Migrate from PAWS to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Dynamics 365 API rate limits require chunked data loading

Dynamics 365 Sales (Dataverse) enforces API request limits per user per day (5,000 requests per user per day on standard plans, higher on Enterprise/Premium). PAWS exports with more than 50,000 records risk hitting these limits during a bulk migration. FlitStack AI mitigates this by chunking record sets, distributing load across multiple API calls with retry logic, and scheduling migration runs during off-peak hours. For enterprise-scale migrations exceeding 200,000 records, we use Dataverse bulk-inject batch operations to reduce API call count. Microsoft reduced service protection limits in 2023 but concurrent operation limits still apply, and Power Platform admin settings can tighten these further — we audit your tenant limits before the migration window opens.

Option-set (pick-list) value integers must map explicitly between PAWS and Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 stores pick-list values as integer IDs, not display-label strings. If your PAWS deal stage 'Qualification' has an internal integer value of 3, but Dynamics 365's 'Qualification' statecode is mapped to integer 1, direct label matching without explicit integer mapping causes wrong values to land in the database. We build a value-mapping table for every pick-list field during the pre-migration audit — mapping both the label and the underlying integer. PAWS custom pick-list fields require particular attention because their integer IDs are arbitrary and may not align with Dynamics 365 defaults. Failing to map these correctly results in records showing incorrect stage values and broken business rules in Dynamics 365.

Multi-company contact associations collapse to primary AccountId plus Account Contact Relationships

PAWS supports assigning a contact to multiple companies natively, which is common for consultants, contractors, and executives with cross-company roles. Dynamics 365 Sales requires a contact to have a single primary AccountId; additional associations use the Account Contact Relationship entity (N:N). We collapse PAWS's N:N model by migrating the most-recently-modified company as the primary AccountId and creating Account Contact Relationship records for all others. The trade-off is that Dynamics 365's relationship model cannot surface the same 'association label' concept (e.g., 'Board Advisor', 'Investor') that PAWS supports — we surface this in the migration plan so your admin can decide whether to add a custom relationship type field.

Custom field naming conflicts with Dynamics 365 schema conventions

PAWS custom fields use underscore-separated naming (e.g., custom_deal_priority, field_referral_source). Dynamics 365 custom fields follow a prefix convention defined during field creation in the Power Apps maker UI (e.g., cr6e3_customdealpriority or a publisher-prefixed name). If a PAWS custom field name collides with a reserved system field name in Dynamics 365, the field creation fails silently or produces unexpected behavior. We audit PAWS custom field names against Dynamics 365's reserved word list before migration and deliver a renaming checklist for any fields that conflict.

Owner resolution failures silently assign records to the wrong user

Dynamics 365 requires every record to have an OwnerId pointing to a valid SystemUser. If a PAWS owner email does not match any Dynamics 365 user record, the migration tool may assign the record to a system-level queue or a default user rather than surfacing the failure. We enforce explicit owner resolution before the migration runs: every unmatched PAWS owner is flagged in a pre-migration report with the option to pre-create a Dynamics 365 user or assign a designated fallback. Records that genuinely have no owner receive a custom 'Source Owner Email' field preserving the original value so no ownership context is lost.