Event management in Customer Insights – Journeys

Customer Insights – Journeys (the successor to Dynamics 365 Marketing) ships first-class event management for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events — from product launches and customer conferences to small webinars and partner roadshows. It is one of the genuine differentiators of the marketing module.

The event record. An event in Customer Insights – Journeys is a Dataverse record with:

• Name, type, format — in-person, virtual, hybrid.
• Start and end dates / times — across time zones with timezone handling.
• Venue — for in-person, links to a venue master record with rooms; for virtual, the platform (typically Microsoft Teams Events).
• Capacity — overall limit, plus per-session capacities.
• Registration window — open and close dates for sign-up.
• Owner, team, business unit — for security and ownership.

Sessions and tracks. Multi-day or multi-track events have sessions — individual presentations with start time, room, speaker, capacity, and optional pre-requisites. Sessions can be organised into tracks for attendee filtering ("technical track", "executive track").

Speakers. A speaker record represents a presenter — internal employees or external guests. Speakers are linked to sessions, with photos, bios, and contact info. The speaker schedule view shows who's presenting when across the event.

Registration pages. Registration is captured through forms (see the Lead Capture guide) hosted as registration pages. The page can be:

• Microsoft-hosted with a unique URL.
• Embedded on the customer's website.
• Branded with custom themes, logos, fonts.

Registration captures attendee info, session selections (for multi-track), payment if applicable, dietary requirements, accessibility needs.

Confirmation and reminders. A real-time journey typically fires on registration:

1. Send confirmation email immediately.
2. Send reminder 1 week before.
3. Send "starting tomorrow" reminder the day before.
4. Send "starting in 1 hour" the morning of.
5. Send post-event survey one day after.

Each is configurable; cancellation flows handle changes.

Capacity and waitlist. When a session or event hits capacity, registration moves to a waitlist. Cancellations auto-promote waitlisted attendees in order. Capacity controls per session prevent over-booking.

Microsoft Teams Events integration. Virtual and hybrid events integrate with Microsoft Teams Events for the streaming side:

• Each session can spawn a Teams meeting / webinar / live event with a custom registration link.
• Attendee registration in Customer Insights – Journeys translates to the Teams registration list.
• Recording captures from Teams and links back to the session.

This integration is what makes the event management practical for serious virtual programmes.

Check-in and badge printing. For in-person events, a mobile check-in app scans attendee QR codes (from the confirmation email) and marks attendance. Badge printing integration (via partner connectors) prints on arrival.

Event websites. A dedicated event website template (often built on Power Pages) gives attendees a landing page with agenda, speakers, sponsors, FAQs, and personalised login to their registered sessions.

Analytics and ROI. Post-event reporting:

• Registration vs attendance — show-up rate per channel, per source.
• Session attendance — popular sessions, drop-off rates.
• Lead generation — qualified leads from event attendees.
• Pipeline influence — opportunities created or accelerated by event attendance.
• NPS / CSAT — from post-event surveys.

Limits. Very large conferences (10,000+ attendees, complex logistics, sponsor expo, full event-app experience) may need specialist platforms like Cvent, Bizzabo, Hopin alongside or instead of Customer Insights – Journeys. For most B2B customer events from 50 to a few thousand attendees, the built-in event management is sufficient.

Operational reality. Event management is unforgiving — botched registration emails are seen by every potential customer. Pilot the registration flow end-to-end before opening to attendees.