Managing Forgotten Leads in Dynamics 365 CRM

This article is the first one in a series of articles devoted to Everyday Power Automate Solutions for Dynamics 365.

In the article, we will look at a simple Power Automate solution that helps identify forgotten leads and automatically reminds the responsible users before those opportunities slip through the cracks.

Andrei is a well-skilled Project Manager leading a team that effectively utilizes technologies like Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Azure, Copilot, and others, all while providing a tailored approach to each client. He also possesses extensive expertise in implementing the Dynamics 365 Sales module.

In most businesses, every customer journey starts with a lead. Leads represent potential opportunities, future customers, and future revenue, which is why they are among the most important records in any CRM system. Keeping leads up to date and making sure they are followed up on promptly is essential for maintaining a healthy sales process.

However, in real life, things do not always go as planned. A lead owner may leave the company, go on vacation, switch teams, or overlook a record during a busy period. As a result, some leads can remain untouched for weeks or even months. When this happens, valuable opportunities may be lost without anyone noticing.

Lead management is a crucial aspect of any successful sales strategy, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales offers a comprehensive solution to streamline this process. With its user-friendly interface and powerful analytics, Dynamics 365 allows sales teams to efficiently capture, track, and nurture leads throughout their journey. Users can input lead information via customizable forms or automatically capture leads from website forms, social media, and email campaigns.

The AI-driven lead scoring functionality assesses engagement levels and assigns scores based on factors such as website visits, email opens, and interactions, enabling sales representatives to prioritize their efforts on the most promising prospects.

Furthermore, Dynamics 365 integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams and Outlook. The built-in workflow automation helps automate repetitive tasks, such as follow-up emails or notifications for lead status changes, allowing sales teams to focus on closing deals.

Additionally, with detailed dashboards and reporting features, sales managers can gain insights into lead conversion rates, pipeline health, and overall team performance, enabling data-driven decision-making to refine strategies continuously.

Therefore, by updating Dynamics 365 Sales capabilities, salespeople can improve their lead management practices, drive higher conversion rates, and ultimately increase revenue.

To better understand the requirement, let us look at a common scenario. During a discussion with the sales team, a manager raised a concern about leads being left unattended for long periods. In some cases, the assigned owner had left the company, while in others the owner was on vacation or missed the record among other daily tasks. As a result, several potential opportunities were never followed up on and eventually became lost business.

The manager asked for a simple solution that would help the team identify these situations before it was too late. The requirement was straightforward: if the lead is not ‘cold’ and remains untouched for more than two weeks after it is created, the responsible manager should receive a notification. This would allow the team to review the lead, take the necessary action, and make sure that promising opportunities do not sit in the system unnoticed.

Let us assume you already know how to access Power Automate and select the correct environment, so we will skip the basics and jump straight into the solution.

1. In the environment where you want to create the automation, start by creating a new Scheduled cloud flow (1).

   

2. Give the flow a meaningful name (2), configure the start date, time, and recurrence interval (3), then click on the “Create” (4)

   

   ! Note. Once the flow is created, you will be redirected to the Power Automate designer.

3. Before adding any actions, it is worth double-checking that the Recurrence trigger contains the same schedule you configured in the previous step. After that, add a new “List rows" step. Since our goal is to monitor Leads, select the “Lead table” in the “Table name” field (5).

   

   ! Note. We do not need to retrieve every lead in the system, so let us add a filter. The “Filter rows” field allows us to limit the results to only the records we are interested in. First, we only want active leads, so add the filter ‘statecode eq 0’. Next, since the requirement does not include cold leads, add ‘leadqualitycode ne 3’. Finally, we only want leads that have not been updated for more than two weeks, so we need to add a function based on the ModifiedOn field. Combine all the conditions using the ‘and’ operator so that only the records matching all the criteria are returned (6).

   

4. Next, let us create two variables that will be used in the email notification. The first variable will store the manager's email address (7). The second variable will contain a direct link to the lead record (8).

   

   To get the base URL for the link, open any Lead record in Dynamics 365 and copy the URL up to and including the last ‘=’ character before the record GUID. We will use this value to dynamically build links to individual lead records.

   

5. Now, it is time to create an email notification. Add a new “Send an email” action, place the “Email variable” in the “To” field, create a “Subject”, and then build the message “Body”.

   

   ! Note. In the example, the lead's First Name, Last Name, Link, and Lead ID are included. One small detail worth mentioning is that there is no space between the Link variable and the Lead ID value. This allows the email to generate a single clickable URL that opens the corresponding lead record directly.

   If you prefer Microsoft Teams notifications instead of emails, you can explore a similar approach in another article from our blog: Power Automate Solution: Instant Teams Notifications for New Contact Registrations.

   

   From this point on, the flow will run every day at 10:00 AM and notify the manager about any leads that have been sitting untouched for more than two weeks.

   ! Note. There are definitely more advanced ways to implement this solution. For example, we could avoid hardcoding the manager's email address, determine the recipient dynamically, or send a single summary email containing links to all abandoned leads. However, to keep this tutorial easy to follow and focused on the core idea, we have chosen a simpler approach.

UDS blog articles:

• Power Automate Solution: Instant Teams Notifications for New Contact Registrations

• Lead Generation with Dynamics 365 Sales

• Lead Generation in the IT Industry: Strategies for Success