Forward-looking organizations of all sizes that are looking to grow, scale, and accomplish more with the tools that they have today understand that managing financial data alone is not enough. These businesses need tools that centralize, manage, and optimize business processes from end to end.

Most teams looking to “graduate” from simplistic accounting software or outdated systems of record turn to cloud-first, and increasingly AI-powered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to deliver on this end-to-end vision.

If you’re thinking about end-to-end business management, and your business runs on Microsoft applications already for things like email, productivity, and business intelligence, there’s a Microsoft solution tailor-made for you: Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Dynamics 365 Business Central

Connect finance, sales, service, and operations.

Learn more

We believe that Business Central is a rock-solid ERP solution in its own right, helping over 45,000 small and medium businesses (SMBs) worldwide manage finance, operations, sales, and service in one solution—but it doesn’t end there. On top of that rock-solid foundation, you get the muscle of Microsoft AI, the extensibility of thousands of apps on AppSource, and, yes, native connectivity to the Microsoft 365 services and applications you’re already using.

Here’s a taste of what that means in practice:

• Data connectivity: Business Central synchronizes financial, operational, and customer data with Microsoft 365 apps, enabling users to access up-to-date information and edit that data in familiar interfaces like Excel without the need for middleware.
• Workflow automation: With Microsoft Power Automate, users can create automated workflows that bridge Business Central and Microsoft 365, streamlining processes such as approvals, notifications, and document management. Tools like Agent Builder and Microsoft Copilot Studio are enabling businesses to deliver powerful, AI-first workflows that run through Microsoft systems and beyond.
• Embedded experiences: Users can interact with Business Central data from within Microsoft 365 apps. For example, they can view and edit Business Central records in Excel, manage invoices and quotes in Outlook, and collaborate on business data in Microsoft Teams—all without switching contexts.
• Security and identity: Both platforms share Azure Active Directory for authentication and authorization, ensuring secure access and unified identity management across the integrated environment.
• AI and insights: The integration enables AI-powered features such as Microsoft Copilot and both prebuilt and custom agents, leveraging combined data from Business Central and Microsoft 365 to provide intelligent recommendations, automate routine tasks, and deliver actionable insights within daily workflows.

This architecture empowers SMBs to streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and enhance customer experiences by leveraging unified data, automated processes, and AI-powered tools—all inside the applications teams use every day.

The nuts and bolts of seamless systems

Let’s take a deeper look at how these integrations can work in practice, the value that it can offer businesses, and the steps needed to manage these processes.

Outlook: Business Central can be made available in Outlook’s sidebar, and administrators even have the option to make finance, customer, and inventory insights available to users without a Business Central license. Advanced tools like Sales Order Agent in Business Central take this interconnectivity even further. With Sales Order Agent, inbound order requests can be fulfilled in Business Central automatically, taking into account inventory and customer preferences. All of this saves time and allows staff to focus on growth, not busy work.

Excel: Business Central allows users to view and edit business data—such as financial reports, budgets, or inventory lists—directly in Excel. The two-way synchronization means that changes made in Excel are instantly reflected in Business Central, and vice versa. This eliminates manual data exports and imports, reduces errors, and empowers finance teams to work with live data in a tool they know well. AI again can take these synergies a step further through Back Reconciliation with Copilot, saving hours of time and effort on month-end operations.

Teams: Collaboration is enhanced through Teams, where users can share Business Central records, discuss transactions, and make decisions together without switching apps. Teams’ chat and meeting features combine with Business Central’s business data—enabling sales, finance, and operations teams to work together in real time. This boosts transparency and ensures everyone is aligned on the latest information. With tools like Copilot Studio, you can create AI-powered agents in Teams that automatically update customer information, generate sales quotes, and centralize operational and engagement data in one place.

These connections work so well that you won’t even think about them, enabling better customer experience, faster growth, and a future-ready foundation for innovation.

Customers reaping the benefits of end-to-end connectivity

This of course isn’t a hypothetical—customers are seeing the benefits of unifying Business Central within the broader Microsoft ecosystem every day.

You can read many of these customer stories right now.

We see in many of these case studies how customers benefit significantly from the integration of Microsoft 365 and Business Central thanks to the seamless ease of use across familiar tools. By embedding business insights and workflows into applications like Outlook, Excel, and Teams, users are empowered to complete daily tasks without constantly switching between different systems. This intuitive experience minimizes the learning curve, reduces manual data entry, and ensures that employees can access real-time information within the environments they use every day. As a result, even those without a Business Central license can gain valuable insights, making financial and operational data more accessible and actionable for a broader range of users. 

The interconnectivity between Microsoft 365 and Business Central creates a unified digital workspace where data flows freely and processes are automated. Teams can collaborate in real time, make informed decisions together, and maintain alignment across departments through shared records and synchronized updates. This shared digital language eliminates silos and fosters transparency, allowing everyone in the organization to speak the same “data language.” Ultimately, these capabilities drive efficiency, enable faster innovation, and support growth by creating a future-ready foundation where technology adapts to business needs rather than standing in the way. 

A future-ready foundation

Integrating Business Central with Microsoft 365 is more than a technical upgrade—it’s a strategic shift. By unifying data, automating workflows, and embracing AI, SMBs gain the agility, resilience, and speed to grow confidently.

Whether you’re a manufacturer optimizing your supply chain, a finance team closing faster in Excel, or a partner building vertical solutions, Business Central + Microsoft 365 gives you a future-ready platform ready to tackle today’s challenges and set you up to own the future.

The post Tackle the future of business operations with the combined power of Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 Business Central appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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

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

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

Why This Matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Access files on SharePoint saved to the cloud. 

Online Mode Capabilities 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What IT Managers Should Know 

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

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

Getting Started: Best Practices for Rollout 

We recommend the following steps for a smooth introduction: 

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

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

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

4. Monitor performance and sync behavior with telemetry tools 

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

• Work confidently offline 

• Switch to online to search or update live data 

• Never miss a critical update from the field or dispatch 

• Stay productive, no matter the network status 

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

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

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

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

More conversational, capable, and configurable 

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

Key improvements: 

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

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

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

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

Voice support 

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

Key improvements: 

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

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

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

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

Smarter intent discovery and management 

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

Key improvements: 

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

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

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

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

Autonomous and semi-autonomous learning loops 

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

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

Learn more 

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

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

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

SMS mobile numbers 

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

This expansion enables businesses in these regions to: 

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

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

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

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

ACS SMS short codes 

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

With this release, organizations can: 

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

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

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

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

Getting started 

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

Learn more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Autonomous case creation and update

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

• Automated detection of intent for incoming emails and case updates 

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

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

Autonomous case resolution 

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

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

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

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

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

Enhanced email channel support 

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

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

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

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

Fully autonomous case follow-up and closure

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

Configuration and control 

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

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

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

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

• Controlling whether CMA is semi- or fully autonomous 

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

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

Learn more

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

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

As AI transforms customer service, sales, and operational workflows, organizations are eager to harness its potential. However, questions about control, security, compliance, and performance linger. That’s why we built Agent hub in Dynamics 365. It’s a one-stop hub that empowers customer service and contact center admins and supervisors to safely adopt AI, monitor its impact, and make informed, responsible decisions. 

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through why it matters, what it offers, and how it works — featuring our key pillars: Learn, Rollout, and Measure. 

Why do we need Agent hub? 

Adopting AI in the enterprise isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Business leaders and IT teams often ask: 

• Which AI agents are running in our environment? 

• Are they compliant and secure? 

• What business value are they driving? 

• How can we safely test and roll out AI capabilities without disrupting operations? 

Agent hub answers those questions by providing transparency, governance, ROI and actionable insights — all in one place. 

With Agent hub in Dynamics 365, customers gain: 

• Transparency — Gain clear visibility into AI agent behavior, security, and compliance posture through the Learn pillar. 
• Control — Safely adopt AI workflows incrementally by intents and workloads using the Rollout manager. 
• Performance monitoring — Measure AI agent performance and key KPIs via the performance dashboards in the Measure pillar. 
• Governance and trust — Drive responsible AI adoption aligned with business priorities and regulatory requirements. 

Pillar 1: Learn 

Before enabling AI capabilities, admins can access plain-language, guided overviews of AI agents, security protocols, compliance impacts, and adoption workflows. This helps demystify AI and empowers decision-makers with the knowledge to act confidently. 

Key highlights: 

• Insights into AI agents, Copilot features, and Fully Autonomous Contact Center (FACC) flows 

• Security, privacy and compliance insights 

• FAQs on AI in Dynamics 365 

Pillar 2: Rollout 

Adopting AI can be safe and controlled. With Rollout manager, you can selectively activate AI agents and autonomous workflows based on specific intents and business rules, giving you full control over which workloads are handled by AI. 

Key highlights: 

• Define rollout plans  

• Track adoption status and control exposure incrementally 

Pillar 3: Measure 

Once an AI agent is live, you need to measure what matters. Performance dashboards for AI agents highlight KPIs like: 

• Autonomous rate 

• Resolution rate 

• Average handle time 

• Abandon rate 

With seamless drill-down to L2 dashboards and actionable insights for AI agents like Knowledge Management Agent, supervisors can continuously measure and optimize AI impact. 

The Agent hub in Dynamics 365 isn’t just a tool, it’s a framework for safe, transparent, and value-driven AI adoption. Whether you’re starting your AI journey or scaling enterprise-wide automation, it equips you with the insights and controls you need to move forward with confidence. 

Learn more about Agent hub

Ensure your organization stays ahead of customer expectations. Preview Agent hub in Dynamics 365 and share your feedback.

To learn more, read the documentation: Overview of agent hub (preview) | Microsoft Learn 

The post Safe, transparent, measurable AI adoption with Agent hub appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s connected world, voice communication remains a cornerstone of customer engagement. Whether it’s a support call for customer service or a telehealth session with a doctor, call quality and reliability are critical. That’s where our enriched telemetry and insights come in. Equipped with comprehensive telemetry data, developers and IT teams can monitor, detect, diagnose, and resolve issues with voice call performance, regardless of the calling service provider.

This blog post will guide you through the powerful diagnostics and telemetry tools available in Dynamics 365. You’ll see how they can enhance your contact center’s efficiency and customer satisfaction. By leveraging these tools, you can ensure seamless voice communication, proactively address potential issues, and deliver an exceptional experience to your customers! 

For either an inbound call where callers are calling into the contact center, or outbound calls where agents are contacting customers, there is a lifecycle to every conversation. This lifecycle is typically as below.  

We have a wide range of Azure monitoring tools, including Application Insights and Azure Communication Service (ACS) Call Diagnostics in Call Diagnostics Center (CDC). These tools, integrated through Azure Monitor and AppInsights, serve different layers of the communication stack and can be complementary when used together. The telemetry in these tools is usually available within 15 minutes, making them apt for monitoring. 

The conversation lifecycle in Application Insights

The conversation lifecycle paints a full picture of the call and does the following: 

• Captures operational conversation events: initiation, voice agent handoff, routing to queues, and agent assignment until resolution. 

• Enables monitoring workflow health, agent performance, and customer service representatives’ performance, as well as customer experience. 

• Integrates directly with Application Insights to track conversation telemetry and build custom dashboards.

• Enables telemetry analysis using our pre-built Azure Data Explorer dashboards. Or, you can simply use these queries to create your own custom queries suited to your business needs. See the sample query here: Configure conversation diagnostics (preview) | Microsoft Learn  

You can now enable out-of-the-box workbooks for viewing all this telemetry in one place. These are in preview right now to try out. Reach out to D365CS_Diagnostics@microsoft.com to enable the reports.

You can also build and edit your own queries in the editor to answer your business questions.  

ACS call diagnostics 

Azure Communication Service (ACS) call diagnostics in Call Diagnostics Center (CDC) help you analyze call telemetry and does the following: 

• Focuses on media telemetry: audio/video quality, jitter, packet loss, latency, device issues. 

• Enables technical troubleshooting of call quality and client-side performance. 

• Can be used for calls from any PSTN operator. 

• Enables data to be routed to Log Analytics via Azure Monitor for querying and alerting. 

You can see these insights in interactive timelines and log analytics workbooks, making it easier to pinpoint the root cause of call quality issues. To learn more, go to Azure Communication Services Call Diagnostics | Microsoft Learn. 

Performance in voice and video 

ACS recently rolled out additional telemetry on performance that is handy for identifying and debugging scenarios that have higher than normal latency. You can: 

• Identify calling SDK APIs that are high latency, for P95 or even P99.  

• Drill down into individual API scenarios to show detailed performance trend.  

Additional information is available in Azure Communication Services Voice and Video Insights | Microsoft Learn 

You can also see the P95 latency thresholds on this page to use as guidance.  

Use cases

Let’s understand how you can use these tools through a couple of common use cases.

Case 1: Optimizing for assignments

As a supervisor, you are tasked with keeping customer service representative assignment time around 3 minutes on average. If assignment time begins to rise, maintaining the same service level requires proactive measures. With assistance from an IT admin, you configure a monitor in Application Insights using conversation lifecycle telemetry. You set the average assignment time to 2 minutes and receive email alerts if the number rises, enabling adjustments.

traces 

| extend customDim = parse_json(customDimensions) 

| extend  

       conversationId =tostring(customDim["powerplatform.analytics.resource.id"]), 

       subscenario = tostring(customDim["powerplatform.analytics.subscenario"]) 

| where subscenario in ("RTQ", "AgentAccept") 

| project timestamp, conversationId, subscenario; 

let latestRTQsBeforeAgentAccept = subscenarios 

| where subscenario == "RTQ" 

| join kind=inner (subscenarios 

    | where subscenario == "AgentAccept" 

    | project agentAcceptTime = timestamp, conversationId) on conversationId 

| where timestamp  2min 

| project conversationId, assignmentTime 

With this query, the alert has a severity of 2, indicating Warning. Additionally, you can select how and when to summarize results, and how frequently to evaluate the calls, and where to send the alerts to. For a critical metric such as assignment time, selecting your evaluation to run every 15 minutes will cost $0.50 a month. 

In the midst of a typical day, an alert notifies you that assignment time has exceeded 150 seconds for more than 10 calls in the past 15 minutes. You reach out to the IT admin, who swiftly jumps into action.

Leveraging the tools at their disposal, they begin diagnosing. They first look at the conversations exceeding 150s in the dashboard they set up using Azure Data Explorer Dashboards. There are more than 30 conversations by now where assignment time has exceeded 150 seconds. They choose a few and view their conversation state flow within the built-in views. The IT admin observes an unusually high queue volume. To manage the surge, an overflow rule is triggered, initiating callbacks. The callback duration is then factored into the assignment time, resulting in a higher-than-normal average assignment times.

The IT admin quickly runs a query in AppInsights and identifies a queue with lower call volume. By routing calls to this queue as an overflow action, they can alleviate the strain on the queue experiencing higher assignment times. What once required extensive troubleshooting with Microsoft Support is now effortlessly resolved, with the answers at your fingertips. 

Case 2: Optimizing for network issues

As a supervisor, a few of your Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) report dropped calls and network error messages during calls. To investigate, you gather the conversation IDs from your team and reach out to your IT admin for support. The IT admin retrieves the call ID for these conversations by using a query in Application Insights. 

The IT Admin then filters for these call IDs in ACS Call Diagnostics and uncovers a recurring no network error confirming a contact center-wide outage rather than isolated network failures.

To prevent future disruptions, the supervisor ensures calls automatically switch to a backup connection when the primary network goes down, maintaining stability and avoiding dropped calls.

Case 3: Optimizing for call connectivity with SBC

As an IT admin, you are responsible for diagnosing calling issues that may involve a non-Microsoft telephony system connected to Azure Communication Services (ACS) via Direct Routing. These complex calling issues will span both Direct Routing SBCs and ACS. When you see a support ticket about a specific incoming call that traversed your Direct Routing SBC, you start with the call ID generated by the SBC. Your goal is to map this trunk call ID to its corresponding ACS correlation ID and uncover the root cause using end-to-end telemetry. 

Inside your ACS resource, you navigate to Azure Monitor, then to Monitoring > Logs. There, you run a targeted query on the ACSCallSummary table. Replace trunkCallId with the specific call ID from the Direct Routing SBC for the call you want to troubleshoot. 

ACSCallSummary 

| where ParticipantType == "PSTN" 

| project 

    | CorrelationId, PstnParticipantCallType, ParticipantEndReason, ParticipantEndSubCode, 

    | trunkCallId = parse_json (CallDebuggingInfo).trunkCallId, CallDuration 

| where trunkCallId has "" 

This query returns the ACS correlation ID linked to your SBC-generated call ID. With this correlation ID in hand, you proceed to ACS Call Diagnostics. Running the correlation ID through the diagnostic tools, you discover a recurring pattern: “No Network” errors appear consistently for calls routed through this path, confirming that the problem is not isolated to a single user or device. 

Instead, your investigation reveals a contact center-wide network outage impacting all calls passing through the affected Direct Routing SBC. With actionable evidence, you escalate the incident for resolution, ensuring future calls are routed via healthy trunks, and document your findings for compliance and proactive monitoring.

By leveraging intuitive dashboards, real-time alerts, and deep integration with Azure services, organizations can quickly identify bottlenecks, optimize performance, and deliver consistently exceptional customer experiences. Embrace these powerful tools to transform your operations, delight your customers, and stay ahead of the competition.

Learn more

To learn more, see Understand conversation diagnostics (preview) | Microsoft Learn 

The post Diagnostics and telemetry for Dynamics 365 Contact Center voice channel appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

For decades, growing revenue in business-to-business (B2B) sales meant expanding the sales team. More sellers, more deals. But AI is providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine customer relationship management (CRM), and business leaders are keen to use its potential to boost sales outcomes and do more with less. Organizations are building the sales teams of the future by investing in generative AI and autonomous AI agents that can empower sales teams to deliver faster, hyper-personalized buying experiences—deeply understanding customer intent and proactively guiding decisions to influence pipeline.

Autonomous agents can handle the manually intensive parts of a typical sales workflow; for example, researching sales leads while allowing reps to spend more time in front of the customers selling and closing revenue. This is what we call agentic sales—where humans guide agents through fully autonomous workflows, transforming the sales journey and delivering meaningful customer engagements. Becoming an agentic sales organization is top mind for leaders, but many don’t know where to start.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Close more deals and increase seller efficiency with an AI-powered CRM solution.

Get started today.

The pressure to deliver on customer expectations is higher than ever. Buyers want faster responses and better customer experience and are willing to walk away if those needs are not met. But with data barriers and organizational silos teams globally are struggling to meet these demands. In the face of these challenges, yesterday’s CRM systems are taking time away from what matters—building relationships and delivering personalized interactions across the sales journey. Sales leaders now rely on AI to provide sales insights and recommend next best actions from their customer data; and they are increasingly looking to agents to automate and augment work like researching, qualifying, and drafting outreach. Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024.¹

We’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant* for Sales Force Automation for the fifteenth consecutive year.

How Microsoft is making selling easier

Reimagine resource-intensive workflows across the sales pipeline

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to boost sales outcomes and improve customer experience powered by a CRM system that embeds AI and agents throughout the key stages of the deal cycle. Sellers can develop, prioritize, and close pipeline faster by adopting a consistent cadence across teams with autonomous AI agents and Copilot. Dynamics 365 helps sellers stay on top of their deals and deliver high-quality customer engagements across touchpoints with AI-powered engagement guidance and real-time action recommendations. With conversational intelligence built-in, sellers get real-time call transcriptions, sentiment analysis, and actionable insights that help them stay focused and responsive. Sales managers are able to use these insights to scale winning teams and grow their business with intelligent forecasting. Sales operations leads are able to tailor the agentic sales solution to meet the needs of the business and deliver sales efficiency with trust and accountability.

Integration with an expanded ecosystem 

Organizations can harness the breadth of the Microsoft Cloud to empower their sales teams with intelligent, connected experiences—easily integrating data, collaboration, and AI-powered insights. Integrated collaboration tools that streamline communication and drive accountability across marketing, sales, and service departments. Embedded Microsoft Teams chat within Dynamics 365 enables real-time discussions through dedicated teams and channels, fostering cross-functional alignment. With Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales sellers can easily share opportunities, leads, and account information plus set up deal rooms directly in Teams with automatic sharing of data and files from Dynamics 365 Sales. Copilot in Power Apps makes it easier than ever to tailor the sales experience. Whether it’s customizing dashboards, building forms, or automating workflows, sellers can use natural language to optimize the user interface around how you work. It’s a smarter, faster way to extend Dynamics 365 Sales—without needing to write a single line of code.

Our customer’s success 

Ricoh Japan drives digital transformation with Dynamics 365 Sales incorporating generative AI for enhanced sales capabilities and seamless integration with Microsoft 365.

Among the most significant benefits of implementing Dynamics 365 Sales for Ricoh was their new access to generative AI technology. As an example of how Ricoh Japan is using generative AI, product recommendations from four sources appear when users access the new system: from daily reports entered in Dynamics 365 Sales, from industry information on the web, from purchase history, and top-selling products by customer segment. “These all appear automatically,” says Kazunari Sakai, CRM Promotion Group Leader in the CRM Planning Office, Marketing Center, Digital Service Sales Division at Ricoh Japan. “Microsoft 365 Copilot is used to summarize Outlook emails as well as chats and meetings conducted using Teams.”

There are many strengths in our sales process that we have honed over a 20-year period and hope to carry forward. Dynamics 365 Sales integrates with Power Platform, a line of products facilitating low-code/no-code development and able to meet our Fit to Standard framework.”

—Makoto Nagai, General Manager of the CRM Promotion Office, DX Promotion Center, Corporate Planning Division, Ricoh Japan

As organizations continue to begin adopting AI agents, Microsoft is here guiding each team as they become an agentic sales organization built on trust and security in leading products like Dynamics 365 Sales.

¹Gartner®, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, October 2024

²Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Steve Rietberg, Wendy Butler-Mafuz, 21 July 2025.

*The report was titled Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation from 2007-2008. Microsoft was recognized as Microsoft Dynamics CRM from 2011-2014 and as Microsoft (Dynamics CRM Online) in 2015-2016. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

The post Microsoft named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Sales Force Automation Platforms    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.