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Dynamics 365 runs your CRM and cases; the knowledge layer that serves every audience is a different job
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a deep, mature system of record. For CRM, ERP, and customer service, case management, omnichannel routing, contact center, and field service, it runs the business at enterprise scale. For a Microsoft-first organization, its ties to Teams, Microsoft 365, the Power Platform, and Azure are hard to beat. If Dynamics runs your customer service and CRM, keep it. Replacing it isn't the point of this page.
The wall is the knowledge layer that serves more than internal teams. Dynamics is a system of record plus an agent console, and customers reach it through cases and self-service portals. Standing up branded, role-gated experiences for customers, partners, and employees, a help center, a partner portal, an employee hub, from one knowledge foundation means separate Power Pages builds and bolt-ons. The AI, Copilot, is embedded for agents and grounded in Dataverse and the Microsoft estate, and the agentic layer is metered by Copilot Credits.
So the multi-audience knowledge an enablement leader owns, product docs, troubleshooting, partner content, customer self-service, either lives inside the Dynamics estate for internal teams or gets scattered across bolt-on tools. The compounding part, where every resolution becomes knowledge every audience can use, isn't what a CRM system of record was built for.
You don't need to replace Dynamics 365. You need a multi-audience knowledge, enablement, and support layer on top of it, one foundation serving customers, partners, and employees with AI included, that integrates with Dynamics and leaves it the system of record.
Can Dynamics 365 serve customers, partners, and employees from one knowledge foundation, or only run cases for internal teams?
💬 Quick Answer: MatrixFlows is the multi-audience knowledge layer that serves customers, partners, and employees from one structured foundation, with AI included, and it sits on top of Dynamics 365 rather than replacing it. Dynamics runs the CRM and cases brilliantly, and its Copilot is capable, but it's a system of record plus an agent console: branded multi-audience experiences mean Power Pages builds, its AI is scoped to Dataverse and the Microsoft estate, and the agentic layer is metered by Copilot Credits. Keep Dynamics for CRM and cases; run the knowledge layer on MatrixFlows. Dynamics 365 runs the business. MatrixFlows powers the knowledge layer.
📊 Quick Stats
- ~76% of the global ERP market - Microsoft Dynamics is the enterprise standard, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service is G2-rated ~4.5/5 (confirm review count at publish)
- HSBC reduced resolution time 30%+ with prebuilt Dynamics 365 agents - a Microsoft-cited proof point (2026); real agentic capability, scoped to the Dynamics estate
- $0.01 per message, ~0.1 credit per MCP tool call - Copilot agents are metered by Copilot Credits, with an Azure subscription required (Microsoft Learn, 2026)
- Hard to budget - consumption-based Copilot Credit costs are flagged as unpredictable across multiple 2026 partner licensing guides
- ~19% of the workweek spent searching for information (McKinsey) - the cost of knowledge no single audience layer reaches
- 60-80% self-service within six months - the range MatrixFlows teams typically reach, with 70% less time creating articles and 60-70% less manual content upkeep
What your free workspace builds on top of Dynamics 365 in the first 10 minutes
👉 Start your free workspace - build a multi-audience knowledge layer on top of your Dynamics 365 data in under 10 minutes | View pricing
Your free workspace includes:
- Connect Dynamics 365 through Composio, the Dataverse Web API, and webhooks, and interoperate with its Dataverse MCP
- Build a customer help center with a built-in AI assistant from templates (~10 minutes)
- Stand up a partner portal and an employee hub from the same content (~15 minutes)
- See AI resolve from structured records across every audience, with no Copilot Credit meter
- Unlimited internal users, unlimited AI, no per-seat tiers
Is Dynamics 365 good at customer service and CRM, or built to be your multi-audience knowledge layer?
For enterprise CRM, ERP, and customer service, Dynamics 365 is one of the best systems of record you can run. That credit is sincere, and it frames everything below.
Dynamics is genuinely strong where it counts for the Microsoft-first enterprise:
- A deep, mature CRM, ERP, and customer-service system of record - case management, omnichannel routing, contact center, and field service at enterprise scale
- Unmatched Microsoft-estate integration - native ties to Microsoft 365, Teams, the Power Platform, Power BI, and Azure
- A serious, fast-moving agentic AI roadmap - Copilot embedded across the suite, prebuilt and Copilot Studio custom agents, role-based agents, and broad MCP support
- Enterprise governance and compliance through Dataverse and the Power Platform Admin Center, with audit trails, security roles, and pay-as-you-go caps
Dynamics 365 is Microsoft's enterprise CRM, ERP, and customer-service suite, the system of record large Microsoft-first organizations run their business on. Keeping it for that job is the right call.
The question is different: whether a CRM and customer-service system of record is the same thing as a multi-audience knowledge foundation serving customers, partners, and employees with shared AI, the layer above the record, not the record itself. Most Microsoft-first organizations that run Dynamics for CRM and cases still build customer and partner knowledge on separate Power Pages sites and bolt-ons, because a multi-audience foundation was never the suite's design center. The next four sections walk where the architecture meets that reality.
Does serving customers, partners, and employees on Dynamics 365 mean a separate Power Pages build for each?
MatrixFlows authors knowledge once and deploys it as a customer help center, a partner portal, and an employee hub from one foundation, each branded and filtered to its audience. Dynamics 365 is a system of record plus an agent console, and external audiences reach it through cases and Power Pages portals.
Support at scale spans more than internal agents and customers raising cases. Customers want a branded help center, partners want a portal that resolves their own questions, and employees want an internal hub, each with its own access rules and its own AI assistant, built on the same knowledge so an update reaches all of them at once. The test isn't whether a suite has a customer portal. It's whether one foundation serves every audience without standing up a separate site and a bolt-on for each.
Dynamics is a system of record and an agent console, not a multi-audience experience platform
Why this matters: a suite built around the case and the agent serves internal teams and customers-via-cases, not customers, partners, and employees each with their own resolving experience.
📄 Comparison:
What Dynamics 365 enables: a strong agent console for the customer-service function, plus customer self-service through case portals and Power Pages. Serving additional audiences well means more Power Pages builds, more configuration, and bolt-on knowledge tools.
What MatrixFlows enables: Flows is a no-code app builder. An enablement leader assembles a help center, partner portal, or employee hub from components like Search, Conversation, Form, and Escalation, brands each one, and publishes it on a custom domain, all reading from the same Matrix foundation.
What Happens at Scale: a SaaS company adds a partner channel and an employee hub on top of its customer support. On a system-of-record-plus-console model, each is a separate Power Pages project with its own build and its own copy of shared content. On a foundation model, all three audiences read from one source, so a single update reaches the help center, the partner portal, and the employee hub at once.
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: one foundation, branded experiences per audience | every audience served and updated once
- Dynamics 365: system of record plus agent console | each audience is another Power Pages build and bolt-on
Branded customer, partner, and employee experiences mean separate Power Pages builds and bolt-ons
Why this matters: when every audience experience is a fresh build, the knowledge layer can't keep pace with the business, and content drifts across sites.
📄 Comparison:
What Dynamics 365 enables: Power Pages sites and the Power Platform to build external experiences, powerful and configurable, and usually a project with developers or a partner. A net-new branded academy or pre-sales hub is built and maintained per site.
What MatrixFlows enables: the same knowledge deploys to many branded applications with no code, each filtered and access-controlled per audience, so the business ships and reshapes experiences itself, in hours.
What Happens at Scale: a product launch needs new content live for customers, partners, and employees at once. On a per-site model, that's three updates across three Power Pages builds, and the one that gets missed is where the audiences drift apart. On one foundation, the content is authored once and every audience experience reflects it on launch day.
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: author once, deploy to every audience, no code | no drift, no per-site rebuild
- Dynamics 365: a Power Pages build per external experience | content maintained site by site
Where Dynamics 365 is right on this axis
For the customer-service agent and the case, Dynamics is genuinely strong, and its self-service case portal is well-integrated with the record behind it. A Microsoft-first organization gets a console wired into the full customer history and the Power Platform. That's a real strength, and it's the experience Dynamics was built to deliver. It's still a system of record plus a console, not a multi-audience foundation the business deploys branded experiences from.
Is Dynamics 365 knowledge a multi-source foundation every audience can use, or scoped to Dataverse and the Microsoft estate?
MatrixFlows integrates many sources into one structured foundation of typed records that every audience and AI agent reads from, and it pulls Dynamics in rather than copying it. Dynamics 365 knowledge and Copilot grounding live inside Dataverse and the Microsoft estate, optimized for the customer-service function.
A multi-audience knowledge layer needs to span the whole company's sources and reach external audiences, not sit inside one estate. Product docs in a wiki, troubleshooting in a help center, partner content in a drive, and case knowledge in the CRM are different sources for different audiences. When the foundation and the AI are scoped to one estate, everything else is either ingested into that estate or left outside the AI's reach. The span and structure of the foundation decide whether the AI resolves across audiences or only inside the system of record.
Knowledge and Copilot grounding live inside Dataverse and the Microsoft estate
Why this matters: if the foundation the AI reasons over is estate-scoped, the knowledge other audiences need either gets pulled into Dataverse or stays invisible.
📄 Comparison:
What Dynamics 365 enables: a knowledge base and Copilot grounding inside the Dynamics and Microsoft estate, deeply integrated with M365, Teams, and the Power Platform. A single, live-connected foundation spanning the whole company's sources and available to external audiences isn't the design center.
What MatrixFlows enables: Matrix models specs, guides, release notes, partner content, and submissions as typed records with faceted taxonomy, and connects many external sources into vector-indexed records, including pulling Dynamics in through its Dataverse MCP and APIs rather than copying it.
What Happens at Scale: a high-tech company has knowledge spread across a wiki, a docs tool, a help center, and Dynamics. On an estate-scoped model, unifying it for the AI means ingesting everything into Dataverse and serving it inside the Microsoft estate. On a multi-source foundation, the same sources sync into typed records the AI reasons over for every audience, and Dynamics stays one connected source among them.
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: many sources into one foundation, Dynamics pulled in | every audience reads from the whole estate of knowledge
- Dynamics 365: knowledge and AI scoped to Dataverse | a single multi-source, multi-audience foundation isn't the design
Where Dynamics 365 is right on this axis
For knowledge tied to cases and the customer record inside the Microsoft estate, Dynamics is deep and well-governed, and Copilot grounded in clean Dataverse data is genuinely capable. A Microsoft-first support team gets a tight, native loop between the case, the article, and the record. That strength is real. It's still estate-scoped, not the multi-source foundation a multi-audience knowledge layer needs.
Does Dynamics 365 AI serve every audience from a shared foundation, or stay scoped to Dataverse and metered by Copilot Credits?
MatrixFlows includes unlimited AI grounded in a multi-audience foundation, built and run by the business, and it interoperates with Dynamics rather than replacing it. Dynamics 365 Copilot is capable and well-funded, scoped to Dataverse and the Microsoft estate, and the agentic layer is metered by Copilot Credits with an Azure subscription required.
AI that resolves across audiences needs grounding in a shared foundation, economics that don't punish usage, and a build model the team that owns the content can drive. When the agentic layer is metered per message and per tool call, scaling self-service raises the bill, and the assistant is scoped to the estate it grounds in. Included, multi-audience AI on a shared foundation is a different proposition from estate-scoped AI metered by Copilot Credits, even when both are capable.
Copilot agents are metered by Copilot Credits, and an Azure subscription is required
Why this matters: when the agentic layer is billed by consumption, the better the AI resolves, the more it costs, and the cost is hard to forecast.
📄 Comparison:
What Dynamics 365 enables: Copilot bundled into the Customer Service SKUs for agent-assist, and prebuilt and autonomous agents metered by Copilot Credits, $0.01 per message pay-as-you-go, with 1,000 credits per user a month bundled into Premium and an Azure subscription required. Partner guides flag the consumption cost as hard to budget.
What MatrixFlows enables: unlimited AI on every plan, grounded in your records, with no per-message meter and no Azure prerequisite. An AI assistant resolves a hundred questions or a hundred thousand without changing the bill.
What Happens at Scale: a team pushes AI self-service from 20% to 60% across customer and partner audiences. On a Copilot Credit meter, that win is a rising consumption line that's hard to predict before a few months of runtime. On included AI, the same win is flat cost and a falling cost per resolution.
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: unlimited AI included, multi-audience | scaling resolution lowers cost per outcome
- Dynamics 365: Copilot Credit metering, Azure required | better resolution raises a consumption bill
Dynamics ships deep first-party MCP, metered and Dataverse-scoped; MatrixFlows interoperates with it
Why this matters: the strongest position isn't replacing Dynamics, it's running the knowledge layer on MatrixFlows and pairing with Dynamics' MCP.
📄 Comparison:
What Dynamics 365 enables: deep, first-party MCP, ERP, Sales, Dataverse, and Power Apps servers exposing Dataverse records, business logic, and Power Platform skills, expanded in 2026 Release Wave 1. Access is metered by Copilot Credits, about 0.1 credit per tool call, and scoped to the Dataverse and Microsoft estate.
What MatrixFlows enables: with MatrixFlows, your own AI builds and runs the platform — from Claude or ChatGPT you create and manage content, tables, fields, records, apps, agents, skills, and tools over a multi-audience foundation — and it interoperates with Dynamics, integrating through Composio, the Dataverse Web API, and webhooks.
And it works the other way too: from inside MatrixFlows, your AI can take real-time actions in the other systems you run as a step in a workflow — create a lead in Dynamics, look up an order's status, or update a case. So one connection runs both ways: your AI builds and runs MatrixFlows, and MatrixFlows gets work done across your other tools.
What Happens at Scale: a team wants its AI to do real work across knowledge and the CRM. Through Dynamics' MCP it reads and acts on Dataverse records, metered, inside the estate. With MatrixFlows, your own AI builds and runs the multi-audience knowledge foundation, and the two run together, so Dynamics keeps the record and MatrixFlows runs the knowledge layer your AI can build on.
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: your AI builds and runs it, and interoperates with Dynamics | run the knowledge layer, keep Dynamics as the record
- Dynamics 365: deep MCP, metered and Dataverse-scoped | data access and Dataverse build, inside the estate
Where Dynamics 365 is right on this axis
Dynamics' Copilot and MCP are substantive, not marketing, and Microsoft's agentic roadmap is moving fast, with the HSBC proof point a real enterprise result. For the customer-service motion inside the Microsoft estate, that AI is genuinely capable, and the first-party MCP depth across ERP, Sales, and Dataverse is hard to match. The gap this page names is scope and economics, not capability. For the system of record it serves, Dynamics' AI earns its place.
Can you scale knowledge and AI across Dynamics 365 without per-seat tiers and Copilot Credit consumption?
MatrixFlows is priced to company size with unlimited internal users and unlimited AI, so everyone contributes and every audience is served without another seat or a consumption meter. Dynamics 365 is priced per seat across tiers, with the agentic AI metered by Copilot Credits and an Azure subscription required.
A knowledge foundation everyone contributes to and every audience uses needs pricing that doesn't tax participation or usage. Per-seat tiers decide who gets to contribute, consumption-metered credits decide what the AI costs as it works, and an Azure dependency adds another line. All reasonable for a CRM and ERP system of record, and all working against a multi-audience knowledge layer the whole company is supposed to feed and use.
Per-seat tiers plus consumption-metered Copilot Credits are hard to budget
Why this matters: when the seat is tiered and the AI is metered, scaling knowledge and resolution is a budget conversation every time.
📄 Comparison:
What Dynamics 365 enables: Customer Service tiers around $50, $105, and $195 per user a month, with Copilot bundled but the agentic layer metered by Copilot Credits at $0.01 per message, plus an Azure subscription. Multiple 2026 partner guides report the consumption cost is hard to forecast, and seeded AI Builder credits are being removed and rebilled through Copilot Credits at higher rates.
What MatrixFlows enables: company-size pricing with unlimited internal users and unlimited AI, no consumption meter and no Azure prerequisite. At 2,000 employees the External plan is $12,000 a year and Build is $21,000, list price.
What Happens at Scale: a team wants more people contributing knowledge and more questions resolved by AI across audiences. On a per-seat, per-credit model, both are reasons the bill goes up, and the AI line is hard to predict. On company-size pricing, more contributors and more resolutions strengthen the foundation at no extra cost, and the unit economics improve.
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: company-size price, unlimited users and AI | growth and resolution don't raise the bill
- Dynamics 365: per-seat tiers plus Copilot Credits | participation and AI usage both cost more, and harder to forecast
Where Dynamics 365 is right on this axis
For a Microsoft-first enterprise already paying for the Microsoft estate, Dynamics' per-seat model and its Azure and Power Platform ties are coherent, and the consolidation onto one vendor is a real advantage for procurement. A company standardized there gets governance and integration that's hard to assemble otherwise. That's a fair trade for the system of record. It's the wrong shape for a multi-audience knowledge layer the whole company contributes to and every audience consumes, which is the part to run on MatrixFlows alongside it.
What can Dynamics 365 Copilot actually do across every audience, and what does it cost in Copilot Credits?
The four-axis section named where Dynamics' AI is scoped and metered; here's what included, multi-audience AI looks like across the eight capabilities MatrixFlows ships today. Copilot is substantive and scoped to the Dataverse and Microsoft estate, with the agentic layer metered by Copilot Credits. MatrixFlows runs the same eight capabilities on a multi-audience foundation, unlimited and grounded in structured records, with your team reviewing what the AI does.
1. Intelligent Discovery
MatrixFlows runs semantic search over vector-indexed typed records across many connected sources, matching what people mean. Copilot search is capable and scoped to Dataverse and the Microsoft estate, where it grounds.
2. AI-Powered Self-Service with Actions
A MatrixFlows AI assistant resolves questions on any application and can act through Tools, query and update records, run skills, escalate, with a voice channel in the browser, included. ⚠️ Dynamics prebuilt and autonomous agents resolve cases inside the estate, metered by Copilot Credits with an Azure subscription required.
3. Internal AI Assistants
The Universal Assistant runs the workspace in plain language, query records, create items, build apps, and Meetings captures calls as records. Copilot assists agents inside Dynamics, and role-based Sales and Finance agents run in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
4. AI-Enabled Fields and Automation
AI fields auto-categorize, summarize, and translate records, and Automations can run an AI agent on a record event, unlimited. Copilot summarizes and routes cases inside Dynamics, bundled into the Customer Service SKUs.
5. AI Writing Assistant
The Writing Assistant drafts inline in any field, grounded in the surrounding records, saved for review. Copilot drafts replies and content inside Dynamics, grounded in Dataverse.
6. AI Drafts Support Replies
The Reply Assistant drafts a complete, grounded response in the Conversations Inbox, ready for a person to send. ⚠️ Copilot agent-assist drafts replies inside the case, and the interaction stays in the Dynamics estate.
7. Content Creation from Conversations
A resolved conversation becomes a structured Matrix record in one click, reusable self-service the moment it's resolved. Dynamics can generate a KB article from a case, in the estate's shape, with manual curation to make it audience-ready.
8. Gap Identification and Auto-Draft
Search and AI analytics flag what people ask that has no answer, AI drafts the missing record, and once a person approves it, it deploys to every application at once. Dynamics analytics surface case trends; closing the content gap is a separate curation effort.
Agentic AI: MatrixFlows agents build and operate the foundation, unlimited and grounded in a multi-audience knowledge base. ⚠️ Copilot Studio builds custom agents and is genuinely deep, with a standalone Copilot Studio plan required to publish agents to external channels, consumption-based, and scoped to the Microsoft estate.
What Happens at Scale: a question arrives that spans a wiki, a help center, and a case, across customer and partner audiences. On an estate-scoped, Copilot-Credit-metered model, resolving it well means ingesting the sources into Dataverse, an Azure subscription, and a per-message charge. On MatrixFlows, the same question resolves into reusable knowledge:
- The gap is flagged from what people searched and didn't find
- AI drafts the missing record from existing context across every source
- A person reviews and approves it - the governor that keeps the answer trustworthy
- It deploys to the help center, the partner portal, and the employee hub at once
- The next person who asks self-serves, and the same question stops coming back
✅ Key Difference:
- MatrixFlows: unlimited, multi-audience AI grounded across many sources | accurate without a meter or an estate boundary
- Dynamics 365: substantive AI, Copilot-Credit-metered and Dataverse-scoped | the agentic layer costs by consumption inside the estate
When a question becomes a case in Dynamics 365, does the resolution become knowledge every audience can use?
In MatrixFlows, the human resolution and the reusable answer are the same act, a person closes the conversation in the Conversations Inbox, and the resolution becomes a structured record that powers the next self-service answer for every audience. In Dynamics, a closed case can seed a knowledge article inside the estate, and turning it into multi-audience self-service is a separate curation step.
The Conversations Inbox is one shared place for every channel that needs a person. Live Chat from inside any application creates a conversation on a record. Inbound email routes in through AWS SES, and replies route back out. Escalations from a form or an AI assistant arrive with the full conversation history, so the person picks up with complete context. Video calls run through the platform, and an AI agent can join to capture the summary, notes, and action items as records.
This is where the run-both model pays off, not where it competes. When a resolution needs a formal case, MatrixFlows creates or updates it in Dynamics through the integration, ticketing sync with Dynamics 365 over Composio, the Dataverse Web API, and webhooks, and the case is worked in the system of record. The difference is what happens to the knowledge afterward: in MatrixFlows the resolution becomes a typed record the AI answers from next time, across customer, partner, and employee experiences, so the same question stops coming back instead of staying inside the case.
Human review is deliberate here, not a limitation. MatrixFlows positions AI to assist and to do the routine work with a person approving, the agent drafts, the human sends, the edge cases get judgment. That's what makes resolving questions automatically safe to ship to customers and partners: the people stay in control of what the AI puts in front of an audience, and every correction lands in the same foundation the AI reads from next time.
What does Dynamics 365 Customer Service plus Copilot Credits plus Azure add up to?
The seat price is only the start; the real number adds the Copilot Credit consumption for agents and the Azure subscription underneath. MatrixFlows prices to company size, with unlimited users and unlimited AI, so the same scope doesn't carry per-message charges or an Azure dependency.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service is per-seat across tiers, Professional around $50 a month, Enterprise around $105, and Premium $195 with Contact Center and 1,000 Copilot Credits per user. Copilot is bundled into the SKUs, but the agentic layer runs on Copilot Credits, $0.01 per message pay-as-you-go through Azure, with pre-purchase Commit Units for a discount. An Azure subscription is required to run agents, and a 40 percent discount on Contact Center and Premium runs through June 2026, while seeded AI Builder credits are removed in November 2026 and rebilled through Copilot Credits at higher rates. List and partner-reported seat figures vary, so treat the spread as an estimate until reconfirmed.
The model contrast shows up clearly at scale. A 2,000-employee company running a service desk at a 5% agent ratio is roughly 100 agents. At the Enterprise tier near $105 a month that's about $126,000 a year in seats alone, before Copilot Credit consumption for agents and before Azure, and Premium at $195 pushes that past $230,000. MatrixFlows at the same company size is $12,000 a year on the External plan or $21,000 on Build, list price, with unlimited internal users and unlimited AI included, and no consumption meter. The three-year comparison is in the table below; the point is the shape, one cost stacks seats, credits, and Azure, the other stays flat.
That shape is the whole argument for running the knowledge layer on MatrixFlows. The goal is to resolve more questions for more audiences with AI that's included, and a per-seat, per-credit, Azure-dependent model makes every step of that a budget conversation, with a consumption line partner guides describe as hard to forecast. Company-size pricing with included AI turns the same growth into flat platform cost and a falling cost per resolution, while Dynamics keeps the CRM and case system it earns its license for.
The quarterly cost of waiting is the sum of three drivers most teams don't add up together: the Copilot Credit consumption and seats that grow with scope, the team time lost building and maintaining separate Power Pages experiences per audience, and the customer and partner experience cost of knowledge no single audience layer reaches. Across a quarter those compound into a number that's almost always larger than the cost of running the knowledge layer on top of Dynamics. There's no countdown and no scarcity here, just a cost that keeps running until one foundation serves every audience.
👉 Start your free workspace and build a multi-audience knowledge layer on top of your Dynamics 365 data in under 10 minutes - keep Dynamics for CRM and cases, run the knowledge layer on MatrixFlows.
Keep your system of record. MatrixFlows serves customers, partners, and employees from one foundation with included AI, and integrates with Dynamics 365 through Composio, the Dataverse Web API, and webhooks, interoperating with its Dataverse MCP.
Start your free workspace | Book a 15-minute demo | View pricing
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