Dynamics 365 Managed Services: What Should Support Cover?
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Your team can use Dynamics 365 and Power Platform every day and still spend too much time chasing problems. Sales managers correct records before reviewing the pipeline. Customer service supervisors follow up on requests that haven’t reached the right person. Employees wait for help with an approval or a change to an app.
Your internal team may be able to handle each request, but keeping up leaves little time to investigate why the same problems return or make improvements employees have asked for.
Ongoing support can help when those responsibilities exceed your team’s time or expertise. Before choosing a provider, decide which tasks you need help with and whether recurring problems need a closer assessment.
What are Dynamics 365 managed services?
Dynamics 365 managed services are an ongoing agreement with a provider to support and maintain your business applications. Depending on the agreement, services can include troubleshooting, administration, testing updates, helping users, and making smaller changes across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
Do you need managed services, occasional support, or an assessment?
Your situation | A sensible starting point |
|---|---|
The application supports daily operations, an employee maintains it, and problems are infrequent. | Occasional support for specific problems or specialist questions. |
The application supports daily operations, but your team cannot keep up with administration, testing, and user requests. | Managed services that assign responsibility for those tasks. |
The same problems keep returning, employees use spreadsheets to compensate for missing functionality, or the causes remain unclear. | An assessment to identify the causes and plan repairs before agreeing to ongoing support. |
You need a major new integration, application, or process redesign. | A separate project with an agreed scope, tests to confirm it meets requirements, and a plan for ongoing support. |
An Alliason assessment can help identify the causes of recurring problems and what needs to change. Urgent repairs can still proceed while the assessment is underway.
What should the support agreement cover?
The agreement should name the applications and integrations covered, including any third-party extensions you use. It should also explain what the provider handles and what remains with your team or another vendor.
Reporting problems and getting them resolved
Agree on how employees report problems, who determines their urgency, and when support is available. Include the time zone and what happens when a problem occurs outside those hours.
A response deadline is different from a deadline to fix the problem. Check whether “response” means acknowledging the request or beginning the investigation. The agreement should also explain how often you'll receive updates and when the provider will involve Microsoft or another vendor.
If agents cannot open cases in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, for example, agree on who investigates and who keeps the service manager informed until agents can resume handling cases.
Administration and access
List the routine requests the provider will handle, such as changing application permissions or investigating access problems. Name the person in your company who approves access to sensitive records.
The provider should record access changes. Assign an internal administrator to review permissions when employees change roles or leave.
Updates and testing
Agree on the processes to test before changes reach employees. For a team using Dynamics 365 Field Service, that might mean confirming technicians can see assigned visits and submit updates. For Dynamics 365 Project Operations, it might mean following a time entry through submission and approval.
For Power Platform and customer engagement applications, Microsoft's release guidance recommends testing processes and customizations in a sandbox copy of the environment and updating training materials to reflect changes.
Update controls vary by product. For Business Central online, Microsoft manages application and platform updates, while administrators and partners have scheduling controls described in Microsoft's update-management documentation.
Record test results, who will investigate failures, and who in your company will confirm that each process runs correctly.
Integrations, automations, and customizations
List each important integration or automation and the process it supports. Record who maintains it, where employees report failures, and who can approve changes.
Include dependencies that are easy to overlook. If a journey in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights relies on data from another application, the investigation may need to cover both the journey settings and the incoming data.
Suppose a professional services company uses an integration to create project records from approved sales records. When it fails, the support team needs to find the missing records, fix the cause, and check for duplicates after rerunning it. Confirm that the agreement covers the record checks as well as the technical repair.
Backup and recovery
Microsoft provides system backups for eligible Dataverse environments, with rules and limits on restoration. Its backup and restore documentation also describes checks needed for flows and connections after a restore. Do not assume a Dataverse backup covers every connected application or its data.
For each system, document what can be restored, who approves the restore, and who checks the application and its connections afterward.
Helping users and making smaller changes
If employees repeatedly ask how to complete a task, check the cause before scheduling more training. They may need clearer instructions, different permissions, or fewer steps in the application.
Ask whether smaller changes are included and how the provider estimates the time needed. If an urgent problem uses the hours set aside for a planned improvement, will that improvement be delayed or billed separately? Require your approval before the provider begins anything that will add to the bill.
If employees also use Microsoft Copilot, agree on how they report inaccurate or unhelpful responses and who reviews them. Define which features or agents the provider supports before adding them to the agreement.
Does Microsoft support replacing a managed services provider?
Microsoft states that a paid support plan is an additional resource for customers and partners and does not replace partner support. Its Dynamics 365 support comparison explains the options and which products they cover.
Confirm whether the partner will check your configuration, reproduce errors, document the business impact, and follow up on Microsoft support requests.
Keep a named application owner in your company who sets priorities, approves access and spending, and confirms that changes meet your team's needs.
How should you compare managed-services costs?
Give each provider the same list of applications and support requirements so you can compare what the fees cover.
Ask each provider to explain:
How much support is included and, for plans based on hours, whether unused hours carry over and how extra hours are charged.
Whether testing, user guidance, and improvements are included in the fee.
What onboarding costs and what the provider needs before taking over support.
Which additional charges require your approval.
How you can end the agreement and what documentation you receive when support transfers to another team.
Use a recent problem to test the proposal: “If this happened again, which tasks would be included, which would cost extra, and who would coordinate the response?”
Include your employees' time in the comparison. They may still need to gather error details, approve changes, and test repairs.
How do you know whether support is improving efficiency?
Review recent support records to establish a starting point, then track:
Repeat problems: Is the same issue returning after tickets are closed?
Business interruption: How long was a team unable to complete a critical task?
Manual corrections: How much time did employees spend fixing records or entering the same information again?
Outstanding fixes: Which important repairs or changes are still waiting, and why?
Time spent managing support: How much time does your application owner spend gathering information, chasing updates, and coordinating vendors?
For a recurring approval-flow failure, the review should show what caused it, what was changed, and whether requests now reach the correct approver without manual intervention.
Discuss the support your team needs
Alliason is a Microsoft Partner focused on Business Applications. Its Managed Services engagement supports Dynamics 365 and Power Platform across sales, marketing, customer service, field operations, projects, and finance. The agreement defines the applications covered and the help your team needs.
Tell us which applications you use and where your team needs help. We'll help you decide whether the problems call for ongoing support, an assessment, or a separate project.
