Installing Deal Desk 365 adds the tables, screens, and business logic, but a few one-time settings must be turned on before sellers can build quotes, margins calculate, and discounts route for approval. Work through these steps in order. Plan on about 20 to 30 minutes, done by a system administrator.
What install already did
You do not need to set these up; they arrive with the app:
- The Deal Desk model-driven app, all tables, and the pricing and approval logic.
- The Deal Desk Quote Word document template for quote generation.
- The Deal Desk Seller, Deal Desk Approver, and Deal Desk Administrator security roles (you assign them in step 2).
Before you begin
- Dynamics 365 Sales in the same environment; Deal Desk 365 extends it.
- Deal Desk 365 licenses available to assign (see step 1).
- Access to the Microsoft 365 admin center and the Power Apps maker portal.
- A short list of who sells (sellers), who signs off discounts (approvers), and who owns the desk's rules (administrators).
1. Assign licenses
Deal Desk 365 is a named-user app: each person who opens it needs a license, on top of their Dynamics 365 Sales license.
- Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Go to Billing → Licenses and confirm you have Deal Desk 365 - Named User licenses.
- Under Users → Active users, select each user and assign both their Dynamics 365 Sales license and a Deal Desk 365 - Named User license.
Access is enforced. A user without a Deal Desk 365 license, even an administrator, is blocked from opening the app with a message to contact their admin. Assign the license before pointing anyone at the app.
2. Assign security roles
A license lets a user open the app; a security role decides what they can do. Give every user at least one of the three roles.
- In the Power Platform admin center, open your environment, then Settings → Users + permissions → Users.
- Select a user, choose Manage security roles, and add the role that fits how they work:
- Deal Desk Seller builds and submits quotes from templates.
- Deal Desk Approver decides discount approvals.
- Deal Desk Administrator sets up and maintains the rules of the desk: pricing rules, approval policies, and quote templates. This is the role for your sales-ops owner; they can configure the product without being a Power Platform System Administrator.
- Repeat for each user. Roles stack: someone who both builds quotes and approves gets both those roles; a sales-ops lead who also builds quotes gets Administrator plus Seller.
All three are roles, not separate licenses; one Deal Desk 365 license covers any of them. The Administrator role is config-only: it does not let a user build quotes or decide approvals unless you also assign the Seller or Approver role. Assigning roles to a Microsoft Entra group instead of individuals scales better for larger teams. See Roles and permissions.
3. Turn on pricing and margin for your price list
Deal Desk 365 governs only the price lists you opt in, so it never disturbs pricing elsewhere in Sales. Margin also needs a cost to measure against.
- In the Deal Desk app, open Configuration → Price Lists, open the price list your quotes use, and on its Deal Desk tab set Govern Pricing (
cwt_governpricing) to Yes. Do this for each price list Deal Desk 365 should manage. - Under Sales → Products, open each product and on its Deal Desk tab set a Standard Cost (
cwt_standardcost). Margin is revenue minus this cost. A seller can override the cost on an individual line when a deal needs it.
Deal Desk 365 adds a Deal Desk tab to the standard Price List and Product forms; it does not alter Microsoft's forms. Open the records from inside the Deal Desk app to be sure you are on the Deal Desk form.
Until Govern Pricing is Yes, no margin, floor, or discount checks run on that price list and the line editor shows blank margins. A missing Standard Cost makes a line's margin read as 100%.
4. Create your pricing guardrails
Pricing rules define the floor a seller cannot quietly cross and the margin you expect to hold.
- Open the Deal Desk app and switch to the Configuration area (area picker, bottom left).
- Choose Pricing Rules and create at least one rule. Set any of Floor Price, Max Discount %, and Min Margin %, and scope it (all products, a product, a segment, or a region) as needed.
- Leave a rule's scope empty to make it the org-wide default; add narrower rules for specific products or segments. The most specific matching rule wins.
Start with one broad default rule (for example, max 15% discount, min 20% margin). You can add sharper rules later; quotes evaluate against whatever rules are effective on the quote date. Details are in Pricing rules.
A rule scoped to a customer segment or region matches only accounts that carry those values. Set them on each account first: open the account and, on its Deal Desk tab, set Customer Segment and Region.
5. Set up approval routing
When a seller submits a quote whose discount exceeds a guardrail, Deal Desk 365 routes it to an approver team. Create the teams first, then the policies that point at them.
- In the Power Platform admin center, open your environment, then Settings → Teams, and create one team per approval tier (for example, Deal Desk Approvers - Tier 1). Add the approver users to it.
- In the Deal Desk app's Configuration area, choose Approval Policies and create a policy per tier: set the discount band it covers, the Approver Team, and an Escalation Hours window.
- Order policies by Sequence so tiers evaluate lowest band first.
With no policy and no approver team, a below-floor submit has nowhere to go. Configure at least one policy before sellers start submitting. Details are in Approval policies and escalation.
6. Enable the approval escalation schedule
Escalations, which move an approval to the next tier when it sits too long, run on a scheduled cloud flow that ships switched off. Turning it on is a short, separate procedure: create a Dataverse connection, bind the Deal Desk Dataverse (Escalation) connection reference (cwt_dataverseescalation), and turn on the Deal Desk - Escalate Stale Approvals flow. Follow Turn on automatic approval escalations.
Approvals still route and lock correctly without this step; they simply will not escalate on their own. Enable it once your approval policies set escalation windows.
7. Review automation settings (optional)
Two environment variables tune how approvals behave. The defaults suit most teams; change them only if your process differs.
- Auto-Approve Within Guardrails (default on): a submit with no floor breach is approved automatically instead of routing to a person.
- Lock Quote While Pending (default on): a quote is read-only while it waits for a decision, so its numbers cannot change under the approver.
Change these in the Power Apps maker portal under the Deal Desk 365 solution's Environment variables. See Approval behavior settings.
8. Verify with a test quote
Confirm the pieces work together before rolling out to the team.
- As a seller, open the Deal Desk app, create a quote on a governed price list, and add a few product lines. Margins should appear on each line.
- Discount a line past its floor. The line should show Below floor before you submit.
- Submit the quote. It should lock and create an approval request routed to your Tier 1 team.
- As an approver, open the request and approve or reject it from the decision screen.
Build the test quote from a quote template (Configuration → Quote Templates) to check template apply, sectioning, and the Word document output in the same pass.
If something is not working
See Troubleshooting Deal Desk 365 for the most common post-install problems: a user who cannot open the app, blank or 100% margins, a below-floor discount that does not request approval, and approvals that never escalate.