Migrate from Contact Beacon to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Discovery and scoping

We audit the source Beacon account across objects (Contacts, Donations, Campaigns, Pipelines, Tags, Custom Fields, Attachments), active workflow count, API key status, and record volume. We pair this with a Dynamics 365 edition review: Sales Professional ($70/user/month) covers most migrations; Sales Enterprise ($165/user/month) is required if the customer needs advanced forecasting, AI Copilot insights, or custom entity support at scale. The discovery output is a written migration scope including the Gift Aid field mapping strategy, a recommendation on whether Donations map to Opportunities or a custom Dataverse entity, and the workflow inventory request list sent to the customer.

Schema design and Gift Aid mapping

We design the destination schema in Dynamics 365. This includes provisioning custom fields (is_gift_aid_eligible__c, gift_aid_declaration_date__c on Opportunity), custom Option Sets for any Beacon picklist equivalents, Account and Contact deduplication rules, and the Opportunity Sales Process reflecting the Beacon pipeline stages. Schema is validated in a Dynamics 365 Sandbox environment before production migration begins. If the customer requires a custom Gift Aid Dataverse entity, we document the schema as a configuration recommendation rather than building it as part of the migration deliverable.

Paginated extraction from Beacon

We extract all Beacon objects via paginated API reads, pacing within Beacon's rate limits and running extractions in off-peak hours for large datasets. Attachments are downloaded individually per Beacon's attachment API. We merge API data with any structured CSV export the customer can produce to reduce total extraction time. Each extraction phase emits a row-count report. We do not begin Dynamics 365 load until extraction is confirmed complete and reconciled against Beacon's record counts.

Sandbox migration and reconciliation

We run a full migration into a Dynamics 365 Sandbox using production-like data volume. The customer's admin reconciles record counts (Contacts in, Accounts in, Opportunities in, Campaign memberships), spot-checks 25-50 random records against the Beacon source, and validates Gift Aid field values on a sample of historical Donations. The customer signs off the schema and mapping before production migration begins. Any mapping corrections happen in the Sandbox, not in production.

Production migration in dependency order

We run production migration in record-dependency order: Accounts (for organisational donors), Users (validated against the destination User table), Contacts (with AccountId resolved), Campaigns, Opportunities (with AccountId, ContactId, OwnerId, and CampaignId resolved), Campaign members, Custom Fields (per-object), Tags, Attachments (last, due to individual download overhead). Each phase emits a row-count reconciliation report. We handle the Gift Aid boolean as a custom field on each Opportunity record at this stage.

Cutover, validation, and workflow handoff

We freeze Beacon writes during cutover, run a final delta migration of any records modified during the migration window, then hand over Dynamics 365 as the system of record. We deliver the workflow inventory document listing every active Beacon automation with its trigger, conditions, and recommended Power Automate equivalent. We support a one-week hypercare window for reconciliation issues. We do not rebuild Beacon workflows as Power Automate inside the migration scope; that is a separate engagement or an internal admin task.