There's quite a bit to work through here, so I'll try to answer what I can.
However, the native import model does not support emails/activities so then we'd be stuck or does it?
Activities typically work just like any other record when working in Dataverse, with the exception that they have their "Regarding" field which can act wonky as it is a polymorphic lookup (meaning it can point to any table where activities are enabled, instead of just a single other record type). It's been a while since I've done an excel import of activities, but as far as I know there are no issues. You can go to Advanced Settings > Data Management > Import Templates and find excel import files for all tables for import, including types of activities (you need to search for the specific type, like "Email" or "Phone Call").
For the Regarding field, in the import file it will likely come through as a separate column for each record type. You will need to enter your mapping data into the correct column to link it to your sales record.
Would we be able to import accordingly or need to manually then trigger the stages/steps? In reality it makes sense but technical wise I'm not sure if this is possible. I don't think we need Quotes and all that for now.
I have a love/hate relationship with Business Process Flows. The important thing to note is that the BPF itself is a separate record from the Opportunity, and it lives on an entirely separate table. The best way I have found to bulk update/handle the BPF is the following:
- Import your sales records. As long as you have an active/standard BPF for the record in question the system should automatically create the BPF and put it into the first stage
- From CRM, do a query against the BPF table and pull information from the related Opportunity so you have something to match against. This export will have the stage as a field value. Export all of your newly created Business Process Flows to excel
- Using Vlookups or whatever excel magic is needed, update the [Stage] column to match what it should be for your given record. Reimport the table
None of the fields "In" the Business Process Flow live on this separate table, just the stage and a few other key fields. This means you don't need to map or import any other data. Letting the system automatically create the BPF and then doing an update after the fact has been easier, in my experience, than trying to create them myself.
Where can I grab the GUID and does that matter when attaching the emails?
Every record created in CRM/Dataverse has a GUID automatically assigned to it. You can see the GUID up in the URL of each record, but if you want to grab them in bulk then you can do it by exporting records after creation. The excel files start with the first 3 columns hidden, and one of these contains the GUID of your record. You can also of course query or connect to Dataverse with SQL, Power Query, or anything else that lets you get to the table and you should be able to find the GUID column.
The GUID cannot be added as a column to a system view in CRM, so you'll need to use one of these other options.
All told, sounds like you have a pretty good start on everything. I honestly think the trickiest parts will be:
- Finding and mapping the correct stage on the BPF table and records
- Filling in Email data (like the email body) and importing
Hope this helps a bit more. Migrations can be full projects for my clients in and of themselves, but you sound like you're going well!
