As self-service becomes the first stop in contact centers, AI agents now define the frontline customer experience. Modern customer interactions span voice, text, and visual channels, where meaning is shaped not only by what is said, but by how it’s said, when it’s said, and the context surrounding it.   

In customer service, this is even more pronounced-customers reaching out for support don’t just convey information. They convey intent, sentiment, urgency, and emotion, often simultaneously across modalities; a pause or interruption on a voice call signals frustration,  blurred document image leads to downstream reasoning failures, and flat or fragmented response erodes trust-even if the answer is correct In our previous blog post, we reflected on the evolution of contact centers from scripted interactions to AI-driven experiences. As contact center landscape continues to change, the way we evaluate AI agents must change with them. Traditional approaches fall short by focusing on isolated metrics or single modalities, rather than the end-to-end customer experience. 

Contact centers struggle to reliably assess whether their AI agents are improving over time or across architectures, channels, and deployments. While cloud services rely on absolute measures like availability, reliability and latency, AI agent evaluation today remains fragmented, relative, and modality specific. What would be useful is an absolute, normalized measure of end-to-end conversational quality- one that reflects how customers actually experience interactions and answers the fundamental question: Is this agent good at handling real customer conversations? 

Introducing the Multimodal Agent Score (MAS) 

MAS is built on the observation that every service interaction- whether human-to-human or human-to-agent- naturally progresses through three fundamental stages: (explored in more detail here: Measuring What Matters: Redefining Excellence for AI Agents in the Contact Center )

1. Understanding the input – accurately capturing and interpreting what the customer is saying, including intent, context, and signals such as urgency or emotion. 

2. Reasoning over that input – determining the appropriate actions, managing context across turns, and deciding how to resolve the issue responsibly. 

3. Responding effectively – delivering clear, natural, and confident resolution in the right tone and format. 

Multimodal Agent Score directly mirrors these stages. It is a weighted composite score (0-100) designed to assess end-to-end AI agent quality across modalities- voice, text, and visual- aligned to how real conversations naturally unfold.  

MAS Dimensions and Parameters 

Computing each MAS score:

MAS is computed as a weighted aggregation of three quality dimensions stated in the table above. 

where: 

• Qj represents one of the three quality dimensions: Agent Understanding Quality (AUQ), Agent Reasoning Quality (ARQ), Agent Response Quality (AReQ)  

• wj represent the costs or weights of each dimension 

• αj captures the a priori probability of the respective dimension  

Computing each MAS dimension: 

Computing each MAS dimension (AUQ, ARQ, AReQ) involves aggregating underlying parameters into a single weighted score. Raw measurements (such as interruption, intent determination, or tone stability) are first normalized into a 0–1 score before aggregating them at the dimension level. We apply a linear normalization function clipping each raw measurement at predefined thresholds suitable for the parameter being measured (for example, maximum allowed interruption or minimum required accuracy). This maintains the sensitivity of each parameter in the relevant effective range and avoids the negative impact of measurement outliers, making MAS an absolute measure of agent quality. 

MAS in Practice: Voice Agent Evaluation Example 

To ground MAS in real-world conditions, we evaluated ~2,000 synthetic voice conversations across two agent configurations using identical prompts and scenarios: 

• Agent-1: Chained voice agent using a three-stage ASR–LLM–TTS pipeline 

• Agent-2: Real-time voice agent using direct speech-to-speech architecture  

The evaluation dataset included noise, interruptions, accessibility effects, and vocal variability to simulate production environments.  

Shown below is a comparison of core MAS metrics, including dimension-level scores and the overall MAS score. 

Voice Evaluation Results (Excerpt) 

Key Observations  

MAS provides flexibility to surface quality insights at an aggregate level, while enabling deeper analysis at the individual parameter level. To better understand performance outliers and anomalous behaviors, we went beyond composite scores and analyzed agent quality at the individual parameter level. This deeper inspection allowed us to attribute observed degradations to specific factors: Example: 

1. Channel quality matters: Communication channels introduce multiple challenge such as latency, interruptions, compression and loss of information, penalizing recognition and response quality. 

2. Turn-taking quality is critical: Missed windows and interruptions strongly correlate with abandonment. 

3. Tone and coherence matter: Cleaner audio and uninterrupted responses lead to higher acknowledgement and perceived empathy. 

4. MAS reveals root causes: Differences in scores clearly distinguish understanding, reasoning, and response failures-something single metrics cannot do. 

Looking Forward 

We will continue to refine and evolve MAS as we validate it against real-world deployments and business outcomes. As the Dynamics 365 Contact Center team, we aim to establish MAS as our quality benchmark for evaluating AI agents across channels. Over time, we also intend to make MAS broadly available, extensible, and pluggable, enabling organizations to adapt it, to evaluate their contact center agents across modalities. For readers interested in the underlying methodology and mathematical foundations, a detailed research paper will be published separately. 

The post Evaluating AI Agents in Contact Centers: Introducing the Multi-modal Agents Score  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce the general availability of proactive voice engagements in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, delivering enterprise-grade outbound calling for service scenarios. We want to thank everyone who participated in the preview and shared valuable feedback. This release introduces key capabilities customers asked for during preview, including Answering Machine Detection, SIP based call outcomes, and the predictive dial mode. These will enable organizations to operationalize proactive voice scenarios with greater accuracy, consistency, and reliability. 

Answering Machine Detection (AMD) 

Customers can enable AMD through the answering machine detection system topic in Copilot Studio. When a machine is detected, the system automatically follows the predefined flows, like playing a customized message or ending the call. This improves predictability across outbound engagements by helping teams avoid nonproductive connections.  

SIP Based Call Outcomes 

Proactive engagement now captures detailed call outcomes using SIP codes. This allows every outbound call to be classified with results such as LiveAnswer, AnsweringMachine, Busy, NoAnswer, InvalidAddress, and other states. These outcomes are logged automatically and provide clear insight into how each call concluded without requiring additional configuration. This classification supports more accurate reporting and helps teams determine appropriate next steps. 

Predictive Dial Mode for Service Scenarios 

The predictive dial mode places calls ahead of CSR availability by estimating when CSRs will become free. By using metrics like abandonment rate and average wait time, it can pace how quickly calls are initiated. Organizations can begin managing higher volume service operations efficiently by increasing the likelihood a customer connects at the moment an CSR becomes available. This improves both throughput and customer experience.  

What’s Next 

As proactive engagement continues to mature, we are focused on expanding channel coverage and strengthening dialing performance. This will deliver more flexible options for connecting with customers at scale. 

• Conversational SMS: Support for proactive engagement in SMS channel now in preview. Organizations can reach customers using their preferred medium while maintaining the same routing, outcome tracking, and compliance standards established for voice. 

• Improvements to preview dialing: Preview dial mode enhancements give representatives more context prior to each call. Reviewing customer details and deciding when to initiate the connection gets simpler.

• Native campaign management capabilities: Native support of contact chaining, outcome based retries, consent management, and configurable calling windows, file upload etc.  
  [Run voice outbound campaigns with proactive engagement | Microsoft Learn] 

Learn more about proactive engagement

To learn more, read the documentation: Configure proactive engagement | Microsoft Learn

Try the preview and ensure your organization stays ahead of customer expectations. Send your feedback to pefeedback@microsoft.com.

The post Announcing General Availability of Proactive Voice Enhancements in Dynamics 365 Contact Center  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

When customers place an order, they expect speed, accuracy, and reliability. Behind the scenes, inventory-to-deliver processes are what makes that promise possible, helping to ensure the right products are available at the right time to meet customer expectations while controlling costs. For operational professionals, inventory isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet, it’s the lifeline of the supply chain. It determines whether you can fulfill demand without delays, avoid costly stockouts, and keep working capital flowing. From procurement and production to fulfillment and customer satisfaction, inventory-to-deliver impacts every aspect of the supply chain.

In today’s fast-paced market, poor inventory visibility can lead to stockouts, excess holding costs, and missed revenue opportunities. Conversely, a well-orchestrated inventory strategy drives efficiency, reduces waste, and strengthens resilience against disruptions. It enables businesses to optimize working capital, improve cash flow, and deliver on promises consistently. So, how can an agent-ready enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform reinvent the inventory-to-deliver process?

Microsoft Cloud and agent platform enables inventory to deliver transformation

Microsoft Dynamics 365 can transform inventory management from a reactive task into a strategic advantage with an agent-ready foundation that spans across finance, supply chain, sales, and operations for a single source of truth that is both scalable and secure.

This same data foundation enables customers to buy, build, and customize agents to infuse across processes. For a refresher on understanding the agent landscape available today, visit Reinventing business process with AI: Agents in record to report where we explore the difference between first party, third party, and custom agents.

Automate vendor communication with a first party agent from Dynamics 365

The Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is designed to automate routine procurement communications between purchasing teams and vendors. Traditionally, these interactions—such as following up on purchase orders or confirming changes—are manual, repetitive, and often handled via email, even in organizations using electronic data interchange (EDI). The Supplier Communications Agent can streamline these low-complexity tasks by automating vendor outreach and updates, freeing procurement professionals to focus on strategic activities. This not only seeks to improve efficiency but also reduces overall procurement costs by minimizing time spent on administrative work.

Explore partner agents to support the inventory to deliver process

Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers are configurable bridges between the business data within your line-of-business apps and the partner or custom-built agents you want to use. MCP serves as a universal intermediary, unlocking access to a unified platform and app data, modernizing how AI agents are interoperable with your apps. Let’s explore a few partner-built agents that will help you realize value across your supply chain today.

Warehouse Advisor Agent by MCA Connect

The Warehouse Advisor Agent leverages machine learning and predictive analytics to automate and improve key processes such as slotting, inventory consolidation, and cycle counting. By analyzing real-time data and historical trends, the agent delivers actionable insights that help warehouse teams make smarter, faster decisions.

This solution is ideal for warehouse managers, operations leaders, and supply chain professionals in distribution and manufacturing industries who are looking to reduce inefficiencies, improve inventory accuracy, and increase labor productivity. It integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), enabling users to deploy intelligent automation without disrupting existing workflows.

Inventory Acquisition and Re‑Balancing Agent from RSM

The Inventory Acquisition and Re‑Balancing Agent from RSM enables smarter inventory decisions by analyzing demand signals, supply availability, and stock imbalances in Dynamics 365. The agent can recommend rebalancing and acquisition actions to reduce stockouts, minimize excess inventory, and improve working capital efficiency.

Inbound Load Agent from Fellowmind

Fellowmind’s Inbound Load Agent can streamline inbound logistics by intelligently composing and optimizing loads based on demand, capacity, and operational constraints within Dynamics 365. The agent seeks to help logistics teams reduce transportation costs, improve warehouse utilization, and simplify complex inbound planning decisions.

Get started with agents for inventory-to-deliver processes

The Microsoft platform brings together secure, scalable cloud services with Dynamics 365’s unified ERP capabilities to streamline the entire inventory-to-delivery process. By leveraging real-time data and intelligent workflows, businesses gain supply chain agility to better meet customer expectations with precision. Partner-built agents, powered by MCP, amplify this value, enabling autonomous actions and predictive insights that transform operations from reactive to proactive. Together, these innovations create a resilient, future-ready foundation for delivering efficiency and growth at scale.

The post Agentic AI for inventory to deliver: From procurement to fulfillment appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Every seller knows how much time gets lost between selling moments. Information arrives in many forms—emails, screenshots, documents, handwritten notes—and turning that into structured CRM data often means manual copying, rework, or skipped fields altogether. At the same time, answering everyday questions like “Which leads should I follow up on?” or “How is my pipeline shaping up right now?” can require complex filters, multiple views, or exporting data just to get a clear answer.

Dynamics 365 Sales is evolving to address these challenges with agentic assistance. Instead of sellers adapting to rigid forms, grids, and filters, agentic AI in Dynamics 365 Sales now adapts to how sellers naturally work—by understanding unstructured inputs, interpreting intent, and assisting directly at the point of action. Two purpose-built agents bring this to life:

• A Data Entry Agent that uses LLMs to understand pasted content and uploaded files, extract relevant details, and quickly populate CRM forms for faster lead and contact creation.
• A Data Exploration Agent helps sellers quickly understand trends across opportunities, leads, or accounts by turning natural language questions into filtered views and visual insights.

Together, these agents reduce two of the biggest productivity drains in sales—manual data entry and cumbersome data exploration—so sellers can spend less time managing CRM and more time engaging customers.

Let’s look at how these experiences use agentic AI in Dynamics 365 in real sales scenarios:

Capture sales data faster with the Data Entry Agent
Accurate customer data is critical, but sellers encounter information in many forms—emails, websites, documents, and business cards. The Data Entry Agent uses large language models to understand unstructured text and files, infer intent, and map extracted details to the right CRM fields, without requiring sellers to manually interpret or retype information.

Capture Lead and Contact details instantly with Smart Paste

When a seller receives an inbound email from a prospect, creating a lead often means manually copying names, email addresses, phone numbers, and company details into CRM. For example, a prospect may write:

You want to respond quickly, but first you need to log the lead.

With Smart Paste (Preview), sellers can copy the email content, navigate to the lead or contact form. The system analyzes the copied text, extracts key details such as name, company, email, and phone number, and suggests values inline for the relevant fields. Each suggestion includes inline citation from the email, so sellers can clearly see the source of the information.

Sellers can review AI-generated field suggestions, view citations, accept what looks right, and save—enabling faster lead capture with greater confidence in data accuracy.

Similarly, a seller may be reviewing a prospect’s website or LinkedIn profile in separate tabs. Instead of manually re-entering details later, they can copy text from the company’s About Us page or the prospect’s LinkedIn profile and paste it directly into a CRM form. The agent analyzes the content and suggests values such as industry, company name, location, and job title, allowing the seller to review and apply the information immediately while the context is still fresh.

Convert Physical Documents into CRM Records with Files (Preview)

After trade shows, conferences, or in-person meetings, sellers often return with a stack of business cards or documents from dozens of conversations. Manually transcribing this information delays follow-up and increases the chance of errors.

With Files (Preview), sellers can upload images of business cards or documents such as .txt, .docx, .csv, .pdf, .png, .jpg, .jpeg, or .bmp, directly into the form. The system analyses the uploaded files and suggests values for relevant fields, including names, titles, company details, email addresses, and phone numbers. Sellers simply review and confirm the suggestions, turning what once took hours into minutes.

This enables faster post-event follow-up and more complete lead and contact records.

Find and understand sales data faster with the Data Exploration agent

Finding the right records and understanding trends is essential for sellers, but navigating views and filters can be time-consuming. Powered by natural language understanding, the Data Exploration Agent (Preview) translates seller questions into structured filters, allowing users to interact with CRM data using plain language instead of complex query logic, making it easier to plan, prioritize, and understand pipeline health directly within their views.

Find the right records faster using Natural Language in Views

Filtering records in CRM can be time-consuming, especially when multiple criteria are involved. Imagine planning your day and opening My Open Leads to focus on recent campaign responses. Instead of building complex filters, you simply type: “Leads from the Summer Campaign created last month.”

Or, when preparing for a forecast call, you search: “Opportunities from Technology accounts closing next quarter.”

The system interprets the request and automatically applies the appropriate filters to the view. Sellers can review and modify the filters if needed, giving them both speed and control. This simplifies daily planning, follow-ups, and pipeline reviews.

Visualize data in Views to spot trends quickly

Understanding trends often requires more than scanning rows of data, but building dashboards or exporting reports isn’t practical for day-to-day sales work. With Visualize (Preview), sellers can turn the filtered data they’re already viewing into interactive charts with a single click—directly within the view and without breaking their flow.

Because the visualization is generated from the current view and visible columns, it automatically reflects the exact filters, segments, and scope the seller is working with. Sellers can hover to see detailed values, drill into specific segments, and switch chart types on the fly as new questions come up. This makes it easy to answer questions like “Where are most of my open opportunities concentrated?”, “Which lead sources are driving volume right now?”, or “How is my pipeline distributed across stages?”

Visualize is designed for quick, in-the-moment understanding, not deep reporting. It complements Power BI by giving sellers immediate visual insight at the point of work—without creating reports, navigating dashboards, or leaving CRM—so they can recognize patterns and act faster while staying in flow.

Enable these agentic capabilities in Power Platform Admin Center

• To enable Data Entry agent capabilities, go to Power Platform Admin Center → Settings → Product → Features.
  Under AI form fill assistance, turn On
  • Automatic suggestions
  • Smart paste and file suggestions and
  • Form fill assist toolbar. Changes apply to model-driven apps once saved.

• To enable Data Exploration agent capabilities, go to Power Platform Admin Center → Settings → Product → Features.
  • Under Natural language grid and view search, set Enable this feature for to All users immediately
  • Turn On Allow AI to generate chartsto visualize the data in a view and enable AI-generated chart styling for a consistent visual experience.

Focus More on Selling, Less on Administration

With agentic AI in Dynamics 365 Sales, the platform evolves from a system of record into a system that understands, assists, and adapts—helping sellers spend more time selling and less time managing CRM.

The post From manual work to meaningful selling: How Agentic AI is transforming Dynamics 365 Sales  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.