The Dynamics 365 Telecommunications accelerator extends the capabilities of Microsoft’s Power Platform and Dynamics 365 to the Telecommunications industry. It provides a Common Data Model extension for this industry for which network operators and their vendors, suppliers, and partners can leverage to dictate application development and design. The enables them to expedite the application development and design process.
In addition to providing a platform for building new subscriber management, service management, and network operations solutions, it also aims to accomplish the following:
Objectives of the telecommunications accelerator
- Aligning the Common Data Model for Telecommunications with the industry standard for data in telecommunications.
- In addition to offering developers a Common Data Model for this industry, thisindustrial accelerator offers new entities and attributes.
- It also expands on critical areas of telecommunications such as address management, customer service, field service, and subscriber and lead management.
- It also aims to assist in network management, service area tracking, and resource management.
- Automating and improving key but repetitive processes in sales and field operations.
What is contained in Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator?
The engineering team at Microsoft develop the Common Data Model for telecommunications 9(known as the telco data model) and feed it forward. Data from this model flows through the Power Platform, accelerators, and other solutions. They also build sample apps that utilize the Common Data Model to showcase the capabilities of the model and the power platform. Sample data and Power BI dashboards are also provided. Independent software vendors around the world can leverage these technologies from Microsoft to quickly build better solutions for telecommunications organizations.
Key features of the accelerator
Data Model Entities
Based on the TM Forum specification for Place Management, the telecommunications accelerator includes 16 new entities. Some of them include Geographic address, location, place, point, and local address. Each entity has its attributes and relationships with other entities. For example, the geographical location entity has center longitude and center latitude attributes. Some entities can have as many as ten attributes.
Which solutions can be built from this accelerator?
Place management solution
Managing a telecommunications network requires service providers to accurately map and describe the location of every physical space through which the network passes or reaches. It is also important to keep account of every tool being used to operate the network in the area. It is therefore imperative that telecommunication service providers have a place management solution.
Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator comes with a prebuilt Place Management solution. This solution contains a model-driven sample application that utilizes the telco data model to capture and track spaces that the network cover. The spaces can also be service locations for active or future customers or equipment that covers a given area. It can also be:
- Network zones,
- Network-operated areas,
- Service area definitions, and
- Relationships across all of them.
The model-driven application includes dashboards, views, forms, and:
- A sitemap for easy navigation to the available entities and attributes
- Power BI reports and dashboards displaying key network standards of measurement.
- The utilization of Azure Maps to geo-locate people and places.
- A product of Power Apps component framework along with multiple canvas apps that directly integrate Azure Maps to the solution.
Telco sales solution
Telecommunications companies are always looking to reach more people to get more returns on investment. This requires a flexible sales tool that can to leverage data from multiple sources to enable sales teams to generate an efficient growth strategy.
This accelerator can empower ISVs to build this kind of solution. To demonstrate that this accelerator can be used to develop a capable lead management sales solution, Microsoft release another model-driven app known as Telco Sales.
Dynamics 365 telecommunications accelerator is a powerful extension of the telco data model that empowers ISVs to build model-driven applications for telecommunications quickly and efficiently.