6 ways to automate Microsoft Dynamics 365

As your business continues to grow, your sales team needs a powerful, centralized system for managing customer relationships. And Microsoft Dynamics 365 hits the spot. Built for tapping into customer behavior and optimizing engagement,  it provides the tools to track interactions, analyze data, and streamline your sales processes. 

But Microsoft Dynamics is so much more powerful when you pair it with Zapier. With Zapier's automated workflows—what we call Zaps—you can automate lead management, engage event attendees, add prospects to marketing newsletters, and more. Take a look at our most popular workflows to get started:

Table of contents

• Automatically create leads and opportunities from forms and conversion tools

• Keep your event attendees engaged

• Add leads to your email marketing campaigns

• Manage reports, records, and projects automatically

• Back up customer information

• Connect almost any app to Microsoft Dynamics with webhooks

Automatically create leads and opportunities from forms and conversion tools

The best way to improve lead conversion rates is to contact leads faster. Most companies wait hours (or days!) to reach out to new leads, resulting in lost leads—and lower revenue. Adding new leads to Microsoft Dynamics as soon as they fill out a form improves lead response rate and ensures you're tracking prospects throughout the buying process.  

Rather than entering all those new leads manually, you can upload new leads automatically from multiple sources using Zaps. For example, if someone fills out a form to download an eBook, Zapier can send that data over to Microsoft Dynamics and create a new lead. 

This happens in real-time, so you'll never miss out on a hot lead again. You can send welcome emails, start nurturing sequences, or register users for a webinar in seconds, not days. 

You'll also want to keep your sales team updated and in the loop on any changes with opportunities. For example, say a lead sends an email to another team member. You'll want to make a note of that in your CRM so all those interactions are taken into account with any follow-ups. Or perhaps another team member messages your team in Slack about an update, and you want to log it automatically in your CRM. 

With these Zaps, you can automatically update opportunities in Microsoft Dynamics the moment that activity happens in other apps. 

Keep your event attendees engaged

Organizing an online or in-person event? 

From webinars to sales demos and more, following up after the fact is the best way to convert your interested prospects. Make it easy by automatically adding each attendee to your CRM the moment they sign up for an event. That way, your sales team can reach out when the time is right. 

Add new leads to your email marketing campaigns

When you add a new lead to Microsoft Dynamics, what happens next? If you don't have a plan to nurture that lead, you could miss out on building customer relationships and conversions. After all, new leads don't become customers on their own. 

Adding new Microsoft Dynamics leads to your email marketing software allows you to nurture new leads, gather data, and segment leads into different buyer personas. By setting up automatic workflows, you can ensure no new leads fall through the cracks and build your email marketing list faster. 

Keep in mind you can use multiple Zaps in your lead workflow. For example, you might automatically add a new lead to Microsoft Dynamics when a user fills out a lead generation form, then use a second workflow to add that new lead to your email marketing platform. 

Zapier can connect Microsoft Dynamics with most major email platforms, including Active Campaign, Mailchimp, and Email Octopus. Use the workflows below to automatically create or update your email software when new leads are created or updated. 

Manage reports, records, and projects automatically

Most CRMs offer no frills, simple-to-use features to track and communicate with your leads and customers. But as your team scales and business grows, you'll likely want a more complex database that allows you to collect all kinds of data from your customers. 

From project records, unique client identifiers, and sales data, this kind of information can be super important for creating reports or analyzing past sales and trends. 

These Zaps will help you create or update client entities directly in Microsoft Dynamics 365 when new information (like a project's status) gets updated in other apps. 

Back up customer information to protect against data loss 

In business, having a backup plan is crucial to success. For example, you wouldn't go to an important client meeting without double checking your presentation is downloaded and in the cloud. Backing up customer data can provide a similar peace of mind. 

In addition to safeguarding against hardware issues, backing up customer data can protect your files from hacking, computer viruses, or power losses. Using Zaps, the process can be automated, so you're protected without even having to think about it. 

Connect Microsoft Dynamics with Google Sheets to automatically add new leads or opportunities to a spreadsheet in Google Drive. This data can also be accessed and analyzed by team members that don't have (or need) access to Microsoft Dynamics. 

Connect almost any app to Microsoft Dynamics with webhooks

Zapier connects to thousands of apps, but there may be tools you use that don't have a Zapier integration. In that case, you'll want to use webhooks that push info from your apps to Microsoft Dynamics.

For example, say you use a form tool that doesn't integrate directly with Microsoft Dynamics. Rather than manually entering data when someone fills out a form, you can create a webhook that automatically looks for new entries and sends them over to Microsoft Dynamics. Use this Zap to get started.

Work smarter (not harder) with Microsoft Dynamics automation 

Automatically sharing information between Microsoft Dynamics and other platforms helps your team focus on gathering and nurturing leads rather than data management. Using automation to sync contact information and update new leads can improve outreach time and drive revenue. 

Want to tailor your Microsoft Dynamics workflows further? Use Zapier's filters to set conditions, so they're only triggered when they meet specific conditions. For example, you can choose to only send leads from a specific city to Microsoft Dynamics or only update contact's email addresses if they're from a certain domain. 

Microsoft Dynamics 360 is a favorite platform for many enterprise companies. Zapier helps make it even more powerful. 

This article was originally published in September 2022, written by Danielle Antosz. It was most recently updated in August 2024 by Elena Alston.