Microsoft Dynamics was a line of Business Applications, containing
enterprise resource planning (ERP) and
customer relationship management (CRM).
Microsoft marketed Dynamics applications through a network of reselling partners who provided specialized services. Microsoft Dynamics formed part of "Microsoft Business Solutions". Dynamics can be used with other Microsoft programs and services, such as
SharePoint,
Yammer,
Office 365,
Azure and
Outlook. The Microsoft Dynamics focus-industries are retail, services, manufacturing, financial services, and the
public sector. Microsoft Dynamics offers services for small, medium, and large businesses.
Business Central Business Central was first published as
Dynamics NAV and
Navision, which Microsoft acquired in 2002.
Navision Navision originated at PC&C A/S (Personal Computing and Consulting), a company founded in
Denmark in 1984. PC&C released its first accounting package,
PCPlus, in 1985—a single-user application with basic accounting functionality. There followed in 1987 the first version of Navision, a
client/server-based accounting application that allowed multiple users to access the system simultaneously. The success of the product prompted the company to rename itself to Navision Software A/S in 1995. The Navision product sold primarily in Denmark until 1990. From Navision version 3 the product was distributed in other European countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom. In 1995 the first version of Navision based on
Microsoft Windows 95 was released. In 2000, Navision Software A/S merged with fellow Danish firm Damgaard A/S (founded 1983) to form NavisionDamgaard A/S. In 2001 the company changed its name to "Navision A/S". On July 11, 2002, Microsoft bought Navision A/S to go with its previous acquisition of
Great Plains Software. Navision became a new division at Microsoft, named
Microsoft Business Solutions, which also handled
Microsoft CRM. In 2003 Microsoft announced plans to develop an entirely new
ERP system (Project Green). But it later decided to continue development of all ERP systems (Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL). Microsoft launched all four ERP systems with the same new role-based user interface,
SQL-based reporting and analysis,
SharePoint-based portal,
Pocket PC-based mobile clients and integration with
Microsoft Office.
Dynamics NAV In September 2005, Microsoft re-branded the product and re-released it as Microsoft Dynamics NAV. In December 2008, Microsoft released Dynamics NAV 2009, which contains both the original "classic" client, as well as a new
.NET Framework-based
three-tier GUI called the RoleTailored Client (RTC). In first quarter of 2014 NAV reached 102,000 current customers. In 2016, Microsoft announced the creation of
Dynamics 365 — a rebranding of the suite of Dynamics ERP and CRM products as a part of a new online-only offering. As a part of this suite, the successor to NAV was codenamed "Madeira".
Dynamics 365 Business Central In September 2017 at the Directions conference, Microsoft announced the new codename "
Tenerife" as the next generation of the Dynamics NAV product. This replaced codename "Madeira". On April 2, 2018, Business Central was released publicly and plans for semi-annual releases were announced. Business Central introduced a new
AL language for development and translated the codebase from Dynamics NAV (
C/AL).
Dynamics SL, Dynamics GP, Dynamics C5 Several variants of the Dynamics brand have migration paths to Business Central with most having not had a new release since 2018. The later releases of the SL, GP, and C5 products adopted the Dynamics NAV Role-Tailored Client UI which helped pave the transition to the Business Central product.
History of Dynamics C5 Dynamics C5 was developed in Denmark as the successor to the DOS-based Concorde C4. The developing company Damgaard Data merged with Navision in 2001 which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft Microsoft in 2002 rebranding the solution from Navision C5 to Microsoft Dynamics C5. The product handles currently more than 70,000 installations in Denmark.
History of Dynamics SL Based in Findlay, Ohio, Solomon's roots go back more than 35 years, when co-founders Gary Harpst, Jack Ridge and Vernon Strong started TLB, Inc. in 1980. TLB, Inc. stands for The Lord's Business, "to remind the founders why the business was started: to conduct the business according to biblical principles." TLB was later renamed Solomon Software, and then Microsoft Dynamics SL.
History of Dynamics GP The Dynamics GP product was originally developed by
Great Plains Software, an independent company located in
Fargo, North Dakota run by
Doug Burgum. Dynamics Release 1.0 was released in February 1993. It was one of the first accounting packages in the United States that were designed and written to be multi-user and to run under Windows as 32-bit software. In late 2000,
Microsoft announced the purchase of Great Plains Software. This acquisition was completed in April 2001. Dynamics GP is written in a language called
Dexterity. Previous versions were compatible with
Microsoft SQL Server,
Pervasive PSQL,
Btrieve, and earlier versions also used
C-tree, although after the buyout all new versions switched entirely to Microsoft SQL Server databases. Dynamics GP will no longer be updated after September 2029, with security updates through April 2031.
Finance Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is a
Microsoft enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for medium to large organizations. The software, part of the Dynamics 365 product line, was first on general release in November 2016, initially branded as
Dynamics 365 for Operations. In July 2017, it was rebranded to
Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. At the same time, Microsoft rebranded their business software suite for small businesses (Business Edition, Financials) to
Finance and Operations, Business Edition, however, the two applications are based on completely different platforms. Its history includes: • 1998 (March) – Axapta, a collaboration between
IBM and Danish Damgaard Data, released in the Danish and US markets. • 2000 – Damgaard Data merged with Navision Software A/S to form NavisionDamgaard, later named
Navision A/S. Released Axapta 2.5. IBM returned all rights in the product to Damgaard Data shortly after the release of Version 1.5. • 2002 – Microsoft acquires
Navision A/S. Released Axapta 3.0. • 2006 – Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. • 2008 – Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. • 2011 – Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. It was made available and supported in more than 30 countries and 25 languages. Dynamics AX is used in over 20,000 organizations of all sizes, worldwide. • 2016 – Released
Microsoft Dynamics AX 7. Later rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Operations. This update was a major revision with a completely new UI delivered through a browser-based HTML5 client, and initially only available as a cloud-hosted application. This version lasted only a few months, though, as Dynamics AX was rebranded Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations in October 2016, and once more as
Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in July 2017. • 2017 – Rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise Edition (not to be mistaken with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Edition, which is based on former
Microsoft Dynamics NAV). • 2018 – Rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations • 2018 – The Human Resources Module became Dynamics 365 for Talent, now Dynamics 365 Human Resources. • 2020 – Rebranded and split into two products: • Dynamics 365 Finance • Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management • 2023 – Dynamics 365 Human Resources re-integrated
Sales Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales has undergone several iterations over its history.
Microsoft CRM 1.2 Microsoft CRM 1.2 was released on December 8, 2003. Microsoft CRM 1.2 was not widely adopted by industry. It was not possible to create custom entities but there was a
software development kit (SDK) available using SOAP and
XML endpoints to interact with it.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 The second version was rebranded as Microsoft Dynamics 3.0 (version 2.0 was skipped entirely) to signify its inclusion within the Dynamics product family and was released on December 5, 2005. Notable updates over version 1.2 are the ease of creating customizations to CRM, the switch from using
Crystal Reports to
Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, and the ability to run on
Windows Vista and
Outlook 2007. Significant additions released later by Microsoft also allowed Dynamics CRM 3.0 to be accessed by various
mobile devices and integration with
Siebel Systems. This was the first version that saw reasonable take up by customers. You could create custom entities and (1xN) relations between the system/custom entities.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Dynamics CRM 4.0 (a.k.a. Titan) was introduced in December 2007 (RTM build number 4.0.7333.3 Microsoft CRM build numbers from version 4.0 to version 8). It features multi-tenancy, improved reporting security, data importing, direct mail merging and support for newer technologies such as
Windows Server 2008 and
SQL Server 2008 (Update Rollup 4). Dynamics CRM 4.0 also implements CRM Online, a hosted solution that is offered directly by Microsoft. The multi-tenancy option also allows
ISVs to offer hosted solutions to end customers as well. Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the first version of the product, which has seen significant take up in the market and passed the 1 million user mark in July 2009. Additional support for NxN relations was added, which solved a lot of 'in-between' entities. "Connections" were also introduced in favour of "Relations". The UI design was based on Office 2007 look and feel, with the same blue shading and round button as "start".
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Dynamics CRM 2011 was released to open Beta in February 2010. It then went into Release Candidate stage in December 2010. The product was then released in February 2011 (build number 5.0.9688.583) Browsers such as
Internet Explorer,
Chrome and
Firefox browsers are fully supported since Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12. Because of this browser compatibility R12 was highly anticipated but also caused a lot of stress for customers that had used unsupported customizations. R12 broke those customizations and clients had to rethink their changes. Microsoft offered additional wizards to pinpoint the problems.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Dynamics CRM 2013 was released to a closed beta group on July 28, 2013. Dynamics CRM 2013 Online went live for new signups in October 2013. It was released in November 2013 (build number 6.0.0000.0809).
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 On September 16, 2014, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015, as well as updates to its Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing services, will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2014. Microsoft also released a preview guide with details. On November 30, 2014, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 and the 2015 Update of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing. On January 6, 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of a CRM Cloud service specifically for the
US Government that is designed for
FedRAMP compliance.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 was officially released on November 30, 2015. Versions for CRM 2016 was 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2. With version 8.2 the name, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, was changed to Dynamics 365 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 was officially released on November 30, 2015. It includes advancements in intelligence, mobility and service, with significant productivity enhancements. In June 2016 was developed a special application which sends scanned info from business cards into MS Dynamics CRM named Business Card Reader for MS Dynamics and Call Tracker application in 2017.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 sales Microsoft Dynamics 365 was officially released on November 1, 2016, as the successor to Dynamics CRM. The product combines Microsoft business products (CRM and ERP Dynamics AX). A
softphone dialer can be added as an extension. The on-premises application, called Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement contained the following applications: • Dynamics 365 for Sales • Dynamics 365 for Customer Service • Dynamics 365 for Marketing • Dynamics 365 for Field Service • Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation The offerings Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations cover the ERP needs, such as bookkeeping, invoice and order handling and manufacturing. In Dynamics 365 version 9.0.0.1 many notable features like Virtual entities in Dynamics 365, Auto Numbering Attributes, Multi Select Options sets etc. were introduced. == Product updates==