2025 release wave 1 brings hundreds of updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

2025 release wave 1 brings hundreds of updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

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

The next wave of innovation for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform starts today. This morning, at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, we are officially launching the 2025 release wave 1, a six-month rollout of new and enhanced capabilities that will be rolled out between April 2025 and September 2025.

This release wave comes at an exciting moment, in a year marked by rapid advancements in AI. Microsoft Copilot and agents are at the heart of this release wave, promising to transform how we all work and to help elevate organizations into AI-first companies. New Copilot and agent capabilities showcased at today’s event will help you to improve business processes, enhance customer engagement, and empower your workforce to automate tasks.

Watch the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to hear directly from product teams as they share demos and real customer stories that showcase the newest features in action. Companies like Eneco, Intralox, Apollo Travel, Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply, Pro Refrigeration Incorporated, and State Farm are leveraging these features to drive transformation.

Create your own autonomous agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio

In this release wave, Copilot and agents take center stage with even more functionalities to help organizations transform their operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences. At the event, we are showcasing custom agents that can autonomously conduct a range of processes across sales, service, finance and supply chain functions.

Explore agents pre-built for you in Microsoft Copilot Studio


Read the blog

Microsoft Copilot Studio serves as the foundation for agents, making it easy to customize and build your own customer and internal facing agents using your data and workflows. In addition, upcoming pre-built agents for Dynamics 365 are ready to customize and launch, accelerating your time to value. Stay tuned for blog updates and deep dives about Copilot and agent capabilities during this release wave.     

Transform customer experiences with AI agents

AI is transforming every aspect of customer experience, from rethinking user experience and business processes to the way apps are built and maintained. The 2025 release wave 1 features Dynamics 365 customer experience apps designed to help you deliver connected and personalized experiences for customers.  

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales brings the power of AI to help sellers meet their targets while boosting seller productivity. Copilot and agents enhance performance and simplify tasks to help grow your pipeline, sharpen strategies, and accelerate deals. A re-imagined user experience ensures sellers never miss the best move to close a deal. And automated research, ongoing follow-ups, and prioritized tasks provide continuous guidance—allowing you to focus on the right actions to drive success and grow your business. 

Dynamics 365 Sales introduces new Copilot and agent capabilities to research and prioritize inbound leads, initiate sales conversations, and develop personalized sales engagements. These features help your teams to simplify tasks to help grow your pipeline, sharpen strategies, and accelerate deals.

During the launch event, we showcase how Intralox, an industry leader in complex conveyance solutions, is leveraging the sales qualification agent in Dynamics 365 Sales to help qualify leads, build stronger relationships with customers, and close deals faster.

New functionalities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center include Microsoft Teams phone integration, which helps to reduce telephony complexity, proactive conversational journeys, and three agents that work in concert to create an autonomous contact center. These agents automate intent determination, manage the case lifecycle from creation to closure, and convert cases and related conversations into knowledge articles to support your contact center operations.

Learn how Apollo Travel, a subsidiary of European travel leader Dertour Group, is using Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Copilot, and agents to automate a range of processes—from generating hotel descriptions to developing chatbots for case summarization. In addition, using Dynamics 365 Contact Center with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Apollo Travel can now leverage custom-built agents to proactively reach out to customers with personalized recommendations, adding value to the customer’s travels and opportunities for upselling additional services. This experience is enabled through new proactive engagement activities such as SMS or phone calls, helping to create personalized journeys in real-time.

Explore the release plans for:

Optimize workflows with autonomous ERP

Today’s launch also showcases innovation across ERP solutions that is leading organizations into a new era of autonomous operations—where humans and agents work together to drive increased efficiency across business processes.

To support autonomous financial operations, Dynamics 365 Finance introduces the Account Reconciliation Agent, along with a new financial task workspace to help teams manage and track recurring processes like period close with greater structure and visibility.

In Dynamics 365 Project Operations, new capabilities will simplify time, expense, and approvals; accelerate scenario planning with what-if analysis; and improve planning accuracy with customizable task details. Dynamics 365 Human Resources will add AI-powered candidate assessment to help hiring teams identify top applicants faster by comparing resumes to job requirements, and a new onboarding agent that guides new hires through personalized onboarding journeys directly within Microsoft Teams.​

In Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, we’re delivering new tools to enhance pricing strategy and procurement efficiency. Unified pricing management enables organizations to centralize omnichannel pricing across segmentation, channel-specific rules, and price trees. At the launch event, we showcase how Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply is using the new Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to reduce manual vendor follow-ups and improve purchase order accuracy.​

We also feature how Pro Refrigeration Incorporated is using the Sales Order Agent in Dynamics 365 Business Central to process customer orders faster and improve responsiveness. Business Central also adds the integration with Dynamics 365 Field Service, new Copilot summarization capabilities and Scope 3 emissions tracking to help organizations meet sustainability goals.

Updates include Copilot-first experiences in Dynamics 365 Finance to streamline complex tax and compliance management and automate account and bank reconciliations using intelligent agents. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces integrated AI, analytics, and automation features to improve operational efficiency, enhanced supplier communication, demand planning accuracy, and intelligent manufacturing features that align production data to real-world processes.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central also adds the integration of Field Service with service management, as well as the ability to enhance purchase order line matching with Copilot.  

Explore the release plans for:

Redefine development: AI-first innovation in Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform continues to empower everyone to build their own AI-powered solutions through low-code or no-code tools with new features. Microsoft Power Apps is changing how software solutions are built with plan designer, enabling makers to build an end-to-end solution plan from simply describing their business problems, generating business requirements, data tables, and suggested solution architecture. 

Microsoft Copilot Studio brings together the best AI innovations into a single low-code agent platform so that you can build amazing things. New capabilities like Agent Flows and Deep Reasoning expand the frontier of agents you can build, while new text and generative AI tools give you the ability to direct agents in specialized ways. The general availability of triggers and generative orchestration enables new categories of autonomous agents to transform business processes. We also are introducing more tools to optimize your agents including new diagnostics, testing, and performance analytics.

Explore the release plans for:

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Watch the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to discover the latest in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. You’ll get access to in-depth demos of new autonomous agents and other capabilities designed to optimize your workflows and streamline operations.

Don’t forget to review the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Stay updated on the latest features and upcoming enhancements, and create your personalized release plan using the release planner to ensure you’re equipped with the knowledge needed to maximize on this new release wave.

We look forward to seeing how capabilities in this release wave enhance your business processes and bring new levels of efficiency and customer success.  

Abstract image with the text "Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event"

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What’s new in unified routing: April 2025 feature update 

What’s new in unified routing: April 2025 feature update 

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

Welcome to the April 2025 release update of unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center! This update brings a suite of new features designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your routing strategies. This post covers unified routing features released from October 2024 to April 2025. Let’s dive into some of the key features. 

Least active routing method in messaging 

This month, we are extending the least active routing method to messaging channels. Least active routing provides efficient workload distribution by ensuring work items are assigned to service representatives based on when they end their last conversation and have the least active in the queue. This approach prevents back-to-back assignments. Additionally, it ensures agents have adequate rest between customers. This leads to better utilization of agents, improved customer satisfaction (CSAT), service representative satisfaction (ASAT), and lower average handling time (AHT).

Learn more: Assignment methods for queues | Microsoft Learn 

Unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service assignment methods for queues

Presence synchronization APIs 

Service representatives work across multiple Dynamics 365 environments and use different collaboration tools. This raises the need for synchronizing the right presence status across these instances to ensure service representatives are not overbooked. Also, it provides a seamless engagement experience for both customers and service representatives. 

The introduction of presence synchronization APIs, will help contact centers in managing presence status’ of service representatives better. Organizations can retrieve, modify and subscribe to presence change events in real time.

Learn more: Synchronize agent presence status across multiple systems | Microsoft Learn 

Dynamics 365 Customer Service diagram showing agent presence

Workforce management with shift-based routing 

Shift-based routing is a game-changer for organizations with varied working hours and global teams. To reduce conversation rejections, transfers, and customer wait times, it is critical to assign conversations and records to service representatives based on their working shift schedules and plans. This feature allows supervisors to create workforce management shift plans and assign them to one or more representatives. This ensures representatives receive assignments only during their scheduled work times. It optimizes resource usage and enhances customer satisfaction by reducing wait times during off-peak hours.

Learn more: Configure routing based on external schedules (preview) | Microsoft Learn 

Unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service workforce assignment rules

Customized notifications for returning chats 

Reconnecting a returning customer to the last service representative they interacted with is now more efficient with a new notification template for returning conversations. This template provides greater control over the assignment process, ensuring that the original service representative is notified and given the opportunity to take the chat, thus maintaining continuity and enhancing the overall customer experience. 

Dynamics 365 Customer Service customized notification to agent

With customized notifications for returning persistent chats, admins can configure a separate notification template for returning chats, choose the auto-assignment behavior, set a distinct notification title, and even customize the timeout period. This feature helps maintain service representative-customer continuity, enabling faster resolution and a smoother experience. 

Unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service customized notification admin setup

Templates for managing routing rulesets in bulk

In order to simplify routing configuration and improve administrative efficiency, we are delighted to introduce the bulk management of routing rules through templates. Bulk management enables administrators to create routing ruleset templates for queues and workstreams, eliminating the need for multiple versions of the same routing rules. With a few clicks, apply prioritization, assignment, or work classification ruleset templates to multiple queues and workstreams. Administrators can manage rules centrally—any template update instantly applies to all instances in queues or workstreams, removing the need for individual ruleset maintenance. 

Learn more: Manage template rulesets for unified routing | Microsoft Learn 

Unified routing in Dynamics 365 Customer Service template rulesets

Make sure to explore these new features to maximize the potential of unified routing in your contact center. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements!

Learn more about unified routing

See our upcoming and recently released features here:

The post What’s new in unified routing: April 2025 feature update  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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Enhance quality compliance with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 

Enhance quality compliance with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 

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

Today, more than ever, it’s critical for manufacturers and distributors alike to ensure product quality and compliance as new regulations continue to emerge and supply chains are increasingly complex. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management offers many out of the box capabilities for quality and compliance, directly integrated with the execution of supply chain processes like procurement, production, and fulfillment. This April, we’re adding new, advanced features to enhance quality compliance in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. These provide extended quality control throughout the supply chain, ensuring compliance with regulations, boosting product quality, and enhancing customer satisfaction. These new features foster continuous improvements and risk mitigation through a feedback-driven approach. They also minimize reliance on third-party quality management solutions.  

What’s New

In Public Preview in Dynamics 365 version 10.0.44, these capabilities extend the existing quality management solution, adding support for the following requirements:  

  • Enhanced user experience – New forms and fields introduced for registering test results for quality orders, enabling faster and more detailed data entry. Additionally, a new quality management workspace provides an intuitive interface for following up on quality orders and performing trending analysis. 
  • Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) Management – Create and maintain records of actions taken to manage and resolve non-conformities or defects. Through structured planning, tracking, and analyzing CAPA cases, this feature helps develop efficient processes for handling recurring issues. CAPA management ensures a formal and controlled process for addressing issues arising from manufacturing, engineering, quality, or data sources. 
  • Flexible sampling plans and triggers – Flexible sampling plans enable adjustments to item sampling over time based on test findings. For instance, initial rounds of testing may inspect 50% of a receipt, which can later be reduced to 10% based on consistent quality. Skip lot sampling allows you to bypass testing specific batches, such as inspecting 10 units and skipping the next 10. Additional event triggers are now available for quality orders. This includes transfer order processing and customer returns, alongside existing triggers like purchase receipts and sales picking. 
  • Test instrument calibration – Time-based or usage-based plans ensure regular and precise calibration of instruments. Maintain their accuracy and compliance with defined schedules or usage metrics. 
  • Electronic batch record (EBR) – EBR digitizes batch manufacturing documentation, replacing traditional paper records with electronic versions that enhance data integrity and accessibility. These records include quality test results, batch attributes, ingredients, work instructions, and electronic signatures for production journals. Ensure regulatory compliance and efficient production workflows. 
  • Production dispensing – Advanced dispensing capabilities for hazardous or sensitive materials minimize contamination and maintain safety. Key features include setting dispensing thresholds, returning unused materials, restricting access to authorized personnel, and requiring electronic signatures for verification. 
  • Approved customer list – Similar to the approved vendor list for items, the approved customer list now tracks which customers are authorized to purchase specific items, preventing unauthorized sales. 
  • Customer-specific Certificates of Analysis (COA) – This feature enables customization of COAs to include data tailored to individual customer requirements. COAs can also be automatically printed when generating a sales order packing slip, ensuring compliance and improving customer satisfaction. 
  • Electronic signatures – Expanded electronic signature capabilities now support regulatory compliance activities. This includes quality order validation, instrument calibration, production dispensing, and CAPA signoffs. Additionally, configurations are available for password formats and expiration dates for electronic signatures. 

Check out this video showing the new flexible sampling plans.

Learn more 

As of April 25th, these features are now in public preview. Enhance quality compliance with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management today! For more information, check out the Dynamics 365 release plan.

We will add a link to the user documentation shortly.

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

Reimagining Supplier Communications with Dynamics 365 Supplier Communications Agent 

Reimagining Supplier Communications with Dynamics 365 Supplier Communications Agent 

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

Efficient supplier communication is the backbone of successful procurement operations. Yet, many purchasing teams face challenges such as manual processes, delayed responses, and missed opportunities for optimization. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supplier Communication Agent is here to transform the way purchasing professionals interact with suppliers and suppliers. Reimagining supplier communications in Dynamics 365 and enable leaner, faster, and more accurate workflows. 

The Problem: Manual Processes and Lost Time 

Purchasing personnel often spend up to 50% of their day managing supplier communications. This includes tasks such as: 

  • Sending purchase orders to suppliers and suppliers. 
  • Following up on delayed orders. 
  • Updating purchase orders based on supplier emails. 

These manual, repetitive tasks not only consume valuable time but also increase the risk of errors, delayed orders, and lost revenue due to customer dissatisfaction. 

The Solution: Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 

The Supplier Communications Agent processes inbound and outbound communications with suppliers and suppliers, allowing purchasing teams to focus on higher-value tasks. Here’s how it works: 

Key Features 

  1. Follow-up: The agent  follows-up with suppliers con delayed and missing confirmations, eliminating avoidable delays due to oversight.   
  1. Updates based on emails from suppliers: It reads incoming emails, understands the intent, and extracts relevant data to summarize changes or update purchase orders.  

Let’s see in detail below.  

Follow up on delayed or unconfirmed orders 

Define the follow-ups based on the criteria you would like, such for unconfirmed orders for the next week or month, or for orders that have not been received after two days. Configure your own criteria and define which tone, information and even signature you would like on the email.  

Configure the criteria yourself as in the following image: 

A screenshot of a computer

And have the emails drafted for your review as shown below: 

A screenshot of a computer

Or if you prefer, send them automatically. Plus, email is written in the supplier’s language.  

Updates based on emails from suppliers 

  • Updating to confirm orders: The agent scans supplier emails and suggests to update the purchase orders when a confirmation is received. 
  • Managing delivery changes: The agent identifies changes in delivery quantities and receipt dates, allowing purchasing agents to review and easily accept updates. 

Select which mailbox you would like the agent to monitor; it could be your common procurement mailbox or each user if you use the purchaser’s mailbox for communications. Then you select which suppliers’ addresses you would like to enable the agent for. If you wanted to start with just a few until you are on your way to automating all communications, then that’s something you can do. 

After setup, the agent will automatically read the emails and show you the summary: 

A screenshot of a computer

You can also teach the agent, so it becomes smarter and smarter over time – for example, you can help it improve its data mapping from supplier emails or PDF documents to Dynamics 365  

A screenshot of a computer

Save your purchasing department’s time on repetitive tasks and streamline the process by just following up on them, as you will easily with the agent activity: 

A screenshot of a computer

Timeline and Availability 

The Supplier Communications Agent is rolling out in Public Preview with release 10.0.44.  Begin reimagining supplier communications today!

Dynamics 365 Supplier Communications Agent is revolutionizing procurement by streamlining supplier interactions, decreasing the risk of manual errors, order delays and ensuring seamless collaboration.  

The post Reimagining Supplier Communications with Dynamics 365 Supplier Communications Agent  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

Enhance customer service with advanced prioritization

Enhance customer service with advanced prioritization

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

Efficient workload management is essential in customer service environments where diverse customer interactions flow through multiple channels. With advanced prioritization capabilities in Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, organizations can provide tiered service levels based on customer value, respond to customer sentiment, and ensure adherence to SLAs. 

Why use advanced prioritization? 

Prioritization in Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Dynamics 365 Customer Service empowers organizations to: 

  • Offer dynamically tiered service levels: Traditionally, SLA commitments in contact centers were enforced through entitlements and queue-specific configurations. With cross-queue prioritization, organizations can now centrally define and dynamically enforce service tiers based on real-time factors like customer value, sentiment, or business context. This approach makes it easier to configure, scale, and adjust prioritization rules across queues, reducing administrative overhead while improving consistency and responsiveness. 
  • React to SLAs dynamically: Contact centers can use prioritization rules to meet time-sensitive commitments across queues. 

These capabilities extend across multiple configuration points, including our newest offering to prioritize work across contact center queues. 

Contact center level prioritization 

Contact center or “cross-queue” prioritization provides flexibility in routing and enhances business outcomes by: 

  • Enabling channel-level priorities: Respond to voice calls first, then chat conversations, then cases. 
  • Supporting business priorities: Prioritize refund queues over sales inquiry queues to align with organizational goals. 

The second type of prioritization occurs within a queue for added control over SLA commitment, urgency, sentiment and so on. 

Advanced prioritization business scenarios 

Example 1: Prioritize by customer channel

Consider a scenario where a customer service team prioritizes interactions across channels. The voice channel is the most urgent channel, followed by chat, and then case. The administrator sets the queue priority attribute to reflect these priorities, so agents receive phone calls immediately. 

List of queues using advanced prioritization in Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Example 2: Prioritize by customer and inquiry type 

A company, Contoso Coffee, operates four queues: 

  1. VIP Case Queue (Priority: 1) 
  1. Premium Support Queue (Priority: 2) 
  1. General Support Queue, prioritized by severity (Priority: 3) 
  1. Billing Inquiries Queue (Priority: 4) 

Agents handle work items using the following process: 

  • Agents handle VIP cases first to ensure top-tier customers receive white-glove support. 
  • Once agents clear the VIP items, the system evaluates Premium Support cases next. 
  • Within General Support, the system evaluate cases for severity and prioritizes high severity cases (such as service outages or urgent account issues) above routine queries. 
  • In the Billing Inquiries queue, the system applies layered rules: 
  • Cases involving overdue bills are flagged for immediate attention, as they often indicate payment barriers such as disputes, failed transactions, or missing billing information. 
  • These cases take priority over in-SLA cases, which may involve scheduled payments, invoice copies, or non-urgent queries. 

With advanced prioritization capabilities in Customer Service and Contact Center, businesses can align routing decisions with customer and business priorities. Whether it’s assigning channel-level priorities or addressing specific business needs, these capabilities provide scalability and flexibility for modern customer service operations. 

Learn more

Watch a quick video introduction.

For more details on prioritization options in unified routing and how to use them, read the documentation: Assignment methods for queues | Microsoft Learn  

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Go live with confidence using Success by Design for Microsoft Dynamics 365

Go live with confidence using Success by Design for Microsoft Dynamics 365

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

Rolling out a new ERP or CRM system is a stressful transformation that can take months or even years to complete if you go it alone. The business process catalog for Dynamics 365 can help you deliver implementation projects faster and with less stress. The business process catalog is a critical component of the Success by Design framework, created by Microsoft to provide official guidance on everything you need, from functional configuration to implementation methodologies, helping companies deploy a Dynamics 365 solution with higher adoption rates and less risk in less time, at lower cost.

Process, meet product: The business process catalog for Dynamics 365

Among the challenges that most implementation projects face is connecting real-world processes to application functionality. Traditional application documentation is often very technical, describing how the system can be configured, but not necessarily how it should be to meet the needs of your business.

That’s where the business process catalog for Dynamics 365 comes in. The catalog helps organize software implementations in terms of end-to-end business processes, like “concept to market” and “inventory to deliver” instead of siloed technology formatting. Resources in the business process catalog include a complete process catalog with diagrams, scenarios, and best practices for how to configure each business process based on factors like industry and business model. And the business process catalog includes an Azure DevOps template to help organize implementation methodology in a process format, helping to ensure that every decision ultimately ties into an end-to-end process for a seamless and successful solution. This approach helps businesses connect what they do today with what they will be doing tomorrow and helps to ensure that the solution will be the right fit for the business.

Business process catalog with work item detail view in Azure DevOps

The business process catalog provides workshop templates that help organizations and their implementation partners and customers structure their discovery conversations around business processes. These templates provide guidelines for involving the right stakeholders, agendas to keep discussions on track, and key questions to cover important topics. When used with process flow diagrams, customers can visualize standardized processes in business terms and identify differences with their own operations. This fit-to-standard approach saves time and money, while recognizing and capturing each organization’s unique needs through Dynamics 365’s extensible platform.

The business process catalog in action: Long View

To understand the real value of the business process catalog and using a business process approach to implementation, look at Long View, a professional services organization that recently replaced its aging legacy ERP solution with Dynamics 365. Long View worked with implementation partners RedCat Consulting Group and Team Bennett Consulting using the business process catalog and Success by Design, maximizing the use of out-of-the-box configurations to accelerate deployment and user adoption, and reduce project costs. The following are just some of the benefits Long View achieved using the business process catalog.

Eliminate customizations

The business process catalog allowed Long View to use best practices and out-of-the-box functionality, eliminating the need for 22 customizations that had been required in the old system. Minimizing customizations also reduces maintenance and risk during security and version updates, allowing Long View to adopt new capabilities quicker and enjoy constant support from Microsoft.

Speed up implementation

Using the business process catalog as a template, Long View and its partners RedCat Consulting Group and Team Bennett Consulting reduced the expected timeline of the discovery phase from two to three months to just six weeks. Later phases were accelerated as well by carrying over the initial processes structure and deliverables into each subsequent project activities.

Accelerate organization-wide adoption

Traditional implementations are often siloed by functional area: separating finance and sales, for example. Taking a process-centric approach, the Long View project team broke down departmental silos and redesigned processes more efficiently. The handoffs between departments in each process were clearly documented, and the design focused on delivering a successful end-to-end result instead of just looking at each team’s individual needs. The result is more usable solutions for everyone and overall productivity gains across the business.

Read more about how Long View uses Dynamics 365 to support its business in the case study.

Embracing a process-focused approach in an AI-powered world

In today’s rapidly evolving, AI-focused world, the importance of a process-focused approach to technology implementation cannot be overstated. Poorly designed processes can lead to inefficiencies, errors, and suboptimal outcomes when automated. An implementation methodology based on the business process catalog for Dynamics 365 helps to ensure the systematic and efficient integration of new technologies aligned with organizational goals. Without a deep comprehension of the underlying processes, attempts to implement Microsoft Copilot or agents may not yield the expected results.

By emphasizing well-designed business processes, organizations can better manage the complexities and potential risks associated with AI technologies. A structured business process approach allows for thorough planning, testing, and iteration, leading to more reliable and scalable solutions, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability and helping organizations to stay ahead in the competitive landscape. Ultimately, a process-focused approach not only enhances the effectiveness of technology implementation but also helps to ensure that the benefits of AI can be fully realized and sustained over time.

Set up for success with process-centric implementation

Taking a process-centered approach to Dynamics 365 implementation helps reduce risk, drives implementation success, and results in positive business outcomes. Together, Success by Design and the business process catalog provide up-to-date best practice guidance to allow organizations to go live with confidence and speed.

A woman sitting in a chair

The business process catalog for Dynamics 365

Navigate and learn from the catalog.

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Talk to our sales team today.

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

What’s new in Copilot Studio: April 2025

Microsoft 365 Copilot: Built for the era of human–agent collaboration

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

Copilot is now your window into the world of agents, with new capabilities that lay the foundation for this next phase.

The post Microsoft 365 Copilot: Built for the era of human–agent collaboration appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

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

Enhance quality compliance with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 

Why migrate now: The benefits of moving from Dynamics GP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

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

In September 2024, Microsoft announced the end of product support and updates for Dynamics GP on December 31, 2029. Microsoft is incredibly grateful to existing GP customers, and is committed to facilitating a stable, supported, and smooth migration for GP customers to a cloud solution.

As a follow-up to that announcement, I wanted to discuss the advantages of beginning the migration process now and review the many resources that Microsoft and our partner community have to support you.

Why migrate to Business Central today?

Microsoft has made sure to provide a lengthy runway so customers currently running Dynamics GP can comprehensively prepare for migration to a new system, but there are clear benefits to moving now, rather than waiting.

Here are a few key considerations.

  • Don’t wait to future-proof your business. Business Central is the leading comprehensive business management solution, designed for small and medium businesses, and engineered for Microsoft Copilot. On a single platform, it includes harnessing sales, finance, project management, manufacturing, supply chain, and service on a single platform, today. Migrating on your timeline means more time to help ensure you’re realizing value at every input.
  • Get ahead of the curve with AI. Most business leaders are curious about what AI will allow their business to achieve. With Business Central, you don’t need to wonder—you’ll benefit from what AI can do today with new use cases, prebuilt agents, and updated workflows. With the AI-powered agents, both prebuilt as well as customized, Business Central capitalizes on and offers a foundation that will put you ahead when this technology quickly becomes a “need-to-have”.
  • Avoid technical debt and realize time and operational savings. Waiting means sitting on a legacy on-premises tech stack than can and should be modernized. Migrating to modern Business Central today can help eliminate redundancies, save money, and offer more visibility into business health and areas for improvement.

Realizing big value for businesses of all sizes

The material value of upgrading is clear: In 2024, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to create a benchmark for the value-add to companies upgrading from an on-premises solution to Business Central. The results of the Total Economic Impact™ study were based on a combination of primary research, customer interviews, and methodological analysis.

Forrester aggregated the data collected into a composite organization with USD15 million annual revenues, 150 total employees, and 28 Business Central users across finance, supply chain, operations, and sales.

An organization of that size saw:

  • Realization of payback in less than six months.
  • 265% return on investment in three years.
  • Net Present Value (NPV) of USD529K over three years.
  • Productivity improvement of 12.5% for operations staff, 15% for sales staff, and 15.6% for finance staff.
  • More than USD80,000/year in third-party fee avoidance.

They achieved these savings through the move to Business Central from on-premises, which allowed:

  • A clear reduction in manual operations.
  • More direct access to systems and data remotely.
  • Clearer and more consistent access to data across the Microsoft ecosystem.
  • Significantly lower infrastructure, maintenance, and personnel costs, as well as upgrade fees.

So don’t treat this upgrade as an obligation, but as an opportunity to control the operational headwinds of your organization, virtually eliminate technical debt, and build a strong, repeatable operational framework that will require very minimal intervention in the months and years ahead.

In addition to these smart business reasons, many existing Dynamics GP customers are eligible for substantial promotional discounts offered by Microsoft when upgrading to an online Dynamics 365 Business Central solution. Promotional offers also allow eligible customers to avoid the need to simultaneously spend money on certain Microsoft on-premises fees while migrating. Be sure to ask your Microsoft systems consultant or reseller about your eligibility for Business Central migration offers.

These migration offers are intended to provide GP perpetual-license customers with a strong runway towards the cloud, driving business productivity, while reducing capital spending and costs of maintaining your on-premises applications while deploying Business Central.

The cloud migration process

With the business case clear, let’s discuss the technical steps in migrating your data and transitioning from Dynamics GP to Business Central.

The first step in a migration process is to consult with your partner on scope, costs, and timing. If your migration requirements go beyond need assistance outside of what your Dynamics GP is able to provide, you can engage a Microsoft representative​.

Here’s an overview of the different stages of migration:

  1. Migration Assessment, evaluating the readiness of the on-premises deployment for migration using the migration assessment tool.
  2. Preparation, developing a migration plan, verifying prerequisites, and checking data is in the best state possible for migration.
  3. Cloud Migration Setup, establishing the connection and pipeline between the on-premises database and online tenant database.
  4. Data Replication, migrating data from on-premises to online and verifying the migration.
  5. Data Upgrade, upgrading the replicated data in the online environment.
  6. Completion and Follow-Up, optimizing the new Business Central online environment, setting up user access, and going live.

What data is migrated

When you’re ready to migrate, Microsoft offers a comprehensive set of tools for migrating company data from Dynamics GP. The cloud migration tool typically migrates the following data:

  • System and company setup (for example: payment terms, shipping methods, sites)
  • Master data for accounts, customers, vendors, and items
  • Transactional data
  • Vendor 1099

See the detailed overview of data migrated to Business Central.

As mentioned previously, the on-premises environment will remain the active system until the migration process is complete.

Once the cloud migration is set up and underway, data entry in the Business Central online tenant is limited to data not included in the migration from on-premises.

How do Business Central processes differ from Dynamics GP?

It’s natural to have questions about how Dynamics GP compares to Business Central operationally, and Microsoft is here to support with common workflow comparisons available for review here, and on the Business Central YouTube channel. Additionally, we discuss many more of the implications and benefits of migration in this on-demand webinar.

Even with this powerful technology, though, there will naturally be some manual processes. Both Microsoft and your partners are here to support your transition with best practices, documentation, and support. The goal is not just a seamless transition, but an end-to-end enhancement of operations.

With these guides, you will have the tools you need to migrate from Dynamics GP to Business Central with confidence. Reach out to your partner to learn more.

The post Why migrate now: The benefits of moving from Dynamics GP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

Transform routing rule administration with bulk management

Transform routing rule administration with bulk management

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

We’re continually improving Dynamics 365 Customer Service to help organizations deliver faster, smarter, and more efficient customer experiences. Today, we’re excited to announce that administrators will now be able to maintain routing rules in bulk. This enhancement empowers administrators to update routing configurations across the board with just a few clicks—a game-changing update for teams leveraging unified routing.

Unified routing is an intelligent, scalable routing system that sends work items to the right queues to ensure quality customer service. Administrators can set up unified routing across channels in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact center. Routing rules classify and assign work items based on the type of request and organizational data.

Save time by administering routing rules in bulk

Bulk management enables administrators to create routing ruleset templates for queues and workstreams, eliminating the need for multiple versions of the same routing rules. With a few clicks, apply prioritization, assignment, or work classification ruleset templates to multiple queues and workstreams. Administrators can manage rules centrally—any template update instantly applies to all instances in queues or workstreams, removing the need for individual ruleset maintenance. 

Rulesets for routing in Copilot Service admin center

By simplifying routing configuration, service teams can devote more time to addressing customers’ needs and less time on administrative tasks. This operational efficiency helps boost overall team productivity.

The ability to maintain routing rules in bulk is now generally available for Dynamics 365 Customer Service customers.

Learn more

To learn more, read the documentation:

The post Transform routing rule administration with bulk management appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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