Teams in Dynamics 365 CE

Teams in Dynamics 365 CE provide a flexible way to manage security and access to records, especially when users need to collaborate across Business Units or when role-based access is not sufficient.

Teams complement the Business Units-based ownership model and help solve common real-world scenarios such as cross-functional access to temporary project teams.

Types of Teams

1. Owner Team

2. Access Team

Owner Teams

• An Owner Team can own records - just like users can.

• A Team belongs to a single Business Unit but can include users from any Business Unit.

• Security Roles can be assigned to Owner Teams, enabling fine-grained access control.

• When a record is owned by a Team, any team member can access it according to the Team’s security roles.

Typical uses:

• Sales or Service teams working on shared accounts/opportunities/cases.

• Temporary project teams that need shared record ownership.

• Cross-BU collaboration when BU hierarchy alone is too restrictive.

Key notes:

• Changing the Business Unit of an Owner Team will remove all roles and owned records.

• Keep Team structure and usage well-documented to avoid uncontrolled data access.

Access Teams

• An Access Team does not own records - it is used purely to grant explicit access to individual records.

• Users can be dynamically added or removed from Access Teams.

• Access Teams do not have Security Roles assigned - access is controlled by the Access Team Template, which defines what level of access team member get (Read, Write, Append, etc.).

• Members of Access Teams can come from any Business Unit.

Typical uses:

• Granting a small group temporary access to an Opportunity or Case.

• Handling ad-hoc collaboration where ownership does not change.

• Scenarios where record ownership must remain unchanged (e.g., legal/compliance requirements).

How it works:

1. An entity(e.g., Opportunity) is configured to support Access Teams.

2. An Access Team Template is created with the required privileges.

3. A system-generated Access Team is created when users are added to the record’s team subgrid.

Key Advantages

• Lightweight and dynamic - does not require Business Unit alignment or Security Role management.

• Useful for customer collaboration portals (combined with Power Pages).

Common Pitfalls

• Misusing Owner Teams for temporary access - this adds complexity. Use Access Teams for dynamic access instead.

• Uncontrolled growth of Access Teams - configure cleanup jobs if needed to avoid too many team records.

• Cross-BU Owner Teams misuse - while members can come from any BU, the Team itself is tied to one BU. Moving Teams between BUs is disruptive.

Best Practices

1. Use Owner Teams when you need record ownership flexibility or need to assign roles.

2. Use Access Teams for lightweight, record-level collaboration scenarios.

3. Avoid deep nesting of Owner Teams or creating to many Owner Teams for one entity.

4. Audit Teams periodically to ensure they reflect current collaboration needs.

5. Document team usage patterns is your security model design.