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As a service representative, having clear visibility into your daily schedule is crucial for effectively managing tasks and maintaining productivity. Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides a user-friendly Schedule Calendar for service reps, allowing them to easily view shifts, breaks, training sessions, and other scheduled activities—all from one convenient location.
Clear visibility into your daily activities
The Schedule Calendar gives detailed insights into both productive tasks and non-productive shift bookings, ensuring you always know what’s coming next. This helps you plan your day effectively, prepare for upcoming activities, and efficiently manage your workload.
Key features of the Schedule Calendar for service reps include:
Shift schedule bookings: Shows all scheduled activities, including productive tasks like customer support sessions, training or coaching events. Additionally, it includes non-productive periods such as breaks and lunches.
Day view: Provides a detailed breakdown of your daily schedule, allowing you to see precise timings for each shift, break, and activity.
Weekly view: Offers a clear overview of your entire week, helping you quickly identify commitments and plan your time accordingly.
Month view: Delivers a comprehensive monthly view, visually highlighting shifts, training sessions, and approved time-off requests.
Agenda view: Presents a concise, list-based summary of upcoming shifts, breaks, training sessions, and scheduled time off. This gives you quick insights into your day-to-day activities.
Time off requests: Stay informed about your approved leave and scheduled time off within the same calendar interface. Easily track your absences, ensuring work-life balance and smooth team coordination.
Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s Schedule Calendar gives service representatives the clarity and organization needed for peak performance. With easy access to shift details and intuitive calendar views, you can improve planning, manage workloads more efficiently, and consistently deliver exceptional customer support.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
It’s not hyperbolic to say that today’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have entered a new era: one where organizations are reimagining systems that are AI-operated but human led. This blended approach will take time to mature but with 81% of leaders expecting agents to be moderately or extensively integrated into their company’s AI strategy1, the time to act is now. In Microsoft Dynamics 365, these agents are redefining how finance, supply chain, and operations teams get their work done and how business operations run: intelligently, cost-effectively, and at scale. Building on the initial wave of agents announced, like the Financial Reconciliation Agent and Sales Order Agent, Microsoft is excited to announce that several new ERP agents are available and ready to start using today.
The rise of autonomous agents
How are agents different from AI-powered assistants? Building on the value of AI acting as an assistant, agents join teams as “digital colleagues”, or agents that take on specific tasks. AI-powered autonomous agents transform how business processes are orchestrated and executed—moving away from human-dependent tasks to intelligent, scalable automation. In Dynamics 365, these agents work on behalf of individuals, teams, and entire functions to streamline processes like lead generation, order management, and account reconciliation and close.
ERP systems in particular are rich with high-volume, rules-based activities that are ripe for transformation. By introducing agents into core ERP scenarios, organizations can reduce manual effort, improve accuracy, and accelerate decision-making across finance, supply chain, and project operations. This shift marks a meaningful departure towards AI-first operations and the below agents, available today in Dynamics 365, are just a preview of what’s to come.
New agents for ERP entering production-ready public preview
Agents for ERP are designed to facilitate complex business processes, like source-to-pay and project-to-profit, to ultimately reduce manual effort, enhance your efficiency, and improve business performance. Some agents fully automate entire workflows, while others support specific steps, but all are built to augment how people work. Today, new ERP agents in Dynamics 365 are now available in public preview.
Account Reconciliation Agent
Reconciling ledger entries is a time-consuming, detailed task that countless professionals spend hours on. With the Account Reconciliation Agent, users can deliver timely, compliant financial statements with fewer manual fixes. The agent accelerates the period-end close by matching ledger entries, flagging discrepancies, and recommending resolution steps. With an agent managing the reconciliation process, users can reduce operational expenses and overall time spent manually reviewing and analyzing results.
Microsoft customer Lifetime Products deployed the Account Reconciliation Agent to automate the matching and clearing of transactions between subledgers and the general ledger and saw immediate process improvements.
“Using AI and autonomous agents are just the next level for us when it comes to realizing the full benefit of our Dynamics 365 environment.“
If the past few years have shown us anything it’s that modern supply chains operate under relentless change—and staying ahead of supplier deliveries is critical to operational performance. The Supplier Communications Agent takes charge of supplier interactions, acting instantly on supplier emails, chasing missing order confirmations and delayed shipments. By closing the loop on every critical supplier touchpoint, the agent slashes rush charges, prevents costly disruptions, and protects your margins. Procurement specialists avoid last minute firefights and can focus on managing supplier relationships, driving resilience and efficiency across your entire source to pay process.
Expense Agent
Catching up with emails after a work trip is challenging enough; providing expense details adds another item on your to-do list. With the Expense Agent, users can streamline expense reporting with accuracy and policy compliance. The Expense Agent uses AI to extract key details from receipts—such as vendor, amount, date, and category—and intelligently suggests classifications aligned with company travel and expense policies. It helps ensure accurate, compliant submissions from the start, reducing manual errors, out-of-policy spending, and the need for rework. By improving data quality at the source, organizations can accelerate reimbursement, maintain policy compliance, and reduce the administrative burden on employees, managers, and finance teams alike. This allows more reliable cost tracking and enhances overall financial visibility into spend.
Time Entry Agent
Reduce time spent on entering details and tracking updates and spend more time using real-time insights into project performance. The Time Entry Agent helps to ensure timely, accurate capture of project hours by prompting employees to log time with smart reminders and context. This agent enhances billing accuracy, payroll, and visibility into project performance. Capturing time spent with an agent reduces the time spent on manual input and gives project planners better insight into resource utilization.
Activity Approvals Agent
Cut through the noise, reduce approval cycle times, and enforce cost controls with the Activity Approvals Agent. Streamline your work by only surfacing entries that need attention. This agent helps managers act faster, prevents unapproved costs, and speeds up downstream workflows. By automating the activity approvals process, project managers can improve project performance and increase visibility into time spent.
Transformative impact on business processes
ERP systems are often considered complex and dense with information, customizations, and requirements. This same complexity makes these processes ripe for automation and agents. By bringing in agents to automate steps across existing business processes and reduce any manual interventions required, agents help teams to achieve greater efficiency and freedom from processes while delivering optimal business outcomes. From finance and supply chain management to project operations and time tracking, these agents streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and enhance accuracy. With 82% of leaders confident that they’ll use digital labor to expand capacity in the next 12-18 months2, the breadth of what is possible with agents for ERP is vast. Get started using agents for ERP processes in Dynamics 365 today to achieve greater efficiency, cost savings, and improved visibility into your operations.
Review documentation of agents and join the public preview today!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Managing workforce availability efficiently is essential for delivering consistent and high-quality customer service. A well-structured shift planning and scheduling process ensures service representatives are assigned to the right shifts at the right time. This helps businesses maintain optimal service levels while balancing service representative workload. By defining shift structures, aligning staffing with demand, and ensuring fair scheduling practices, organizations can improve workforce efficiency and enhance service quality.
Create shift templates with shift planning
Shift planning forms the backbone of workforce management. It helps businesses organize shift structures, define coverage requirements, and ensure the right service representatives are available. A clear and well-defined shift plan minimizes coverage gaps, reduces scheduling conflicts, and improves operational efficiency.
Key benefits of a shift plan include:
Align staffing with capacity plans: Ensure shift coverage aligns with forecasted service demand by scheduling the right number of service representatives at the right time.
Assign the right skills to the right shifts: Match service representatives with the required expertise to ensure optimal performance across different customer interaction channels.
Structured shift activities: Organize shift time effectively by incorporating work periods, training sessions, scheduled breaks, and lunch intervals. This structure helps optimize service delivery while ensuring employee well-being.
Comprehensive shift calendars: Set operational parameters, including shift days, working hours, and time zones, to ensure alignment with business requirements and global workforce operations.
Ensuring workforce efficiency with seamless scheduling
Once shift plans are in place, scheduling ensures service representatives are assigned efficiently to maintain business continuity. An organized scheduling process helps businesses allocate resources effectively, adapt to changing needs, and maintain fairness in workforce management.
Key benefits include:
Automated scheduling for quick assignments: Generate schedules in bulk based on predefined shift plans and workforce requirements, ensuring efficient allocation of resources.
Flexible manual scheduling: Assign service representatives to shifts manually, allowing for adjustments based on real-time operational needs and individual preferences.
Break distribution for continuous service: Balance workload by strategically distributing breaks across service representatives, preventing service interruptions while maintaining coverage.
Adaptability for changing needs: Easily adjust schedules to accommodate last-minute changes, or unexpected fluctuations in service demand.
By using Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s shift plan and scheduling, businesses can ensure smooth operations, optimize workforce utilization, and provide better service experiences. A well-organized shift structure helps service representatives stay productive and engaged while ensuring that customer support remains uninterrupted. With a strategic approach to planning and scheduling, organizations can balance efficiency with flexibility. Consequently, they foster a more structured and effective service operation.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In today’s fast-paced service landscape, ensuring the right number of service representatives are available at the right time is critical to maintaining efficiency and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Capacity planning in Dynamics 365 Contact Center empowers organizations to align workforce availability with service demand by providing accurate staffing forecasts. By leveraging historical data and advanced modeling, businesses can make proactive staffing decisions, optimize operational efficiency, and enhance service levels.
Capacity planning offers a structured approach to predicting staffing requirements across different time horizons. Whether planning for the immediate future or long-term workforce strategy, organizations can leverage these capabilities for efficient resource planning.
Short-term planning
Short-term capacity planning enables organizations to predict service representative needs in 15-minute intervals. This capability ensures staffing levels align with fluctuating support demand throughout the day. By continuously analyzing workload patterns, businesses can make real-time adjustments to maintain service quality and responsiveness. This approach helps contact centers proactively address unexpected surges, minimize wait times, and optimize resource utilization. With greater visibility into short-term trends, organizations can ensure seamless customer support while preventing service disruptions.
Long-term planning
Long-term workforce planning enables organizations to predict daily service representative needs well in advance. By assessing workforce requirements over extended periods, businesses can develop hiring strategies, optimize shift allocations, and ensure that they have the right talent in place to meet projected service demands. This forward-looking approach supports strategic decision-making, financial planning, and workforce scalability.
Data slicing
Organizations can break down staffing forecasts by specific channels and queues. Consequently, they get a deeper understanding of workforce distribution across various service touchpoints. This capability helps businesses allocate resources effectively, ensuring that each customer interaction channel is adequately staffed to meet demand.
With the inclusion of Capacity Planning in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, organizations can be well-equipped with the tools they need to optimize staffing efficiency and ensure exceptional service delivery. Capacity planning provides the foresight necessary to manage workforce resources effectively. Businesses can balance operational costs, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive long-term success.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As finance leaders scale to meet growing business complexity—spanning global entities, evolving regulations, and rising business performance demands—the pressure is on to do more than close the books. Today’s finance organizations must move faster, manage risk more proactively, and adapt dynamically.
That requires more than automation, it demands a new era of ERP. One where systems don’t just record and report, but act, learn, and adapt—where AI agents, embedded in everyday workflows, help finance teams manage complexity, reduce manual effort, and accelerate decision-making.
At Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference 2025—taking place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center—we’re showcasing how Microsoft is enabling this shift. Visit our team of technical specialists at Booth #313 and attend our keynote to see how Microsoft is helping finance teams develop and implement AI strategies that align with business goals—without compromising on governance, compliance, or security.
Global-scale financial operations for the modern CFO
As organizations adapt to shifting markets—whether by entering new regions, adjusting product strategies, or responding to evolving regulations—financial operations become more complex. Finance teams are tasked with managing activity across multiple legal entities, currencies, and accounting standards, all while ensuring accuracy, compliance, and transparency. What was once the domain of large multinational companies is now a day-to-day reality for businesses of all sizes. As a result, global-scale financial operations have shifted from being a specialized need within your business systems to a core capability.
This evolving reality is creating a new baseline for finance transformation. Global-scale financial operations are no longer a niche requirement—they’re an operational necessity. Finance teams must support complex processes like consolidation, allocations, revaluation, and compliance across geographies and systems, while maintaining accuracy and transparency.
Multi-entity journal processing from a single experience.
Multi-ledger automation to support International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP), and local standards.
Cross-entity allocations, revaluations, and close activities.
Shared hierarchies for business units, customers, vendors, and financial dimensions.
Integrated consolidation and reporting across systems and geographies.
These features help finance organizations simplify complexity and operate with greater agility and precision—without increasing overhead.
Investing in the future of global-scale finance and agentic operations
As business models continue to evolve and financial complexity deepens, Microsoft is making foundational investments to support the next generation of finance operations. Our roadmap for Dynamics 365 Finance focuses on deepening multi-entity and multi-ledger capabilities, accelerating period-end close, and enabling flexible data hierarchies across legal entities, currencies, and accounting standards. Here are a few things we’re investing in:
Multi-entity and intercompany operations are often constrained by fragmented processes and manual handoffs across legal entities. A new approach is needed to streamline activity across the organization, reduce duplication, and increase control—all without scaling up effort or cost.
Multi-ledger accounting is becoming essential as more companies operate in jurisdictions that require parallel accounting standards. Traditional methods often rely on offline reconciliation or separate systems. We’re investing in ways to maintain compliance and transparency while reducing complexity.
Accelerating period-end close remains one of the most persistent challenges for finance teams. Time-consuming reconciliations, disconnected systems, and limited visibility into task status slow down the close. We’re focusing on integrated task orchestration, automation, and embedded intelligence to improve agility and confidence.
Flexible data hierarchies are increasingly essential as organizations grow and restructure—they help introduce new business units, financial dimensions, and operational models. We’re evolving to provide more support for shared, adaptable hierarchies across entities and dimensions to improve enterprise-wide reporting, planning agility, and compliance alignment.
At the center of this is a new vision for ERP—one that supports your organization’s shift to a more autonomous enterprise. This model brings together adaptive user experiences, AI agents, and a set of modular, extensible capabilities that can be accessed across applications and workflows. Finance professionals can interact with the system in natural language, receive guided recommendations, and delegate tasks to AI-powered agents embedded directly within their daily workflows. At the same time, these systems are becoming more interoperable—able to connect data, coordinate actions, and deliver outcomes across complex organizational structures.
We’re building financial operations solutions that don’t just keep pace with change, they help you lead it.
From intelligent tools to more autonomous financial operations
While intelligent automation has improved efficiency across finance processes, the next phase of transformation will require more than assistance. This next phase calls for intelligent systems that act with autonomy and help finance teams stay ahead of increasing demands.
Microsoft is delivering both embedded and the ability to build AI agents to support this shift:
The Account Reconciliation Agent, embedded in Dynamics 365 Finance, helps automate transaction matching, flag discrepancies, and reduces time spent on period-end close activities. Watch the Account Reconciliation Agent here.
The Finance Reconciliation Agent, available in Excel, enables intelligent reconciliation of data sets from across the business using familiar tools. Watch the Finance Reconciliation Agent here.
Custom finance agents, built with Microsoft Copilot Studio, allow organizations to design their own agent experiences—supporting processes like allocation modeling, compliance validation, or internal control workflows tailored to their unique operating model.
This approach to AI implementation represents a new layer of the finance IT stack—one that not only reduces manual workload but allows you to use and create agents that work for you to enhances accuracy, accountability, and insight.
Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference 2025
Learn how Microsoft helps finance teams develop and implement AI strategies.
What to expect: Learn how Microsoft is applying cutting-edge AI to transform finance operations—from reconciliation and forecasting to policy guidance and close review. We’ll share practical examples from our own finance organization, highlight new agent capabilities, and offer guidance on how to begin implementing agent-based automation in your own enterprise.
Whether your finance team supports 10 legal entities or hundreds, the tools to manage complexity, enhance insight, and drive transformation are available now.
Let us show you what’s next in financial and agentic operations, and how Microsoft can help you lead the way.
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