Migrate from Basic Online CRM to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Basic Online CRM Contacts map directly to Dynamics 365 Contact records. We map name, email address, phone number, and postal address fields 1:1. Any non-standard fields in Basic Online CRM land as custom columns in Dataverse. Email address is used as the primary deduplication key during import. Owner assignment is set at bulk during the write-back phase using the owner mapping the customer provides during scoping, because Basic Online CRM does not surface record-level owner assignment in its exports.

Basic Online CRM Companies map to Dynamics 365 Account records. The company name becomes Account Name, and the website field maps to Website. Companies in Basic Online CRM are flat without subsidiary hierarchies, so all records import as top-level Accounts. We flag duplicate company names that appear more than once in the export and present them to the customer for resolution before the import phase begins.

Basic Online CRM Deals map to Dynamics 365 Opportunity records. Deal name becomes Opportunity Name, deal amount maps to Estimated Revenue, and deal stage maps to Stage Name. The primary complexity in this mapping is resolving the Contact and Company associations: Basic Online CRM stores these as internal numeric IDs in the Deals CSV, while Dynamics 365 Opportunity requires a valid ContactId (via the Contact Lookup on Opportunity) and an AccountId. We cross-reference the internal IDs against the exported Contact and Company lists during the transform phase and resolve to the corresponding name-matched Account and Contact records.

Basic Online CRM Notes are free-text entries with no timestamp enforcement or type categorisation. We migrate them as Dynamics 365 Note records linked via the Annotation object to the parent Contact, Account, or Opportunity. Any timestamps that were not explicitly set in Basic Online CRM are not reconstructable; we set the Created On date to the import timestamp and flag the absence of original timestamps in the pre-migration data quality report. Basic Online CRM does not store file attachments, so any document references in notes must be sourced externally by the customer and re-uploaded post-migration.

Basic Online CRM custom fields exist but store all values as untyped strings regardless of intended data type. Date fields may export as Jan 15 2024 in one record and 15/01/2024 in another. We standardise date formats to ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD), numeric fields to decimal or integer depending on content, and picklist-like fields to Option Set values in Dataverse. The customer reviews the custom field inventory during scoping and confirms intended data types before we create the corresponding Dataverse columns. This step prevents mis-typed fields that would require a schema change post-import.

If the Basic Online CRM instance contains task records, they are simple title-and-status items with no due-date enforcement or assignee fields. We migrate them as Dynamics 365 Task records with the task subject set to the Basic Online CRM task title and Status mapped to the closest Dynamics 365 Task Status value. Assignee resolution is not possible from the source data because Basic Online CRM does not surface record-level owner assignment; we assign migrated tasks to the bulk owner the customer designates during scoping. Due dates are preserved only if they were explicitly set in Basic Online CRM.

Basic Online CRM has a basic user concept but no explicit owner assignment on exported records. We ask the customer during scoping which team member should own migrated records in Dynamics 365 and apply bulk OwnerId assignment during write-back. If the customer has an Enterprise-tier Basic Online CRM subscription with documented API access, we attempt to match owners by email against the source platform's user list and resolve to the corresponding Dynamics 365 User record by email lookup. Owners without a matching Dynamics 365 User go to a reconciliation queue for admin provisioning before record import resumes.

Basic Online CRM does not host or store file attachments natively. Any documents referenced in Notes or Deal descriptions must be identified by the customer during the pre-migration checklist phase, sourced from their original storage location, and re-uploaded to Dynamics 365 SharePoint or OneDrive post-migration. We include a file inventory checklist item in the scoping pack asking the customer to enumerate any referenced files and their storage locations.