The Townsend Report

The discontinuation of Microsoft Parature is just over two weeks from now, so presumably nearly all customers have chosen a new software platform for customer service and migrated to that platform. Many customers likely chose Microsoft Dynamics 365.  They may have picked Dynamics 365 because it comes from Microsoft, and they can receive credit from Microsoft for any Parature subscriptions which were purchased but cannot be used due to the discontinuation of service.  They also may have chosen Dynamics because of the integration with Office 365 and other Microsoft products. It may have come as a surprise to some customers that Dynamics 365 is not at all similar to Parature, even though Microsoft progressively implemented new features in Dynamics 365 to replace the functions that Parature provided.  Here are some of the ways that they are different: Dynamics 365 is a broader platform than Parature.  In addition to customer service it offers sales, marketing, field service, projec

Updated : Since the original posting, Microsoft introduced s torage in SharePoint from Power Apps Portal .  I updated the post to reflect current support.-jt Microsoft offers Power Apps Portal (formerly Dynamics Portal) as a way for external users to access information in Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM). Portals are included in some Dynamics 365 subscriptions, and are used in scenarios such as customer service, employee self-service, online communities, and supplier portals. Dynamics Portal is also applicable for xRM solutions such as grant management, eligibility determination and other forms of case management. In portal scenarios, you may have a requirement to allow users to submit or view file attachments such as grant or credit applications, presentations, photographs and other files.  This blog post introduces some options for where and how these file attachments are stored and accessed. Microsoft supports three methods for storing file attachments in the Portal.  They

The following is a guest blog post from  Tabetha Sheaver, CEO of Plus Delta 314 . Her new company focuses on helping customers succeed with adoption of CRM and other solutions.  Does your company suffer from poor communication? Poor communication is cited as the #1 reason for employee turnover and project failures. Organizational change management is a discipline that has a number of steps and stages. What is interesting is that whether you ask organizations or change management practitioners 68% of them will say that the communication plan is the most important of the entire organizational change management program. In the next 2 minutes, I want to show you the steps so you can build a seamless communication plan that prevents employees from saying… “We have poor communication.” or “I didn’t know!” Define your message - What is you want them to know and why? Define the personas – Who will you be communicating to? Do a stakeholder assessment; identify “What’s