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18 January 2023
By: Eline Blom

Extend Microsoft D365 Finance and Operations with Dynamics 365 Commerce

The new form designer in D365 Real-time Marketing

For some time Microsoft is moving more and more from Outbound Marketing, segment based, to Real Time Marketing, engage in real-time, segment- and trigger-based. So, it is no surprise that it is now possible to create and manage your forms in Real-time marketing. A welcome new feature as the current form designer in Outbound marketing was okay, but it still used the old drag and drop designer which is already deprecated for the emails.

Let’s have a short deep dive in this new functionality.

 

Where can you find the new form designer?

First navigate to Settings, Versions and be sure that you are up to date. (At least version 1.90.2011.0.) Second open the Feature Switches tab and search for Real-time marketing forms.

As you can see it is a preview feature, so not suitable for production environments yet. Microsoft says about preview features the following: “A preview feature is a feature that is not complete, but is made available before it’s officially in a release so customers can get early access and provide feedback. Preview features aren’t meant for production use and may have limited or restricted functionality.”

Sometimes enabling a preview feature will not affect your environment but in this case it is also creating a new consent structure and that could affect the deliverability of your emails. So be aware of it!

After enabling the feature, you will find a new “form” section in the left navigation bar for Real-time marketing.

Create your first new form

Creating a new form starts with choosing your target audience. Should the form match a contact or a lead? This is already a main difference between the old and the new form designer. It has been a long time wish from users to be able to target leads and it is finally possible.

Fill in a name, make your choice, use a predefined template or not and start creating your own design. You can drag and drop elements and fields into your design and change fonts and colors as we are used to do in the email designer. It is also possible to customize the CSS to reflect your own corporate identity.

 

What is not possible?

You cannot add links to your text or images. So adding a link to your Privacy Policy or socials is not possible. I hope it is a temporary bug in this preview version, and we will be able to add links in the final version of Real Time Marketing forms.

 

Forget creating form fields

There is no need to create form fields anymore. All columns from the contact or lead table are directly available to drag and drop into your form. Easy! Unfortunately it is currently not possible to create separate custom form fields that should not be mapped to the contact or lead. I hope that it will be available soon!

All fields have their own field properties. This meansyou can change labels, make them required, hide them, set a default value or add a validation for each field.

New: The consent element

A new element is the consent element which you can also drag and drop in the design. With adding this element to your form, it immediately updates the given consent in Real time Marketing. Nice!

As mentioned before, this is also the new consent model. Two new Dataverse tables, Contact point consent and Compliance Settings are created for this, replacing the former ones with the same name. The consent element isn’t linked to the Do not bulk email column of the Contact. So, if you are currently using both Outbound and Real Time Marketing, there is some more work to do before you have covered all consent correctly. sending out an outbound email is possible when someone has opted out for real time marketing and vice versa.

 

Easy publish your form

When your design is ready, select publish in the top right corner. The form will automatically save and the validation process will start. After the validation is completedyou will receive three options. Implement with Javascript code, iframe code or create a standalone page.

You can embed the form in your own website with Javascript or an Iframe. The domain should be allowed for external form hosting as you were used to in Outbound Marketing.

Or you can choose for a standalone page, It is not needed to create a separate marketing page like we need to do in outbound marketing. If you have connected portals, a standalone page is immediately created.

Now you are ready to go!

Your marketingform is just the beginning…

Out of the box triggers are available to follow up your Marketing Form submissions in Real-time marketing journey orchestrations. The world is your oyster.

 

Interested in the benefits of Dynamics 365 Marketing?

Please contact us for a demo. Dynamics 365 Marketing is a mature Marketing automation tool completely integrated withing Dynamics. One database, one truth. Designed to improve your customer experience and make it a personal journey. Interact in real-time on every action a (potential) customer takes with personal content.