How to Work Offline with Dynamics 365

What a lot of people don’t know is that you can use Dynamics 365 when you’re not connected to the internet AND it’s not a big deal to setup.

What can I do offline in Dynamics 365 Sales mobile app?

You can use the app without internet access to:

• View and edit records like contacts, leads, opportunities, quotes, accounts
• Create new records
• Add notes, activities, and product lines

How does offline Dynamics access work?

Once offline mode is enabled by your admin, the experience is mostly seamless for you. You don’t need to manually switch modes or trigger a sync.

What’s Going on Behind the Scenes?

When you open the app online, it downloads data based on your Mobile Offline Profile (set by your admin). This profile decides what records are cached on your device – like leads from the last 14 days, or accounts you’re actively working on.

While you’re offline:

• You can view, edit, and create records included in your profile
• You can add notes, tasks, and activities
• Changes stay saved locally until you reconnect

When you’re online again:

• Everything syncs back automatically
• You don’t need to switch modes or push updates
• Your admin handles what data is available offline

It’s seamless!

• You don’t need to enable offline mode manually.
• You don’t need to trigger a sync.
• You don’t need to manage which records are available offline, that’s handled by your admin via sync filters and offline profiles.

Not all data will be synced, as this could mean huge data use on your mobile. Your administrator will set criteria, so that only relevant records are downloaded – this could mean, for instance, syncing all leads created in the last 14 days only.

Things You Can’t Do Offline

• Business Process Flows don’t work properly
• Calculated fields, rollups, and mapped fields won’t behave as expected
• You can’t add stakeholders or competitors to opportunities offline
• Views for some entities (like emails or phone calls) aren’t supported

Setting up offline working in Dynamics 365

This is aimed at Dynamics administrators

First enable offline access for each Dynamics table you want to appear offline

• In Power Apps, click Tables
• Click the 3 dots menu beside the table you want to appear offline and choose Properties

• Open Advanced options
• Select Can be taken offline

Then set up Offline profiles

An offline profile defines the dataset which get synced on a user’s device. This includes the tables and related filters which define which data is synched

• Login to Power Platform admin centre (https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/)
• Choose the Environment you wish to work in
• From the command bar, choose Settings
• Then open Users + Permissions
  • Select Mobile configuration
• Here you can view all the existing offline profiles and open them to see which tables and users are part of the profile
• You can also create a new profile and add tables and users to suit your requirements
• Look at Microsoft learn for more about optimising and setting up offline profiles
• Initially it’s best to choose the built in offline profile for your app. Microsoft have information about how to generate a default profile and how to add tables and users to a profile
• If you’ve created a new profile, make sure you publish it.

Next, set up mobile access in your Dynamics app

• Go to Power Apps (https://make.powerapps.com/)
• Click Apps
• Choose the app you wish to enable for offline
• Select the vertical 3 dots beside the app and choose Edit

• Click Settings
• And from the General tab, switch Can be used offline to on

• Next choose Default to enable the app for all users or Restricted to selected users
• You’ll now need to choose an offline profile as set up previously