This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In the September 2025 edition of our monthly roundup, we’re recapping the most exciting new features recently released in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
The post What’s new in Copilot Studio: September 2025 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Frontline technicians juggle more than just work orders—they balance customer visits, team meetings, and personal commitments. Until now, keeping these schedules aligned often meant switching back and forth between apps.
With Release Wave 2 2025, we’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of Exchange Integration for Dynamics 365 Field Service. This capability syncs work order bookings directly into Outlook and Teams calendars, giving technicians a unified view of their schedules in one place, where they already collaborate with their team.
Field service organizations rely on accurate scheduling to keep operations running smoothly. Yet, frontline workers have traditionally had to check multiple sources—Field Service for bookings, Outlook for meetings, Teams for collaboration—just to piece together their day.
With this Integration:
The result: fewer missed updates, less app switching, and more time spent serving customers.
If your organization already uses an Exchange integration with Field Service to sync appointments, contacts, or tasks, you’ll notice an important change after GA:
Field Service work order bookings will begin syncing into Outlook and Teams calendars.
To ensure a smooth transition:
– Prepare your users for this update to prevent unexpected duplicate or overlapping events.
– If needed, disable the sync for all user mailboxes or turn off the Exchange Online email server profile to opt out of this feature.
Q: When will Exchange Integration be generally available?
A: Exchange Integration is available to all customers with Wave 2 2025.
Q: Does the sync work both ways?
A: No. The sync is one-way, from Field Service to Exchange. Updates made in Outlook or Teams do not flow back to Field Service.
Q: How often does the sync run?
A: Bookings appear in Outlook and Teams within 15 minutes.
Q: What happens if we already have an Exchange integration set up?
A: You’ll begin to see Field Service work order bookings added to calendars after GA. Prepare users for this change to avoid confusion. Turn off the feature via mailbox or server profile settings if needed.
Q: Can we control which bookings sync?
A: No, only work order related bookings will sync 2 weeks into the future and 1 week into the past. Admins can manage who is set up for integration by enabling or disabling the sync on their mailbox in Dynamics.
Q: Do we need new licenses?
A: No additional licenses are required beyond standard Dynamics 365 Field Service and Microsoft 365 licensing.
With the Calendar Integration now generally available, your technicians gain a clearer view of their day, your dispatchers simplify scheduling, and your organization eliminates unnecessary friction.
Ready to keep everyone in sync? Enable Calendar Integration in Dynamics 365 Field Service today. [Learn more in our documentation]
The post Integrate Field Service bookings with Outlook and Teams, now Generally Available. appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As innovation speeds up, staying agile is essential. To keep your business ahead of the curve with innovation across Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot Studio, join us for the Business Applications Launch Event, debuting live on the Dynamics 365 YouTube channel on Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified when the update is live.
The Business Applications Launch Event offers an exclusive first look at new capabilities launching over the next few months.
With a newly streamlined presentation format, you can quickly get up to speed on the most important and innovative capabilities—with expert insights and demonstrations from Microsoft product leaders and engineers. It’s our way of helping you stay current, make informed decisions, and move faster in the era of Copilot and AI agents.
Mark your calendar for the Business Applications Launch Event—Thursday, October 23, 2025.
The update is your opportunity to:
During this update, you’ll hear from the product leaders and engineers behind the technology, including new Copilot and AI agent innovation for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Demo highlights will include:
Learn about updates to the Sales qualification agent. It autonomously researches and engages with leads, helping sales teams quickly identify those with real purchase intent. In this wave, the agent goes further—moving the lead closer to full qualification and boosting the team’s opportunity pipeline with greater precision and impact.
Get an overview of 2025 release wave 2 highlights for Dynamics 365 Sales:
The latest release wave of Dynamics 365 Contact Center helps service reps better understand customer needs and deliver what they need—quickly, efficiently, and with a human touch. Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to enhance agentic and Copilot capabilities for case and knowledge management, as well as AI-based routing. Dynamics 365 Contact Center will also focus on expanding agentic and Copilot capabilities to automate service journeys across digital and voice channels, along with introducing new omnichannel and supervisor features in the 2025 release wave 2.
Get an overview of 2025 update two highlights for Dynamics 365 Contact Center:
Dynamics 365 Finance expands the capabilities of the Account Reconciliation Agent. Today, it supports your team in effortlessly resolving voucher amount mismatches. In this wave, it extends support to include ledger not in subledger and subledger not in ledger exceptions. Instead of relying on manual exception handling and static reports, the solution reviews all transactions on an ongoing basis, services exceptions, and presents them to you. The agent then suggests the most appropriate action for resolution, and you have the freedom to accept it or choose another path. Core updates to Dynamics 365 Finance also include the automation of remittance advice processing.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces capabilities that make AI-led demand planning more flexible. You can now bring in multiple external signals like inflation, weather, and industry indexes right into your forecast.
And new autonomous and intelligent productivity capabilities for finance solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot will reshape the finance process, from reconciliation to collections to advanced analytics help reduce repetitive work and surface actionable insights.
Get an overview of 2025 release wave 2 highlights for Dynamics 365 Finance:
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management:
Finance agents for Microsoft 365:
Microsoft Power Platform is getting a major boost with AI and collaboration features. Power Apps now lets people and agents work together—agents can help with tasks like data entry, visualization, and app creation just by describing what you need or sharing an image. Power Automate is evolving with smarter automation tools, including generative AI actions, intelligent document processing, and new human-in-the-loop experiences like advanced approvals. It’s also, it’s adding stronger governance and security controls to help manage automation at scale. Power Pages is making it easier than ever to build secure, data-driven websites, with new tools for low-code makers and developers, and enhanced security insights to keep everything protected.
Get and overview of 2025 release wave 2 highlights for Power Apps:
See wave two highlights for Power Automate:
Copilot Studio continues to make agent creation and operation even easier and more powerful with autonomous agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, the ability to build complete teams of agents that work seamlessly together, and improved governance for enterprise scalability. Copilot Studio will offer even deeper integration with Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Graph, helping ensure your agents can use the latest AI technology alongside your data in the Microsoft Graph.
Get an overview of 2025 release wave 2 highlights for Copilot Studio:
The Business Applications Launch Event will be live on the Dynamics 365 YouTube channel on Thursday, October 23, 2025, starting at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time. We’ll see you there!
The post Explore new AI innovation for Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot Studio at the Business Applications Launch Event appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Contact centers are increasingly adopting AI agents as part of their journey to become autonomous. During this time of rapid transformation, the need for a robust system to monitor agent activity is critical. AI agents are capable of resolving customer issues independently across channels, but their autonomy introduces new challenges around compliance, customer trust, and operational transparency.
To address this, we’re excited to announce the agent activity feed, now in preview. This release empowers AI supervisors with the tools they need to monitor agent behavior and intervene when necessary. Additionally, it ensures organizations are adopting AI responsibly and in line with their values and regulatory requirements.
The initial release of the agent activity feed includes:
Viewing the agent activity feed requires the enablement of at least one AI agent in Copilot Service admin center. Users must have a Customer Service Enterprise license and Microsoft Copilot Studio (MCS) message packs available.
Admins can customize which agents to enable. They also need to give supervisors the Editor role in MCS for each agent so they can view its activity in the feed.
Admins can turn on this feature in Copilot Service admin center or Power Platform maker center. In a few short configuration steps, they can enable supervisors to view every agent operation. This streamlined feed gives supervisors the ability to catch issues as they happen and ensure a more effective and productive service organization.
For more details on how to get started, read the documentation: Configure AI agent feed (preview) | Microsoft Learn
The post Try the AI agent activity feed in Dynamics 365 Customer Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re taking a big step forward with major updates to our individual subscription plans, combining the best of AI and productivity at an unbeatable price.
The post Meet Microsoft 365 Premium: Your AI and productivity powerhouse appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
How the Advanced Tax Calculation Engine Supports Businesses in a Time of Change
Brazil’s sweeping tax reform is reshaping indirect taxation and creating new compliance demands for companies of all sizes. To help organizations prepare, Microsoft is introducing the Brazilian Tax Reform solution in Dynamics 365 Finance—a flexible, transparent, and compliance-ready approach designed to support modern enterprises.
At the core of the solution is the Advanced Tax Calculation engine, which enables organizations to configure, test, and run both legacy and new tax regimes in parallel during the transition period. This approach supports continuity, allowing businesses to adopt reform at their own pace while minimizing disruption or downtime.
Figure 1: Legacy core tax plus Advanced Tax Calculation engine
The Brazilian Tax Reform solution provides intuitive tools that simplify setup and ongoing operations. Users can:
Clear documentation and guided configuration help minimize errors and improve readiness for future regulatory changes.
Tax reform is not a one-time change—it will continue to evolve. Dynamics 365 Finance Globalization delivers updates as requirements shift, reducing the need for long upgrade projects. This continuous compliance model ensures businesses remain current with legislation and better prepared for future adjustments.
The Brazilian Tax Reform solution is built on a modern, extensible data model that adapts as regulations change:
Figure 2: Brazilian Tax Reform Solution Structure
The Brazilian Tax Reform solution in Dynamics 365 Finance gives organizations the flexibility and tools they need to manage compliance confidently. With dual tax engines available only during the transition period, flexible configuration, and continuous updates, the solution supports a smooth shift to Brazil’s new requirements while maintaining operational continuity.
This solution is designed not only to meet today’s compliance needs but also to help businesses stay adaptable in the face of ongoing regulatory change.
The post Introducing the Brazilian Tax Reform Solution in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The record to report (R2R) process is foundational to financial transparency and compliance, encompassing activities such as accounting policy definition, cash management, journal entries, reconciliations, variance analysis, financial close, and reporting. However, these processes are often manual and complex, leading to extended close cycles and data integrity challenges.
To streamline R2R operations, finance teams are increasingly adopting AI-powered agents. These agents accelerate tasks like document summarization across systems—such as audit reports, contracts, and lease agreements—and assist with time-intensive, period-end activities like reconciliations and variance analysis. According to the Microsoft Work Trends Index 2025 report, The Rise of the Frontier Firm, 68% of finance leaders identified automation as a top priority for improving accuracy and speed in the close process, while 72% reported a reduction in manual effort since adopting AI-powered solutions. As a result, finance professionals can shift their focus from routine tasks to more strategic analysis and decision-making, fundamentally transforming the way financial operations are managed and enabling businesses to stay agile in fast-moving markets.
Microsoft has introduced several first-party ERP agents designed specifically to streamline and enhance finance and operations. These agents are seamlessly integrated within the Microsoft ERP ecosystem, automating tasks such as account reconciliation, expense management, and supplier communications. Through a combination of first-party (1P), third-party (3P), and custom-built agents, let’s delve into real-world applications of ERP agents, highlighting how organizations can automate, optimize, and elevate to enter R2R lifecycle.
Drive growth with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that streamlines operations and decisions.
Before diving into the impact AI and agents have on R2R, it’s important to distinguish between the three agent types:
Each type plays a unique role in supporting R2R, and together they form a powerful toolkit for finance transformation.
One of the most time-consuming tasks in R2R is reconciliation—whether it’s matching transactions between subledgers and general ledgers or reconciling bank statements and intercompany balances. The Financial Reconciliation Agent, a 1P solution, has already demonstrated its value in reducing manual effort and improving auditability.
Users can initiate reconciliation directly from Excel, define matching logic, apply tolerances, and generate detailed reports. Templates allow for repeatable automation, and agents can be triggered by events like file uploads or scheduled runs. Organizations like U.S. AutoForce have reported time savings of up to 80% using these agents.
Variance analysis is critical for understanding deviations between actuals and forecasts. The variance analysis capabilities, available in Microsoft 365 Copilot, enables finance teams to perform multi-dimensional analysis across products, regions, and time periods. It supports both natural language queries and structured prompts and can generate executive summaries and actionable insights.
These role-based solutions are particularly useful during month-end close, budgeting cycles, and performance reviews. By automating variance detection and explanation, agents can free analysts to focus on strategic decision-making.
Microsoft is accelerating the development of out-of-the-box finance agents by collaborating with our partner ecosystem to deliver finance-specific solutions through the AppSource framework. These agents are purpose-built in response to direct customer feedback, ensuring they address real-world financial challenges with precision and relevance.
Among the standout examples is the Lease Agent developed by Crowe, which automates lease data extraction and validation, and seamlessly integrates with Dynamics 365 Finance to streamline the lease accounting processes. Another impactful solution is the PayFlow Agent by HSO, designed to eliminate the repetitive task of responding to vendor payment inquiries. Operating behind the scenes, it analyzes incoming emails, retrieves real-time data from Dynamics 365 Finance, and delivers accurate responses within seconds.
These are just two of many 3P agents currently in development, with more expected to launch in the coming months.
While 1P and 3P agents offer robust out-of-the-box functionality, many organizations require deeper customization. Enter custom agents, built in Microsoft Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry. These agents can:
Examples include agents that monitor service disruptions, generate alerts, and initiate corrective actions; or agents that automate work item creation in DevOps based on finance triggers.
Custom agents are ideal for complex workflow automation, advanced need, or when integrating with legacy systems or handling complex business logic.
Let’s map agent capabilities to key R2R stages:
| R2R stage | AI type | Agent functionality |
| Journal entry | Custom agent | Create entries based on triggers or reconciled data. |
| Reconciliation | 1P agent | Automate ledger matching, generate reports, and notify users. |
| Variance analysis | 1P Copilot | Analyze deviations, generate summaries, and suggest corrective actions. |
| Close management across multiple systems | Custom agent | Coordinate tasks, validate data, and escalate issues. |
| Financial reporting | 1P or custom agent | Aggregate data, apply formatting, and distribute reports. |
| Audit and compliance | 1P or custom agent | Preserve original data, ensure traceability, and support audit workflows. |
This alignment shows how agents can support both tactical execution and strategic oversight.
The convergence of 1P, 3P, and custom agents marks a new era for finance operations. By automating routine tasks, surfacing insights, and enabling intelligent workflows, agents empower finance teams to focus on what matters most—strategic decision-making and value creation.
As organizations embrace AI-first transformation, the R2R process stands to benefit immensely from agentic innovation. Whether you’re just starting or scaling your deployment, now is the time to explore how agents can reshape your finance function.
The post Reinventing business process with AI: Agents in record to report appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Today, we’re bringing vibe working to Microsoft 365 Copilot with Agent Mode in Office apps and Office Agent in Copilot chat.
The post Vibe working: Introducing Agent Mode and Office Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
A new breed of industry-leading company is taking shape — Frontier Firms. These organizations blend human ambition with AI-powered technology to reshape how innovation is scaled, work is orchestrated and value is created. They’re accelerating AI transformation to enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes and unlock creativity and innovation.
To empower customers in becoming Frontier, we’re excited to announce the launch of the reimagined Microsoft Marketplace, your trusted source for cloud solutions, AI apps and agents. This further realizes Marketplace as an extension of the Microsoft Cloud, where we collaborate with our partner ecosystem to bring their innovations to our customers globally. By offering a comprehensive catalog across cloud solutions and industries, Microsoft Marketplace accelerates the path to becoming a Frontier Firm. With today’s announcement, we are excited to share:
YouTube Video
Microsoft Marketplace gives you access to thousands of AI apps and agents from our rich partner ecosystem designed to automate tasks, accelerate decision-making and unlock value across your business. With a new AI Apps and Agents category, you can easily and confidently find AI solutions that integrate with your organization’s existing Microsoft products.
“With Microsoft Marketplace, we reduced configuration time of AI apps from nearly 20 minutes to just 1 minute per instance. That efficiency boost has translated into increased productivity and lower operating costs. Marketplace is a strategic channel for Siemens, where we’ve seen an 8X increase in customer adoption. It’s a powerful platform for scaling both sides of our business.”
— Jeff Zobrist, VP Global Partner Ecosystem and Go To Market |
Siemens Digital Industries Software
Special thanks to these partners who are launching new AI offerings in Microsoft Marketplace today:
Microsoft Marketplace offers solutions across dozens of categories ranging from data and analytics to productivity and collaboration, in addition to industry-specific offerings. Microsoft Marketplace is a seamless extension of the Microsoft Cloud, uniting solutions integrated with Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Microsoft Security and more.
“The Microsoft Marketplace, in particular, helps us balance innovation with confidence by giving us access to trusted solutions that integrate seamlessly with our Azure environment — ultimately enabling us to move faster while staying true to our Five Principles.”
— Matthew Hillegas, Commercial Director – Infrastructure & Information Security |
Mars Inc.
For organizations with a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, 100% of your purchase for any of the thousands of Azure benefit eligible solutions available on Marketplace continue to count toward your commitment. This helps you spend smarter to maximize your cloud and AI investments.
Contextually relevant cloud solutions, AI apps and agents built by our partners are also available directly within Microsoft products — providing users, developers and IT practitioners with approved solutions in the flow of work. For example, Agent Store includes Copilot agents within the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience. The same applies for apps in Microsoft Teams, models and tools in Azure AI Foundry and future experiences including MCP servers.
By integrating offerings from Marketplace directly into the Microsoft Cloud, IT is equipped with management and control tools that enable both innovation and governance. When you acquire a Copilot agent or an app running on Azure from Microsoft Marketplace, it’s provisioned and distributed to team members aligned to your security and governance standards.
YouTube Video
For our partners, Microsoft Marketplace sits at the center of how we work together. We’re continuously expanding its capabilities to help our partners drive growth — whether that means scaling through digital sales, deepening channel partnerships or landing transformative deals.
We’ve invested in multiparty private offers, CSP integration and CSP private offers to connect software development companies and channel partners on Marketplace, creating more complete solutions to address customers’ needs. Today, we’re excited to share that valued partners including Arrow, Crayon, Ingram Micro, Pax8 and TD SYNNEX are integrating Microsoft Marketplace into their marketplaces, further extending customer reach.
Additionally, a new Marketplace capability called resale enabled offers is now in private preview. This empowers software companies to authorize their channel partners to sell on their behalf through private offers — unlocking new routes to market.
“We’re incredibly excited about the path forward with Microsoft. This integration with the Marketplace catalog is just the beginning — we see endless potential to co-innovate and help customers navigate their AI-first transformation with confidence.”
— Melissa Mulholland, Co-CEO | SoftwareOne and Crayon
Nicole Dezen, Chief Partner Officer and Corporate Vice President, Global Channel Partner Sales at Microsoft, shares more details about the partner opportunity with Microsoft Marketplace in her blog.
Whether you’re seeking to accelerate innovation, empower your teams with AI or unlock new value through trusted partners, Microsoft Marketplace brings together the solutions, expertise and ecosystem to meet your business needs. Explore the new Microsoft Marketplace. Thousands of solutions. Millions of customers. One Marketplace.
Alysa Taylor is the Chief Marketing Officer for Commercial Cloud and AI at Microsoft, leading teams that enable digital and AI transformation for organizations of all sizes across the globe. She is at the forefront of helping organizations around the world harness digital and AI innovation to transform how they operate and grow.
The post Introducing Microsoft Marketplace — Thousands of solutions. Millions of customers. One Marketplace. appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Our mission is to empower everyone to achieve more, and we design our products and services with enterprise-grade security, privacy, compliance, and transparency. As part of this commitment, we continue to evolve our offering to provide administrators with enhanced tools and reporting to optimize access and licensing within Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications.
On April 30, 2025, we delivered a set of enhancements to user license reporting in the Power Platform admin center, providing customers with comprehensive visibility into license usage across security roles. These improvements build on the momentum from our earlier investments in governance tools, as outlined in our March blog post on simplifying license management in Dynamics 365. Together, these updates are designed to help organizations better understand and manage their licensing footprint.
Microsoft is updating the timeline for in-app notifications and per-user license validation to give customers more time to prepare. To enable a smoother and more predictable experience, license validation will follow a staged rollout aligned with customer’s contract renewal or anniversary date. In parallel, we are introducing additional tools and reporting capabilities to increase transparency and improve the overall experience for customers managing their licensing footprint.
Starting January 15, 2026, license validation for Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications will begin for customers with contract renewals or anniversaries occurring after that date – refer to the FAQ to learn how this applies to your organization. This approach enables several important benefits:
Note: Customers granted a grace period as described in this customer blog will continue to have that status honored.
To maintain continuous access and reduce disruptions in the future, we recommend organizations proactively review and assign licenses in advance. Users without assigned licenses will no longer have access to these applications after technical validation until licenses are assigned and will instead receive prompts to request the appropriate licenses from their administrator.
To help customers confidently navigate the upcoming license validation process starting January 15, 2026, we’ve outlined clear steps to enable your organization to be prepared.
As we approach this important milestone, we encourage your administrator to:
Following this guidance will help facilitate a smooth transition and position your organization for success managing Dynamics 365 finance and operations licensing across your Microsoft Cloud solutions. This shift toward centralized license assignment underscores our commitment to simplifying administrative processes, providing greater visibility, security, and governance.
For additional information, use the following resources to continue adapting to the new modern reporting tools:
The post Simplifying License Management for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations: Improved User License Validation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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