MB-210 Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Create and Manage Quotes

1. Dynamics 365 Quotes

Alright, so welcome to this tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn about Dynamics 365 sales Quotes. So by now you must have learned and practiced for Dynamics 65 Leads Opportunities and also how to create products and product catalog components. Let’s talk about the next component of sales cycle called Sales Quotes. So when prospect or existing customer are ready to buy and they ask for or a formal quotation with all the details that you have explained them, like product quantity, price, discount, et cetera, the sales team sends them a quote. So a code can be created in two ways. First is from an opportunity. So a code can be created from an opportunity. You don’t need to enter the product details and other listed details manually when you create a quotation from an opportunity. And a code can be revised from the opportunity screen as well.

So that is one way. The second way is you can create codes manually. So a code can be created manually without following the lead opportunity process. If you have any prospect or customer that you don’t need to qualify them, you can just directly send them quotation if they ask for. You can skip the lead and opportunity process and you can directly create a quotation and send to the prospect or customer. And all the details must be filled manually when you create a quotation. And there’s no reference of opportunity in this scenario, but you can associate an existing opportunity manually if you want. So now let’s talk about the code process flow.

So this is a standard process flow in Dynamics 365. Now, companies may change based on their requirements, but let’s look at the standard one. The first is the opportunities. So from an opportunity you can create a quotation and then you activate the code. Now, when you create a quotation, the default status of a code is draft. And when you activate the quotation, the default status becomes active and then you can print and send it to the customers. You will have active state and Active state is nonaditable. Then from there, if customer accepts your quotation, then you can create order directly from the quotation. And as you create order from quotation, the quotation is automatically closed as one. The other option is you can close a quotation manually. So when you click Close quotation, you have options to select whether the quote is lost. It means that you are no longer pursuing this quote and it is lost. You can also select Close quote as canceled. So it means quote is canceled from your side. Okay? So you can select code canceled.

Third option is you can revise the quote. It means that existing code that you have will be archived and a new version of the code will be created which can be edited and can be sent to the customer as per their requirements. So this is a standard process flow of quotation. So let’s see how you can create quotation. And then in the coming videos I’m going to show you this entire cycle. All right? So here I’m done mix 65. Let’s click quotes under collateral. And here you can see if you have any quotes available. If not, then you can click New to create a new quotation. So first let’s see how you can create a quote manually. And then I’m going to show you how you can create it from an opportunity. Now you need to make sure that the quotation form that you choose will be quote, okay? So the one that was selected was for field service. So we have field service, project service and the sales related quotation. The entity is same, only the fields and the layout will be different.

So let’s enter the name of this. So this is an example, you can select the price list. Now we are taking this example price list. And then you need to select here the potential customer which is mandatory. So you can select from contacts or from accounts. So we’ll select Adam Corporation, we save it and the quote is created. And then here you can add the products. So let’s click Add Product. And in here you can select the product similar to the opportunity. That how we did and participant. Now this is the example I’m doing because this is we are talking about business central. I’ll just change that as well for you so that there is no confusion. I’ll just go here and change it to finance and operation, okay? So this is the product that is added and here you can enter the change of quantity, say looking for ten, save it. And this count is also applied here, right?

So like this you can add products and click Add it if you want. Another thing you can do is you can get products from an opportunity. So you can open any quote and click Get Products. And here you need to select the opportunity from where you will get the products. So you can just click, say MB series C bundle, click OK and you will see all the products that were available in Opportunity is now here on this quote. So you can only get products from Opportunity. So you can do it in quotation and other sales entities but you cannot get it from any other entity, right? So that way you can create similarly, you can associate any opportunity that you have manually. Enter the description here, enter the shipping method if applicable. If not, then you can just leave it as it is. Then what is the payment terms? Any freight terms if applicable.

Then what is a bill to address for customer? That’s something you can mention. So this way you can create a quote now, right now you can see the status of the code is draft, okay? And it is editable. So you can make changes. So that way you can create a quote manually. So let’s see how we can create a code from Opportunity. So we go here, click open Opportunities. Let’s open this opportunity and it has product line as well, right? So what we will do now, we can just go to Quotes tab and from there we can click New Quote. So a new quote is created. Now you will notice that everything, what you had is populated here. You have the name, you have the opportunity, potential customer and the product details and the pricing. So everything is populated from the opportunity and you don’t need to manually do it. When this is created, you will notice that still it is in draft state. So whenever you create a code, it will be in draft stage only.

And here you can put all of the details. You can also modify the existing information. You don’t need to just go with what you have already in the opportunity. So for example, I choose here for 20, okay? I can just save it and everything else will change here. So we can just click refresh and you will see the amount in case if you want to give a manual discount percentage, you can do that. For example, I just give 10%, I save it and you will notice that the discount is given here on the quote document and not the line. So line, you can give linewise discount on each item.

If you want to give the discount on the overall quotation, you can do it here in case if you want to add any freights here, you can add it. So this is the first step of quotation. You can create a quotation manually and you can also create a quotation from an opportunity and you will see the reference here as well. So when you go to Opportunities and click Quotes, you will see all the quotes that are created against this particular opportunity. So that’s it for this video and I will see you in the next video tutorial.

2. Activate Quote and Send to Customer

All right, so welcome to this tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn code activation and how you can send a quotation to customers. So in the previous video you learned how to create a code and when you create a code, it is in Draft state and you can create code two ways. You can create it from opportunity or you can create it manually. So let’s see how we can activate a code. So, when you create a code, it is in Draft state which means it is editable. It means you can make changes and you can send a quotation to Customer after activating the code.

Now, it is possible to send a quotation when the code is in draft state. But as a best practice, it is always good to activate the code. Then only you send it to the customer because you don’t want to make any changes after you have sent to the customer because it may lead to some confusion, right? So it is always good to activate the code and then you send it to the customer. And for that you need to click Activate Quote and then the quote becomes non editable.

So currently you can see in this screenshot you have Quote in the Draft state and you can just click Activate code. Once you do that, it becomes active and becomes non editable. After you have activated the code, you can send it to the customer. So, with the new features, users can send a quotation as PDF in the email or manually. So you can click Create PDF and select the template as per your requirement. And the PDF will be created based on the Word template which we’ll explain in the coming tutorial, how you can create a Word template for a quotation and you can send it to the customer.

You can also email a quotation as PDF. Email activity is created and the PDF is added as an attachment to that email. So you can just click Create PDF and then print code to Customer or Code Summary based on your requirement. And then you will see a quotation generated like this. So let’s see how you can activate a code and send a code to the customer. All right, so here I am in Dynamics 365 and this is the code that we created from the opportunity. So, first step is we need to activate the code. So after you mention everything as per the requirements, you can add description, terms, everything, then you can just click Activate Code. So let’s click activate. Quote now the code is now activated and won’t be editable. As you can see the message now you cannot make any changes to it, right? And that is a best practice before you can send it to the customer.

After that you can click Create PDF and then you have two options. One is to print code for customer or code summary. So let’s see print code to Customer. What happens, save it and let’s open this. So a quote is generated with all the details. Now this template you can customize, we’ll see that in the coming tutorials, how you can customize this template and create add new logos or other things that you want, right? Let’s see the code summary. So let’s click code summary and save it. And you can open this and see, this is the code summary. So you can send the quotation in this format as well, right? So based on your requirement you can create quotation format, you can just create it from PDF, you can email that manually or if you want to email it from Dynamics 365, then you can click email as PDF and then you need to choose the format.

So for example, we choose this format so it is going to create an email activity and it will attach that document as the PDF so that you can send it to the customer. You can enter the email body and you can enter any of the people that you want to add and you can also define the email engagement properties here. So it is saying that it is outside business hours for demo company. We suggest you send this email your time. So this is a good way so that we get more open rates. Like customer opens this particular email on time and then they can move forward. If you send it now, then it may be the challenge for customers, like they may get a lot of emails on top of it. So when the customer starts their day, they may not see your email top on the inbox. So this is a very good strategy suggested by email engagement to send this email later. So you can click Delay Send and then you can select the time. You can also follow the activities here and you can set a reminder if they do not open by specific time, okay? And once you are done with this, you can just click Save and you can send it. So the email will be sent from Dynamics 365 with this attachment and you can manage everything in Dynamics 365. So that’s how you can activate a code and you can send it to the customer as PDF or via email. So that’s it for this video and I will see you in the next video tutorial.

3. Revise and Close a Quote

All right, so welcome to this tutorial. In the previous tutorial, you learned how you can create a code, how you can activate a code and send a code to the customer. But what if a customer request changes, right? So it is very common to request changes. Then you have negotiation with the customer and then you need to revise quotations, right? So let’s see the cost revision process flow. So when customer or prospect request changes in a quote, you can revise the code that you have created. And the code revision process will automatically create a new quote with the new revision number. So the old quote will be marked as closed. So let’s see the code revision process flow. So, first we have a code which is created in the Draft State.

Then you activate a code which is now in active state. Then you click revise. Okay? So when you click Revise Quotation, it automatically close existing code that you have and it creates a new code Revision, which is Revision One, which is in Draft Stage. Then you can make changes. And after you make changes, you can activate the code and the new revised code is activated. You can send it to the customer and move forward. So let’s see how you can do that in Dynamics 365. So this is a quotation we send to the customer. Now, customer is looking for some changes. They say, okay, we don’t need 20, we just need 15 now. So we can make changes, but we cannot make changes when it is in active state, right? So for that, we need to click Revise.

And when you click Revise, it creates a new quotation with the same quotation ID, but the revision will be one, okay? And everything else will remain the same. There will not be any changes. So we can make changes here. Say we can just say 15, save it, and in the description we can put revised to 15, okay? Whatever the changes that you want to make, you can do that. So the code is saved now. But first, let’s see what happens to the Opportunity and existing code. So we open this Opportunity and we can go to quotations. And here you will notice you have the same quote ID old one was closed. Okay? So if you open this, you can no longer make any changes to it, okay? This is marked as closed and the other quote is currently created, which is in Draft Stage.

So if you open this, this is the same quote with a new revision. So you can keep track of all the revisions when you do to a quote. If a company is not following the Opportunity Code Process, like they are not creating quotations from Opportunity, then it may be a little difficult for them to keep track of it. But it is always good to follow the Opportunity Code process because that can really help organizations in tracking and manage it well. So the revision is done. This quotation is in draft stage right now. And then we can just click Activate code and now it is activated. So we can now send this to the customer. So that’s how the court revision process work. Let’s see the next step. The next important step in the process is closing a quote, right? So let’s talk about the closing quote process.

So, users can choose to close a quote for various reasons. So there are three closing reasons available. One is lost, canceled or revised. Let’s understand court closing process flow. So when a quote is in active state, you can close a quote. One option is you can choose to revise the quotation or you can choose to don’t revise the quotation. So the old code is closed and a new code will be created in the draft state. If you have any associated opportunity to the Court, then it asks you do you want to close the opportunity? If yes, then the opportunity is closed. If no, then the opportunity remains open. So, as you can see, the court has three status reasons lost, canceled and revised. And closed opportunity condition will only be available when the court has an associated opportunity. If the court is created manually and there is no associated opportunity, you will not see this step on the left hand side, this condition of closing an opportunity.

So let’s see that in Dynamics 365. So as you can see here, this is the active quote that we created and we have revised it. So we have revision one. You can create multiple revision by clicking Revise and then this existing quote will be closed. A new quote will be created with new revision. The other option you have is Closed quote. So you can click Close quote and then you can choose whether it is lost. So if you choose it is lost, then you need to choose the close date, give the description why it is lost, and do you want to create a revised quote. So if the quotation is lost, then in most of the conditions, the create a revised quote will be no. And if there’s any associated opportunity to it, then do you want to close that opportunity, yes or no. You can do that as well.

The second option is you can choose a status reason as canceled, it is canceled by your team and the same options will be available and the other one is revised. So do you want to create a revised quotation? Yes. If no, then you can choose no. And do you want to close the associated opportunity? You can do yes or no, right? So this is the quote where you have an opportunity associated. Let’s see a quote which has no opportunity associated. Let’s click quotations and we see all quotes here. So this is a closed one, this is active and this is a draft one, which we created manually. You can see there is no opportunity here. So let’s activate this quote and the code is activated. Let’s click Close quote. And here you have options, so you can close as lost. And do you want to create a revised quotation, yes or no? Now, you can see you don’t have the opportunity option here because there is no associated opportunity, right? So you can choose the status as per your requirements. For example, we select it is lost due to late follow up.

And you want to create a revised quote not required because this is lost. We can just click okay. And now the quotation is closed. And here you can see the status as closed. So that’s how you can close a quotation. So quotation is closed automatically when a new revised quote is created. Or we can close a quotation as lost. Lost or canceled. All right, so that’s it for this video. And I will see you in the next video tutorial.

4. Convert Quotes to Orders

Alright, so welcome to this tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn how to convert quotations to orders. Okay? So when customers or prospects confirm to purchase from a company then the sales team member can create order from the existing court. They don’t need to follow the manual order creation process. They can create order directly from the court and the court will be closed as one and the new order will be created. So the newly created order will be in active state.

So we are in this process. So we have completed the lead opportunity and almost the quotation process. So now we are converting a quotation into an order. So let’s see how we can do that. So here we are. This is the quotation that is an active state. It means you have sent it to the customer. Custom has agreed and once customer has agreed you can create order from this quotation. So you can just click create order. And here it will ask you to change the status reason which will always be one the date, one, the description finalize the order.

Do you want to close the associated opportunity? Yes or no you can define here. If you choose yes then do you want to calculate actual revenue from quotation? Yes or no you can define that. If it is yes then it will take from the quotation. If no then you can enter the actual revenue manually here. Okay? So this is a very simple process. Do you want to close the existing opportunity? Yes or no? If you choose no, everything is okay. You can just click okay. If you choose yes then it asks you to calculate revenue from the quotations. If you choose yes then this revenue will go to the order. If no, then you can enter the actual revenue here.

Okay, so let’s keep this as it is. Click okay. So as you can see the message order created successfully. And here you will see the order ID generated, all the other details and the information which was there in quotation. The amount is there, right? So we have discount, we have detailed price in case if we want to make changes in the order level we can do that. So it’s not like we cannot make changes to the order. Once it is created from a quote we can.

And once we do that, we can communicate to the customer. But it is not a good practice to change order once it is confirmed. If customer is asking for any changes then you can send them another quotation and you can cancel this particular order. Similarly you can see the associated quotation and opportunity. So let’s click quotation. So the related quotation is closed as one and you cannot make any changes to it now. And if you see the opportunity, you will see the status of the opportunity is also one. It is closed, right? So the opportunity is closed.

The quotation that was associated was closed and a new order is created which is in active state. So you can see here the state is active and the status’reason for active is new. Pending or on hold. So if you’re waiting for some information from customer and you don’t want to proceed with the finalization of this order, then you can select pending or you can change hold as per your requirements. Right? So save it. So that’s how the order can be created from a quotation. So how to create an order manually? I’ll show you that in the coming tutorials. So that’s it for this video and I will see you on the next video tutorial.

5. Configure Quotes Status Reasons

All right, so welcome to this tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn how to configure code status reason. So by now you must have seen the entire process of quotation, how it works. Different status is available. So let’s look at the status and the transition and how you can manage it. So, status explains the current state of a code and it has four statuses draft, Active one and closed. So under each each state we have status reasons that give more information about the code state. So the first one is Draft. When the code is in draft, you only have one status reason as in progress. When the code is activated, it is in active state. And here you will see the default status reason is in progress. In case if you want to change it to open, you can do that.

Once the quote is closed as one, then the status reason for one is wn one, right? And if the quotation is closed, then you can choose whether it is lost, cancelled or revised.

When you click Close quote, you will see revised as the default value. But you can always make changes and select Lost or Cancel as per your requirements. Similar to the Lead and Opportunity status reasons, you can also customize the status reasons for quotation. So let’s see that in Dynamics 365, right? So you need to come to advanced settings and then customizations customize the system and expand entities. Go to quotation, open quotation, click fields and then open status. Reason?

So here you can see statuses. So we have Draft, which has in progress as status reason. For active we have in progress and Open for one, we have only one, and for closed we have these three, right? So in case if you want to modify them and make changes or add new, you can do that. So that’s how the status reasons can be managed. And you can see those status reasons for each of the code as well. So that’s for this video and I will see you in the next video tutorial.

6. Create a Template from a Quote

Alright, so welcome to this tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn how to create a template from a quote. So you must have seen in the previous tutorials where you click Create PDF and then you select a template and then it generates a format of the quotation which you can send it to the customer. So let’s see how you can customize and create the template and you can use it for your production or for your clients. Word Documents allow creating standardized documents for an entity and populate data in a structured format. So users can create Word template to create and email a code in the PDF format. And you can download the Word template from the code entity after selecting One to N to One and EndToEnd relationships.

And after you download it, you can use XML data to create the standardized code document. After you make changes, you can upload the template, rename it as appropriate, and then you can start generating documents as required. So here’s how you can do it. You can go to the quotation, you can create a template you can download after making changes, you can upload it. So when you open the downloaded Word template, a Word document, you may not see the XML mapping pane, right? Because that is required for creating the structure document and have Dynamics 365 data map to it. So to enable that, you need to enable the Developer tab in Microsoft Word. So I will show you how you can do that. You need to customize Ribbon and then you can enable the tab developer where you will see XML mapping Pane. So let’s see how you can do that in Dynamics 365. So here I am in dynamics. 365. So for that we need to have a quote.

So let’s click New to create a new quote and we give it a name. Damage is your mastery program and you can define as you want. You can select the price list and other details, select a customer and save it. Now you can add products manually, or we can get products from an opportunity. Let’s click Add Products and we select the opportunity here. Okay, so we can add here the bundle, click OK and the products are added here. Now we can just quickly rectify it, we can save it and we can go back. So this is a code that is created and now we have options to create PDF. So once you activate the code, the code is active, then you can create a PDF and you can use the format. But if you want to create a new format as for your company branding and requirements, then for that you can use Word templates and for that let’s click Download Template.

And here the quotation is selected as Entity. Then you need to choose a one to end relationship here. So for which entity you want, you can select so we need quote line. You can also define end to one relationship if you want and you can just click Download. Then you save this format and click Open. You need to click enable editing. And now if you don’t see this developer tab you need to go to File Options customize Ribbon and then here you need to search for Developer and then you need to add that to the right hand side. And here you can see the Developer tab click OK and it will be done. So you will see this developer tab and to see the XML that you have received you can just click XML Mapping pane and here you can choose Code which is the template.

So you can see the code here and also all the relationship that you have created. So code Details relationship we have it here. You can use your own template as per your requirements. So let us take an existing code template that I have taken. So this is a Word template. I can just copy this and I can just paste it here. Okay, so you can make changes, the company slogan, your date, the quotation number, everything you can define here. Okay, so this is just an example I’m showing you. So the quote number I need to define here the quote number. So here I can just search for quote ID. I can keep my cursor here. Right click Insert as rich text so the quote ID is added here. Similarly you can add your company name and other details right? So date also we can add here you can add created on this is done. Then you need to specify the details which is in line.

 So I’ll just delete this table and let’s add a table here. So we click insert. Let’s add just two three columns so which is like Product name, quantity, extended Amount okay so here we add the product name. So we need to go to the Quote details line. This is the one and here we add the product. So we can add product name, then quantity, then extended amount. So we have added this year. Now we need to select this and right click on the code details insert Repeating. So now this will repeat based on the number of records that we have here. You can put the subtotal select here total Amount and then finally you can add Total as well here.

So let’s delete it from here and let’s put this to Total Amount and this is done. You can add more information as you like. You can make changes as per your requirements. Once it is done you can close it. Click Upload Template, select the file so code this is the file, let’s click Upload and it is created. Let’s click View Template and give it a meaningful name so it’s easy to understand. So new code Format okay, so we can just save it now this is a personal template created so it will not be available to other users, if you want other users to use this and you need to ask your system administrator to create this as a system template. Okay, let’s go back to the code.

This is the code. So you click Create PDF, select a new code format, save this as PDF and open it. You will see here that it is there. And then you have the products that you selected with the amount. So you have two other products which has zero value and the total value. Here you can add more information as per your requirements. So this is just an example to show you what is possible. I would highly recommend you to create a word format as per your company needs or your clients need and then define the fields, map the fields with the quotation format, then you can upload it and users can start using it. Right, so that’s for this video. And I will see you in the next video tutorial.