Dynamics 365 & LinkedIn Sales Navigator New Features 2021

It’s been a while since I wrote a post on this, but there are some new features with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 Sales that are coming, or have already been pushed to your environments. In this article I am not going to cover all the new features in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I am focusing on the changes related to the integration with Dynamics 365 Sales. Even if there are not that many new features, I still feel they are worth mentioning as they do give sales people a better experience and allow them to be more productive.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lists with Dynamics 365 Sales Data

There were two features that came out in the last quarter in 2020 which I haven’t mentioned yet.
One of these features is the list synchronization from Dynamics 365 to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. If you open LinkedIn Sales Navigator and you click on ‘Lists’ on the top bar, you’ll notice there are two types of list that show. One is a Lead list and the other is an Account list. These lists show lead lists that you created yourself, but there is also a ‘My CRM Leads and Contacts’ list (in the lead list) and a ‘My CRM Accounts’ list (in the Account list).
When you hover your mouse of any of those lists, you’ll see that this list contains leads and contacts that are owned by you in Dynamics 365, or contacts that are associated to opportunities that are owned by you in Dynamics 365. So if you’re working on a deal and are looking for the people related to that deal, you don’t have to manually search for those people in LinkedIn Sales Navigator! This functionality will have the system will automatically create these lists for you based on the records that are assigned to you in Dynamics 365!
The accounts list are accounts that are owned by you or that are associated to opportunities that are owned by you in Dynamics 365, and guess what, that’s not all!

View Dynamics 365 opportunity data in LinkedIn Sales Navigator

I wanted to mention these lists first because there have been an advancement to the CRM accounts lists (which I just mentioned above) in quarter 1 of 2021. Sales users can now review opportunity information directly from the account list that was created by the system in LinkedIn Sales Navigator! Users will be able to view the close date and the name of the opportunity related to that account. They can also click on the close date/opportunity name, which will then open a separate pane on the left hand side of the screen which shows all Dynamics 365 opportunities at that account. Users have the ability to filter the opportunities shown in the pane by the opportunity owner. When the opportunity name is clicked, the associated opportunity in Dynamics 365 Sales will open in another window/tab. How cool is that!! Unfortunately this feature is only available for Enterprise edition users so if you want to be able to use this, you will need to get the Enterprise license.

Lead Creation in Dynamics 365 from Sales Navigator

We already had the ability to create a contact in Dynamics 365 from a Linkedin Profile in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but you might not want to add these folks as a contact. Maybe you haven’t done business with them yet so you might need to add them as a lead instead. Well, you’re in luck! If you have an enterprise Sales Navigator license a system administrator can now turn on this feature! It works very similar to the ‘add contact’ feature: you can add the person as a lead or contact to Dynamics 365 by clicking on the ellipse. When you click on the ellipse a fly-out menu will show options to add the person as a lead or a contact. When you click on ‘Add new lead’ a form will open showing the following fields:

• First name | Required Field | Auto-populated from profile
• Last name| Required Field | Auto-populated from profile
• Country | Optional Field | Auto-populated from profile
• Job Title | Optional Field | Auto-populated from profile
• Email
• Phone
• Company | Optional Field | Auto-populated from profile

You’ll also notice a checkbox on the left bottom side allowing you to save the lead in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Admins can turn on this functionality by navigating to the Admin Settings which is accessible from the top navigation bar in Sales Navigator. Here admins can also configure the lead source value that should be associated with leads created from Sales Navigator. This field points to the out of the box field that is called ‘leadsourcecode’ in the lead table. I would recommend adding a value to this field called ‘LinkedIn’ or ‘Sales Navigator’ for reporting purposes. Keep in mind the CRM sync has to be enabled in order to use this functionality.

Sandbox Synchronization Support

Before this release we weren’t able to connect LinkedIn Sales Navigator to a sandbox environment, which made it a little difficult to test these integrations. In this release this is enabled. Administrators can now simultaneously maintain a connection between Sales Navigator and two different Dynamics 365 environments! Of the two environments one needs to be a sandbox environment, which can be used to test CRM synchronization and new features before enabling the new features in their production instance. This will give administrators also a better understanding how new features will impact their organization. When an admin logs into Sales Navigator by clicking on ‘Admin Settings’ on the top navigation bar.

On the left side under ‘CRM’ they will see two tabs, one for a production and one for a sandbox environment. By clicking on the sandbox they will be able to connect to their Dynamics 365 sandbox instance. After the instances have been connected, the administrator will need to add and enable users so they can start testing the features. Keep in mind that there can only be up to 10 users activated within the sandbox environment, for a period of 30 days. Once a user has been added they will notice a banner at the top of Sales Navigator when they log into Sales Navigator, indicating they are connected to the Dynamics 365 sandbox environment.

These are all the new features concerning the integration with Dynamics 365 Sales. If you’re interested in learning more about additional features in Sales Navigator only, you can take a look at this page. I hope you enjoyed this post! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!