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In an asynchronous chat setup, it’s common for service representatives to place conversations in a waiting state — For example, they are waiting for the customer to respond with additional details. Now, supervisors using Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Dynamics 365 Customer Service can easily monitor these waiting conversations
With this enhancement, supervisors can now monitor these waiting state conversations directly from the Omnichannel real-time analytics dashboard in the Copilot Service workspace. This capability gives supervisors full visibility into waiting conversations. They can review conversation transcripts and take appropriate action, such as transferring the chat to another available service representative, without needing to interrupt the flow of the conversation.
Improving insights for supervisors
Take the example of Contoso Health, a leading insurance provider. Lorenzo is a contact center supervisor at Contoso Health, responsible for ensuring smooth operations across their customer service team. Sara, a customer service representative, is chatting with a customer about an insurance claim. She asks the customer to upload documents and places the conversation in waiting as the customer requires some time to gather the required files. Post that, Sara waited for an hour for the customer to respond and ended her shift for the day.
Previously, Lorenzo would have no visibility into this conversation unless Sara reopened it or he transferred it to himself. But with this new capability, Lorenzo can simply head to the Omnichannel real-time analytics dashboard in the Copilot Service workspace, click Monitor for that conversation, and view full details. He can see the chat transcript, current status, and time elapsed.
This helps Lorenzo quickly assess if the conversation is progressing well, or if the customer might need additional help. If Sara is on vacation or unavailable for an extended period, Lorenzo can transfer the conversation directly to another available service representative — ensuring the customer doesn’t have to wait until Sara returns.
Monitoring waiting state conversations helps businesses ensure higher service quality, better monitoring of service representative responses, faster customer response times, and more efficient supervisor workflows in async channels.
Learn more about monitoring waiting state conversations
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Automated assignment in unified routing enables organizations to efficiently direct customer queries to the most suitable service representatives. To ensure swift response to customers, organizations can use the presence-based assignment functionality to select and deploy the best available service representative for the work. This blog talks about a few scenarios wherein we can make use of presence-based assignments.
Service representative presence
The availability indicator, or presence, represents different stages of service representative availability:
Available: Not engaged in any customer conversations.
Busy: Managing a few customer conversations but still has capacity for more.
Do Not Disturb: Fully occupied with customer conversations and cannot take any more.
Offline: Service representative is disconnected or logged out from the customer service platform.
Away: Indicates the service representative is on a break but still connected to the customer service.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service updates the service representative’s presence in real time based on their capacity utilization and connection status. Additionally, service representatives can also set their presence manually to accurately reflect their availability.
Presence based service representative assignment
Organizations can use these presence statuses to choose the appropriate service representative for a customer query. Depending on their business use cases, they can configure the routing system to select service representatives who are either fully available, those with some capacity, or simply those who are online (excluding service representatives with away or offline statuses).
Option 1: By utilizing the Allowed presences setting in the workstream, they can configure which presence statuses qualify service representatives for work assignment.
Option 2: Organizations can also write custom assignment rules and set assignment conditions based on the service representative’s presence. Conditions can be static, such as “Service representative presence should be available or busy.” They can also be dynamic, like “Service representative presence should match one of the allowed presences defined in the workstream.”
Note: The default assignment methods such as Highest Capacity, Advanced Round Robin, and Least Active Routing (for voice queues) automatically select service representatives whose presence aligns with the allowed presences list.
Example of presence-based assignment
Sara is a director of customer service at Contoso Health, managing a large support organization that serves more than 20 product lines and includes over 5000 service representatives globally.
Scenario: Sara wants to assign ‘Emergency’ chats to service representatives who are completely available to ensure quicker resolution.
Configuration: ‘Allowed presences’ setting in the Copilot Service admin center to specify that only service representatives with the ‘Available’ presence status can be assigned the chats from the ‘Emergency’ workstream.
Scenario: For the email queues, Sara prefers to select service representatives who are online. If none are available, the system should then consider other service representatives in the queue.
Configuration: Sarah sets up a custom assignment ruleset for the email queue. In the first rule, she specifies that only service representatives with a presence status of ‘Available’ or ‘Busy’ should be considered. In the second rule, she broadens the criteria to allow assignment to any service representative in the queue, regardless of their presence.
Additional use cases: Sara can easily detect unavailable representatives whose presence status automatically switches to Do Not Disturb (DND) when their capacity is fully utilized. Additionally, she can also configure the system to update representative’s availability based on their response to assignment notifications and prevent work from being assigned to the ones who miss or reject these notifications. Refer to Missed or Reject notification features for more details.
In a world of high-volume customer service requests, organizations can use presence-based assignment to match incoming work with the most suitable service representatives, while steering clear of unavailable or offline ones. Leveraging this capability also enhances the service representative productivity by offering them greater control over their availability and workload management.
Learn more
For more information about unified routing, automated assignment, and service representative presence in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, read the documentation:
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Maintaining adherence to schedules and ensuring that service representatives are consistently available during their shifts is crucial for delivering exceptional customer service. The Adherence Tracker in Dynamics 365 Contact Center helps organizations monitor and manage service rep activities effectively, leading to improved performance and customer satisfaction.
This powerful Contact Center feature allows supervisors to track the adherence of service representatives to their scheduled shifts. It provides real-time visibility into whether representatives are adhering to their assigned schedules, including breaks, training, and other activities.
Key features of the Adherence Tracker
Real-time monitoring: Real-time adherence monitoring involves continuously tracking service representatives’ activities against their scheduled bookings for the current day. This enables supervisors to quickly identify and address deviations, ensuring optimal productivity and compliance with schedules.
Metrics: Track adherence percentage, total scheduled time, time in current state, and time out of adherence.
Adherence Tracker: Use a visual Gantt chart to show reps’ activities on a timeline with near real-time data for immediate oversight.
Integration with Schedule Calendar: The Adherence Tracker seamlessly integrates with the service rep Schedule Calendar. It provides a comprehensive view of adherence alongside scheduled activities.
Benefits of using the Adherence Tracker
Improved performance: By monitoring adherence in real time, organizations can ensure that service representatives are consistently available during their shifts. Consequently, contact centers see improved performance and customer satisfaction.
Enhanced accountability: The tool promotes accountability among service representatives by providing visibility into their adherence to schedules.
Data-driven insights: Detailed reporting and analytics help organizations identify patterns and areas for improvement, enabling data-driven decision-making.
Operational efficiency: Actively tracking adherence and taking timely corrective actions help prevent adherence issues from impacting service operations. As a result, contact centers experience smooth and efficient workflows.
The Adherence Tracker in Dynamics 365 Contact Center is an essential tool for organizations looking to boost their team’s performance and maintain high standards of customer service. By providing real-time monitoring, this feature empowers supervisors to manage service reps effectively and drive continuous improvement.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Efficient workforce management involves flexibility in shift assignments, enabling service representatives to maintain work-life balance and ensuring consistent operational coverage. Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides robust solution for shift swapping and shift bidding, empowering service representatives with greater control over their schedules while helping managers easily manage staffing.
Shift swapping
Shift swapping enables service representatives to exchange shifts with their colleagues, providing additional flexibility in managing their schedules. This feature helps representatives accommodate unexpected changes in their availability while ensuring that service operations remain uninterrupted.
Shift swapping can be private, where a representative trades directly with another colleague, or public, where a representative posts the shift to the entire team and anyone interested can offer the trade.
How shift swapping works
Shift exchange request: A service representative initiates a shift swap request with a colleague (private) or posts the shift to the team (public).
Approval workflow: The colleague reviews the request and approves or declines the swap (private) or team members offer the trade (public).
Supervisor approval: Supervisors review the swap request to ensure it aligns with operational requirements and approve or decline the swap.
Schedule update: Approved swaps are automatically updated in the service representative’s schedule calendar.
Shift bidding
Shift bidding allows service representatives to bid for preferred shifts based on their availability and preferences. This feature promotes flexibility and employee satisfaction by letting them choose shifts that best align with their personal needs. The bidding process is transparent and fair, ensuring that all representatives have an equal chance to secure their desired shifts.
How shift bidding works
Shift availability: Supervisors create and publish available shift plans for bidding.
Bidding process: Service representatives submit their bids for preferred shifts within the specified timeframe.
Approval: Supervisors review the bids and approve shifts based on the business conditions.
Schedule update: Approved shifts are automatically updated in the service representative’s schedule calendar.
Benefits of shift bidding and swapping
Enhanced flexibility: Shift bidding and swapping provide service representatives with greater control over their schedules. This results in better work-life balance and job satisfaction.
Improved productivity: By allowing representatives to choose and exchange shifts based on their availability, organizations can ensure that their workforce is motivated and productive.
Operational efficiency: The transparent and streamlined processes for shift bidding and swapping help supervisors manage schedules effectively. Consequently, they can ensure adequate coverage for the shifts.
With shift bidding and swapping in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, organizations can effectively balance operational efficiency with employee needs. These capabilities not only promote workforce agility and satisfaction but also support consistent service excellence, creating a dynamic and responsive work environment.
Learn more
To learn more about agent shift bidding and swapping in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, read the documentation:
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Managing time-off requests efficiently is crucial for maintaining a balanced and productive work environment. Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides an intuitive solution enabling service representatives to request, track, and manage their leave seamlessly. This streamlined process offers representatives clear visibility into their leave status, helping managers balance workforce coverage while accommodating employee preferences.
Configure time-off types
Using the time-off request management features in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, organizations can now configure various leave types required for their business, such as Paid Time Off (PTO), Unpaid Leave, Sick Leave, Personal Leave, etc. Organizations can name and categorize these time-off types, providing flexibility in how time away from work is tracked and reported. This ensures consistency in scheduling and helps supervisors manage coverage effectively.
Submit leave requests with ease
Service representatives can quickly initiate leave requests directly within their schedule calendar view. Also, they can specify leave types, durations, and additional relevant details. This straightforward time-off submission process reduces administrative burden, allowing representatives to concentrate on their core responsibilities.
Transparent approval workflow
The features also include a clear and efficient approval workflow. Managers receive immediate notifications of pending requests. Then, they can review, approve, or decline these requests directly from within Dynamics 365 Contact Center. This transparent process enables managers to swiftly assess staffing implications, maintain optimal workforce coverage, and promptly communicate decisions.
Real-time status updates and notifications
Service representatives receive instant communications via email or notifications within the Dynamics 365 app regarding the status of their leave requests—whether approved, pending, or declined. This real-time clarity allows representatives to effectively plan their schedules, manage expectations, and remain informed about their upcoming absences.
Calendar visibility
The integrated schedule calendar shows approved time-off requests automatically. This provides both employees and managers with a comprehensive overview of scheduled absences. This integration facilitates proactive planning, helps teams smoothly manage workload adjustments, and ensures consistent service delivery.
Benefits of time-off request management
Improved work-life balance: By providing a straightforward process for requesting time off, Dynamics 365 Contact Center helps service representatives maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Enhanced productivity: Efficient management of time off requests ensures that representatives are well-rested and motivated, leading to improved productivity and performance.
Operational efficiency: The approval workflow and calendar integration help supervisors manage team schedules effectively, ensuring that service operations run smoothly even during periods of high demand.
Time-off request management in Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides service representatives with simplified processes, clear approval workflows, and comprehensive calendar visibility. Managers benefit from tools that ensure balanced coverage, maintain operational efficiency, and boost employee engagement. This holistic approach to time-off management significantly contributes to a productive and harmonious workplace.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As a service representative, having clear visibility into your daily schedule is crucial for effectively managing tasks and maintaining productivity. Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides a user-friendly Schedule Calendar for service reps, allowing them to easily view shifts, breaks, training sessions, and other scheduled activities—all from one convenient location.
Clear visibility into your daily activities
The Schedule Calendar gives detailed insights into both productive tasks and non-productive shift bookings, ensuring you always know what’s coming next. This helps you plan your day effectively, prepare for upcoming activities, and efficiently manage your workload.
Key features of the Schedule Calendar for service reps include:
Shift schedule bookings: Shows all scheduled activities, including productive tasks like customer support sessions, training or coaching events. Additionally, it includes non-productive periods such as breaks and lunches.
Day view: Provides a detailed breakdown of your daily schedule, allowing you to see precise timings for each shift, break, and activity.
Weekly view: Offers a clear overview of your entire week, helping you quickly identify commitments and plan your time accordingly.
Month view: Delivers a comprehensive monthly view, visually highlighting shifts, training sessions, and approved time-off requests.
Agenda view: Presents a concise, list-based summary of upcoming shifts, breaks, training sessions, and scheduled time off. This gives you quick insights into your day-to-day activities.
Time off requests: Stay informed about your approved leave and scheduled time off within the same calendar interface. Easily track your absences, ensuring work-life balance and smooth team coordination.
Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s Schedule Calendar gives service representatives the clarity and organization needed for peak performance. With easy access to shift details and intuitive calendar views, you can improve planning, manage workloads more efficiently, and consistently deliver exceptional customer support.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
It’s not hyperbolic to say that today’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have entered a new era: one where organizations are reimagining systems that are AI-operated but human led. This blended approach will take time to mature but with 81% of leaders expecting agents to be moderately or extensively integrated into their company’s AI strategy1, the time to act is now. In Microsoft Dynamics 365, these agents are redefining how finance, supply chain, and operations teams get their work done and how business operations run: intelligently, cost-effectively, and at scale. Building on the initial wave of agents announced, like the Financial Reconciliation Agent and Sales Order Agent, Microsoft is excited to announce that several new ERP agents are available and ready to start using today.
The rise of autonomous agents
How are agents different from AI-powered assistants? Building on the value of AI acting as an assistant, agents join teams as “digital colleagues”, or agents that take on specific tasks. AI-powered autonomous agents transform how business processes are orchestrated and executed—moving away from human-dependent tasks to intelligent, scalable automation. In Dynamics 365, these agents work on behalf of individuals, teams, and entire functions to streamline processes like lead generation, order management, and account reconciliation and close.
ERP systems in particular are rich with high-volume, rules-based activities that are ripe for transformation. By introducing agents into core ERP scenarios, organizations can reduce manual effort, improve accuracy, and accelerate decision-making across finance, supply chain, and project operations. This shift marks a meaningful departure towards AI-first operations and the below agents, available today in Dynamics 365, are just a preview of what’s to come.
New agents for ERP entering production-ready public preview
Agents for ERP are designed to facilitate complex business processes, like source-to-pay and project-to-profit, to ultimately reduce manual effort, enhance your efficiency, and improve business performance. Some agents fully automate entire workflows, while others support specific steps, but all are built to augment how people work. Today, new ERP agents in Dynamics 365 are now available in public preview.
Account Reconciliation Agent
Reconciling ledger entries is a time-consuming, detailed task that countless professionals spend hours on. With the Account Reconciliation Agent, users can deliver timely, compliant financial statements with fewer manual fixes. The agent accelerates the period-end close by matching ledger entries, flagging discrepancies, and recommending resolution steps. With an agent managing the reconciliation process, users can reduce operational expenses and overall time spent manually reviewing and analyzing results.
Microsoft customer Lifetime Products deployed the Account Reconciliation Agent to automate the matching and clearing of transactions between subledgers and the general ledger and saw immediate process improvements.
“Using AI and autonomous agents are just the next level for us when it comes to realizing the full benefit of our Dynamics 365 environment.“
If the past few years have shown us anything it’s that modern supply chains operate under relentless change—and staying ahead of supplier deliveries is critical to operational performance. The Supplier Communications Agent takes charge of supplier interactions, acting instantly on supplier emails, chasing missing order confirmations and delayed shipments. By closing the loop on every critical supplier touchpoint, the agent slashes rush charges, prevents costly disruptions, and protects your margins. Procurement specialists avoid last minute firefights and can focus on managing supplier relationships, driving resilience and efficiency across your entire source to pay process.
Expense Agent
Catching up with emails after a work trip is challenging enough; providing expense details adds another item on your to-do list. With the Expense Agent, users can streamline expense reporting with accuracy and policy compliance. The Expense Agent uses AI to extract key details from receipts—such as vendor, amount, date, and category—and intelligently suggests classifications aligned with company travel and expense policies. It helps ensure accurate, compliant submissions from the start, reducing manual errors, out-of-policy spending, and the need for rework. By improving data quality at the source, organizations can accelerate reimbursement, maintain policy compliance, and reduce the administrative burden on employees, managers, and finance teams alike. This allows more reliable cost tracking and enhances overall financial visibility into spend.
Time Entry Agent
Reduce time spent on entering details and tracking updates and spend more time using real-time insights into project performance. The Time Entry Agent helps to ensure timely, accurate capture of project hours by prompting employees to log time with smart reminders and context. This agent enhances billing accuracy, payroll, and visibility into project performance. Capturing time spent with an agent reduces the time spent on manual input and gives project planners better insight into resource utilization.
Activity Approvals Agent
Cut through the noise, reduce approval cycle times, and enforce cost controls with the Activity Approvals Agent. Streamline your work by only surfacing entries that need attention. This agent helps managers act faster, prevents unapproved costs, and speeds up downstream workflows. By automating the activity approvals process, project managers can improve project performance and increase visibility into time spent.
Transformative impact on business processes
ERP systems are often considered complex and dense with information, customizations, and requirements. This same complexity makes these processes ripe for automation and agents. By bringing in agents to automate steps across existing business processes and reduce any manual interventions required, agents help teams to achieve greater efficiency and freedom from processes while delivering optimal business outcomes. From finance and supply chain management to project operations and time tracking, these agents streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and enhance accuracy. With 82% of leaders confident that they’ll use digital labor to expand capacity in the next 12-18 months2, the breadth of what is possible with agents for ERP is vast. Get started using agents for ERP processes in Dynamics 365 today to achieve greater efficiency, cost savings, and improved visibility into your operations.
Review documentation of agents and join the public preview today!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Managing workforce availability efficiently is essential for delivering consistent and high-quality customer service. A well-structured shift planning and scheduling process ensures service representatives are assigned to the right shifts at the right time. This helps businesses maintain optimal service levels while balancing service representative workload. By defining shift structures, aligning staffing with demand, and ensuring fair scheduling practices, organizations can improve workforce efficiency and enhance service quality.
Create shift templates with shift planning
Shift planning forms the backbone of workforce management. It helps businesses organize shift structures, define coverage requirements, and ensure the right service representatives are available. A clear and well-defined shift plan minimizes coverage gaps, reduces scheduling conflicts, and improves operational efficiency.
Key benefits of a shift plan include:
Align staffing with capacity plans: Ensure shift coverage aligns with forecasted service demand by scheduling the right number of service representatives at the right time.
Assign the right skills to the right shifts: Match service representatives with the required expertise to ensure optimal performance across different customer interaction channels.
Structured shift activities: Organize shift time effectively by incorporating work periods, training sessions, scheduled breaks, and lunch intervals. This structure helps optimize service delivery while ensuring employee well-being.
Comprehensive shift calendars: Set operational parameters, including shift days, working hours, and time zones, to ensure alignment with business requirements and global workforce operations.
Ensuring workforce efficiency with seamless scheduling
Once shift plans are in place, scheduling ensures service representatives are assigned efficiently to maintain business continuity. An organized scheduling process helps businesses allocate resources effectively, adapt to changing needs, and maintain fairness in workforce management.
Key benefits include:
Automated scheduling for quick assignments: Generate schedules in bulk based on predefined shift plans and workforce requirements, ensuring efficient allocation of resources.
Flexible manual scheduling: Assign service representatives to shifts manually, allowing for adjustments based on real-time operational needs and individual preferences.
Break distribution for continuous service: Balance workload by strategically distributing breaks across service representatives, preventing service interruptions while maintaining coverage.
Adaptability for changing needs: Easily adjust schedules to accommodate last-minute changes, or unexpected fluctuations in service demand.
By using Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s shift plan and scheduling, businesses can ensure smooth operations, optimize workforce utilization, and provide better service experiences. A well-organized shift structure helps service representatives stay productive and engaged while ensuring that customer support remains uninterrupted. With a strategic approach to planning and scheduling, organizations can balance efficiency with flexibility. Consequently, they foster a more structured and effective service operation.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In today’s fast-paced service landscape, ensuring the right number of service representatives are available at the right time is critical to maintaining efficiency and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Capacity planning in Dynamics 365 Contact Center empowers organizations to align workforce availability with service demand by providing accurate staffing forecasts. By leveraging historical data and advanced modeling, businesses can make proactive staffing decisions, optimize operational efficiency, and enhance service levels.
Capacity planning offers a structured approach to predicting staffing requirements across different time horizons. Whether planning for the immediate future or long-term workforce strategy, organizations can leverage these capabilities for efficient resource planning.
Short-term planning
Short-term capacity planning enables organizations to predict service representative needs in 15-minute intervals. This capability ensures staffing levels align with fluctuating support demand throughout the day. By continuously analyzing workload patterns, businesses can make real-time adjustments to maintain service quality and responsiveness. This approach helps contact centers proactively address unexpected surges, minimize wait times, and optimize resource utilization. With greater visibility into short-term trends, organizations can ensure seamless customer support while preventing service disruptions.
Long-term planning
Long-term workforce planning enables organizations to predict daily service representative needs well in advance. By assessing workforce requirements over extended periods, businesses can develop hiring strategies, optimize shift allocations, and ensure that they have the right talent in place to meet projected service demands. This forward-looking approach supports strategic decision-making, financial planning, and workforce scalability.
Data slicing
Organizations can break down staffing forecasts by specific channels and queues. Consequently, they get a deeper understanding of workforce distribution across various service touchpoints. This capability helps businesses allocate resources effectively, ensuring that each customer interaction channel is adequately staffed to meet demand.
With the inclusion of Capacity Planning in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, organizations can be well-equipped with the tools they need to optimize staffing efficiency and ensure exceptional service delivery. Capacity planning provides the foresight necessary to manage workforce resources effectively. Businesses can balance operational costs, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive long-term success.
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