Our mission is to empower everyone to achieve more, and we design our products and services with enterprise-grade security, privacy, compliance, and transparency. As part of this commitment, we continue to evolve our offering to provide administrators with enhanced tools and reporting to optimize access and licensing within Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications.

On April 30, 2025, we delivered a set of enhancements to user license reporting in the Power Platform admin center, providing customers with comprehensive visibility into license usage across security roles. These improvements build on the momentum from our earlier investments in governance tools, as outlined in our March blog post on simplifying license management in Dynamics 365. Together, these updates are designed to help organizations better understand and manage their licensing footprint.

Microsoft is updating the timeline for in-app notifications and per-user license validation to give customers more time to prepare. To enable a smoother and more predictable experience, license validation will follow a staged rollout aligned with customer’s contract renewal or anniversary date. In parallel, we are introducing additional tools and reporting capabilities to increase transparency and improve the overall experience for customers managing their licensing footprint.

Why We’re Taking a Staged Approach

Starting January 15, 2026, license validation for Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications will begin for customers with contract renewals or anniversaries occurring after that date – refer to the FAQ to learn how this applies to your organization. This approach enables several important benefits:

• Proactive Engagement: Aligning validation with contract milestones helps customers plan to review user counts and licensing needs.
• Reduced Operational Impact: This timing allows organizations to plan and implement necessary adjustments with less likelihood of operational disruption.
• Scalable and Transparent: A staggered timeline provides better transparency when license validation occurs, helping customers plan ahead.

Note: Customers granted a grace period as described in this customer blog will continue to have that status honored.

To maintain continuous access and reduce disruptions in the future, we recommend organizations proactively review and assign licenses in advance.  Users without assigned licenses will no longer have access to these applications after technical validation until licenses are assigned and will instead receive prompts to request the appropriate licenses from their administrator.

Preparing for a Smooth Transition

To help customers confidently navigate the upcoming license validation process starting January 15, 2026, we’ve outlined clear steps to enable your organization to be prepared.

As we approach this important milestone, we encourage your administrator to: 

1. Understand licensing requirements: Review the licensing model for clarity on how security roles, duties, and privileges map to license types.
2. Review User Role and License Mapping: Use the Power Platform admin center or Dynamics Lifecycle Services reporting to generate a high-level summary of active users and respective license requirements.
3. Role to license optimization: Use the License Usage Summary Report in Dynamics 365 finance and operations to identify opportunities to optimize user role assignments by removing unnecessary entitlements or permissions.
4. Align license assignments in Microsoft 365 Admin Center: Provision and assign the appropriate licenses to users in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, ensuring they match the license types mapped in the reports. If needed, make reservations or place supplemental orders for additional licenses.

Following this guidance will help facilitate a smooth transition and position your organization for success managing Dynamics 365 finance and operations licensing across your Microsoft Cloud solutions. This shift toward centralized license assignment underscores our commitment to simplifying administrative processes, providing greater visibility, security, and governance.

For additional information, use the following resources to continue adapting to the new modern reporting tools:

• Licensing Resources
• User security role reporting and technical validation for finance and operations apps FAQ​
• View license consumption for finance and operations apps​
• Stay compliant with user licensing requirements​
• User security governance overview​

The post Simplifying License Management for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations: Improved User License Validation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

The post Protected: Simplifying License Management for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations: Improved User License Validation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Dynamics 365 Contact Center in Government Community Cloud Moderate (GCC-M), signifying a significant advancement in the communications landscape for government organizations. This launch provides public sector entities with secure, compliant, and innovative contact center technology tailored to the unified voice and digital engagement needs of federal, state and local agencies. 

Recognizing the longstanding demand for robust, scalable, and efficient solutions, Contact Center in GCC-M has been specifically developed to meet these requirements. It unifies widely adopted Microsoft public sector technologies into an AI-driven contact center solution. The solution spans both self-service and representative-assisted capabilities, thereby enhancing resident engagement and increasing employee service efficiency. This milestone highlights Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to delivering AI-powered solutions for government agencies that emphasize security, scalability, and regulatory compliance.

Importantly, Contact Center holds FedRAMP High Certification, ensuring that government agencies benefit from the highest standards of security and compliance for cloud solutions. This achievement underscores our dedication to safeguarding sensitive data and supporting rigorous government requirements. 

Empowering government customers

Government customers can now use Contact Center to: 

• Enhance public engagement through omnichannel communication and a Copilot-first experience. This includes multi-language conversational IVR, chat and digital messaging, unified routing, advanced call handling, and AI-assisted service rep experiences. 

• Unify enterprise contact center operations with flexible deployment options to meet the different agency service needs. Options include:
  • Contact Center embedded into third-party case management solutions
  • Standalone contact center capabilities
  • Full Dynamics 365 Case Management and Contact Center as one unified offering

• Streamline service operations with a unified Dynamics 365 Case Management and voice and digital contact center solution on a single platform 

• Enable a unified AI-first unified cloud voice strategy for all users with Dynamics 365 Contact Center 

This offering presents new opportunities for government organizations to advance their contact center capabilities, strengthening their reach and service effectiveness within a secure regulatory framework. The release of Contact Center in GCC-M demonstrates our continued dedication to supporting public sector innovation, particularly around privacy, security, and compliance. 

Contact Center in GCC-M not only addresses current operational needs but also supports future requirements. We’re delivering scalable and modern contact center technology at the core of government operations. Our solution enables agencies to enhance public sector engagements, improve service provision, and modernize communication. And we’re making all of this possible within a secure and compliant environment. 

Learn more

This achievement is an important step in our ongoing effort to empower government organizations to better serve their communities. For additional details, read the documentation: Dynamics 365 Contact Center | Microsoft Learn 

The post Dynamics 365 Contact Center now available in GCC-M appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Dynamics 365 Contact Center in Government Community Cloud (GCC), signifying a significant advancement in the communications landscape for government organizations. This launch provides public sector entities with secure, compliant, and innovative contact center technology tailored to the unified voice and digital engagement needs of federal, state and local agencies. 

Recognizing the longstanding demand for robust, scalable, and efficient solutions, Contact Center in GCC has been specifically developed to meet these requirements. It unifies widely adopted Microsoft public sector technologies into an AI-driven contact center solution. The solution spans both self-service and representative-assisted capabilities, thereby enhancing resident engagement and increasing employee service efficiency. This milestone highlights Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to delivering AI-powered solutions for government agencies that emphasize security, scalability, and regulatory compliance.

Importantly, Contact Center holds FedRAMP High Certification, ensuring that government agencies benefit from the highest standards of security and compliance for cloud solutions. This achievement underscores our dedication to safeguarding sensitive data and supporting rigorous government requirements. 

Empowering government customers

Government customers can now use Contact Center to: 

• Enhance public engagement through omnichannel communication and a Copilot-first experience. This includes multi-language conversational IVR, chat and digital messaging, unified routing, advanced call handling, and AI-assisted service rep experiences. 

• Unify enterprise contact center operations with flexible deployment options to meet the different agency service needs. Options include:
  • Contact Center embedded into third-party case management solutions
  • Standalone contact center capabilities
  • Full Dynamics 365 Case Management and Contact Center as one unified offering

• Streamline service operations with a unified Dynamics 365 Case Management and voice and digital contact center solution on a single platform 

• Enable a unified AI-first unified cloud voice strategy for all users with Dynamics 365 Contact Center 

This offering presents new opportunities for government organizations to advance their contact center capabilities, strengthening their reach and service effectiveness within a secure regulatory framework. The release of Contact Center in GCC demonstrates our continued dedication to supporting public sector innovation, particularly around privacy, security, and compliance. 

Contact Center in GCC not only addresses current operational needs but also supports future requirements. We’re delivering scalable and modern contact center technology at the core of government operations. Our solution enables agencies to enhance public sector engagements, improve service provision, and modernize communication. And we’re making all of this possible within a secure and compliant environment. 

Learn more

This achievement is an important step in our ongoing effort to empower government organizations to better serve their communities. For additional details, read the documentation: Dynamics 365 Contact Center | Microsoft Learn 

The post Dynamics 365 Contact Center now available in GCC appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, customer experience is paramount. Businesses are constantly seeking innovative ways to engage with their customers and provide seamless, personalized interactions on self-service channels. One of the common challenges in customer interactions is the mismatch between customer sentiment and the voice agent’s response. This can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction, ultimately impacting customer loyalty. For instance, a customer expressing frustration might receive a neutral or overly cheerful response from the voice agent, exacerbating the situation. 

One such innovation that addresses this issue is the use of high definition (HD) voices from Azure AI Speech in Dynamics 365 Contact Center, which revolutionizes the way we interact with technology. 

What are high definition voices? 

High definition voices (HD voices) use neural text-to-speech technology to generate highly natural and human-like speech. These voices are trained on millions of hours of multilingual data, enabling them to accurately interpret input text. Then, they can generate speech with the appropriate emotion, pace, and rhythm without manual adjustments. This results in more engaging and lifelike interactions for users. 

Key features of HD voices:

• Human-like speech generation: HD voices can generate speech that closely mimics natural human conversation, including spontaneous pauses and emphasis. This makes interactions feel more authentic and comfortable for users. 

• Emotion detection and tonal adjustment: HD voices can automatically detect emotions in the input text and adjust their speaking tone in real-time to match the sentiment. This ensures that the voice agent’s response is empathetic and contextually appropriate. 

• Consistent voice persona: HD voices maintain a consistent voice from their neural (and non-HD) counterparts, displaying a more natural sounding output.

Generative responses and dynamic content 

As customers embark on their journey towards agentic architectures, they increasingly rely on generative responses to provide responses grounded in comprehensive knowledge sources. Moreover, the ability to generate dynamic content on the fly allows businesses to address a wide range of customer needs without using extensive pre-programmed responses. This flexibility is particularly valuable in scenarios where customer inquiries are complex or varied. The voice agent can provide tailored solutions that are both relevant and timely.  

This shift represents a significant evolution in information available on self-service channels. Generative responses use advanced AI algorithms to dynamically generate content rich and accurate. On voice channels, the personalization is compounded with emotionally aware and engaging voice responses using HD voices. As businesses continue to prioritize agentic architectures, the adoption of generative responses will undoubtedly play a crucial role in delivering more engaging, empathetic, and effective interactions. 

Getting started 

When configuring a voice channel in the Copilot Service admin center, select one of the newly available HD voices denoted by the model type in parenthesis at the end of the voice name. 

Once you are in Copilot Studio building a voice agent, simply send a message or play a question to a caller, even call upon generative answers, and receive a more emotionally aware response. To increase or decrease the variance in the speech response, simply lower the temperature parameter (ranging from 0 to 1) using Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) where you define a message for the caller. For more variable responses, increase the temperature; decrease the temperature for more stable responses. 

 

Here is a test 

HD voices represent a significant advancement in text-to-speech technology. By providing human-like speech generation, emotion detection, and tonal adjustment, HD voices can transform customer interactions and address the challenge of mismatched sentiment. As businesses continue to prioritize customer experience, the adoption of HD voices will undoubtedly play a crucial role in delivering more engaging, empathetic, and effective interactions. 

Learn more

Watch a quick video introduction.

To learn more, read the Azure AI Foundry Blog: New HD voices preview in Azure AI Speech: contextual and realistic output evolved, or read the documentation: Introduction to the voice channel | Microsoft Learn 

The post Create empathetic agents with HD voices in Dynamics 365 Contact Center appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Frontier Firms are a new type of organization that puts AI at the heart of business—reinventing customer experience and employee productivity while reshaping processes and bending the curve on innovation. Copilot is powering this transformation with unprecedented adoption by more than 100 million commercial and consumer users and by more than 70% of the Fortune 500. Today, we’re announcing the addition of role-based AI solutions to Microsoft 365 Copilot for sales, service, and finance professionals to help these critical functions move to the Frontier.

Reinvent productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot
Sales
Sales professionals are the revenue engine for every organization and the function where time is literally equal to money. The Sales solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot brings AI directly into the applications that sellers use daily—Copilot, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams—to help them move with speed and agility while staying focused on customer engagement.

For example, sellers can now prepare for customer meetings with the help of Copilot, right in the flow of work, with fast access to customer relationship management (CRM) opportunity details, recent communications, and company insights. They can also ask Copilot to help with tasks like “Give me a list of deals at risk of falling through,” “Help me create a plan to close this deal,” and even “Update this CRM record” all in the flow of work.

Microsoft 365 Copilot connects with leading CRM tools, including Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, to make it easy to stay informed and engaged.

The role-based sales solution can transform the way our teams work. Now that it’s part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, we can scale AI across the business much faster to accelerate adoption.

Shaun Worsley, Sales Process & Technology Manager, Sandvik Coromant

Sales solution preparing for upcoming meetings and updating CRM records in Outlook.
Service
Customer service professionals are the frontline of brand loyalty, balancing rising customer expectations with growing workloads and fragmented toolsets. The Service solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot helps these professionals resolve issues faster and deliver personalized experiences that build lasting relationships.

For example, customer service professionals can now generate a concise case summary to quickly get up to speed without poring through pages of notes, draft a customer-ready email with resolution details and other contextual information that can be further customized before sending, or simply view and update records without having to switch windows and navigate to the CRM. This can mean fewer clicks, faster responses, and more time spent helping customers.

Finance
Finance is about more than transactions—it’s about making sure the business has accurate numbers, steady cash flow, and insights needed to pursue a growth agenda. The Finance solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot brings enterprise resource planning (ERP) connected data directly into Copilot, Excel, and Outlook to help finance teams manage tasks and gain faster insights.

For example, finance teams can now draft customer emails with account details and payment history; enable accelerated financial reconciliation by matching transactions, flagging discrepancies, and preparing reports; perform variance analysis (public preview) that highlights anomalies, surfaces potential drivers, and generates draft explanations for leaders; and use data preparation (public preview) to clean, reshape, and structure ERP exports into analysis-ready reports and enabling time savings on manual work.

Microsoft 365 Copilot connects with leading ERP tools, including Dynamics 365 and SAP.

inance solution showing a financial workflow in Excel, with variance analysis and data preparation tools within a Finance pane. The interface supports financial reconciliation tasks, with the cursor interacting across spreadsheet cells and tool options.
Powering Frontier sales, service, and finance teams
With role-based solutions in Microsoft 365 Copilot, sales, service, and finance teams can work smarter and faster—right where work happens. These role-based solutions will be available for installation to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers via the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store starting in October 2025.

The post Moving sales, service, and finance to the Frontier with Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.