Advanced Find for Analytics - Rishan Solutions

Introduction

In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations are constantly striving to leverage analytics to drive decision-making and operational efficiency. Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) offers a range of tools for business analysis, and one of the most powerful and versatile of these tools is Advanced Find. Advanced Find allows users to search for and filter data in a customizable way, providing businesses with valuable insights into customer relationships, sales performance, and other business-critical data.

Advanced Find is often considered a hidden gem for business users and analysts in Dynamics 365. It empowers users to create complex queries, analyze data, and generate reports without needing extensive technical skills. Whether you’re a business user, analyst, or developer, learning how to use Advanced Find for analytics can significantly enhance your ability to analyze and leverage the data within D365.

In this article, we’ll explore how to use Advanced Find for analytics, its key features, best practices, and examples of how it can be used to gain insights from your Dynamics 365 data.

What is Advanced Find?

Advanced Find is a built-in tool within Dynamics 365 that allows users to search and filter data across various entities. It enables users to create custom queries, refine their search results with multiple filters, and view data in a grid-like format. The tool allows non-technical users to access and analyze data quickly without writing complex SQL queries or relying on IT teams.

The results from Advanced Find can be used for a variety of purposes, such as:

Reporting
Dashboards
Custom views
Exporting to Excel
Sending emails based on query results

Advanced Find can be used with most of the entities in Dynamics 365, including accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and custom entities. It provides the flexibility to create and save queries, which can be reused as needed.

Key Features of Advanced Find for Analytics

Before diving into practical usage, it’s essential to understand the core features of Advanced Find that make it a valuable tool for analytics:

Customizable Filters and Criteria Advanced Find allows users to specify multiple conditions to refine their search. These conditions can be based on various fields within an entity, such as customer names, dates, or sales values. Filters can be combined using logical operators like AND and OR, allowing for complex queries to retrieve exactly the data needed.
Query Building Interface The user interface of Advanced Find is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, even for those without technical expertise. Users can select fields from dropdown menus, choose comparison operators (e.g., equals, greater than, contains), and easily modify queries as needed.
Save and Reuse Queries One of the key benefits of Advanced Find is the ability to save queries for future use. Once a query is created, users can save it to their Saved Views and run it again at any time. This feature eliminates the need to recreate the same search repeatedly, making it highly efficient for recurring reporting or analysis tasks.
Exporting Results Advanced Find results can be exported to Excel for further analysis or reporting. This feature allows users to easily share or manipulate the data outside of Dynamics 365. Additionally, data exported to Excel can be used to generate custom reports or visualizations, which can then be presented to stakeholders.
Create Custom Views Advanced Find allows users to create custom views that are tailored to specific business needs. These views can be applied to various entities in D365, such as customer accounts or sales opportunities. Custom views help users quickly access the most relevant data for their role.
Relational Queries Advanced Find allows users to perform relational queries across related entities. For example, users can query data from opportunities related to accounts, or activities related to contacts. This capability makes it possible to pull data from multiple entities and gain more holistic insights into customer interactions, sales pipelines, and business performance.
Aggregate Functions Advanced Find includes options for aggregation, such as counting records or summing values. This feature is especially useful for summarizing data and quickly obtaining totals or averages, such as total sales revenue or the number of open opportunities.
Security and Permissions Advanced Find respects security roles and permissions set within Dynamics 365. This means that users will only see the data they are authorized to access based on their security roles. This ensures that sensitive or confidential information remains protected.

Using Advanced Find for Analytics

Now that we’ve explored the features of Advanced Find, let’s dive into some practical examples of how it can be used for analytics in Dynamics 365.

1. Analyzing Sales Opportunities

One of the most common use cases for Advanced Find is analyzing sales opportunities. Sales managers often need to review the pipeline, track the progress of deals, and assess team performance. Using Advanced Find, you can quickly build queries that answer questions such as:

How many open opportunities are in each sales stage?
What is the total value of closed-won opportunities this month?
Which accounts have the highest-value opportunities?

For example, to find all open opportunities for a particular sales team, you can:

Navigate to Advanced Find and select the Opportunities entity.
Set the filter criteria to select only records where the Status equals “Open” and the Owner is the sales team.
Use the Group By option to aggregate the opportunities by Sales Stage.

This query will give you a breakdown of open opportunities by sales stage, which can be used for reporting or dashboard creation.

2. Analyzing Customer Engagement

Advanced Find can also be used to analyze customer engagement and interactions. For example, you might want to track:

How many customers have interacted with customer service in the past 30 days?
Which customers have received the most recent marketing emails?
What is the average response time for customer support cases?

To create an Advanced Find query for customer service interactions, you would:

Choose the Cases entity and add a filter where the Created On field is within the last 30 days.
Add another filter to select only cases with the Status equal to “Resolved.”
You can group results by Case Resolution or other relevant fields to gain insights into the resolution times or issue types.

By analyzing customer engagement, businesses can make data-driven decisions to improve customer service and retention.

3. Tracking Marketing Campaign Performance

Another valuable use case for Advanced Find is tracking the performance of marketing campaigns. Marketers can use Advanced Find to query data related to:

Leads generated from a particular campaign.
The conversion rate of leads into opportunities or customers.
The ROI of various marketing campaigns.

For example, to track leads generated from an email campaign, you can:

Choose the Leads entity.
Add a filter to include only leads where the Source equals “Email Campaign.”
Use aggregation functions to count the number of leads and opportunities generated from the campaign.

This query will help you assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and make adjustments to future strategies.

4. Analyzing Product Performance

For product-focused businesses, Advanced Find can help track product performance. You might need to answer questions like:

Which products have the highest sales volume?
Which products are associated with the most opportunities or quotes?

To query product performance in Dynamics 365, follow these steps:

Select the Products entity and apply filters to look for products associated with Opportunities or Quotes.
Aggregate by Quantity to identify top-selling products.
Filter by Opportunity Close Date to analyze sales performance over time.

This analysis can inform inventory management and sales strategies for particular products.

5. Generating Custom Reports

Advanced Find results can be exported to Excel for further analysis and reporting. For example, if you’ve created a query to find all accounts with high-value opportunities, you can export the results to Excel, apply additional filters, and create pivot tables or custom reports for stakeholders.

By combining Advanced Find’s filtering capabilities with Excel’s reporting tools, businesses can create highly detailed and customized reports that offer insights into performance across various dimensions.

Best Practices for Using Advanced Find in Analytics

To maximize the value of Advanced Find for analytics, it’s important to follow some best practices:

Start Simple: When building queries, start with simple filters and gradually add complexity. This will make it easier to troubleshoot any issues that arise.
Use Views and Dashboards: Once you’ve created effective queries, consider saving them as custom views or incorporating them into dashboards for continuous monitoring.
Leverage Relational Queries: Use the ability to pull data from related entities to gain deeper insights into customer relationships, sales pipelines, and other business processes.
Optimize for Performance: While Advanced Find is a powerful tool, querying large data sets can sometimes impact performance. Keep queries focused and avoid pulling unnecessary data when possible.
Train Users: Ensure that business users understand how to use Advanced Find effectively. Offering training or creating guides can empower users to create their own queries and analyze data independently.
Maintain Data Security: Always consider the security roles and permissions when creating and sharing Advanced Find queries. Sensitive data should only be accessible to users who have the appropriate access.