To demonstrate how you can easily customize RapidStart CRM to meet your needs, we created this "Tips and Tricks" Series. In this series we will outline some simple-to-perform solutions to common things customers ask about RapidStart CRM. Enjoy!

Pay as You Go

Microsoft recently introduced a Pay as You Go plan for Power Apps. RapidStartCRM just so happens to be a “Power App” so you can take advantage of this model if it fits your needs.

Before you go down this path, there are a couple of caveats. First, the price charged for Pay as you Go plan is $10 per user who accessed within a particular month. The price for the non-Pay as you Go “Per App Plan” is $5 per month whether accessed or not. The reason for the difference is that with Pay as You Go, 1GB of storage is allocated to the environments enabled for it. That is not 1GB per user, just 1GB per environment where Pay as You Go is enabled. Alternatively, the $5 Per App plan has a 50MB storage allocation per user. An environment requires a minimum of 1GB, so you would need at least 20 per app plans, or you can add Per User Plans @$20/month to get a storage allocation of 20GB for teh first one, and then 25oMB for each additional one. For example, let’s say you have 10 users for RapidStartCRM:

1. You could go with the Pay as you Go plan for all 10. You would have 1GB of storage and if all users logged in every month to RapidStartCRM it would cost you $100/month.
2. You could go with the Pay as you Go plan for all 10. You would have 1GB of storage and if only half of the users logged in every month to RapidStartCRM it would cost you $50/month.
3. You could go with Per User plan for 1 person at $20ea, get 10GB storage, then add 9 Per App plan users and get an additional 350MB, for a total of 10.35GB. This would cost you $65/month, regardless of whether they logged in or not.
4. You could go with Per User plan for 1 person at $20ea, get 10GB storage, then add the Pay as you Go plan and get an additional 1GB of storage. This would cost you $20/month, plus $10/month for each user that logged in.

Another thing you should be aware of with Pay as You Go plan. If you exceed your 1GB of storage, you will be charged automatically against your plan for the overage in fractional increments of 1GB at $48/GB/month.

For this exercise we will setup Pay as You Go plan for RapidStartCRM.

These are the steps, some of which you may have already completed:

1. Create an Environment and Install RapidStart CRM
2. Create a Azure Subscription
3. Connect Azure Subscription to the Environment
4. Share RapidStart CRM with Users

1. Create an Environment

First log into https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com, this link will take you to your current Power Platform environments list. We will create a new environment. If you already have RapidStartCRM installed, you can skip to step 2.

Click + New and in the side form that opens, fill in the information shown. Be sure to select “Create a database”, then click Next.

Here you can select your language, if different from English, RapidStart CRM has been translated to Arabic, German, French, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Spanish. In addition you can create a custom url. Leave the other options as they are and click Save. After your environment is created, click on the environment link to open the details page and in the lower right pane of the page that opens, click on Dynamics 365 Apps. You should be here:

Click on AppSource, and in the window that opens type “RapidStart” into the search bar and select RapidStart CRM. On the RapidStart CRM page, click on “Get it now”. You may be asked to login with your Microsoft credentials. Tick the permission on the dialog that opens and you should arrive here:

Select the environment you created in the previous steps, tick the two boxes and click Install. In a little while this will complete in the background so we can move on to the next step.

2. Create Azure Subscription

Go to https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Billing/SubscriptionsBlade and log in. If you are not able to log in you may have to get elevated privileges from your IT department, or ask them to perform these steps. If you already have an Azure Pay as you go subscription, you can skip to step 3.

If you already have a subscription, note the name and move to the next step. Otherwise click + Add.

Here select the “pay as you go” option and complete the remaining steps to add your information.

3. Connect Azure Subscription to the Environment

After your subscription is provisioned in Azure, go back to the the subscriptions list here https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Billing/SubscriptionsBlade and click on the subscription you created.

Click on Resource Groups and then Create resource group.

This should default to the subscription you created earlier, if not, then select it. Give the resource group a name with no spaces, and select your nearest region. The click Review + Create, and then Create on the next page. Now we can go back to the Power Platform billing center by clicking this link: https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/azurebilling

Now click + New billing policy

Give this policy a name with no spaces and click Next.

Select the Azure Subscription and Resource Group you created earlier, and Region for the Power Platform environment you created earlier.

Select your RapidStart CRM environment, then + Add to policy, then Next.

If the review looks correct, click Create billing policy

3. Share RapidStart CRM with Users

Now let’s share the app from https://make.powerapps.com/. Note that this process is the same, regardless of licensing model.

Make sure your RapidStart CRM environment is selected in the upper right, then click Apps in the sidebar, click the three dots next to the App you want to share and then click Share.

In the People box, type the user’s name that you want to share the app with and click it, they will be added to the New list, click their name there and you can select a role for them, then click Share.

Summary

While this takes a few steps, depending on your situation, it could save you quite a bit. Particularly when you have sporadic usage. If you have any questions feel free to post them in the Free Support Forum. If you need help setting this up, contact Forceworks.