When Microsoft released Dynamics 365, they really wanted to create a product that could be used by every employee in a given company. To accommodate this, they included flexible licensing. For instance, you can mix and match the modules of your choice for each individual user.
In this article, I’m going to look at the two types of user licenses in Dynamics 365: “Team Member” licenses, and “Full” licenses. I’ll explain the limitations of Team Member licenses, and help you decide which type of license you should get for the various employees in your company.
What Can Team Member Licenses Do?
Team user licenses are broadly intended for secondary users of the application; perhaps they only need some access to data for reports, or they might have to approve certain things – or maybe they need to enter time.
When you purchase a team member license in Dynamics 365, this user can “read” data from all of the Dynamics 365 applications that you have. Basically, you can “look, but don’t touch” everything in your Dynamics 365 environment.
However there are certain things that you can “touch”, or edit, in Dynamics 365 with a Team Member license. Team Members can carry out this minimal amount of tasks. I’ll break them down below:
Dynamics 365 for Team Members – Unified Operations
Dynamics 365 team members can do the following within the Unified Operations Plan (Finance and Operations, Retail, Talent):
- Record any type of time
- Record any type of expenses
- Manage personal information
- Create requisitions
- Create or edit the items related to the following capabilities: quality control, service orders
- Approve time, expenses, and invoices
Dynamics 365 for Team Members – Customer Engagement
Dynamics 365 team members can do the following within the Customer Engagement Plan (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Services):
- Write to Accounts, Contacts, Activities, Tasks and notes
- Record time and expense for Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation, and apply for projects
- Set up and manage the knowledge base and Interactive Service Hub
- Update personal information
- Reporting and dashboards
- Edit Custom Entities
- Participate as an end-consumer of Dynamics 365 services such as responding to surveys, or applying for projects
Detailed Table
Here are some more details on the abilities of Team Members in Dynamics 365:
Access Rights
|
Description
| Customer Engagement | Unified Operations |
| Access | Access Anywhere: Web App, Mobile App, Tablet App, via Outlook | × | |
| Use Relationship and Connections between records | × | ||
| General System Use | Run as an On-demand process*, Run an Automated Workflow* | × | |
| Saved views, personal views | × | ||
| Search, Advanced Find Search | × | ||
| Export data to Microsoft Excel, Perform Mail Merge | × | ||
| Read | Full Read across all Dynamics 365 Applications | × | × |
| Accounts & Contacts, Activities & Notes, Shared Calendar, Announcements | × | ||
| Knowledge Management, Interactive Service Hub for KM, User Dashboards/Reports | × | ||
| Time & Expense, Apply for Project | × | ||
| Collaboration experience: Activity Feeds & Yammer Integration | × | ||
| Use a Queue Item, start dialog* | × | ||
| Edit/Actions | Custom Entities* | × | |
| Record time and Expenses (including for projects) | × | × | |
| Manage personal info | × | × | |
| Create requisitions | × | ||
| Create and edit quality control | × | ||
| Create and edit service orders | × | ||
| Approval | Time, Expense and Invoices | × | |
| Special Portal Only Items | Employee Self Service: Via Web Only: Start Personal Support Chat & Cases | × | |
| Respond to Voice of the Customer Surveys | × | ||
| Non-Employee, Non-Outsourced users: Create & Update Opportunities, update work orders | × | ||
| Platform | PowerApps for Team Members | × | × |
*Actions can be performed only against records corresponding to entities included in the use rights
What Can Full Users Do That Team Members Can’t?
Quite a bit!
Unified Operations Full Users
In the Unified Operations Plan (Finance and Operations, Retail, Talent); user access is governed by security roles. I’m going to give some examples of security roles that you need the “Full User” for (there are a lot). If your employee fits any of the below descriptions, they probably need a full license.
| Compensation and benefits manager | Documents compensation and benefit events, responds to compensation and benefit inquiries and records the financial consequences of compensation and benefit events |
| FMLA administrator | Information and functionality around managing employees who are out an FMLA leave |
| Human resource assistant | Documents human resource events and responds to human resource inquiries |
| Human resource manager | Periodically reviews human resource process performance and enables the human resource process |
| Payroll administrator | Documents payroll events, responds to payroll inquiries and records the financial consequences of payroll events |
| Payroll manager | Authorizes activity in the payroll process |
| Recruiter | Documents recruiting events, responds to recruiting inquiries and records the financial consequences of recruiting events |
| Training manager | Documents training events, responds to training inquiries and records the financial consequences of training events |
| Retail catalog manager | At the head office, the retail catalog manager maintains and publishes retail catalogs |
| Retail merchandising manager | At the head office, the retail merchandising manager maintains and replenishes retail products and assortments |
| Retail operations manager | At the head office, the retail operations manager is responsible for all non-merchandising operations, such as configuring stores, registers, and staff |
| Retail service | Retail service account |
| Accountant | Documents accounting events and responds to accounting inquiries |
| Accounting manager | Reviews accounting, customer invoice, vendor invoice, and payment process performance and enables those processes |
| Accounting supervisor | Reviews accounting process performance and enables the accounting process |
| Accounts payable centralized payments clerk | Documents accounts payable centralized payment events and responds to centralized payment inquiries |
| Accounts payable clerk | Documents vendor invoice events and responds to vendor inquiries |
| Accounts payable manager | Reviews vendor invoice process performance and enables the vendor invoice process |
| Accounts payable payments clerk | Documents accounts payable payment events and responds to payment inquiries |
| Accounts receivable centralized payments clerk | Documents accounts receivable centralized payment events and responds to centralized payment inquiries |
| Accounts receivable clerk | Documents customer invoice events and responds to customer inquiries |
| Accounts receivable manager | Reviews customer invoice process performance and enables the customer invoice process |
| Accounts receivable payments clerk | Documents accounts receivable payment events and responds to payment inquiries |
| Auditor | This role is designed for in-house or external auditors. It provides read-only access to a majority of the system. It is also used for audit policy management |
| Collections agent | Documents collections events and responds to collections inquiries |
| Collections manager | Reviews collections process performance and enables the collections process |
| Financial controller | Reviews all accounting process performance and enables those processes |
| Tax accountant | Documents fiscal events and responds to fiscal inquires |
| Tax engine developer | Create and manage taxable document model mappings. |
| Tax engine functional consultant | Create and manage generic tax engine components (taxable document and tax document) |
| Treasurer | Documents treasury events and responds to treasury inquiries |
| Project manager | Documents the project forecast/budget events and responds to project forecast/budget inquiries.
Maintains project accounting master information and responds to project accounting master information inquiries. Authorizes project accounting process events
|
| Resource manager | Maintains project resource tasks |
| Project accountant | Maintains project accounting policies |
| Project supervisor | Enables and reviews the project accounting process |
| Purchasing agent | Documents request for quotation events and responds to request for quotation inquiries. Documents purchasing events and responds to purchasing inquiries. Maintains purchasing agreements and vendor master information. |
| Purchasing agent – Public Sector | Documents request for quotation events and responds to request for quotation inquiries. Documents purchasing events and responds to purchasing inquiries |
| Transportation coordinator | Enables inbound, outbound, rating, routing, and handling of transportation process |
| Transportation logistics manager | Set up, maintain, and configure the network
planning that are used in transportation management processes
|
| Shop supervisor | Reviews the time registration process and maintain corrections. Authorizes production feedback registrations and responds to inquiries from production. |
| Production manager | Reviews the production plan and ensures the proper resources are available |
| Production planner | Schedules and plans productions |
| Production supervisor | Enables the production process. Ensures the day-to- day execution of orders/jobs so Machine operators |
| Materials manager | Enables and reviews processes, maintains master data, and responds to inquiries within logistics and material management. |
| Warehouse manager | Enables and reviews processes, authorizes recordings, maintains master data, and responds to inquiries within warehouse management |
| Warehouse planner | Plans and authorizes warehouse work. Maintains warehouse planning master information and responds to warehouse work planning inquiries. |
| Cost accountant | Implements dimensions, policies, and reporting structures according to the strategy set by the Cost accounting manager |
| Cost accountant clerk | Performs repetitive tasks aligned with predefined policies and reporting structures |
| Cost accounting manager | Sets the overall strategy for how cost accounting is performed in the Enterprise. |
| Inventory accountant | Documents costs, inventory valuations, and cost accounting events. Responds to costs, inventory valuations, and cost accounting events inquiries. |
| Inventory accountant clerk | Authorizes and maintains costs, inventory valuations, and cost accounting calculations. Responds to costs, inventory valuations, and cost accounting inquiries. |
| Product designer | Designs new and modifies existing BOM structures |
| Product design manager | Reviews and authorizes product BOM structures |
| Process engineer | Defines processes to make new products |
| Process engineering manager | Reviews and authorizes new production processes |
| Quality control manager | Enables and reviews processes, maintains master data, and responds to inquiries within quality control |
As we mentioned, there are a LOT of security roles in the Dynamics 365 Unified Operations Plan. I’m going to move on to what the Customer Engagement Plan full users can do.
Customer Engagement Full Users
In the Customer Engagement Plan (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service), “Full Users” can edit and add records to certain entities that Team Member licenses don’t get access to. Full users can edit and create records within the following entities:
- Dynamics 365 for Sales Full Users
- Leads
- Opportunities
- Competitors
- Products
- Price Lists
- Quotes
- Orders
- Invoices
- Goals
- Territories
- Sales literature
- Marketing Lists
- Campaigns
- Business Units
- Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Full Users
- Cases
- Contracts/Contract Templates
- SLAs
- Entitlements
- Facilities/Equipment
- Services, resources, work hours
- Dynamics 365 for Field Service Full Users
- Work Orders
- Scheduling and Dispatch
- Schedule Board
- Service Agreements
- Purchase Orders
- Invoices
- Customer Assets
- Inventory
- Repairs and Returns
- Resources (Facilities/Equipment/People)
- Field Service Mobile App Access
- Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation Full Users
- Projects
- Projects Expenses and Estimates
- Resource Availability and Schedule
- Project Price Lists
- Project Contracts
- Project Invoices
- Services/Resources/Work Hours/Competencies
Conclusion
Hopefully you continued scrolling all the way down here! If you’re still wondering which type of user license a particular employee needs, ask yourself two questions:
- Does the employee need to use this software to do their job effectively?
- Will the employee spend more than 2 hours/week using the software?
If the answer to either question is yes, it’s highly likely that you’ll need a full user license. If anything, I hope this article impressed on you just how “limited” team member licenses are. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.