Reaching the free storage limit of Dynamics 365 is inevitable. You must prioritize and choose wisely before storing bulk data. You must understand your priorities and consider alternate storage facilities for the not-so-crucial documents. Reaching your limit in terms of storage can cause severe disruption to your business processes.
However, the brilliance of Dynamics 365 is that it sends you an alert when you are at 80% storage capacity. But the bad news would be adding more storage is equivalent to spending more money. It is the nature of every enterprise to minimize their spending wherever possible. Optimizing your Dynamics 365 space is one way of minimizing expenditure. Experienced professionals tend to manage their data to minimize the need of buying additional storage.
Top 4 ways to cut storage costs in Microsoft Dynamics 365
Trying to be cautious with what you store is only the first step in cost-cutting. Here’s a list of different ways for you to minimize your costs for storage in dynamics 365:
1. Maintain and review your storage capacity
Understanding how much storage your company uses is vital. You need to have an idea of how much is needed and how much is being used by the organization to optimize. In case you are paying for higher storage than necessary for your organization you can shift plans to save money. Upon reaching the limit, you can upgrade to the necessary plan. This is a very cost-effective solution as upgrading and downgrading are extremely easy with Dynamics 365.
Deleting unnecessary files by periodic reviews can also help you save storage space. Keep an eye out for old audit logs, unnecessary emails and their attachments, Workflows that are not in use, duplicate files, images, and videos that are unnecessary, etc., and take up a lot of space that can be used for other purposes.
Another idea to minimize your storage costs would be to choose a cheaper storage management system. Azure Blob Storage and SharePoint are two cost-effective solutions. Azure Blob Storage offers special additives including Firewalls, DDoS protection, SQL encryption, backup, database auditing, application firewalls, etc., without any additional charges.
Reviewing and maintaining your storage capacity should also include removing unnecessary files. Look for the following:
- Unnecessary email attachments you don’t need anymore
- Old audit logs
- Suspended workflows you don’t plan to use in the future
- Duplicate files
You might also consider moving some of your data from Dynamic 365 to a document management system that charges lower fees. SharePoint stands out as a good option. You could also save money by using Azure Blob Storage.
Azure Blob Storage is a strong contender because you don’t have to pay extra for effective security features like:
- DDOS protection
- SQL encryption
- Application firewalls
- Database auditing
- Firewalls
- Data backups
2. Role-based security auditing
The number of accesses granted to a particular module is directly proportional to the cost. The higher the number of people with access, the greater the cost. Role-based security auditing helps you understand and identify the accounts that do not use certain modules or applications. It also helps managers and employees to avoid saving large files on their databases. This helps in minimizing storage space and in turn, helps in minimizing costs.
Furthermore, you are entitled to security benefits from auditing the status of your employees. By following the principles of least privilege, it minimizes the risk of hackers hacking your system for sensitive information. Irrespective of the minimization of storage costs, the security role feature of Dynamics 365 is worth investing in.
Additionally, you get security benefits from auditing account statuses. Following the principle of least privileged adds to your organization’s security by making it more difficult for hackers to escalate accounts and access sensitive information. Whether or not security role auditing cuts your D365 storage costs, it’s worth the investment.
3. Conducting a periodic cleanup
Every organization has a bunch of files and folders that they do not require anymore, and they are likely to be in large numbers occupying a large amount of your storage memory. In case you have still stored such files on the Dynamics 365 database you are likely spending a larger amount to maintain them.
If you move those files elsewhere (most likely a cheaper storage solution like Azure blob Storage) and delete the files of the Dynamics 365 database, you will save space and money. However, if you have saved them there to refer them for insights, you can use applications like business intelligence to simply focus on those insights. Using business intelligence ensures that you will not be eliminating every bit of data relevant to that project, but only irrelevant files will be eliminated.
Based on the sort of industry your organization belongs to, you will be required to retain certain files longer than the project lifecycle. You must ensure that you keep the necessary files and scrub off those that are irrelevant to you. Conducting a periodic data clean-up helps you have an idea of what you need and how much storage is required. It does not encourage unnecessary spending on storage.
Migrating data to another storage management system can also be a cost-effective strategy. Although these are not on the Dynamics platform, they are easy to access while working out cheaper for you in the long run.
Depending on your industry, regulations might force you to retain some files longer than you want. Trained professionals can keep regulatory requirements in mind while scrubbing your database of unneeded files and data sets. Conducting a data cleanup helps ensure you always maintain access to the information you need without wasting money storing data you no longer require.
4. Periodic review for unused modules licensing
Understanding the needs of your organization might be tricky. The requirement is never constant. Hence, a periodic review will take you a long way in terms of cost-saving. Dynamics 365 offers you several applications that might not always be used by your organization. Removing the ones that you do not use regularly will help save space and money.
Do this cautiously. Take time and patiently double-check your usage and needs. It is important to ensure that you do not eliminate features that are necessary for your workflows and processes. Running a fine comb through all your active licenses can also help you find missed opportunities. By evaluating your current requirements, you can upgrade and downgrade certain features.
How to identify what’s taking up space on Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes it very easy for you to understand and identify how much storage your organization has used. It further helps you classify them into data, log storage, and files. The storage type distinction is key, as every style is priced differently. Data storage is approximately 20 times more expensive than file storage. To identify your storage consumption, you must log on to your Power Platform admin center. From the admin center, you can view and compare the overall storage consumption of your organization. You will see charts and the total occupation of storage which can be compared and studied in the admin center.
The advanced find feature
Advanced Find is the perfect tool that Dynamics 365 presents to help you get rid of unwanted data. It is an in-built query feature that allows you to run either complex or even simple queries against the existing records. As Dynamics is simply a table of data records, the advanced find feature is simply a super filter that allows you to sort through the data on Dynamics 365. Thus, the advanced find helps you look for files and data easily on Dynamics 365 making the process of elimination easier for you.
Final Word
In conclusion, managing your storage on Dynamics 365 is vital to minimize unnecessary costs. Keeping your database clean might seem like a tedious task but having periodic reviews of your data can help you eliminate unnecessary files and folders thereby freeing up space. It ensures that you are not paying unnecessary charges for storing all your data.
The entire cleaning process is also made easier with the “advance find” feature that is built-in with Dynamics 365. It acts as a super filter and helps you run and extend both simple and complex queries. Furthermore, by integrating with other storage management systems like SharePoint and Azure Blob Storage you can minimize your storage costs. The advantages that Dynamics 365 brings to your organization are far more significant than its increasing storage costs as there are multiple solutions to minimize them.
The Attachment Management app allows for notes and email attachments that would normally be saved against records in Dynamics 365 to instead be kept in Azure storage instead. Azure storage is a Microsoft service, with storage charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. However, the charges are significantly cheaper than Dynamics 365 additional storage costs.
Crucially, items stored within Azure storage can still be easily retrieved from Dynamics 365. Files, attachments and notes are only a single click away, so users probably won’t notice much of a difference.