built in. A US based project manager coordinates with your IT team, your Dynamics partner if you have one, and your business owners.

1. Discovery: review of solutions, publishers, plugins, flows and environments, plus Azure subscription access and API usage. Deliverables are an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories such as a credit hold in Business Central blocking a new order in Dynamics.
2. Design: entity mapping, ownership rules, managed solution structure and wireframes for any new app or model driven form changes.
3. Development and Testing: work in a dedicated sandbox environment, an Alpha in a development environment and a Beta in a production copy, with test plans for throughput under service protection limits, plugin failures and security roles.
4. Training: sessions for admins on managed solutions and monitoring, and for users on new screens.
5. Launch: deployment through managed solutions and Azure DevOps or GitHub pipelines, data backfill and support reps during cutover.
6. Support: bug tracking, feature requests and checks ahead of Microsoft’s twice yearly release waves.

Discovery is typically 1 to 3 months, development and QA 2 to 6 months, and launch around a month. Read more about our process.

Upgrading older Dynamics CRM or building custom around it

Some teams reach Tepia still running Dynamics CRM on premises, with years of customizations nobody fully documents. Moving to Dynamics 365 online is often the right path, but it is a good moment to ask which customizations still earn their place. Tepia reviews each plugin, workflow and custom entity, retires what nobody uses and rebuilds the rest in supported ways.

Other teams decide part of the business needs its own software. A manufacturer might keep Dynamics 365 for sales and service while Tepia builds a dealer ordering portal or a production scheduling tool that reads accounts from Dataverse. Fewer still move off Dynamics entirely, and Tepia supports that with a CRM data migration that preserves history, owners and relationships.

Whatever the direction, Tepia keeps everything inside managed solutions and source control, so your next partner or internal developer inherits a documented environment instead of untracked changes made directly in production.

If you are weighing those paths, our Dynamics vs custom CRM guide lays out the decision, and you can talk to Tepia about your environment directly.

Frequently asked questions