Course Overview

Custom Data Platform specialists implement solutions that provide insight into customer profiles and that track engagement activities to help improve customer experiences and increase customer retention. In this course, students will learn about the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights solution, including how to unify customer data with prebuilt connectors, predict customer intent with rich segmentation, and maintain control of customer data. This course begins with importing and transforming your customer data and culminates with extending your customer data platform solution into the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 applications.

Key Learning Areas

  • Clean, transform, and ingest data into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
  • Create a unified customer profile
  • Work with Dynamics 365 Audience insights
  • Enrich data and predictions
  • Set up and manage external connections
  • Administer and monitor Customer Insights

Course Outline

Get Started with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

This module will cover the business value of a customer data platform and the user interface of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

  • Introduction to the customer data platform
  • Administer Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
  • Explore user permissions in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Lab: Verify environment

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Describe the value of a customer data platform
  • Describe the functionality of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
  • Administer environments and users in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Ingest Data into Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

This module will cover how to clean, transform, and import Data into Customer Insights.

  • Import and transform data
  • Connect to data sources
  • Work with data

Lab: Ingest data

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Perform data transformation and import data using Power Query
  • Connect to Microsoft Dataverse and Common Data Model sources
  • Set up data refreshes

Create a Unified Customer Profile in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

This module will cover how to map, match, and merge data to create a unified customer profile. After creating the customer profile, we will define search and filter indexes to search for customers.

  • Map data
  • Match data
  • Merge data
  • Find customers

Lab: Unify the data

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Map data, including using intelligent mapping, primary keys, and attribute types
  • Match data, including specifying order, rules, conditions, and deduplication
  • Merge data using system recommendations or manually
  • Configure search and filter indexes
  • Search for customers

Work with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

This module will cover relationships, activities, measures, and segments.

  • Explore Audience insights
  • Define relationships and activities
  • Work with measures
  • Work with segments

Lab: Work with activities
Lab: Define measures
Lab: Create segments

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Define activities
  • Define relationships
  • Create measures from scratch or use a template
  • Manage segments and get suggested segments

Enrich Data and Predictions with Audience Insights

This module will cover how to enrich data, including brand and interest enrichment, how to use predictions, and how to use machine learning models.

  • Enrich data
  • Use predictions
  • Use machine learning models

Lab: Enrich data
Lab: Predictions
Lab: Subscription Churn Model

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Identify the different options for data enrichment
  • Enrich their customer data
  • Define predictions
  • Predict subscription churn
  • Use machine learning models
  • Describe responsible AI principles

Manage External Connections with Customer Data Platform

This module will cover extension options for Customer Insights data, including how to surface data in Dynamics 365 applications and the Microsoft Power Platform.

  • Export Customer Insights data
  • Use Customer Insights with Microsoft Power Platform
  • Display Customer Insights data in Dynamics 365 apps
  • More ways to extend Customer Insights

Lab: Extend with the Power Platform
Lab: Extend with the Dynamics 365 apps

After completing this module, students will be able to:

  • Surface Customer Insights data in Dynamics 365
  • Use Customer Insights with Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI
  • Use Customer Insights with Azure Synapse Analytics
  • Understand use cases for Customer Insights APIs

Who Benefits

Candidates should be familiar with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and have firsthand experience with one or more additional Dynamics 365 apps, Power Query, Microsoft Dataverse, Common Data Model, and Microsoft Power Platform. They should also have working knowledge of practices related to privacy, compliance, consent, security, responsible AI, and data retention policy.

Certification Details

Exam MB-260: Microsoft Customer Data Platform Specialty
This exam measures your ability to accomplish the following technical tasks: design Customer Insights solutions; ingest data into Customer Insights; create customer profiles by unifying data; implement artificial intelligence predictions in Customer Insights; configure measures and segments; configure third-party connections; and administer Customer Insights.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarity with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
  • Firsthand experience with one or more Dynamics 365 apps, Power Query, Microsoft Dataverse, Common Data Model, and Microsoft Power Platform