Monitoring Dynamics 365 using Organizational Insights

Once Dynamics 365 (CRM) is deployed to Production it becomes vital to monitor the health of the environment. Statistics that need to be monitored are - 

• Performance - Identify any issues and be able to troubleshoot quickly
• User adoption - Track # of users using the system 
• Usage & storage - Track what is used and capacity

The above would have required a custom dashboard in earlier version of Dynamics CRM. In the current version 8.2 of Dynamics 365 online, Microsoft has provided an app (there is an app for that!) to help in monitoring the instance and it is available on Microsoft AppSource.

 In this blog will walk through the installation process of Organization Insights and discuss the visualization available.

How to get Organization Insights – (only for version 8.2 and above)

1. The below link is for the Org. Insights app on App source.  Make sure to log in to the App source using your System admin Office 365 account and select the Get it now button. Agree to the terms and conditions.

1. https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/dynamics-365/mscrm.04931187-431c-415d-8777-f7f482ba8095?tab=Overview

2.  Select the correct organization and add the app to D365

3. The solution will be now seen in Installation Pending status in your Office 365 > Dynamics 365 Admin > Manage Solutions view. Confirm the solution shows as installed.

4. Once the solution status is installed in Office 365– confirm in Dynamics 365 that the managed solution is available.

5. In D365 go to > Settings > Admin > System Settings > Previews > Agree to T&C and enable Org Insights Preview. (This step may not be required in the future once Org Insights is out of preview) 

6. Now you should see the Organization Insights in Settings area 

Organizational Insights consist of dashboards (web resources) that has all the information needed to monitor, troubleshoot and track all in one place. It has the following dashboards - 

1. Home - This is the default dashboard that you can customize. You can add / remove / resize / re position the charts in this dashboard. There are currently 21 charts / views available to show on the home page. 

There are Date / Time filters also available to view different data over time. 

2. Active Usage - This contains information on the active users, api calls, CRUD operations in the specified time. 

    3. System Jobs - This dashboard provides details on the workflows & system jobs.

    4. Plug-ins dashboard - This shows the execution and performance of plugins.

    5. Storage dashboard - This shows the storage used by the tenant, instances and tables in D365.

    6. API Calls Statistics - This dashboard shows the API calls performance - useful for monitoring and troubleshooting of API calls

    

     As mentioned before Organizational Insights is a very useful tool for System Admins to monitor the performance, usage and storage of Dynamics 365 instances. For consultants it is one less thing to customize for D365.

    Hope you make use of Organizational Insights and do let me know about your experience with it.

    Keep reading !!

    Mihir Shah @MihirCRM