For organizations that rely on frontline workers to service and maintain assets in the field, the offline-first experience in Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile has long been a lifeline. Whether at factory floors, remote oil fields, or underground facilities, your teams can keep working without a network. 

But what about those moments when connectivity is available? Why not take advantage of it? 

We’re excited to introduce Online mode, a new capability that allows technicians to access live Dataverse data from the Offline-First application, giving users the best of both worlds: offline reliability and real-time access. 

Why This Matters

Field service environments are unpredictable. A technician may have a 5G connection at 9:00 AM and no signal by lunch. Traditionally, mobile access has focused on being offline-first, locking the user in to use data stored on their local device, ensuring the app continues to function no matter what. 

However, more frontline workers are working in semi-connected or fully connected environments — city rooftops, modern warehouses, customer facilities with Wi-Fi. In these situations, relying only on pre-downloaded data (defined by the mobile offline profile) can slow down workflows and limit access to up-to-date records. 

With Online mode, users now have the option to tap into live data in Dataverse, allowing them to: 

• Search and locate data beyond the boundaries of their offline profile 

• See real-time changes to records like assets, work orders, or inventory 

• Immediately retrieve up-to-date schedules, instructions, or notes 

• Access files on SharePoint saved to the cloud. 

Online Mode Capabilities 

When working with the latest version of the Field Service Mobile app, frontline workers can now: 

• Switch between Offline-first and Online mode based on their connectivity and job needs 

• Access live Dataverse data directly when Online mode is active. 

• Continue to sync offline data in the background while working in Online mode 

• Switch back to Offline-first mode if connectivity is lost and continue working with data already synchronized to their device. 

No more guesswork. Users always know whether they’re working from their local database or the cloud. 

What IT Managers Should Know 

Enabling this feature requires only a configuration change in the Power Apps maker experience.  

After enabling the configuration and publishing the App Module, users will begin seeing the online Toggle within their Field Service Mobile application.

Getting Started: Best Practices for Rollout 

We recommend the following steps for a smooth introduction: 

1. Train users to understand the differences between online and offline mode and how to switch between operating modes in the application within the Offline Status page. 

2. Roll out to techs in high-connectivity areas (urban, in-building roles) 

3. Gather feedback to optimize your mobile offline profile based on real usage 

4. Monitor performance and sync behavior with telemetry tools 

With the new Online mode, your technicians don’t have to choose between reliability and real-time access — they get both. 

• Work confidently offline 

• Switch to online to search or update live data 

• Never miss a critical update from the field or dispatch 

• Stay productive, no matter the network status 

Ready to empower your team? Update your Field Service Mobile app today and start using Online mode. 
→ Learn more in our documentation 

The post Go Beyond Offline: Introducing Online Mode for Field Service Mobile  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

With the latest July 2025 updates to the Customer Intent Agent, Microsoft is accelerating the journey toward fully autonomous contact centers. These enhancements empower organizations to leverage AI agents that not only understand customer intent but also automate the entire resolution process. This increases the availability of human service reps to focus on high-value interactions. 

The July preview introduces powerful new capabilities for the Customer Intent Agent, building on the foundation of intent mining, dynamic interviews, and knowledge-driven automation. Now, organizations can achieve more accurate intent detection, seamless handoffs, and flexible integration with custom workflows with the same enterprise-grade control and compliance. 

More conversational, capable, and configurable 

The Customer Intent Agent’s conversational abilities have been significantly enhanced. Natural language instructions at the organizational and intent level guide the agent’s behavior, enabling more natural, dynamic, and context-aware interactions. The system now supports instructions written in natural language. This allows for dynamic interviews, conditional logic, and seamless transitions between related intents. 

Key improvements: 

• Dynamic interviews: The agent can persist information from self-service, suggest next questions, and handle intent shifts or interruptions gracefully. 

• Instruction-driven resolution: Playbooks provide step-by-step guidance for resolving intents, leveraging both knowledge articles and connected actions. 

• Intent-level mapping: The agent can map intents to knowledge, actions (via connectors), or custom AI agents. This enables tailored resolution logic and flexible integration with proprietary systems. 

• Improved disambiguation: The agent asks clarifying questions and provides immediate feedback. This ensures customer intent is accurately captured, even across thousands of topics. 

Voice support 

The Customer Intent Agent now supports voice for self-service as well as chat. It uses agentic AI techniques to provide a higher quality of self-service and lower chance of escalation by providing a natural flow of conversation, focusing on narrowing down the customer’s reason for calling and identifying the best solution. 

Key improvements: 

• Natural conversation: The agent speaks in a natural empathetic back-and-forth manner, without robotic prompts.  It’s just a conversation that flows, reducing the chance of the call escalating. 

• No pre-programming: The agent dynamically plans the conversation without pre-programmed flows. It reasons over the customer’s speech, narrowing down the intent and identifying the most appropriate solution. 

• Robust speech recognition: The customer speaks naturally, as they would to a person, and the agent understands. 

• Responsive: Fast, natural responses keep the conversation flowing, which is critical in a voice conversation. 

Smarter intent discovery and management 

A core advancement in this release is the overhaul of intent discovery. The Customer Intent Agent now leverages business context, product hierarchies, and industry profiles to generate more relevant, manageable, and actionable intents. Fewer, higher-quality intents make it easier for admins to approve, merge, and segment them by line of business. The new analytics dashboards and semi-autonomous approval flows help organizations quickly identify and promote the most impactful intents. This streamlines the management process and ensures that intent libraries align with real customer needs.  

Key improvements: 

• Business context-aware mining: Intents are now generated with additional context, reducing noise and improving accuracy. 

• Granular control: Admins can filter, approve, or merge intents in bulk, and segment libraries by line of business. 

• Industry and product integration: Mining can be guided by industry and product family, ensuring that intent libraries reflect the organization’s unique landscape. 

• Sample-driven validation: Admins can now view sample cases and conversations that led to intent generation, increasing confidence in the mining process. 

Autonomous and semi-autonomous learning loops 

The July release introduces full and semi-autonomous learning loops. The Customer Intent Agent can continuously improve by extracting new intents and questions from completed conversations. The improved feedback loop, backed by usage data and dashboards, supports the authoring of high-ROI solutions and the creation of knowledge articles. The Customer Intent Agent closes the loop between customer interactions and organizational learning. 

If your organization wants to reduce manual effort, improve resolution times, and deliver consistent customer experiences, now is the time to explore what this agent can do. Preview the Customer Intent Agent in your Dynamics 365 Customer Service environment today! 

Learn more 

To learn more, read the documentation: Autonomous service agents in Dynamics 365 (preview) | Microsoft Learn

The post Automate intent discovery and resolution with Customer Intent Agent appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce two enhancements to Dynamics 365 Contact Center, powered by Azure Communication Services (ACS): SMS mobile numbers and SMS short codes. These capabilities significantly expand our global SMS footprint. Moreover, they provide businesses with more flexibility and control over how they engage with customers through real-time, two-way messaging. 

SMS mobile numbers 

With the introduction of SMS mobile numbers, ACS-based SMS in Contact Center is now available in ten additional countries: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. 

This expansion enables businesses in these regions to: 

• Enable two-way SMS for real-time, conversational customer support. 

• Engage customers using local mobile numbers, improving trust and deliverability. 

• Leverage ACS’s native integration with Dynamics 365 Contact Center for seamless setup and management. 

Whether it’s resolving a billing question, confirming an order, or assisting with a service issue, mobile numbers allow customer service representatives and bots to engage customers in real time—right from the same unified platform. 

ACS SMS short codes 

We’re also pleased to introduce ACS SMS short codes. These are short, memorable numbers (e.g., 12345) that are ideal for high-throughput, compliant messaging. Short codes are now available in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. 

With this release, organizations can: 

• Use ACS SMS short codes directly within Contact Center, eliminating the need for third-party SMS providers. 

• Simplify provisioning and management by staying entirely within the Microsoft and Azure ecosystem. 

• Ensure compliance and security, as short codes are registered and approved by carriers, reducing the risk of message blocking or spam filtering. 

This capability strengthens the Contact Center SMS offering by enabling businesses to scale their customer engagement strategies with secure, carrier-approved messaging, all within a unified Microsoft environment. 

Getting started 

You can provision both mobile numbers and short codes through Azure Communication Services and integrate them directly into your Contact Center SMS workflows. This streamlines setup and management, allowing your teams to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences. 

Learn more

To learn more about acquiring and configuring SMS numbers with ACS, read the documentation: 

• Quickstart: Get and manage phone numbers 
• Configure an SMS channel using Azure Communication Services 

The post Expanding SMS capabilities in Dynamics 365 Contact Center  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

With the latest updates to the Case Management Agent (CMA) in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Microsoft is helping organizations accelerate their evolution into frontier firms. These organizations lead by empowering AI agents to run entire business processes while humans set direction and monitor progress.  

The July 2025 preview updates to CMA introduced powerful capabilities that automate the entire case lifecycle, from creation to closure, with the flexibility to provide enterprise-grade case resolutions.  

The release of CMA in April 2025 laid the foundation for intelligent, agent-led automation. We built the agent to autonomously create and update cases, with AI-powered field population and contextual updates. Then, it could semi-autonomously follow up on cases and close them. 

Now, CMA offers flexibility for both fully autonomous and semi-autonomous workflows. Here’s how full automation manages the entire case lifecycle: 

• Case creation and update: Automatically generates and updates cases from chat, voice and email channels using AI-powered field prediction.

• Case resolution: Drafts context-aware resolution emails and manages follow-up sequences, including SLA-based timing and escalation logic. 

• Case follow-up and closure: Automatically drafts context-aware resolution emails to follow up on cases and closes them once resolution criteria are met, with options for agent review or full automation. 

These capabilities reduce handle time, improve consistency, and free up customer service representatives to focus on complex, high-value interactions.

Autonomous case creation and update

The Case Management Agent can now create and update cases through any channel of engagement including voice, chat, email and social channels. A case gets created when the customer service representative accepts the chat request and automatically updates it at the end of the conversation. Furthermore, it can update related entities (such as contacts) based on ongoing customer interactions, reducing manual effort and improving data accuracy. The July updates also bring improvements to email channel handling. CMA now supports: 

• Automated detection of intent for incoming emails and case updates 

• Automated follow-up emails which outline clarifying questions to get more precise information to help resolve the case 

These features are particularly valuable for industries like finance, manufacturing, and services, where customers often send their queries via emails. 

Autonomous case resolution 

A major advancement in this update is the ability to resolve cases in an autonomous manner. CMA uses intent to determine the best course of action for each case, including drafting resolution emails from knowledge bases and triggering custom agents to resolve customer issues. If CMA can’t resolve a case autonomously, it has the intelligence to proactively escalate to a supervisor or customer service representative.  

Support for custom agents means organizations can now configure CMA to work with their own resolution logic, workflows, and data models without limitations. It allows for: 

• Tailored resolution logic: Organizations can define how to resolve cases based on their unique business rules, processes, escalation paths, and customer segments. 

• Flexible integration: CMA can now trigger custom flows, invoke external services, or interact with proprietary systems to determine the best resolution path. 

• Enhanced control: Admins can fine-tune CMA’s behavior to align with internal compliance requirements, service tiers, and operational goals. 

Enhanced email channel support 

The July updates also bring improvements to email channel handling. CMA now supports: 

• Automated detection of intent for incoming emails and case updates. 

• Automated follow-up emails with clarifying questions to get more precise information to help resolve a case.

These features are particularly valuable for industries like finance, manufacturing, and service, where customers often send their queries via emails. 

Fully autonomous case follow-up and closure

Another impactful addition in this release is the ability for CMA to handle case follow-up and closure in a fully autonomous manner. Once a resolution is proposed – either manually or autonomously – CMA can initiate follow-up messages to confirm customer satisfaction, track SLA intervals, and automatically close the case if no further action is required. This eliminates the need for customer service representatives to monitor post-resolution status manually and ensures that cases are closed in a timely, consistent, and compliant fashion. It also triggers the Customer Knowledge Management Agent if a knowledge asset needs to be created from the case. Administrators can configure the number of follow-ups, timing intervals, and closure conditions, giving organizations full control over the automation logic while reducing operational overhead.

Configuration and control 

Administrators can fine-tune CMA’s behavior using global settings and configuration options. This includes: 

• Setting up field mappings, related entities and business context for AI based case updates. 

• Configuring appropriate knowledge, custom agents and other tools to resolve cases 

• Specifying the email templates, and the number and timing of follow-up and case closure emails 

• Controlling whether CMA is semi- or fully autonomous 

This level of control ensures that any organization can tailor CMA to meet their needs. 

If your organization wants to reduce manual effort, improve resolution times, and deliver consistent customer experiences, now is the time to explore what this agent can do. Preview CMA in your Dynamics 365 Customer Service environment today!

Learn more

To learn more, read the documentation: Autonomous service agents in Dynamics 365 (preview) | Microsoft Learn 

The post Empowering frontier firms with the Case Management Agent appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.