Dynamics 365 Activate: What gets easier when you move from Salesforce?

What is Dynamics 365 Activate, and what is available now?

Microsoft released Activate as a public preview on 9 September 2026, in a blog post by Jeff Teper, who leads Microsoft's apps and agents business. The vision is one AI-assisted implementation path whether you are starting fresh, moving from another system or extending an existing Dynamics 365 solution. What is available today is one route: Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service.

Microsoft states that the tool draws on hundreds of recent migrations and more than six billion data records. Those are Microsoft's own figures, and they say more about scale than about accuracy. ERP and more CRM sources are announced, but today only Salesforce is supported.

Access requires a Microsoft Entra work account, and Microsoft usually processes the request within three business days. The tool itself is free while it is in preview.

What does the tool do, step by step?

Microsoft describes the process in eight steps, combined into six here. The order is worth knowing, because some choices have to be made before discovery and cannot be changed afterwards without starting over.

What the tool can remove is much of the manual work of finding out what exists: which fields are used, which automations are active and which packages are installed. That is not a small thing, since data migration is one of the items most often underestimated in Dynamics 365 budgets, as we have gone through in what a Dynamics 365 implementation really costs.

What does Activate not do?

The most important limitation is stated clearly in the documentation: automation and code are analysed, but not converted or migrated. Flows, Process Builder, workflow rules and Apex have to be rebuilt in Dynamics 365, typically as Power Automate flows, business rules or plug-ins, and in a mature Salesforce environment that is often where the business logic lives. How to do that without new shadow IT is something we have written about in Power Automate and Dynamics 365.

Three other limitations are worth noting: Big Objects and External Objects in Salesforce are not included, field types and picklists are adapted to the target schema so that data may look different, and Salesforce API limits can slow large migrations down.

One point is unclear. The overview page says that selected files, notes and attachments can be moved, while the security page, updated the same day, says the tool does not migrate attachments, files or documents. If you have a lot of documentation attached to customers and cases, test it in your own environment before it goes into a plan.

What does Activate change in the assessment of a switch?

What changes is how early you can know what a switch involves. Previously someone had to go through the Salesforce environment by hand to find out which fields, automations and integrations are actually in use. Now an automated discovery can give you that overview before you have decided, and the estimate can be based on what exists rather than on assumptions.

Pattern: An organisation with 50 to 150 CRM users and a Salesforce environment that has grown over eight to ten years gets an automated discovery on the table. What we typically see, whatever the platform, is that a handful of automations and integrations carry most of the business logic, while many custom fields are barely used. The work shifts from finding out what exists to deciding what should be redesigned.

What does not change is what decides whether the switch pays off: whether Dynamics 365 fits the way you work better, what it costs to rebuild the business logic, the licence cost over time and the work of bringing the organisation along. Analysts interviewed by the trade publication CIO describe Activate as an accelerator and not an autopilot, and point out that an assessment made by the vendor you might be moving to is not a neutral verdict. The objection applies to any vendor, including us.

Some should not move at all. If Salesforce is well adopted, you are not Microsoft-centric, and the platform does what it should, a cheaper migration tool is not a reason to switch. We have gone through the differences in Dynamics 365 Sales versus Salesforce, and which Sales licences you need on the other side in Dynamics 365 CE or Dynamics 365 Sales.

What should Norwegian organisations clarify before the first run?

Three points should be settled before the first run, and each belongs in the project plan as a decision point: where the data is processed, what the AI features actually do, and what the preview status allows.

Where the data is processed

When you request access, the US is the only region that can be selected for the workspace. With the default setup, records are staged in Microsoft-managed Azure storage in that region before they are written to Dataverse. The Dynamics 365 environment can still be in Norway. What sits with Activate is the staging, the processing along the way and the project data: discovery results, mappings and run history, which Microsoft keeps for as long as the project exists.

With your own storage and database, which Microsoft calls bring your own storage, staged records, discovery results and mappings can sit in your own Azure subscription and in a region you choose. That governs where the data is stored, not where the service runs. The choice has to be made before discovery, and the documentation says it is not yet switched on in every environment.

Discovery and migration are different matters from a data protection point of view. During discovery, according to Microsoft, the tool reads only definitions, configuration, Apex source code and aggregate figures. Customer records are read only when you start a migration and have confirmed a consent summary, while the user mapping uses employees' email addresses and usernames. Discovery can therefore be run as a separate step, with its own risk assessment.

Transfers of personal data out of the EEA need a basis in Chapter V of the GDPR. For the US, the European Commission's adequacy decision of 10 July 2023 applies to companies certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, including for transfers from Norway. Whether that covers your use of Activate should be clarified with your data protection officer and in the data processing agreement before you connect. This is not legal advice.

What AI-powered means today

Microsoft describes Activate as AI-powered, but according to the security documentation the AI features are turned off in production environments, and the recommendations there are rule-based. In development and test environments AI may be turned on, and excerpts of Apex code of up to 1,500 characters may then be sent to an AI model. It is not clear whether that applies to workspaces you label as development or test yourselves, so clarify it with Microsoft before you choose the purpose. For now, AI in Microsoft's description describes the direction more than what you get.

What the preview status means

Preview features are not intended for production use and are subject to supplemental terms of use. Activate is therefore suited today to discovery, decision support and test migrations. The decision you need to make is whether the cutover to production should wait until the tool is generally available, or be done with other tools.

How should the transition be planned?

Phased testing and phased go-live are two different choices. Phased testing means small test migrations before the main run, and you should do it whatever the transition model. Phased go-live means the organisation moves part by part, with two systems in use at the same time. It lowers the risk of each step, but costs parallel running, synchronisation and a clear agreement on which system owns which records.

A single cutover can be right when the environment is easy to oversee, there are few integrations and the organisation can live with a short freeze. A phased go-live justifies its cost when units work differently, when integrations with ERP and other core systems have to move in a particular order, or when one large cutover carries too much risk. Microsoft's reference architecture for phased migration to Dynamics 365 Sales is based on a very large implementation, but the principle also applies to mid-sized organisations.

Activate can be used in a phased plan, with two caveats. Delta mode picks up records changed since the last run, so you can do a full migration first and pick up the changes in the run-up to cutover. But the tool never writes back to Salesforce, and the documentation does not describe a filter for limiting a run to one business area. If you move part by part, you therefore need your own synchronisation during the transition.

How we would use Activate in a Norwegian project

If discovery shows that a switch makes sense, this is the order we would follow. It is not specific to Activate, but the tool makes the first steps faster.

1. Clarify data protection and storage before connecting. Decide whether you need your own storage and database, and give the integration user in Salesforce the minimum required permissions.
2. Run discovery and read the report as a basis for decisions. It shows complexity and recommended approaches, but it is not a project plan.
3. Sort everything into four groups: preserve, simplify, redesign and leave behind. It is the most important working session in the project, and it needs people from the business in the room, not just IT.
4. Test in small steps. Trial 100 per table against a test environment, then a full test migration with reconciliation. Check the content, not just the count. Testing in a pilot before the full migration is the same principle as in the migration guide from Excel to Dynamics 365.
5. Plan automation, integrations and training as separate workstreams. Activate solves none of them. See how to connect ERP and CRM and change management for CRM.

How do we use AI and our own products in the rest of the delivery?

Activate stops where the business logic starts, and that is where we use AI in our own work. We use it to read and explain existing flows, Apex code and validation rules, to develop replacements as Power Automate flows, business rules and plug-ins, and to create test cases that check the new solution gives the same result as the old one. Consultants who know both the platform and the business review everything before it is put to use.

Our own products can reduce the need for new custom development where the need is already known. Quotes with pricing rules and approvals can be built on Cartagena CPQ, the integration with the finance system on Cartagena Link, and membership organisations can start from Cartagena Medlem. How much that reduces the scope depends on how close to the standard you are, and you only know that after the sorting.

Microsoft says the same in the launch: partners can spend less time on discovery and more on methodology, industry expertise, solution architecture and change management. That matches what we have seen of where Dynamics 365 implementations are won and lost.