Migrate from Pipeliner CRM to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Discovery and plan tier verification

We audit the Pipeliner CRM instance across entity count, pipeline structure, active Automatizer workflows, and custom entity usage. We verify the customer's Pipeliner plan tier — Starter tier is a migration blocker because it has no API access, requiring a tier upgrade to Business ($85/user/mo annual) or higher before any programmatic extraction can proceed. We pair this with a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales edition review: Sales Professional ($65/user/mo) covers standard migrations without Quotes or custom entities; Sales Enterprise ($105/user/mo) is required for Quote objects, advanced forecasting, and read-only Dynamics 365 record types; Sales Premium ($150/user/mo) adds Copilot and advanced AI features.

Schema design and hierarchy enforcement

We design the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales destination schema including Account hierarchy, Contact-Account parent relationships, Opportunity Record Types and Sales Processes, custom fields, and any custom Dataverse tables required for Pipeliner custom entities or the Buying Center restructure. This step also defines the per-user stage normalization rule — we collapse Pipeliner's per-user stage overrides to the canonical admin pipeline schema and map each Pipeliner pipeline to a Dynamics 365 Record Type. Schema is deployed into a Dynamics 365 Sandbox via the Dataverse management APIs for validation before any data moves.

Sandbox migration and reconciliation

We run a full migration into a Dynamics 365 Sandbox using production-equivalent data volumes. The customer's sales operations lead reconciles record counts across all entities, spot-checks a random sample of Opportunities and Contacts against Pipeliner source records, and validates that the Account-Contact hierarchy is correctly enforced. Any mapping corrections and hierarchy enforcement issues surface here, not in production. The customer sign-off on the sandbox reconciliation gates the production migration start date.

Owner reconciliation and User provisioning

We extract every distinct Pipeliner Owner referenced on Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and Activities and match by email against the Dynamics 365 destination org's User table. Owners without a matching User are placed in a reconciliation queue. The customer's Dynamics 365 admin provisions any missing Users (active if the original Pipeliner user is still active, inactive if the user has left). OwnerId references on Opportunities and Activities require a valid User record before insert, making this a hard dependency that gates subsequent migration phases.

Production migration in dependency order

We run production migration in record-dependency order: Accounts first (from Pipeliner Companies), Contacts with ParentAccountId resolved from the Account mapping, Leads, Opportunities with OwnerId, RecordTypeId, and stage normalized, Products and Price Book entries, Quote headers with line items, Activities via Dataverse API with WhoId and WhatId resolved to the migrated IDs. Each phase emits a row-count reconciliation report before the next phase begins. We pause writes in Pipeliner during the production migration window to prevent delta records accumulating mid-migration.

Cutover, validation, and Automatizer rebuild handoff

We freeze Pipeliner writes during cutover, run a final delta migration of any records modified during the migration window, then set Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales as the system of record. We deliver the Automatizer workflow inventory document listing every identified automation with its trigger, conditions, actions, and a recommended Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales equivalent (Sales Automation rules or Power Automate cloud flows). We support a one-week hypercare window where we resolve reconciliation issues raised by the customer's sales team. Buying Center restructure is documented but not executed as part of the migration scope.