Supercharge your CRM with Microsoft Viva Sales—Now in preview

Supercharge your CRM with Microsoft Viva Sales—Now in preview

by | Aug 1, 2022 | Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

At the announcement of Microsoft Viva Sales, Paul Greenberg, Founder, Managing Principal, The 56 Group, LLC,often called the “Godfather of CRM” and has written a book, CRM at the Speed of Light, and I were chatting about the state of customer relationship management (CRM) market and the innovations in the last 20 years. One area we both agreed that has been underserved is the seller experience. CRM vendors have all focused on the system of recordthe CRM system but sellers continue to work in the system of productivityMicrosoft Office and Microsoft Teams with no connection between them.

In independent research conducted by Microsoft, we surveyed over 500 salespeople who live and work in North America and who use a CRM on a regular basis. The findings revealed that the tools in use today aren’t always helping, and, in some instances, they are even hindering a salesperson’s ability to do their job.1 They love the CRM, but they hate manual data entry. This is one area where Microsoft wants to focus on with Viva Sales. With Viva Sales, we take the manual work of CRM away from the sellers and put technology to work on behalf of the sellers so they can cut the forms, connect the data, and crush the sale.

Today I’m pleased to share that Microsoft Viva Sales is now in preview.

The Viva Sales preview includes surfacing customer contact information from your CRM directly in Microsoft Outlook and Teams, connecting to the CRM of your choice, capturing rich contact information in Outlook, capturing notes and action items using AI, providing AI driven recommendations, and more.

Improve the seller experience with Microsoft Viva Sales

The past two years have had a profound impact on work. Employee expectations concerning how, where, and when they work have significantly changed and continue to evolve. While these work trends are pervasive across the workforce, they have especially reshaped the expectations of sales professionals who have had to adapt to an increasingly digital workplace all while using outdated sales tools. In fact, 74 percent of sellers described sales intelligence tools as critical or extremely critical in closing deals.1 Prior to 2018, digital selling was already gaining popularity but the forced adoption of remote work, brought on by COVID-19, put a spotlight on the top pain points common across sales organizations by highlighting the gaps and limitations in the sales tools.

With Viva Sales we address these gaps to mitigate these top pain points:

  • Manual data entry is time-consuming and frustrating and bogs down digital sellers.  
  • Inability to capture customer engagement data in productivity applications where sellers do their work. According to Futurum research, 82 percent of salespeople shared that faulty data has led to an embarrassing mistake with a customer.2
  • Lack of AI-based recommendations delivered to the point of action.
  • Disconnected processes and tools that slow down productivity. Sellers spend two-thirds of their time on administrative tasks that do not directly generate revenue.

Viva Sales gives sellers more time to focus on selling by eliminating the administrative burden of manual data entry to provide an improved seller experience. Combining the power of Microsoft 365 applications and Teams, this new sales experience application captures, accesses, and registers data into any CRM. With Viva Sales, sellers can cut the forms, connect the data, and crush the sale.

The power of AI combined with enriched customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 applications and Teams provides easy access to sales intelligence in the applications sellers already use every day.

In the video, The future of sales enablement, Paul states “Because Viva Sales is 100% seller focused and all the sales manager stuff is taken care of by the more traditional CRM technologies. That’s pretty awesome. You’ve managed to create it in a way that doesn’t disrupt or destroy the traditional focus but actually enhances it but at the same time makes the seller’s experience much better for that seller, which is not something that has been around much.” 

Learn more

Read our in-depth blog about Viva Sales to learn more and find out how to try out Viva Sales today.

Sources

1Microsoft Viva Sales: Supercharge your CRM, PDF.

2Futurum, 2022. Reimagining the Sales Process – Are You Ready?

The post Supercharge your CRM with Microsoft Viva Sales—Now in preview appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Using Azure Container Registry to build Docker images for Java projects

Using Azure Container Registry to build Docker images for Java projects

by | Jul 31, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

In this article we will create a Docker image from a Java project using Azure Container Registry and then it will be deployed in a Docker compatible hosting environment, for instance Azure Container App.


For this process it is required:



  • JDK 1.8+

  • Maven

  • Azure CLI

  • GIT


And the following Azure resources:



  • Azure Container Registry

  • Azure Container App. This resource can be changed by other container hosting service, such as Azure App Service, Azure Functions or Azure Kubernetes Service.


These Azure resources can be create using the following az cli commands:


 

LOCATION=westeurope
RESOURCE_GROUP=rg-acrbuild-demo
ACR_NAME=acrbuilddemo
CONTAINERAPPS_ENVIRONMENT=containerapp-demo
CONTAINERAPPS_NAME=spring-petclinic
# create a resource group to hold resources for the demo
az group create --location $LOCATION --name $RESOURCE_GROUP
# create an Azure Container Registry (ACR) to hold the images for the demo
az acr create --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $ACR_NAME --sku Standard --location $LOCATION

# register container apps extension
az extension add --name containerapp --upgrade
# register Microsoft.App namespace provider
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App
# create an azure container app environment
az containerapp env create 
    --name $CONTAINERAPPS_ENVIRONMENT 
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP 
    --location $LOCATION

# Create a user managed identity and assign AcrPull role on the ACR.
USER_IDENTITY=$(az identity create -g $RESOURCE_GROUP -n $CONTAINERAPPS_NAME --location $LOCATION --query clientId -o tsv)
ACR_RESOURCEID=$(az acr show --name $ACR_NAME --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --query "id" --output tsv)
az role assignment create 
    --assignee "$USER_IDENTITY" --role AcrPull --scope "$ACR_RESOURCEID"

# container app will be created once the image is pushed to the ACR

 


Let’s take a sample application, for instance the well known spring pet clinic.


 

git clone https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-petclinic.git
cd spring-petclinic

 


Then create a Dockerfile. For demo purposes it will be as simple as possible.


 

FROM openjdk:8-jdk-slim
# takes the jar file as an argument
ARG ARTIFACT_NAME
# assumes the application entry port is 8080
EXPOSE 8080

# The application's jar file
ARG JAR_FILE=${ARTIFACT_NAME}

# Add the application's jar to the container
ADD ${JAR_FILE} app.jar

# Run the jar file
ENTRYPOINT ["java","-jar","/app.jar"]

 


To build it locally the following command would be used:


 

docker build -t myacr.azurecr.io/spring-petclinic:2.7.0 
    -f Dockerfile 
    --build-arg ARTIFACT_NAME=target/spring-petclinic-2.7.0-SNAPSHOT.jar 
    .

 


To build it in Azure Container Registry the following command would be used instead:


 

az acr build 
        --resource-group rg-spring-petclinic 
        --registry myacr 
        --image spring-petclinic:2.7.0 
        --build-arg ARTIFACT_NAME=target/spring-petclinic-2.7.0-SNAPSHOT.jar 
        .

 


Instead of execute it manually, this command can be integrated as part of the maven build cycle. To perform this action, we will use 


org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin. This plugin allows to execute system or Java programs. It will be used to execute the previous az cli command. To include as part of the build lifecycle it will be created a new maven profile.

<profile>
    <id>buildAcr</id>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.0.0</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>acr-package</id>
                        <phase>package</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>exec</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <executable>az</executable>
                            <workingDirectory>${project.basedir}</workingDirectory>
                            <arguments>
                                <argument>acr</argument>
                                <argument>build</argument>
                                <argument>--resource-group</argument>
                                <argument>${RESOURCE_GROUP}</argument>
                                <argument>--registry</argument>
                                <argument>${ACR_NAME}</argument>
                                <argument>--image</argument>
                                <argument>${project.artifactId}:${project.version}</argument>
                                <argument>--build-arg</argument>
                                <argument>ARTIFACT_NAME=target/${project.build.finalName}.jar</argument>
                                <argument>-f</argument>
                                <argument>Dockerfile</argument>
                                <argument>.</argument>
                            </arguments>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</profile>


To execute this process just execute the following maven goal with the new profile.

mvn package -PbuildAcr -DRESOURCE_GROUP=$RESOURCE_GROUP -DACR_NAME=$ACR_NAME

The resource group and the Azure Container Registry are passed as environment variables, but the can be defined as maven parameters or just hardcoding.


Now the image already exists in Azure Container Registry.


fmiguel_0-1656887311912.png

Now it’s time to create the Container App.

# Create the container app
az containerapp create 
    --name ${CONTAINERAPPS_NAME} 
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP 
    --environment $CONTAINERAPPS_ENVIRONMENT 
    --container-name spring-petclinic-container 
    --user-assigned ${CONTAINERAPPS_NAME} 
    --registry-server $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io 
    --image $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io/spring-petclinic:2.7.0-SNAPSHOT 
    --ingress external 
    --target-port 8080 
    --cpu 1 
    --memory 2


Now the application is deployed and running on Azure Container Apps.

fmiguel_0-1656974193359.png

fmiguel_1-1656974290151.png

You can find the source code for this application here.

 

New transactable offers from Contentsquare, Connecting Software, and Enlighten Designs

New transactable offers from Contentsquare, Connecting Software, and Enlighten Designs

by | Jul 29, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft partners like Contentsquare, Connecting Software, and Enlighten Designs deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about these offers below:


 

















Contentsquare logo.png

Contentsquare Digital Experience Analytics: More than 1,000 leading brands, including BMW, Giorgio Armani, Samsung, Sephora, and Virgin Atlantic, leverage Contentsquare’s digital experience analytics cloud to understand customer behaviors and empower teams to seize growth-accelerating opportunities. Intuitive visual reporting makes it easy to see how customers are using a brand’s site or app, in turn driving more successful experiences.
Connecting Software logo.png CB Dynamics 365 to SharePoint Permissions Replicator: This application from Connecting Software automatically synchronizes your Microsoft Dynamics 365 privileges with your SharePoint permissions, enhancing security and avoiding infringement of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. It replicates the Dynamics 365 permission schema and ensures that your SharePoint folders match your CRM security model.
Enlighten Designs logo.png

IDA, the Insights and Discovery Accelerator: Powered by Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search, this solution from Enlighten Designs facilitates journalistic research. The Insights and Discovery Accelerator uses object visioning to identify characteristics like columns and hyphens from text scans to give researchers a full and accurate transcript. Its video indexer can recognize people, topics, and entities and can pull transcripts from video and audio files.

New transactable offers from Dace IT and PhakamoTech in Azure Marketplace

New transactable offers from Dace IT and PhakamoTech in Azure Marketplace

by | Jul 28, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft partners like Dace IT and PhakamoTech deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about these offers below:


 













Dace IT company logo.png

 

Intelligent Traffic Management 2022: Detect and track bikes, vehicles, and pedestrians, as well as collisions and near-misses with Intelligent Traffic Management from Dace IT. This data can be used to adjust traffic lights for traffic flow optimization and automatically notify emergency services.
1.png

 


 

Managed Cybersecurity Operation Center Service: This multi-tenant 24/7 cybersecurity operations managed service from PhakamoTech will enhance your security investments using Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and more. This service centralizes visibility for better threat detection, response, and compliance setting.