Editor Denis Conway

Introduction

In the relentless pursuit of customer-centric excellence, optimizing our return process emerges as a pivotal strategy for both customer satisfaction and operational prowess. This blog exploration delves into Dynamics 365 SCM Warehouse Management’s transformative role in enhancing customer return receiving process, showcasing a strategic framework that promises elevated customer experience and operational efficiencies.

Elevating Standard Processes

In the traditional realm of return management, the issuance of a Return Material Authorization (RMA) order has been the cornerstone. This process, while effective, faces challenges in scenarios where the reason for return is not immediately apparent. Our executive journey begins with understanding the standard RMA process and its limitations.

This current sales return approach with RMA order, while effective in many respects, introduces potential delays and customer frustration due to its structured and sometimes rigid procedures. The complexity of documentation, especially in unplanned return scenarios, coupled with communication gaps and limited automation, poses challenges. Additionally, as businesses scale, the classic RMA order process may face scalability concerns, raising questions about its ability to efficiently handle increased volumes of return requests. Addressing these limitations is crucial for executives aiming to optimize return management processes, enhance customer satisfaction, and ensure operational resilience. The previous return system does not support the creation of return labels that is a must have for many industries, such as e-commerce. 

Enhanced processes in customer return receiving

In the innovative landscape of our enhanced customer return receiving process within Dynamics 365 SCM, the traditional requirement for a pre-existing Return Material Authorization (RMA) order has been reimagined. In the new way of enhanced customer return process, we can pre-generate return data, create return labels that can be shipped in a shipment and used for seamless return of items. If items need to be returned, customers now have the flexibility to initiate returns seamlessly through two distinct scenarios: the ‘Blind Return’ and ‘Return Details,’ eliminating the upfront necessity of an RMA order.

Blind Return Scenario: In the ‘Blind Return’ scenario, customers can initiate return requests without disclosing specific details initially. We will still need to have a customer number to assign (it can be a dummy customer) to the return order and the item numbers, but we do not need to have an issued return order number. This approach caters to situations where the reason for return may not be immediately apparent or where customers prefer a swift and straightforward process. By bypassing the need for upfront details, this streamlined approach accelerates the return initiation phase, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Return Details Scenario: Alternatively, the ‘Return Details’ scenario allows customers to provide comprehensive information about the return from the outset. This more structured approach is ideal for situations where a detailed explanation of the reason for return, return until date or additional information is available. It facilitates smoother and more informed return processing, using pre-generated RMA-number included on the return labels, enabling the receiving team to address customer needs with precision and efficiency.

Crucially, what sets this enhanced process apart is the automation that follows these customer-initiated returns. In the subsequent stages, the system intelligently generates the necessary RMA order automatically in the background. The post-return generation of the RMA order streamlines the process, combining customer convenience with the structured documentation needed for efficient internal processing. As we evolve in our commitment to customer-centric operations, this innovative approach sets the stage for a more agile, responsive, and efficient return management process. In the image below, we can see an illustration of the return receiving process:  

Conclusion

In the executive suite, strategic decisions are paramount. The enhanced customer return receiving process in Dynamics 365 SCM Warehouse Management is not merely a feature; it’s a strategic tool that aligns our organization with the demands of modern business. As we navigate the complexities of customer interactions and operational excellence, let us leverage this innovation to propel our brand into the forefront of customer-centric leadership.

More details

Learning article can be found at:
Sales returns – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn,
Receive unannounced sales returns – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn.

Welcome to join Yammer group at: Dynamics 365 and Power Platform Preview Programs : Dynamics AX WHS TMS

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At Microsoft, trust is the foundation of everything we do. As more organizations adopt Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, we are committed to helping everyone use AI responsibly. We do this by ensuring our AI products deliver the highest levels of security, compliance, and privacy in accordance with our Responsible AI Standard—our framework for the safe deployment of AI technologies.

Take a moment to review the latest steps we are taking to help your organization securely deploy Copilot guided by our principles of safety, security, and trust.

Copilot architecture and responsible AI principles in action

Let’s start with an overview of how Copilot works, how it keeps your business data secure and adheres to privacy requirements, and how it uses generative AI responsibly.

First, Copilot receives a prompt from a user within Dynamics 365 or Power Platform. This prompt could be in the form of a question that the user types into a chat pane, or an action, such as selecting a button labeled “Create an email.”

Copilot processes the prompt using an approach called grounding, which might include retrieving data from Microsoft Dataverse, Microsoft Graph, or external sources. Grounding improves the relevance of the prompt, so the user gets responses that are more appropriate to their task. Interactions with Copilot are specific to each user. This means that Copilot can only access data that the current user has permissions to.

Copilot uses Azure OpenAI Service to access powerful generative AI models that understand natural language inputs and returns a response to the user in the appropriate form. For example, a response might be in the form of a chat message, an email, or a chart. Users should always review the response before taking any action.

How Copilot uses your proprietary business data

Responses are grounded in your business content and business data. Copilot has real-time access to both your content and context to generate answers that are precise, relevant, and anchored in your business data for accuracy and specificity. This real-time access goes through our Dataverse platform (which includes all Power Platform connectors), honoring the data loss prevention and other security policies put in place by your organization. We follow the pattern of Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG), which augments the capabilities of language models by adding dynamic grounding data to the prompt that we send to the model. Our system dynamically looks up the relevant data schema using our own embedding indexes and then uses the language models to help translate the user’s question into a query that we can run against the system of record.

We do not use your data to train language models. We believe that our customers’ data is their data in accordance with Microsoft’s data privacy policy.  AI-powered language models are trained on a large but limited corpus of data—but prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph and Microsoft services are not used to train Copilot for Dynamics 365 or Power Platform capabilities for use by other customers. Furthermore, the models are not improved through your usage. This means that your data is accessible only by authorized users within your organization unless you explicitly consent to other access or use.

How Copilot protects business information and data

Enterprise-grade AI, powered by Azure OpenAI Service. Copilot is powered by the trusted and compliant Azure OpenAI Service, which provides robust, enterprise-grade security features. These features include content filtering to identify and block output of harmful content and protect against prompt injections (jailbreak attacks), which are user prompts that provoke the generative AI model into behaving in ways it was trained not to. Azure AI services are designed to enhance data governance and privacy and adhere to Microsoft’s strict data protection and privacy standards. Azure OpenAI also supports enterprise features like Azure Policy and AI-based security recommendations by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, meeting compliance requirements with customer-managed data encryption keys and robust governance features.

Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, privacy, and compliance. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. It automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Copilot is hosted within Microsoft Cloud Trust Boundary and adheres to comprehensive, industry-leading compliance, security, and privacy practices. Our handling of Copilot data mirrors our treatment of other customer data, giving you complete autonomy in deciding whether to retain data and determining the specific data elements you wish to keep.

Safeguarded by multiple forms of protection. Customer data is protected by several technologies and processes, including various forms of encryption. Service-side technologies encrypt organizational content at rest and in transit for robust security. Connections are safeguarded with Transport Layer Security (TLS), and data transfers between Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Azure OpenAI occur over the Microsoft backbone network, ensuring both reliability and safety.  Copilot uses industry-standard secure transport protocols when data moves over a network—between user devices and Microsoft datacenters or within the datacenters themselves.

Watch this presentation by James Oleinik for a closer look at how Copilot allows users to securely interact with business data within their context, helping to ensure data remains protected inside the Microsoft Cloud Trust Boundary. You’ll also learn about measures we take to ensure that Copilot is safe for your employees and your data, such as how Copilot isolates business data from the language model so as not to retrain the AI model. 

Architected to protect tenant, group, and individual data. We know that data leakage is a concern for customers. Microsoft AI models are not trained on and don’t learn from your tenant data or your prompts unless your tenant admin has opted in to sharing data with us. Within your environment, you can control access through permissions that you set up. Authentication and authorization mechanisms segregate requests to the shared model among tenants. Copilot utilizes data that only you can access. Your data is not available to others.

Committed to building AI responsibly

As your organization explores Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, we are committed to delivering the highest levels of security, privacy, compliance, and regulatory commitments, helping you transform into an AI-powered business with confidence.

Learn more about Copilot and Responsible AI

• Trust and responsible AI in Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Copilot in Power Platform 

• Copilot data security and privacy for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform FAQ

• Copilot availability

• Microsoft Responsible AI Standard

• How other organizations are using Copilot to improve operational efficiency and customer experiences

• Responsible AI FAQ for Microsoft Power Platform

• Responsible AI FAQ for Dynamics 365

The post Building digital trust in Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The timeline is a crucial tool for users to monitor customer engagements, track activities, and stay updated on record progress. With Generative AI, we’re introducing timeline highlights, enabling users to grasp activity details in milliseconds. 

Streamlined timeline highlights revolutionize the way users interact with essential activities such as emails, notes, appointments, tasks, phone calls, and conversations. With a single click, agents gain access to summaries of key events, including records like cases, accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and customized entities. 

Agents save time with timeline highlights

This new feature optimizes agent productivity, eliminating the need for excessive clicks and extra reading. Agents can efficiently absorb crucial information, enabling faster and more transparent interactions with customers. Users can expand the highlights section in the timeline by clicking on the chevron. 

The highlights show relevant items in a clear and concise bulleted format, facilitating quick analysis and easy reference. The copy functionality empowers users to reuse content by pasting it into notes, with the flexibility to make modifications as needed.

In summary, our innovative approach to timelines, driven by generative AI technology, offers users a transformative experience. Consequently, agents can effortlessly track customer engagements and monitor progress with unparalleled speed and accuracy. 

The timeline highlights feature is available within the apps like Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics Field Service and custom model-driven Power Apps, providing a unified experience across Dynamics 365.   

Timeline highlights are enabled by default. You can enable and disable timeline highlights at the app level and also at form level via the maker portal make.powerapps.com 

Learn more

To learn more, read the documentation:

Responsible AI FAQ for Copilot in the timeline – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn 

Timeline Overview for Users – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Add and configure the timeline control in Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

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In the ever-evolving landscape of generative AI, a copilot isn’t just a companion that makes tasks that you’re already doing at work easier, but it’s quickly becoming a transformative force reshaping the very core of how things are done.

After shipping 13 publicly available Microsoft Copilot features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights that enable marketing teams to ask Copilot questions about their data, receive ideas for content from key points they want to make, define audiences and journeys in everyday words, understand their data quality, or get a summarized answer from multiple sources on how to use a feature within Dynamics 365 Customer Insights (to name a few), we realized that Copilot can help our marketing teams not just with tasks, but can completely change their workflow.  

This workflow in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will enable marketers to deliver unparalleled customer experiences (CXs). This could encompass a myriad of scenarios, from a marketing campaign for a new product or promotion, to managing how companies interact with their customers in key moments at scale.

The new Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

The new Copilot in Customer Insights in now available in preview.

Register and try it

Take for example a theme park—as customers scan their tickets to ride attractions, they can receive personalized messages and notifications across their preferred channels be it: in-app, web, text message, or email. This not only enhances customer experience by making the most out of their visit but also enables the company to maximize customer spending.

Companies often spend a tremendous amount of time building these campaigns and experiences. With the growing demand for digital and mobile experiences, coupled with the need to use customer data from an expanding array of disconnected systems to personalize and trigger the experiences, the time and cost to deliver continues to rise.

Our conversations with numerous companies illuminated a common pain point—the process to deliver a CX project or campaign can extend from 12 to 15 weeks (about three and a half months). There are no signs this will decrease in length.

It’s not surprising why. The current marketing workflow resembles a complex team sport, requiring multiple contributors focused on different aspects—audience, journey, content, and the delivery channel.

Most teams create campaigns starting with a blank canvas; assembling, testing, and going live; then tracking the analytics to ensure everything is going well and any drop-off points are addressed. The complexity and coordination across people affect more than the time to market, it affects the quality and level of personalization delivered to the end customer.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will completely change the game.

“At Campari Group, we’re excited by the opportunities these new Copilot capabilities will bring us to streamline our digital marketing processes—driving collaboration and enhancing our ability to deliver a truly engaging consumer experience, whilst staying one step ahead of the competition!”

David Hand – Global IT Manager, CRM, Campari

Companies have data that ground Copilot in brand styles, tone, language, and imagery. Briefs contain a lot of key information about the intent, success, branding, and key points. Over time, data from prior projects or campaigns will drive the continuous improvement of business results.

Armed with this data, what if you could describe the outcomes you want,
and Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights could take the lead?

Our vision has four key areas of innovation:

1. We’re removing complex UIs that are difficult to navigate and use, instead Copilot will provide dynamic user experiences (UX) that come to you based on what you are trying to achieve. Examples of this are the dynamic project board and analytics.
2. Instead of marketers having to start from a word or pixel for every element of the project or campaign, Copilot provides data-driven suggestions that allows you to curate your project instead of having to create every piece. Everything starts connected and Copilot keeps it connected and in sync making any downstream changes saving the marketer time and eliminating a class of errors due to partial changes. Choose from suggested images, emails, audiences, journeys, and more instead of having to create each element from scratch. We don’t believe any of the suggestions will be 100% of what the marketing team needs, what we do know is that even if it’s only 60% the way there, it will save 60% of the time needed to launch the project.
3. We’re removing the constraint of resources limiting the quality of experience and depth of personalization. Instead of personalizing to four cohorts, Copilot will personalize to 64 cohorts or more. But then, you need confidence in what you’re delivering to customers. We are innovating in new UX and Copilot capabilities that will allow marketing teams to review and approve at Copilot scale where instead of having to review 100 variations across the journey, Copilot will tell you the key variations to review and tweak and make corrections on your behalf.
4. Today, after a project or campaign goes live, you need to assign a person to track the analytics and find where customers are dropping off. That person then needs to work with the right people to improve the results. Now, Copilot can track the analytics on behalf of the marketing team and proactively notify of optimizations with suggested options that allow the team to curate rather than create and deliver business success.

We’re partnering with Typeface to deliver this vision, and it plays a key role in enabling scaling on-brand multimodal content personalization in ways that simply were not possible in the past. Typeface understands your brand in depth and utilizes that understanding to deliver text and images that align to companies’ brand guidelines enabling one-on-one personalization with on-brand images at a scale that wasn’t viable in terms of time and cost before.

“Copilot holds the potential to be a real game-changer. Its ability to seamlessly align our business goals with community values has the potential to save us valuable time on internal processes. This efficiency translates to quicker iterations and more frequent connections with our audience. It’s not just shaping up to be a tool but a strategic advantage.”

Martin Nicholson – Digital Engagement Manager,  Rare Ltd.,
Xbox – Sea of Thieves

This innovation is not years away, not months, not even weeks. Today, we’re happy to announce that our first public preview focusing on curation rather than creation is now available in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights in English, in all regions. Sign up to be one of the first to preview and experience the new capabilities.

We invite you to explore this transformative journey as Copilot takes the reins, opening a new era in marketing workflows. Join us in redefining how work gets done.

Learn more:

• Register and access Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
• Watch our latest webinar on Streamlining Marketing with AI in Microsoft Copilot!
• Watch the New Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
• Read the release note on Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
• Check the release W1 2024 video for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
• Discover more about Typeface.
• Read Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI.

The post Revolutionizing marketing workflows with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Getting customer signoff on a completed Work Order is a key job to be done for any service technician. Earlier this year, Dynamics 365 Field Service released a new and improved signature control to capture customer signatures on mobile devices. It supports drawing a signature on the screen as well as typing a name in lieu of a drawn signature. This enhancement was a key customer request, and also helps the scenario to be more accessible for our users.

How it works

Technicians in the field can open the form that has been configured to capture the customer signature on the Field Service mobile app and hand over the device to the customer.

Drawing the signature on the screen

Technicians will then be able to choose how they want to enter the signature, either drawing it on the screen with their finger or stylus pen, or by typing it on the keyboard.

Typing the signature using keyboard

How to configure a form to add the control

If you use default forms provided by Microsoft, the existing signature controls have already been updated, and there’s no action needed to configure it.

For example, the Booking and Work Order Form in the Bookable Resource Booking entity, contains the Signature field in the Notes tab. By opening this form in Power Apps, you find the associated component Signature Control

Add the signature control to a custom form

Follow these steps to add the new control to a custom form.

• Edit a custom form and add the Signature field (or your custom Multiline text field where you store the customer signature) on your form. Optionally, hide the label, so the control can use all the available space on screen.

• Expand the Components section at the bottom of the field detail pane and add the Signature Control component.

• If the Signature Control is not in the list, select Get more components.

Note:  The new Signature Control replaces the Pen input control.

• Select the Signature Control in the list of controls to add it.

• Save and Publish your form to make it available to your technicians.

We hope that these new enhancements in Field Service mobile will make your work even more productive. We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions on how to improve the product. Please feel free to leave comments in the Dynamics 365 Community Forum or suggest features in the Ideas portal.  

The post Capture customer signatures with the new Signature control in Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.