Microsoft Dynamics 365
CRMs are useful because they let you see everything centrally. Make sure your Fundraise Up data is showing up in Microsoft Dynamics in the fashion you'd expect!
We are preparing to make the Microsoft Dynamics integration available in beta. If this has been discussed with your success manager previously, or you do so now, we will ensure you get notice when beta access is available.
Review your Microsoft Dynamics environment
To start, we recommend logging in to your Microsoft Dynamics account, and taking the following steps:
- Please verify that the Dynamics 365 nonprofit accelerator is installed in the environment you would like Fundraise Up to write records into.
- Fundraising and Engagement is not required at this time, but can be a useful extension of the tools provided by Dynamics and the nonprofit accelerator out of the box.
- Once you've done so, copy the base URL (ex: https://example.crm.dynamics.com) of that specific environment, as you will need this later.
Connect the Integration
Once you've got the URL, go ahead and log in to your Fundraise Up account to set up the Integration.
In the Fundraise Up dashboard, click on your organization's name in the top bar, then click Settings.
From the left-hand menu of Settings, click Integrations to be taken to a list of the connected Integrations for your organization's account and a button allowing you to add integrations.
To continue, click the Add Integration button, then click Microsoft Dynamics from the list.
This will take you to a screen describing the requirements of the Integration, and what it can do when connected.
To establish the connection as described, click the Connect Microsoft Dynamics button, then enter the URL of your Microsoft Dynamics environment, and click the Connect button.
Now that you've got the Microsoft Dynamics Integration connected, please feel free to review our Customizing the Microsoft Dynamics Integration article for further guidance and instructions on setting up the automatic syncing of donations.
We are preparing to make the Microsoft Dynamics integration available in beta. If this has been discussed with your success manager previously, or you do so now, we will ensure you get notice when beta access is available.
Now that you've connected your Microsoft Dynamics Integration, you can customize it further and start automatically syncing donations from your Microsoft Dynamics Integration settings page, available by clicking into Settings -> Integrations -> Microsoft Dynamics:
Review the Integration's default behavior + Enable Automatic Sync
Once you Enable Automatic Sync from the bottom of the Integration screen, our Integration's sync will run after every successful donation made via Fundraise Up, including for installments of recurring donation plans.
To the extent that we can, we seek to make our CRM Integrations fill in every standardized field and create every standardized record that's expected.
Transactions
The integration makes Transactions in Microsoft Dynamics to represent all Donations, and fills in certain key fields by default like amount and date.
Pending and successful donations will sync as Transactions with the Status (aka stateCode) of "Active", whereas refunded and failed donations will sync as Transactions with the Status of "Inactive" so that the difference in won vs lost funds is as clear as possible. If you want more granular detail, you can also always map Fundraise Up's Donation Status field to a custom field on the Transaction as well.
Contact
When a Donation is synced in and creates a Transaction in Microsoft Dynamics, the integration attempts to find an existing Contact, also sometimes called a Constituent in some places in the Microsoft Dynamics interface when the nonprofit accelerator is installed.
Microsoft Dynamics offers a tool to manage the duplicate detection rules for your environment - whatever rules you have set there are what the integration will use to attempt to locate an existing Contact!
If it does find a matching Contact, it associates the Transaction with that Contact. If it doesn't, it makes a new Contact, and associates the Transaction with the new Contact.
In both cases, we update any stock personal or contact information fields for which the Donation had updated information, such as name, email address and email mailing list opt-in status, phone number, and physical address.
Donor Commitments and Payment Schedules
The integration makes both Donor Commitments and Payment Schedules in Microsoft Dynamics to represent any synced Recurring Plan.
Any Transactions made in Microsoft Dynamics that represent installments of a Fundraise Up Recurring Plan get associated with the corresponding Payment Schedule in Microsoft Dynamics.
Nonprofit accelerator and Fundraising and Engagement
Dynamics 365 comes with a Contact object, so that is truly a standard object. However, Dynamics 365 is not inherently a fundraising platform first, and as such does not by default have objects to represent donations. The installation of the Dynamics 365 nonprofit accelerator is required specifically because it does add those objects like Transaction, Payment Schedule, and Donor Commitment, along with a range of other helpful fields and objects included in the nonprofit Common Data Model.
Fundraising and Engagement, a useful Microsoft-maintained extension which depends on the nonprofit accelerator, is not required but can be a helpful addition. We will be adding features as time goes on to better support cases where it is installed, as it adds useful features like a hard link between Transactions and Designations, and much much more!
Known Limitations
Fundraise Up integrations are API-based, meaning that the software suite that data is being synced into controls how records can be made, whether they can be edited, and so forth. Before using the Microsoft Dynamics integration, we recommend reviewing the following known limitations:
- The Microsoft Dynamics integration is only intended for use with Microsoft Dynamics environments that have the nonprofit accelerator installed.
Set your defaults using General Settings & Mapping Rules
The Microsoft Dynamics Integration page has four sections:
- the header, which shows you what account you connected,
- the tabbed area, which lets you set your sync behavior,
- the sync log, which shows you records that've synced into Microsoft Dynamics,
- and the footer, with options to run historical syncs or deactivate this Integration.
It's good to start in the tabbed area (with tabs labeled General Settings, Mapping Rules, and Special Rules) so that you can cover your most common donation scenarios. Any changes you make in any of the tabbed sections are not saved until you hit the Save Changes button at the bottom of that area.
Look over your General Settings
The screen will have the General Settings tab open by default.
Within General Settings, you'll find a few checkboxes.
Checkbox options:
- Sync test data
- Sync subaccounts
- This checkbox will only display if the Fundraise Up account connected has subaccounts.
Make some Mapping Rules
The second tab in is labeled Mapping Rules - it allows you to make 1-to-1 mappings of fields in Fundraise Up to fields in Microsoft Dynamics.
As covered above, some mappings are already built-in by default (i.e. donation amount to donation amount), so this area is really for defining what additional things should be true most of the time.
To add a rule here, you'll click the Add Rule button to start choosing what Fundraise Up object the mapping should start with.
You can modify existing rules by clicking on any of the object or field buttons that represent the mapping, or delete them by clicking the grey x on the right-hand side of that rule's row.
When talking about mappings, we'll follow the format:
Object in Fundraise Up: Field in Fundraise Up -> Object in Microsoft Dynamics: Field in Microsoft Dynamics
The available Fundraise Up entities to map data from are:
- Account
- Campaign
- Designation
- Donation
- Checkout Question
- Custom Field
- UTM Parameter
- Static Value
- This allows you to enter a specific value to pass in for every Donation.
The available Microsoft Dynamics entities to map data to are:
- Transaction
- Donor Commitment
- Payment Schedule
Sync your historical data
Once you chose to Enable Automatic Sync, all new donations will have started coming over to your Microsoft Dynamics account, generating records as applicable.
How do you get past donations and donor data in? What about changes that've been made to your mappings; how do you get that new data in?
For scenarios like those, we offer the ability to run a sync that'll add any new records and update any previously synced ones. In the footer section of the Microsoft Dynamics Integration page, you'll find a button labeled Synchronize in a section that summarizes the last sync run.
Clicking that Synchronize button will launch a popup labeled Synchronize Donations, which will provide you the following options:
- All donations
- Specify period
- This will offer a date range selector, so that you can sync only donations made in your date range of choice.
Once you click Start Synchronization, the sync will begin.
Refreshing the page and scrolling back down to the footer will show you the progress/results of that latest manually-started sync.
Note: This mass sync option will only sync live Donations. To sync a test Donation historically, go to that test Donation's record in Fundraise Up and use the Synchronize button there.