Data encryption in Dynamics 365

 The customer engagement apps uses standard SQL server cell level encryption for a set of default entity attributes contains sensitive information like usernames and passwords. All CE instances by default use data encryption to comply with FIPS(Federal Information Processing Standard)140-2 compliance. This encryption is turned on by default and cannot be turned off.

 

Only with system administrator security role users can change the encryption key based on requirements.

Microsoft Dataverse

    What is Microsoft Dataverse? 

In other words Microsoft Dataverse is a database which allows us to store data in secured cloud storage options in the form of standard and custom entities. Terminology wise Dataverse replaces entity as table and field as Column.

 

That means Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications like Sales, Services and Marketing can use Dataverse directly to store and secure the data without any manual integrations as it is already in compatible with it.

 

But for Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamic 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Retail currently require the configuration of the Data Integrator to make your business data available within Dataverse.

 

All server side logics and validations( Business Rules, Business Process flows, Workflows and Business logic with code) works as it is with Dataverse.

Also, the Dynamics 365 connector is deprecated, but continues to work until removed.Do not use the Dynamics 365 connector for new flows. Use the Dataverse (current environment) connector whenever you can. If the Dataverse (current environment) connector does not fit your needs, use the Common Data Service connector.The Dataverse (current environment) connector should be your first choice because it provides the most capability and best performance.

CE instance in administration mode and its impact

Keeping an organization mode suspends all async services and but will process all synchronous plugins and workflows. While organization in administration mode only users with administrator role can access the environment. 

 Below are the some interesting points I did observes during administration mode: 

•  Does administration mode suspends all async serves including Microsoft flows? It suspends flows only with CDS connector. This administration mode does not impact any other connectors 
•  While organization in administration mode, all triggered async services (async plugins steps etc) are registered in system jobs and but all of them are in suspended (state) and waiting for Event (status) statuses. CE won't resume all these suspended system jobs after you disable administration mode. You have to resume these system jobs explicitly to process them 
• While turning off or on administration mode activates all inactive mailboxes, this is a weird behaviours not sure whether it is a bug. If you are trying to migrate data by keeping an organization in administration mode, you need to be careful with these mailboxes.