I recreated Dynamics CRM with the Power Platform Plan designer

In January 2003 after many months of engineering and development, Microsoft released one of the first business solutions built-in house; Microsoft Business Solutions Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

This of course evolved into Dynamics CRM, of which much of the technical foundation became Dataverse, the bedrock of the Power Platform.

I just rebuilt Dynamics CRM in an afternoon using AI.

Just kidding. (but I got your attention)

What I did do is use some specific AI tools, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and the Power Platform Plan designer and did build a basic minimal viable product CRM system.

The linked YouTube video walks through the whole process, but here are the high level steps:

1. Collected various pieces of documentation and information and added those to a Microsoft 365 Copilot notebook.
2. Initiated a working session with the notebook using a CRIT prompt (Context, Role, Interview, and Task) to build a Product Requirements Document (PRD) that will be the basis for my CRM system.
3. Used the PRD to create a prompt for a vibe coding or AI solution creation tool (Plan Designer) to build my solution.
4. Set up a Dataverse developer environment, a publisher and a solution (set to preferred) and used the Plan designer to build and iterate user roles, processes, a Dataverse data model, a model driven Power App, a canvas Power App, a Power Pages website, and a Copilot Studio agent.
5. Generated system documentation in a PDF file.

Have you tried plan designer lately? Like many new features in the new agentic era, if you had less than good experiences earlier, they do get better. Is is perfect? Not yet.

Observations:

• You still need to interject yourself into the process, despite how detailed your prompts may be.
• Plan designer doesn’t yet accept PDFs, word documents, Power Points or other document types beyond your text prompt and image files. (This is where M365 helps)
• Plan designer still doesn’t know about the Common Data Model. You need to manually swap out the custom tables it wants to build with actual Dataverse tables that already exist.
• The table designer provides an amazing ERD view of your data model. However the table editor doesn’t provide options for global choices or some of the new field types (prompt fields).
• The table designer now provides default table icons! (not puzzle pieces!)
• Plan designer will launch existing app building copilots (Canvas Power Apps, Power Pages, Power Automate, Copilot Studio).
• There still is a LOT of clean up and configuration work, but in my opinion, a lot of tedious ground work is accomplished by Plan designer, making it a worthwhile tool to quickly develop a minimal viable product solution.
• There is still a lot more it could eventually do.

Summary

Software development is changing… rapidly. And building solutions in the Power Platform are no exception. Currently with generative pages, code apps, and SPAs in Power Pages, the foundation is being set for a new era of low-code solution development. Tools like Plan designer help orchestrate and manage the process so you are not vibe coding your way into a technological nightmare.

Nick Doelman is a Microsoft MVP, podcaster, trainer, public speaker, and competitive Powerlifter. Follow Nick on X at @readyxrm or LinkedIN, and now; Bluesky.

Need Power Platform expertise or training? Check out Nick’s website for more details.

Listen or watch the the Power Platform Boost podcast with Nick and co-host Ulrikke Akerbæk every second week for news and updates from the Power Platform community.

Original Post https://readyxrm.blog/2025/08/06/i-recreated-dynamics-crm-with-the-power-platform-plan-designer/