Editor: Denis Conway

Introduction:

The introduction of the Automatic re-waving of shipment lines failed to be allocated is solving issue where failed lines needed to be handled manually in the “Maintain shipments” form. This feature empowers warehouse managers to schedule checks for incomplete shipments to be re-waved and completed. In the past, this would have been a manual task for a warehouse manager to manage, actively going through a list of incomplete shipment lines and manually reprocessing them for the shipments to be completed. This process was time-consuming every time an exception happened, and lines did not manage to allocate inventory.  
A scenario where this could occur would be if inventory levels in a specific picking location were not available. If that was the case, the system would previously add that failed shipment to a list of incomplete shipments, which a warehouse manager would then have to manually manage.  

 With the Auto Add to Shipments feature, failed shipment lines will be automatically re-added to a new wave, ending the need for manual exception handling.  
Warehouse administrators have the flexibility to configure this as a batch job. This type of exception management allows our outbound processes to continue even when unforeseen accidents or events occur, without need for hours of manual labor spent on reprocessing the failed waves.  

Image: Warehouse Manager reviewing inventory

In this image, we get a screenshot of the Auto add shipments to wave menu, where the user can do a variety of things, but most importantly we can set up the recurrence for how often we want our failed shipments to be re-run.  

As we can see on the Auto add shipments to wave menu, there is a field named WHS rewave counter and has a default setting of 5. This means that we will only be able to re-wave our shipments a maximum of 5 times. If there is a scenario where we would like this shipment to be re-waved even after the fifth attempt, users can add a shipment ID manually through this page, which enables these previously failed shipment lines for another five re-wave attempts.  

 We can see on the image below that in the form “WHSWaveProcessingRemovedShipment” that one shipment line has failed, and we receive an error message that gives us a hint on why this happened. As we can see, the Shipment status is still “open”, which means the shipment will not be removed from the table. In the WHS rewave counter column there is a 0, which tells us we have not yet tried to re-run that shipment. In the Wave ID field, we can also see the Wave that was affected.

In the image below, we get a snapshot of what the set up for the removal of re-waved shipment lines from the earlier mentioned form looks like. On this screen, users can set up when and how often the re-waving cleanup job should run.

How does the cleanup job work?

The cleanup job was introduced to this feature to avoid failed shipment lines being stuck in the “WHSWaveProcessingRemovedShipmentCleanup” form if they could not be re-waved. Users do not have to set up a cleanup job for the Auto add to shipments feature, however, that means that the staging form will hold lots of shipment lines that have not been re-waved successfully after the maximum number of attempts. The cleanup job will remove lines from the form either via the Cleanup wave threshold field or the Last update older than given number field. This allows users to choose whether they want to remove that line from the form either through a re-wave threshold or after a certain number of days have passed.

In the Cleanup rewave threshold field, users can select how many times they want their shipment lines to be re-waved before they are removed from the ‘WHSWaveProcessingRemovedShipment‘ form.
That means, even as we have the default setting of five attempted re-waves, the cleanup job can remove shipments from the ‘WHSWaveProcessingRemovedShipment’ form earlier than after 5 attempts, by selecting a number lower than 5.
This can be useful if you would only like failed shipment lines to be re-waved a maximum of let’s say 3 times, before they are removed from the ‘WHSWaveProcessingRemovedShipment‘ form.

In the Last update older than given number field, users can select to remove failed shipment lines based on this criterion as well. Setting this to 30 means cleanup job will run and remove all failed shipment lines with the last update being older than the given number. This means, if we select 30 as our number, if we have a shipment line that was last updated 31 days ago, when the cleanup job runs, that line will be removed from the ‘WHSWaveProcessingRemovedShipment‘ form.

Areas of use:

Conceptually, this feature is suited for all kinds of industries, and can aid your outbound processes in more ways, but primarily focuses on scenarios that require exception management related to failed allocation of inventory from a picking zone. This mainly occurs when we allow inventory reservations for e.g., sales orders that are not stored in a picking location or your inventory due that inbound receiving and put-away has not been completed yet, or that production facility has reported inventory after production has been completed but not yet conducted finished goods put-away.

By enabling the re-waving feature for Dynamics 365 Warehouse Management, users reduce time consumption by handling uncompleted shipments, avoiding manual exception handling, and making sure that all shipment lines not allocated will be automatically re-waved and not forgotten.

Take your warehouse to the next level and achieve more with Microsoft Dynamics 365!

More details

Learning articles can be found at: Automatic rewaving of nonallocated shipment lines – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

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Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management capabilities

Modernize your supply chain to enhance visibility, improve planning, streamline procurement, and optimize fulfilment – Learn More

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In this extraordinary age of AI, we find ourselves on the brink of a profound revolution. Companies are looking for generative AI to solve longstanding problems around customer connection, loyalty, and seller productivity. Businesses are on a journey to become a digital-first business, not only to connect with customers, but to benefit from the advances in AI. 

Both winning and retaining customers requires a unified customer understanding and ability to orchestrate experiences across sales, marketing, and service. To deliver exceptional experiences, businesses need a solution that breaks down data silos between applications and departments so sellers, marketers, and service agents can get the right information in the right interface at the right time.

Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 1

Release wave 1 brings new innovations and capabilities to transform your business. 

Learn more

Imagine if your sellers could effortlessly collaborate with contributing stakeholders and had the exact right information at the exact right time to make a persuasive sales pitch that speaks to the needs and wants of each individual customer to cement the sale.

Imagine if your marketing team could create the perfect end-to-end campaign, one that aligns input across departments, that pulls in the perfect target audiences, that includes campaign assets aligned with your brand identity. And instead of doing so in months, being able to create a good draft…in minutes.

Imagine if each time customers interacted with your company, no matter what department or touchpoint they engage with, they felt known, and each interaction built on the last.

With generative AI and our Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer experience solutions, these “imagine ifs” are reality.

The innovative capabilities that are coming to you in Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will help you elevate the seller experience through AI-driven process transformation, optimize the buying journey with the power of data, and personalize every customer interaction.

Elevate the seller experience through AI-driven process transformation

A recent study of sales professionals showed that up to 70% of their time is used for administrative and non-selling tasks that reduce the quality of their interactions with customers.

With Copilot for Sales and Dynamics 365 Sales, we enable innovative AI-enriched experiences to support sellers as they move through the sales process. We help transform sales teams from just following leads and opportunities into being trusted advisors who can predict and support customer needs.

Copilot for Sales is designed to be an invaluable assistant helping drive productivity and improve sales efficiency. It combines all the unique role-based sales capabilities with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 to deliver a unified and highly relevant seller experience right within the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, keeping the seller in their flow of work. Sellers can use chat to identify answers to top sales questions, whether it’s to find out more about an account or opportunity, or to view the sales pipeline. We deliver relevant sales context using natural language and prompt-based actions.

Let’s look at some of the newest features within Copilot for Sales, an application for sellers who use either Dynamic 365 Sales or Salesforce but prefer to work within their Microsoft 365 productivity apps to manage their day:

• Enhance email summaries and replies to minimize app switching and provide a response that’s aware of the customer context. Insight related to sales such as buying intent is emphasized, and suggested changes such as updates to sales stages, opportunity budgets, or estimated close dates appear in the side panel allowing instant updates.
• Easily create meeting preparation reports that give you the information you need to engage your customers confidently. You can share the meeting prep with your team members so everyone can be on the same page with knowledge about the customer and the account. Using the power of Copilot in Word combined with Sales insight from your customer relationship management (CRM) application.
• Get immediate AI-generated tips, suggestions, and advice in Microsoft Teams meetings to help sellers concentrate on the meeting dialogue and ensure they can respond quickly to requests and possible challenges, such as competitor references, by surfacing relevant information when and where they need it.
• Generate post-meeting follow-up quickly and easily allowing sellers to follow-up with tasks and notifications that are generated from the Teams intelligent recap screens and review the key questions that need to be answered. Follow-up work with their team members can be managed using deal rooms and planner activities to review task suggestions and assignments ensuring no follow-up is missed.
• Keep systems up to date without the pain of manual effort. Copilot for Sales allows for quick creation of records, such as leads and opportunities, right in the Microsoft 365 surface area. In the Copilot side panel, create new records and update fields using pre-filled suggestions without leaving the screen.

Dynamics 365 Sales continues to be our market-leading CRM solution designed to streamline sales processes, cultivate customer relationships, and expedite deal closures for businesses of all sizes. We bring the power of generative AI right inside this surface area and help sellers transform their CRM interactions to support customer conversations and land deals. With the latest release we’re helping sellers to:

• Transform the CRM sales experience by using the immersive full-screen Copilot view right in Dynamics 365 Sales. Get all key information in one place including pipeline, suggested actions, deals in progress, and real-time insights on key accounts. Sellers can query that information to get further details and insights using natural language and suggested prompts. Use it to get started every day as a homepage for all sellers using Dynamics 365.
• Make the best use of prospecting time with intelligent lead management to make sure that sales development teams are using their time wisely and focusing on leads that have a higher chance of closing quickly. In this release, we’re adding qualification criteria that incorporate signals to help show how interested the customer is. The distribution of those leads is then improved based on seller capacity and our new notification alerts make sure that sellers don’t lose the opportunity to interact when the timing is right.

Optimize the buying journey with the power of data

It all starts with data. Generative AI takes what used to be specialized and trained roles and democratizes them so customer experience (CX) professionals can use and take advantage of the data, insights, and workflows from their CRM system. Generative AI will autonomously assist customers and sellers in their day-to-day experiences to:

• Elevate customer experiences in real time: With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, CX professionals can now ensure customer profiles and associated insights are updated in real time based on data signals, allowing them to provide the most targeted and personalized experience as they engage with your website or mobile app, which will foster loyalty, increase engagement, enhance satisfaction, and drive higher conversion rates.
• Know your account better with AI-generated account summaries in Dynamics 365 Sales: With integrated data from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, sellers can now quickly access a comprehensive overview of each account, enabling them to prioritize their work effectively and engage with customers in a more personalized and targeted manner.
• Maximize sales success with AI-suggested past successful deals: In Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers now have the ability to use the collective intelligence from past successful deals to identify and pursue similar opportunities effectively. This AI-driven feature simplifies the decision-making process and increases the likelihood of closing deals quickly. By analyzing personal success stories and industry-specific data, sellers can make well-informed decisions that enhance sales effectiveness. The strategic use of AI suggestions not only improves efficiency but also significantly raises the chances of winning deals, thereby boosting overall sales performance.

Personalize every customer interaction

Marketers and CX professionals are being empowered to go beyond automated spam to creating cross-channel cohesive, conversational experiences that drive loyalty and retention. The innovative capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights that are releasing in this wave enable CX professionals to:

• Take campaigns from concept to launch in minutes using Copilot in Customer Insights Journeys: With Copilot, instead of breaking down a series of fragmented work items, the team begins by telling Copilot the outcome they want to achieve. In minutes, they’re presented with the new project board, curating ideas for every component central to the campaign: such as segments, content, and journeys, all ready for review. It’s fueled by unified data from all sources of customer data, brand guidelines, past campaigns, and creative briefs.
• Generate unique on-brand creative assets in minutes: No more scouring media libraries or resorting to use of stock images. You can ensure images are on brand and personalized for each audience, generated by Copilot using the new Typeface integration. Copilot allows you to generate variations that then can be used for personalization—no special photo editing abilities required.
• Personalize omnichannel experiences with no code using Optimizely: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Optimizely now unlock omnichannel personalization and experimentation capabilities, enabling marketers and citizen developers to personalize every customer touchpoint with no code or prior expertise required. By combining insights and segments from Customer Insights with Optimizely audiences, you can create experiences that are tailored to your customer’s browsing activity, their loyalty, past engagement history, and other real-time signals. Moreover, you can continue the conversation or re-target your visitors by delivering the same consistent experience through customer journeys, based on which Optimizely treatment cohort the customer was part of.

With generative AI and Copilot, we’re revolutionizing the workflow for sellers and CX professionals. First, sending personalized content at every stage of the marketing campaign, improving the quality of sales leads, and next, optimizing the productivity of sellers and enhancing every single engagement with their customers, helping them to close deals faster, all thanks to Copilot. There has never been a more exciting and productive time to be a seller or marketer. We can’t wait for you to experience it.

Learn more about 2024 release wave 1 capabilities

The future of customer experience is here, and it’s driven by cutting-edge AI technology that empowers businesses to better connect with their customers, drive sales, and improve overall satisfaction for both customers and employees. This release wave is truly driving transformative change for customer-facing roles, so get your organization set up today.

To see how all of this comes to life, watch the CX overview segment of the Business Applications Launch Event and check out the 2024 release wave 1 plans to read more about these game-changing capabilities.

The post 2024 release wave 1: Transforming experiences with Microsoft Copilot and Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce a new project onboarding feature is now available in the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The portal makes it easier to deploy Dynamics 365 projects successfully by guiding you from the start of your project to the end, giving you valuable insights and recommendations along the way. All you need to do to get started is create your implementation project in the portal, and the new onboarding wizard makes it easy. Here’s how:

User-friendly interface removes technical barriers. The onboarding wizard’s intuitive and user-friendly interface is designed to make the onboarding process accessible whatever your technical background. It acts as a virtual assistant, walking you through each step of project creation with clear instructions and prompts.

Projects are ready to use immediately. On completion of the onboarding process, your Dynamics 365 implementation project is instantly available, streamlining collaboration and ensuring that stakeholders have swift access to project resources.

Data is protected automatically. If the implementation project targets a tenant other than the one you’re signed in to, the onboarding wizard starts an approval flow. Two reviewers for the targeted tenant must both approve the request before information such as the customer name and telemetry insights are made available. This automatic review process ensures compliance with data protection regulations and builds trust with customers.

Successful Dynamics 365 implementations by design

The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal is based on Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployment that was developed by Microsoft. Success by Design provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying your new Dynamics 365 solution. The onboarding wizard represents a pivotal advancement in the journey towards a successful Dynamics 365 implementation. By guiding you through the creation of your implementation projects, facilitating reviews, and offering relevant insights, the Implementation Portal and the onboarding wizard help your business harness the full potential of Dynamics 365 with confidence and efficiency.

Next steps

Sign up for the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal and read the documentation.

Learn more about the onboarding wizard.

Have feedback or questions about the onboarding wizard or the Implementation Portal? Let us know! Email us at ftd365ip-support@microsoft.com.

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Take a tour and get a free trial.

The post Create Dynamics 365 implementation projects easily with the new onboarding wizard appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This April at Hannover Messe, the world’s leading industrial trade fair, organizations across engineering, digital technologies, energy, and more will gather to demonstrate solutions for high-performance, sustainable industries. Microsoft is honored to attend this year’s event to showcase how Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps manufacturers: 

• Modernize service operations with AI to close work orders faster.
• Deliver end-to-end personalization to customers and improve efficiency.
• Increase visibility into your product genealogy across steps in the supply chain.

Modernize service operations with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service  

New Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enhance data insights, boost productivity and deliver more customization for field service managers. These capabilities are generally available today.

Managers can now interact with Copilot to find pertinent information about work orders, prompting Copilot using natural language for details and insights, right from the Dynamics 365 Field Service web app. By simplifying data retrieval and minimizing time spent searching for information, managers can boost the efficiency of work order processes.

In addition, Copilot can provide work order summaries, reducing time spent reading through lengthy work orders to quickly get an overview and understanding of key points of the work to be done. Organizations now have more control to include specific data in the summaries for their users, which can lead to more useful and actionable summaries.

To help ensure smooth communication flows when using the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, field service managers can ask Copilot to compose clear and concise email content recapping details of scheduled work orders, which can then be edited or further customized before sending. And with the Dynamics 365 Field Service plugin for Copilot, field service managers and technicians can find key information about work orders and Dataverse records from within a Microsoft Teams chat using natural language. Starting today, technicians can also ask Copilot to search through lengthy product manuals to find answers to help resolve product issues faster. 

Also starting today, technicians can easily launch a Dynamics 365 Remote Assist call natively within Microsoft Teams mobile to increase first-time fix rates. Access to Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is available with Dynamics 365 Field Service, at no additional cost, and licensed customers can try out the mixed reality tools available in preview starting today within their Teams mobile app for iOS. 

Dynamics 365 Field Service users with the Field Service app in Teams can now share links to work orders that automatically expand to provide key details. This link unfurling capability eliminates the need for technicians to switch between apps. Visit Modernize Service Operations with AI booth at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06 to discover new ways to transform your service operations with generative AI and mixed reality.

Deliver end-to-end personalization to customers and improve efficiency 

At Hannover Messe, we’ll highlight the end-to-end customer experience for manufacturing teams. At our booth and across multiple sessions, we’ll showcase how manufacturing teams across sales, service, and marketing can leverage the power of Copilot and Dynamics 365 to enhance their customer interactions and deliver personalization at scale by refining internal workflows.

Harnessing the end-to-end, unified platform of Dynamics 365 across the teams enables better visibility and deeper personalization. A prime example is Sonepar, a leading global electrical distributor. They’re now leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to deliver exceptional experiences to their customers.

“With this platform, we are able to transfer data regarding customer needs and requests between teams, measure the service provided to our customers and the time taken to resolve problems”.

Denis Ravel, CRM Director, Sonepar

Learn more about their recent transformation and see how Dynamics 365 helped to empower a new standard of excellence at Sonepar.  

Improve visibility into product genealogy with traceability 

Today, we’re announcing the upcoming preview of traceability for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Traceability allows you to increase visibility into product genealogy through the different steps of the supply chain. You can track events and attributes throughout supply chain processes, and query and analyze the data with an intuitive interface. This capability supports you in meeting industry-specific regulatory requirements, tracking the achievement of sustainability and ethical supply chain goals, and gaining deeper insights into how supply chain events impact product quality and customer satisfaction.  

Traceability is designed to work seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, using the data already tracked in Dynamics 365. This removes the need to purchase or integrate a separate traceability solution, which can be costly and complex. Now, you can benefit from the simplicity and performance of using the built-in capabilities. Check out traceability at Demo L in the Microsoft booth at Hannover Messe.  

Join us at Hannover Messe 

Visit us at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06, to explore demos of new capabilities announced today, and learn about our end-to-end, AI-powered solutions for manufacturers across industries.

Hannover Messe 2024

Join is at the world’s leading industrial trade fair.

Visit us at the expo

The post Microsoft unveils AI features for manufacturers at Hannover Messe 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Delivering exceptional service is key for building customer preference and loyalty. Today, we’re introducing new capabilities for Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service that help service managers and technicians efficiently find the information they need to resolve issues right the first time while keeping customers updated at every step of the process. Additionally, with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist capabilities within Microsoft Teams and seamless data flow across Dynamics 365 Field Service, finance, and operations applications as well as Microsoft 365, we’re helping break down application silos and making it easier to stay in the flow.

Streamlining work order management with next-generation AI

With new capabilities generally available starting today, field service managers can interact with Copilot to find pertinent information about work orders using natural language in the Dynamics 365 Field Service web app. Copilot can assist in retrieving work order details, summarizing them, and presenting them in an easily digestible format. Copilot can also go beyond searching work orders to searching other Microsoft Dataverse records, including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. In addition, organizations can now configure the data that Copilot uses to generate work order summaries in Dynamics 365 Field Service to meet their specific business needs.

“The introduction of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service, with its powerful summarization capabilities, is a game-changer. Not only does it benefit our leaders, but it also streamlines internal communications, aids finance, and helps customers stay up to date. By automating this process, we reduce manual work and ensure critical information isn’t overlooked.”

Amit Nene, Business Applications Director, BW Packaging Platform, Barry Wehmiller

With new capabilities generally available starting today in the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, field service managers can go beyond asking Copilot for help creating work orders based on customer emails and scheduling them. They can now also ask Copilot to draft email updates to customers recapping details of scheduled work orders or suggesting next steps for unscheduled work orders.

Boosting technician efficiency with new tools in Teams

With the Dynamics 365 Field Service plugin for Microsoft Copilot now generally available, field service managers and technicians can use natural language chat in the flow of work in Teams to find key information about their work orders and other Dataverse records. Starting today, technicians can also use this experience to ask Copilot to search through lengthy product manuals and find relevant answers to resolve product issues faster.

Should technicians need additional assistance from remote experts to resolve issues, starting today they can access Dynamics 365 Remote Assist capabilities in the flow of work in Teams. As a technician shares what they see through their mobile device’s camera during a video call, the mixed reality tools enable technicians and remote experts to use annotations and arrows to refer to specific parts of a machine. These spatial annotations stay anchored even if the camera moves. Access to Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is available at no additional cost with Dynamics 365 Field Service, and licensed customers can try out Remote Assist’s spatial annotation capabilities available in preview starting today within their Teams mobile app for iOS.

To further streamline collaboration among field service managers, technicians, and remote experts in Teams chats, meetings, or channels, Dynamics 365 Field Service users who have installed the Field Service app in Teams can now share links to work orders that automatically expand to provide key details. This link unfurling capability is generally available starting today.

Introducing efficiencies with more integrated offerings

To help the frontline and back office stay in sync as service deliveries impact financial and inventory systems, the Dynamics 365 Field Service integration with Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications is now generally available. Additionally, for small businesses, seamless financial and inventory data flow between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is also now generally available.

Learn more at Hannover Messe 2024

Next week at Hannover Messe 2024, the world’s leading industrial trade fair, organizations across engineering, digital technologies, energy, and more will gather to demonstrate solutions for high performance, sustainable industries. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service team is honored to attend to showcase how the innovations announced today can help manufacturers. Visit us at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06 to discover new ways to transform your service operations with generative AI and mixed reality.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

New capabilities generally available today.

Learn more

The post Introducing new Microsoft Copilot capabilities to optimize Dynamics 365 Field Service operations   appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce the general availability of new and enhanced experiences in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service as part of our 2024 release wave 1 cadence. This release focuses on extending Microsoft Copilot capabilities by infusing generative AI into customer, agent, and supervisor experiences. We’re also enhancing voice, messaging, and email channels to provide a unified, omnichannel experience.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps organizations improve every aspect of contact center operations. We’re continuing to invest in generative AI to help contact centers create seamless self-service options for common questions. Plus, it helps every agent become a super-agent when it comes to more complex, high-touch issues.

Copilot and AI innovation in Customer Service

Since we announced Copilot capabilities a year ago, organizations have been realizing the benefits of generative AI in the contact center. Copilot answers agents’ questions, drafts email, provides case and conversation summaries, and automates time-consuming tasks. We’ve enhanced the email drafting capability further by including a contextual inline email editor, making it even easier for agents to deliver personalized service.

Also in this release, we’re enabling agents to generate AI-powered timeline highlights to get an overview of key activities like emails, notes, appointments, tasks, phone calls, and conversations. This minimizes the amount of clicking and scrolling an agent must do to get caught up on case and customer details.

Organizations can extend Copilot capabilities with prompt plug-ins in public preview this month. With plug-ins, agents can generate a summary of their customers, products, cases, or any other entities in Microsoft Dataverse without having to switch tabs or log in to a separate app.

Generative AI in external apps with Microsoft Copilot for Service

In February, we introduced Microsoft Copilot for Service, which enables organizations to use Copilot capabilities with their existing customer relationship management (CRM) solutions such as Salesforce, and other productivity apps like Microsoft Teams and Outlook. It helps organizations by making their knowledge more accessible. This speeds up training and problem-solving, making work easier for agents.

In Teams, agents can save time by accessing a customer’s CRM records during a meeting. Agents can update the case and contact details, and link to open CRM records from Teams.

In Outlook, Copilot for Service can draft personalized, contextual customer service emails based on predefined intents, or agents can provide their own custom intents. Copilot can also help agents catch up on email quickly by generating summaries of long email conversations and display summaries of all the activities and information of a case. They can then save the summary to the CRM system and access it later.

Preparing for meetings is easier for agents because Copilot for Service provides the case summary associated with the meeting, along with access to view and edit CRM records. Furthermore, Copilot for Service can recommend CRM updates to agents based on information it finds in Outlook, such as contacts, emails, meetings, and summaries.

Voice channel enhancements in Customer Service

The omnichannel capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Service help organizations provide support to customers across multiple channels, including email, voice, text message, chat, and social media. This release brings several voice channel enhancements and certifications.

With enhancements to outbound dialing, agents can easily search for a customer in the outbound dialer and open the customer record right from the call history. They can now test the microphone and speakers before and during calls. Agents can also rate the call quality using a five-star rating system with the ability to describe issues with lower quality calls. We’re also enhancing customer trust, compliance, and security with sensitive data masking in data storage, during interactive voice response (IVR) sessions, and agent sessions.

IVR enhancements to the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Omnichannel add-on help customers self-serve before they must speak with an agent. In addition to improved speech recognition accuracy, these new voice features enable organizations to set prompts on silence, control timeouts, enable barge-in at any step, and suppress noise. The result is a smooth, contextual experience for customers.

Customers in Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) Moderate can now access features from the voice channel. In addition, we’re submitting Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certifications for the components of the omnichannel stack in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This high-level certification for government clouds will ensure the security of newly integrated features.

Workforce management

Intelligent forecasting with Dynamics 365 Customer Service introduces an AI-powered forecasting feature designed to predict service volumes and agent demands effectively. By analyzing historical data and trends, this intelligent model provides accurate predictions for up to six months into the future. Organizations can use this capability to optimize resource allocation, streamline operations, and improve customer satisfaction, thanks to daily and intraday forecasts for cases and conversations.

Forecasting is tailored to the unique needs of front-office and back-office operations. It distinguishes between direct customer interactions (conversations) and internal processing (cases), offering flexibility in forecasting for different service channels. This allows organizations to plan resources efficiently, ensuring optimal service levels and agent availability for both immediate and future service demands.

Operational metrics such as service level, shrinkage, and concurrency are considered in forecasting agent demand, aligning capacity with operational constraints. The model’s auto-detection of seasonality and holidays further refines accuracy, enabling businesses to adapt to service demand variations. User-friendly charts and the ability to slice forecast data by channels and queues provide valuable insights, while the export functionality enhances usability and integration with other tools.

Email enhancements

An intuitive agent experience is key to connecting with customers. Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers a robust agent desktop with generative AI, collaboration tools, and productivity features in a customizable workspace.

Agents now have a more efficient way to search for customers. They can use any part of the customer’s name to quickly find the right recipient. Email addresses are displayed alongside recipient names, making it easier for agents to identify and select the correct contact. Additionally, agents can see if recipients have set an out-of-office status, so they can adjust their communication accordingly.

The enhanced email attachment experience allows agents to quickly drag and drop attachments in emails. It also includes a reminder system that prompts agents if they mention an attachment in the email but forget to include it. These capabilities help agents save time and increase productivity when handling email communications.

To benefit the support organization, we’re also introducing the ability to create multiple cases from emails. The feature allows for automatic case creation for all mailboxes that receive an email, ensuring full visibility into customer issues. It enables teams to respond independently to customer issues, without case transfers, leading to quicker first responses and improved handling times. By avoiding case transfer delays, teams can more quickly meet service level agreements.

Next-generation AI that’s ready for enterprises

Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage. It also allows users to control access to their data and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on Azure OpenAI, so enterprises can rest assured that it offers the same level of data privacy and protection.

AI solutions built responsibly

We are committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We’re putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Empower agents to resolve issues quickly using generative AI and automation.

Try it for free

Learn more and try Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Learn more about how to elevate your service with AI and enable Copilot features for your support agents.

The post AI-powered innovations enhance customer service with 2024 release wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.