We’re entering the era of next-generation AI that is driving new levels of productivity and efficiency, unleashing new innovations in the customer service space. AI is profoundly changing how customers engage with businesses and how agents provide exceptional service to them.

From a service perspective, customers expect fast, accurate answers to their questions, and personalized help when they contact a business. Meanwhile, businesses are under pressure to provide exceptional customer service with fewer resources. Legacy ways of integrating multiple-point solutions for customer service do not work. The time to embark on a digital transformation journey is now. Choosing the right AI-powered customer service solution for that journey, empowering customer service agents with AI, and reducing costs has never been more important. 

We’re excited to launch Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which provides agents with real-time AI-powered assistance, developed in alignment with our responsible AI principles and standards. Copilot helps agents resolve issues faster, handle cases more efficiently, and automate time-consuming tasks so they can focus on delivering high-quality service to their customers. In a nutshell, Copilot can help every agent to become your best agent.

With just a click of a button, Copilot empowers any agent to obtain the most relevant answer to any complex question that a customer may have and deliver a tailored response to the customer in real time using chat messages and emails. Copilot is available to agents as part of their natural flow of solving problems using Customer Service workspace. It’s like having an expert at your fingertips, always ready to assist. 

Let’s take a closer look at the ways Copilot revolutionizes customer service and enables agents to deliver fast and relevant resolutions to customer problems.

Make every customer service agent a superagent

Today, when agents get a question from a customer that they can’t answer immediately, they typically search multiple internal knowledge sources or try to find an internal expert to consult with. The amount of time it takes to read through search results, find the right solution, compose a response back to the customer, and resolve the case is often lengthy.

Now, agents can chat with the next-generation AI-powered Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service right within Customer Service workspace. Copilot can diagnose customer problems, use the organization’s internal knowledge and vast amounts of data from trusted websites, and supply the agent with an appropriate solution to give to the customer.

Copilot analyzes customer data to identify patterns, anticipate customer needs, and make suggestions to the agent on how to best handle each interaction. With this powerful tool at their disposal, agents can handle more queries in less time, increasing efficiency and improving the overall customer experience. Since agents are always in the loop every step of the way, they are in full control of using AI to drive their productivity. Agents can verify the responses, check the resources, and personalize the message to match the customer’s specific needs to ensure their satisfaction and optimal experience.

Answer customer questions fast across channels 

In today’s fragmented contact center solution space, agents are often inundated with multiple messages on different channels of engagement. They are overwhelmed by multitasking and context switching, often wondering how they can keep up with overflowing incoming requests.

With omnichannel capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, customer service agents get a streamlined view of incoming chats from a variety of channels (such as Apple Messages for Business, Google Business Messaging, text messages, and WhatsApp) integrated with case management. Agents can now use Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which intelligently parses information from the conversation and contextualizes it with organizational and customer data. Furthermore, Copilot keeps track of historical interactions, and uses all of that information to recommend a tailored, helpful answer that agents can review before they respond. Customers get the best service, regardless of their choice of channel.

Send expertly crafted customer service emails 

For agents who receive questions via email, Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service can help create relevant and personalized email responses in seconds. Copilot provides agents with predefined prompts based on what the agent is trying to do, such as “suggest a call”, “request more information”, “empathize with feedback”, or “resolve the customer’s problem.” Agents can also provide their own custom prompt for more complex issues. 

Normally, agents may spend many minutes or hours researching and composing a detailed email with all the necessary information. With Copilot, agents get a composed email response in an instant that they can review and send.This model drives unparalleled productivity for the agent and delivers personalized service for the customer.  

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Enrich self-service with AI-powered conversational assistance

Dynamics 365 Customer Service now offers a powerful conversational experience with Power Virtual Agents, boosted by next-generation AI capabilities. Customers can get relevant answers to their questions immediately from intelligent conversational bots that use trusted websites and internal data. Enterprises also have the choice of using Nuance as an on-ramp for their digital transformation journey. Nuance announced new AI capabilities in Nuance Mix. Dynamics 365 Customer Service, together with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Platform, Nuance, and Microsoft Azure, deliver truly transformative experiences for both agents and customers through the contact center.

Next-generation AI that is ready for enterprises

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. 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 are putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society.

Try Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Sign up for the limited preview of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This preview is available for instances in North America using the English US language.

The post Revolutionize customer service with next-generation AI appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Automating the deployment and configuration of Warehouse Management can be more efficient for big-scale deployments if you have a lot of devices to manage. One solution for this is using a mobile device management (MDM) solution such as Microsoft Intune, but not limited to it. To learn general information about using Intune to add apps, refer to the guide Add apps to Microsoft Intune.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) Perquisites

This article provides a demonstration of the practical deployment with Intune. It is imperative to ensure the availability of the following resources:

• Microsoft account, Google Account
• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD Premium P2 license)
• Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center (aka Intune website)
• Certificate connector
• PFXImport Powershell and Visual Studio 2022
• Dedicated Windows PC for Certificate connector
• Warehouse Management app Connections.json
• Warehouse Management app Certificate for CBA

Setting up Warehouse Management app in

Endpoint Manager

Each MDM solution offers several methods for delivering an application to end devices, including delivering app binaries or from app stores. The preferred delivery method is through app stores, as it is simple and offers the most convenient way to receive updates.

Here is an example of how to configure it on Intune portal.

Android

Add the Warehouse Management app with Add button in the Apps -> Android section.

Select app type as Managed Google Play app. Use your Google account to log into Google Play, it requests only once the first time. In the window that opens, find Warehouse Management then click the Approve button and then the Sync button.

In the list of applications, select Warehouse Management, in the page that opens, select Assignments -> Edit.

On the assignments page, select the user groups for which this application is intended and save.

Windows

The setup process for Windows apps is like Android, except for selecting an app from the Microsoft Store.

Add a new app with Add button in the Apps -> Microsoft Store app (new).

Search for Warehouse Management

Apply user assignments.

Managed Configuration

The Warehouse Management app (available from version 2.0.41.0+) enables connection settings to be import as a managed configuration through an MDM solution, and the same ConnectionsJson configuration key is shared across all platforms.

As a prerequisite, you must have connection JSON file, described in the Create a connection settings file or QR code section.

Remember that it is necessary to have a single connection set as the default (IsDefaultConnection=true) for the first time the application instantly connects to the backend. If this is not done, the user will have to manually choose the initial connection from the available options.

Here is an example of how to configure it on Intune portal.

Android

On the Apps tab, select App Configuration policies -> Managed devices.

Define a name, platform, profile, and app.

To create an app configuration policy, you need to grant the following permissions: Camera, External storage (write), and External storage (read). Then, add a configuration key and choose the ConnectionsJson option from the dialog box that appears. Insert the contents of the Connections.json file as the value of the ConnectionsJson key. Finally, proceed to the subsequent steps and assign the relevant user groups.

Windows

The Warehouse Managed for Windows requires a slightly different approach to deliver managed configuration. Navigate to the Devices section and choose Windows. This is where you will be able to view your Windows devices. Then, move to the Configuration Profiles section and create a custom profile by using templates for the Windows 10 platform.

Define a name.

In the Configuration settings step, add a new OMA-URI Setting and complete all necessary fields. Enter “./User/Vendor/MSFT/EnterpriseModernAppManagement/AppManagement/AppStore/Microsoft.WarehouseManagement_8wekyb3d8bbwe/AppSettingPolicy/ConnectionsJson” in the OMA-URI field and insert the contents of your Connections.json file in the Value field. Finally, proceed to the subsequent steps and assign the relevant user groups.

Certificate-based authentication

Certificate-based authentication is widely used for secure and efficient method of authentication. In mass deployment scenarios, it is advantageous due to its ability to provide a secure access alongside the simplicity of certificate deployment to end devices. This helps in reducing the risk of security breaches, which can be a significant concern in large-scale deployments.

To use the Warehouse Management mobile app, you need to have the certificate stored on each device. If you’re using Intune to manage your devices, you can find additional instructions on how to handle certificates for authentication in the Use certificates for authentication in Microsoft Intune guide.

To utilize a Certificate-based authentication approach, you must obtain a self-signed certificate (.pfx) either through the Windows Server Certificate Authority or by using PowerShell. It’s important to ensure that the certificate is exported along with its private key and protected by a password.

The objective is to transfer the PFX certificate (.pfx) with the thumbprint specified in the ConnectionsJson to the target devices. To achieve this, utilize the PKCS imported certificate configuration profile, as it enables the delivery of the same certificate across devices.

Certificate import

Create App registration in Azure Active Directory for PFXImport Powershell

Create new client secret on Certificates & secrets tab.

Add and configure Mobile and desktop applications on Authentication tab.

Build PFXImport

Download Visual Studio 2022.

Download PFXImport Powershell Project from GitHub.

Open PFXImportPS.sln file, switch it to release mode, and build the project. You can find additional information by following the link.

Dedicated machine for Certificate Connector

Start up the designated machine and carry out all subsequent actions on it.

Copy your self-signed PXF certificate to the Certificate Connector machine.

Copy the project binaries to the machine. (~Intune-Resource-Access-developsrcPFXImportPowershellPFXImportPSbinRelease)

Modify IntunePfxImport.psd1 in Release folder file with data from App registration.

To install the Microsoft Intune Certificate Connector, locate the installation file under the Tenant administration tab in the Endpoint Manager.

To install the Certificate Connector, transfer the installation file to the designated machine where it will be used and then run the file. During the installation process, be sure to select the “PKCS imported certificates” checkbox. Then sign into your Azure AD account using an admin user. As a result of successful installation, you will see a green checkmark on the Endpoint Manager page. You can find additional information by following the link.

Import certificate with PFXImport Powershell

Run Powershell Terminal as administrator on the Certificate Connector machine.

Change folder to PFXImportPowershell release folder.

Run the following commands in the given sequence.

1. Import-Module .IntunePfxImport.psd1
2. Set-IntuneAuthenticationToken -AdminUserName ““
3. Add-IntuneKspKey -ProviderName “Microsoft Software Key Storage Provider” -KeyName “PFXEncryptionKey”
4. $SecureFilePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String “” -AsPlainText -Force
5. $UserPFXObject = New-IntuneUserPfxCertificate -PathToPfxFile “C:.pfx” $SecureFilePassword “<END_USER@DOMAIN.COM>” “Microsoft Software Key Storage Provider” “PFXEncryptionKey” “smimeEncryption”
6. Import-IntuneUserPfxCertificate -CertificateList $UserPFXObject

To deliver the certificate for additional end users, repeat steps 5 and 6 while including their logins.

Use the following command to validate the result.

Get-IntuneUserPfxCertificate -UserList “<END_USER@DOMAIN.COM>”

Additional information is available at the following link.

Troubleshooting: Use Windows Event Viewer to review the Certificate Connector logs.

Endpoint manager portal configurations

To create a new configuration profile, the process is the same across all platforms. Start by going to the Device tab, selecting the desired operating system, and clicking the “Create profile” button. Then, select “PKCS imported certificate” as the profile type (If the operating system is Android, also select the “Android Enterprise platform” option). Give the profile a name and description in the next step.

In the following step, choose “S/MIME Encryption” as the “Intended purpose” and finalize the process by assigning it to a user group (If the operating system is Windows, also select the “Enroll to Software KSP” option).

Use the configuration profile details page to validate the result.

Another way to verify is to inspect the end devices. You can check the certificates using:

1. the “Manage user certificates” option on Windows, or
2. an app like “My certificates” to view installed certificates on Android. Please note, this app needs to be installed in the same way and the same work profile as Warehouse Management to access certificates distributed from Intune.

End Device Enrolment

Devices can be enrolled with the Company Portal app, depending on the type of device and platform, and these enrolment programs provide access to work or school resources. Enrolment involves registering with Microsoft Intune and applying organizational policies for security. The Company Portal app is accessible on multiple devices.

Android

You must install the Intune Company Portal app and log in to your company account.

Windows

Windows has several options to setup end user devices.

1. With the Intune Company Portal app
2. Login into “Access -> Access work” or school and login into “Accounts -> Email & accounts -> Add a work or school account” then reboot the device.
3. Other options

Not yet a Supply Chain Management customer? Take a guided tour.

The post How to mass deploy Dynamics 365 Warehouse Management – Mobile App appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Introducing the world’s first AI copilot in both CRM and ERP

Today we announced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, providing interactive, AI-powered assistance across business functionsfrom sales, service, and marketing to supply chain. With Dynamics 365 Copilot, we’re introducing the world’s first AI copilot natively built-in to both CRM and ERP applications.

Copilot brings the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to Dynamics 365, working alongside business professionals to help them create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actionsjust by describing what’s needed.

Copilot features are in preview across Dynamics 365 applications and Microsoft Viva Sales. View demos of the capabilities, as well as learn how to access the previews, below.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales

Many sales teams struggle to scale seller experiences. AI can help any sales organization to be more productive and effective, enabling them to automate the sales process and know customers more deeply.

Microsoft Viva Sales, which is included in Dynamics 365 Sales and available for purchase separately for other CRM systems, including Salesforce, revolutionizes the way sellers work by integrating with Microsoft Outlook and Teams to augment a seller’s actions and decisions with AI-powered insights and actions. New Copilot features help sellers save time, boost productivity, lighten workloads, and stay focused on what matters most: connecting with customers and closing deals.

Communicate with customers more effectively with AI-generated emails

Last month, we announced that Viva Sales now generates content suggestions based on customer emails, such as a reply to an inquiry or a request for a proposalcomplete with data specifically relevant to the recipient, such as pricing, promotions, and deadlines. The seller simply selects the option to suit their needs and a reply is generated for the seller to review, edit to their liking, and send. The reply is enriched with the combined data from Microsoft Graphwhich provides access to people-centric data and insights in the Microsoft Cloud and the CRM system (Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce).

Today we are announcing an updateemail replies will now move into general availability and on March 15, we will add enhancements to create customizable emails. For example, a seller can generate an email that proposes a meeting time with a customer, complete with a proposed meeting date and time based on availability on the seller’s Outlook calendar.

In addition, a new feedback mechanism allows sellers to rate the AI-generated content with a thumbs up or thumbs down, which helps refine and improve future replies. Sellers can also refine generated results by providing a new prompt that creates an updated response that builds on the previously suggested draft and new context.

By auto-suggesting customizable content, sellers can spend less time composing emails and searching for sales data from colleagues and databases. 

Follow up with customers promptly with AI-generated meeting summaries

Sellers often spend hours each day on calls with prospects and customersand nearly as much time recapping action items for follow-through. To help with that, conversation intelligence provides automated summaries of key topics, issues, and concerns discussed during the meeting.

Now available for public preview in Viva Sales, the new Copilot feature uses natural language capabilities powered by Azure OpenAI Service to intelligently draft a recap of a call with action items and follow-up dates, based on CRM and meeting data. Summaries can be generated for a range of meeting types in Teams, including multi-participant and internal calls, helping sellers stay organized and on top of critical, content-heavy sales meetings.

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If you’re not a current customer, start a free 1-month trial of Viva Sales to try Copilot features.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Customer service agents are critical for maintaining customer loyalty, but they often face pressure to resolve multiple customer cases quickly, leading to burnout and decreased customer satisfaction. To address these challenges, agents need tools that can help them streamline tasks across both simple and complex cases, while still providing personalized service that demonstrates their commitment to resolving each issue thoroughly and efficiently.

Now available for limited preview, we’re announcing Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Servicea range of next-generation AI capabilities that can expedite resolving customer issues and increase satisfaction scores. Copilot provides the agent with 24/7 AI-powered assistance to help them find resources that will help resolve issues faster, handle cases more efficiently, and automate time-consuming tasks so agents can focus on delivering high-quality service to their customers.

Turn service agents into superagents

With Copilot, agents can quickly craft a draft email or chat response to customers with a single click. Copilot understands the context based on the current live conversation; identifies relevant information from trusted websites and internal documents, including knowledgebase articles and previously resolved cases; and crafts a response that the agent can review and send to the customer.

For agents working on emails, Copilot can help create relevant and personalized email responses to customer queries in seconds. Once Copilot synthesizes information and suggests an email draft, agents can review and modify the content before sending it to the customer. Using conversational chat experience, agents can ask Copilot to help diagnose more complex customer issues, discover resolutions, and summarize draft responses with the right tone to the customeracross all communication channels.

With comprehensive and efficient assistance from Copilot, agents can significantly reduce the amount of time spent searching for content and drafting their response, resulting in improved agent productivity and customer experience.

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Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Service are now in limited preview.

Enrich self-service with AI-powered conversational assistance

Organizations can provide an even more powerful conversational experience by leveraging Power Virtual Agents, now enhanced with generative AI capabilities and available today in preview. Customers can self-serve and get their needs more easily solved with highly intelligent conversational bots that use trusted websites and the company’s internal data to resolve customer issues. Additionally, with the continued investment in the open, flexible, and composable Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, Nuance is announcing new AI capabilities in Nuance Mix. Dynamics 365 Customer Service, together with Teams, Microsoft Power Platform, Nuance, and Azure, deliver truly transformative experiences for both agents and customers through the contact center.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Marketing

To meet customer expectations, marketers need to deliver personalized marketing experiences across physical and digital channels. The next-generation AI empowers marketers to proactively target any audience segment in lockstep with market trends and customer demand. 

Get to data insights faster and easier with natural language

Marketers have traditionally relied on data analysts, leveraging their skillset to write queries in SQL, to uncover insights from their customer datawhich can take weeks for results. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, marketing teams can engage directly with customer data and discover new information that they may not have been aware of, democratizing access to insights. 

With simple prompts, marketers can ask questions using natural language to explore, analyze, and understand customer segment sizes and preferencesno need to be a SQL expert or wait for other teams to process their requests. For example, a marketer might want to identify customers that reside in San Francisco, California, with a high customer lifetime value, who have also made a purchase in the last 90 days. With a few clicks, Copilot produces the results, along with information such as the customers’ average age, product preferences, or average purchase price. These insights can then be configured into a segment to support a campaign. With Copilot, marketers can now get a deeper understanding of their customers in near real-time.

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Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights are now in limited preview.

Use natural language to create audience segments

Market segmentation is an important step to create personalized campaigns based on interests and needs. It also can be a time-consuming process, often requiring knowledge of the complex data structures defined by the marketing database. Query assist, a Copilot capability in Dynamics 365 Marketing, uses Azure OpenAI Service to save time creating or enhancing segments.  

Marketers can describe the target audience characteristics by typing a segment description, such as “all contacts under the age of 30 living in New York City.” Rather than manually select data tables, a marketer can simply type a description of the contacts they wish to engage with, and then add the results to the segment builder. By using this simple query approach, marketers can create real-time segments without the need for knowledge of their back-end data, saving hours of time. 

Create relevant, compelling, and personalized marketing content faster

Email marketing is a powerful way to engage audiences if the email content is compelling and relevant. Too often, content can begin to feel stale or repetitive over time. Content ideas, a Copilot feature in Dynamics 365 Marketing, inspires marketers by turning topics into suggested copy, helping them move from concept to completion faster.

When editing an email, a marketer can prompt Copilot with up to five key points to get across in the email. The content ideas capability uses Azure OpenAI Service to generate a set of text suggestionsunique content can be used as a starting point when composing marketing emails. It can analyze the organization’s existing emails, in addition to a range of internet sources, to increase the relevance of generated ideas. With Copilot, marketers can save hours of time brainstorming and editing, while keeping content fresh and engaging.

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Content ideas and query assist are both available in public preview today. If you are not a current customer, start a free trial for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing to experience the new Copilot features.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Compelling product descriptions in online stores boost sales by making products stand out from the crowd. However, producing consistently engaging descriptions on-demand can be challenging, especially when writing product descriptions for dozens or even hundreds of similar products.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central help small and medium-sized businesses to bring new products to market faster by producing AI-generated product descriptions. This Copilot feature suggests copy for engaging product descriptions, tailored to your brand using a product’s title and key attributes, such as color, material, and size. Easily customize the text to your preferred writing style by choosing the tone and length, and make any needed edits before saving. Business Central customers can seamlessly publish the new product descriptions to their Shopify store with just a few clicks.

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Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central is now in limited preview.

Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

In recent years, many businesses discovered that their current supply chain technologies are ill-equipped for an environment characterized by ongoing disruptions, constraints, and shortages. AI-enabled supply chain management can provide unprecedented visibility and insights, helping to solve disruptions before they happen.

Today we are announcing new Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Supply Chain Center, available to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management customers, to better predict and act on disruptions that occur across suppliers, weather, and geographies. Use intelligence from the news module to proactively flag external issues such as weather, financial, and geo-political news that may impact key supply chain processes. Predictive insights surface impacted orders across materials, inventory, carrier, distribution network, and more.

Copilot turns these insights into action with contextual email outreach generated by Azure OpenAI Service to help solve problems in real-time and with ease. With a custom and contextual reply, supply chain managers can save time and collaborate with impacted suppliers to quickly identify new ETAs and re-route purchase orders based on an identified disruption, like a weather event. They can also fulfill high-priority customer orders via an alternate distribution center to ensure they can meet customer demand in full and on time.

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Copilot features for Microsoft Supply Chain Center are now in limited preview.

Supercharge the entire customer journey with AIstarting today

With every biannual release wave, Microsoft is enhancing Dynamics 365 applications with new, more powerful AI capabilities to help organizations drive business outcomes, improve operational efficiency, and create exceptional customer experiences. 

The capabilities spotlighted today are just the start of AI-powered features to follow across business functions. Stay tuned to this blog, as well as the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform release planner, for further details.

Microsoft is committed to ensuring that AI systems are developed responsibly and in ways that warrant people’s trust. Learn about our AI principles that empower impactful responsible AI practices at Microsoft, as well as provide a framework for implementing responsible AI practices at our customers’ organizations.  

The post Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, bringing next-generation AI to every line of business appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In our daily lives we engage across multiple communication channels depending on the time and place. It’s no different when we engage in a sales conversation. Customers and prospects are busy people who don’t always have the time to join a booked meeting, take a call or even engage via e-mail. Yet when the need arises, we want them to be able to get in touch with ease. 

Now in Dynamics 365 Sales we have made connecting with customers even easier by adding an SMS channel communication for our users. This channel provides another option to the sellers ‘kit bag’ to aid connection. 

It’s a convenient and non-intrusive option to send reminders, provide quick updates, or respond to customer queries.  

Today most of the customers are already collaborating with their key contacts and business decision makers via various chat channels including SMS. However, often these happen over seller personal devices, or via custom SMS platforms which need connection and setup into a CRM application. With this new update sellers can just get started quickly knowing the conversation is tracked for the team to keep informed. We can stop data silos and reduce IT spend on activation. 

Let’s look at how this latest update can help engage customers:

• Connect with customers on their terms. Allow sellers to interact in a way that suits their customer while maintaining a full history tracked back into the Dynamics 365 Sales application. 
• Improve team visibility. Help sellers and supporting teams engage with the full context on conversations enabling better relationship building and removing information repetition.  
• Maintain continuity. New account teams and sellers can quickly pick up the history with stakeholders without missing a beat. 

• Inform next steps. With connected conversation history a sales team can accurately plan what actions to take to close deals faster. 

Organizations will be able to: 

• Ensure all the touchpoints sellers have with their customers are captured as part of the sales application for better tracking and planning.  
• Enable sellers to spend less effort managing multiple conversations with all their key contacts. 

Let’s dive in to see our key capabilities and learn how implementing this across sales scenarios will benefit your organization. 

What are the capabilities available to the users? 

We are adding the SMS communication channel as a new activity record in Dynamics 365 Sales. It will power several workflows, including: 

• Send and receive SMS messages using the chat editor from various touchpoints like the up next widget in the sales accelerator workspace, contact or lead forms. You can use the chat editor to send manually typed messages or invoke pre-created templates to send to the customer. 

• Add automated/manual SMS step in a sequence – While creating sequences, add SMS as a manual or automated step. This enables sellers to send reminders or quick updates to key contacts as part of the sales process.  

• Create SMS templates for personal use or to share with the organization based on permissions. As a user, you can create templates which are best suited to your relevant SMS-related scenarios. These templates can be:
  • Invoked manually from the SMS chat editor in context of specific entities, such as a contact or an opportunity. 
  • Added while creating a step as part of a sales accelerator sequence.

Additionally, you can leverage the personalization capability while creating the templates, to add a personal touch to the messages. 

• View the conversation details on the entity timeline. Often, multiple members from the sales team talk to the same customer as part of a sales process. This creates communication gaps within the sales team as everyone is not aware of all the other, parallel, conversations. With this capability, all the various conversations happening with different team members will be captured as “conversation blocks” on the entity timeline. All the team members can refer to the timeline for information. They can also expand each block to view the details of each customer conversation in context of the entity. 

How to get started:

Administrators will need to set up the SMS provider within the Dynamics 365 Sales application and assign numbers to enable additional communication channels. Once done, sellers or sales team can leverage the assigned number to send and receive SMS.

Let’s look at the key steps involved in the process: 

• Set up using our current providers. The account will then be used to configure the SMS channel within the Dynamics 365 Sales application.
• Connect to Dynamics 365 Sales. Administrators can then easily associate the SMS channel provider within the Dynamics 365 Sales application by following the setup wizard. 
• Assign sellers. Once the provider configuration is completed, the admin or sales manager can assign the available SMS numbers to their sales team or specific sellers. Once the sellers log in with their credentials, they will be able to leverage the assigned numbers to use the SMS capabilities. 

Start today with additional communication channels:

• Reduce the time and effort your sellers are putting into managing, tracking and entering relevant engagement details into CRM.

• Help existing sellers and sales teams be more productive and have more efficient conversations,

• Help new starters quickly get up to speed on customer conversation history. 

Next steps

Configure the SMS channel provider and start using SMS as part of your sales workflows: Engage with customers through text messages | Microsoft Learn

We’re always looking for feedback and would like to hear from you. Please head to the Dynamics 365 Sales – Forums, Blogs, Support to start a discussion, ask questions, and tell us what you think! 

If you are not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out theDynamics 365 Sales webpagewhere you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial. 

*Available for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and above, for pricing, please visit: Sales Pricing Compare Plans | Microsoft Dynamics 365 

The post How to engage customers with the right communication channels appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited and honored that Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for B2B Marketing Automation.*

Today’s buyers value authentic engagements and expect the companies they buy from to know them and to provide one-of-a-kind experiences. This past year, we continued to invest in solutions that help our customers meet these demands by delivering personalization at scale.

Customers can automate buyer-centric experiences and processes using trigger-based journeys to respond to actions and signals in real time and easily optimize customer journeys with insights from across digital and physical channels. With configurable key performance indicators (KPIs), customers can use out-of-box machine learning templates or bring their own AI/machine learning modelsboth options supporting rapid innovation that expands the discovery of insights.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 equips organizations with holistic views of their customers so they can discover what buyers need with insights that power individualized experiences and the delivery of deeply personalized content in customer journeys. Going forward, we will continue to expand this functionality for our customers.

Data at the center of everything

Gartner recognizes “B2B marketing automation platforms as technologies that serve as an essential tool for customer journey orchestration in support of B2B customer acquisition, retention and growth objectives.”

Dynamics 365 supports the practice of demand generation, helping our customers to capture, qualify, and nurture leads and accounts across multiple channels.

Data is at the center of all these functions, and it is the power behind the insights that drive what businesses need to do now and what they should do tomorrow. Microsoft helps businesses thrive and grow by capturing, analyzing, predicting, and reporting on their data.

One of the ways we are helping customers like Eika use one, coherent data platform to optimize their business-to-business (B2B) customer engagement with a high level of agility is the common data platform, Microsoft Dataverse. Dataverse lets you securely store and manage data used by business applications.

By using one single vendor that unifies and simplifies support processes for all solutions, customers benefit from products built to talk and complement each other. For instance, solutions like Dynamics 365 can work closely with other Microsoft technologies, such as Microsoft 365, Azure, Power BI, and LinkedIn to enhance and extend Dynamics 365 capabilities. This native integration also simplifies user adoptionusers are more comfortable when working with a familiar set of applications, and this ease of use can help lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and IT costs.

Additionally, customers that want to extend their investments in Microsoft technologies with applications to support their unique business needs have a huge range of options. Independent software vendors (ISVs) across the globe have created hundreds of software as a service (SaaS) applications that use Dynamics 365 and the underlying Microsoft Power Platform to deliver business value on top of Microsoft’s B2B automation platform.

Helping to ensure our customers’ success

Microsoft customers can participate in two customer success programs that deliver support for their implementations and can help them drive continuous adoption. FastTrack for Dynamics 365 is an engineering-led implementation guidance service that has been shown to speed deployments, drive higher usage, and reduce customer support needs. The second program, the Subscription Support for Microsoft Dynamics 365, is a support option delivered by a dedicated customer success unit within Microsoft.

Together, these programs have driven proven and lasting customer success. FastTrack for Dynamics 365 guides customers through successful implementations, bringing the best practices from thousands of deployments. The Subscription Support for Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps them drive continuous adoption, ensuring customers are realizing ongoing business value from the solutions they deploy.

Reimaging your B2B marketing automation

As today’s digital-first buyers become more informed, meeting their expectations is becoming a more difficult challenge. They’re more likely than ever to ignore anything that doesn’t feel authenticforcing businesses to connect customer insights and data across the organization to meet customers where they are and to capitalize on every opportunity.

B2B marketing automation platforms serve as an essential tool for customer journey orchestration in support of B2B customer acquisition, retention, and growth objectives. As Gartner mentioned in their report, “while B2B marketing automation platforms are designed to primarily support B2B use cases, they can also provide much needed functionality to B2C organizations selling high-consideration products and/or B2B2C models with more complex, indirect sales processes.”

We are excited to be positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and are committed to helping both our B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) customers meet the changing expectations of their customers. We invite you to learn more about how Microsoft is helping marketers around the world reimagine customer experience.

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Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Rick LaFond, Julian Poulter, Jeffrey L. Cohen, Matt Wakeman, Jeff Goldberg , 19 September 2022

*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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

The post Microsoft is named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for B2B Marketing Automation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In this fast-paced world, customers expect to be able to interact with brands in ways that extend beyond traditional channels. Brands are constantly competing for the attention of customers who are deluged with messages daily. Text messages and messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram represent an opportunity to engage your customers where they’re paying attention. Your customers benefit from increased and faster engagement with your brand through a real-time, personalized experienceand you’re more effective in triggering a specific customer action or behavior.

Curious about how you can integrate WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, and many other channels in your journeys to engage your customers in the moments that matter?

Discover Dynamics 365 Marketing custom channels

With custom channels, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing meets the need for a customizable model that supports any customer outreach and engagement medium marketers may demand. Along with built-in channels like email, text messages, and push notifications, you can now create custom communication channels to use in your journeys. Custom channels provide additional extensibility and personalization capabilities when reaching out to your customers, increasing the efficiency of your communications.

With custom channels you can:

• Bring a new communication channel like WhatsApp, Viber, or Telegram to Dynamics 365 Marketing. These channels support a custom message editor and deliverability analytics. Two-way communication and custom interactions will follow in future releases.
• Extend the functionality of text messages by connecting to any provider you want. Custom text message channels come with all the features supported by the built-in providers: text message editor with preview, two-way communication, analytics, and interactions.

By adding a custom channel to Dynamics 365 Marketing, you unfold its true potential and maximize your users’ engagement through:

• Creation of personalized messages content for a more individualized experience.
• Plugging your custom channels and messages into any customer journey.
• Tracking the deliverability of your messages to assess and optimize the effectiveness of your new channels.

Engaging your customers in non-conventional channels can also freshen up the image and perception of your brand. For instance, sending messages on WhatsApp can give your customers a feeling of closeness. You can define the channels that match your brand and your audience.

Our Dynamics 365 Marketing customers are already using custom channels in their journeys to send:

• Appointment confirmations with local text message providers, for customer to never miss on them,
• Promotional campaigns with exclusive discounts on WhatsApp or Viber,
• Various types of reminders through text messages or WhatsApp,
• Informational WhatsApp messages to increase the attendance for upcoming community events.

For instance, one of our customers has set up a journey that informs like-minded professionals about webinars and live community events that could interest them. The message includes a link to a form for professionals to sign up for the events. WhatsApp was chosen as a more engaging and real-time channel than emails, while less intrusive than text messages. In addition to keeping customers informed of upcoming events, the goal is to increase event registrations and the average attendance.

Start using custom channels in your customer outreach

Take advantage of custom channels in Dynamics 365 Marketing to capitalize on favorite and proven channels you’ve already invested time and effort in. Add real-time marketing capabilities like personalization, consent, and deliverability analytics to take your personalized targeting to the next level and maximize the impact of your communications.

Learn more

Ready to start building your new custom channels in Dynamics 365 Marketing? Read the release notes and check out the product documentation: Create custom channels (Dynamics 365 Marketing) | Microsoft Learn

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Marketing Customer? Take a guided tour and get a free trial!

The post Extend and optimize your customer outreach with custom channels appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.