Unified Service Desk for model-driven apps provides a configurable framework that allows you to build applications that give call center agents a unified view of customer data.

Unified Service Desk version 4.2, generally available since June, enables you to host web applications using Microsoft Edge WebView2 Process based on the Chromium open-source framework, as well as delivering improved performance and other enhancements.

The Microsoft Edge WebView2 control enables you to embed web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) in your native apps. Microsoft Edge WebView2 Process is based on the open-source framework in Chromium that powers many modern browsers.

With support for Microsoft Edge WebView2, Unified Service Desk admins have these capabilities:

• Ability to select WebView2 Process as the hosting type for their organization.
• Ability to select WebView2 Process as the hosting type for web applications, along with Chrome Process.

In addition, Microsoft Edge WebView2 Process delivers:

• Availability on supported versions of the Windows operating system.
• Easy configuration of host applications in Unified Service Desk.
• Ability to switch seamlessly from one browser to another for your entire organization.
• Enhanced performance and memory optimization.

Next steps

To learn more, check out the Unified Service Desk documentation or the Microsoft Edge WebView2 documentation. To use the capabilities, download and install or update Unified Service Desk 4.2.

The post Host web apps using Microsoft Edge WebView2 Process in Unified Service Desk 4.2 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The last few decades have seen monumental change in the retail industry. Specifically, technology has untethered the shopper from the store and allowed retail to take place anywhere, at any time. When viewed through hindsight, these changes occurred just in time, for without the e-commerce revolution during the past two decades, retailers would have faced a significantly more difficult situation during the recent pandemic. Nonetheless, innovative companies have been able to adapt and adjust to these challenging times.

Businesses looked to the role of technology in enabling the agility to not only meet emerging customer needs but also to drive lasting impact in their organization’s business efficiency, customer experience, and market position. Patagonia partnered with Microsoft and Dynamics 365 to help navigate through the market turmoil and continue to innovate and drive to meet their business goals.

The pandemic forced many retailers to rethink almost everything related to the purchase experience. Where and how can customers pick up and return their purchased items? How can they pay? What is the utility of a store in an online-first shopping environment? Questions like these are now being answered in ways that will reverberate through the industry long after the pandemic has receded.

Dynamics 365 has helped equip retailers with a flexible, unified, and seamless buying experience for customers and partners. With Dynamics 365 Commerce, businesses have been able to engage across traditional and emerging channels while allowing consumers the option to buy when, how, and where they wanton any deviceby delivering a frictionless and consistent experience across online and offline channels.

As we continue through the pandemic, both shoppers and retailers will have to adapt to a new normal. Let’s take a closer look at some trends that will persist in retail for the time to come.

1. Flexible order fulfillment

2020 ushered in the mass adoption of non-traditional fulfillment opportunities. One of these new methods that became essential during the past year is BOPIS, or buy-online-pick-up-in-store. As the pandemic unfolded, retailers saw a 208 percent increase in BOPIS from the previous year as customers gravitated to the increased convenience and choice that flexible order fulfillment offered. This accelerated a trend that had been gaining ground in some industries, like grocery, and saw it spread to retail sectors of all kinds.

2. Flexible returns

Like flexible order fulfillment, flexible returns provide the customer with increased convenience, this time related to items they no longer need or are not satisfied with. Returns are costly, and COVID-19 supercharged their numbers, with 2020 seeing consumers return $428 billion in merchandise, with $102 billion attributed to online purchasing, up 38.5 percent from 2019. As we move forward, the challenge will be for retailers to manage costs around returns without depriving consumers of the ease of returns they came to expect during the pandemic.

3. Contactless payments

Of all the trends mentioned in this blog, contactless payment via radio frequency identification (RFID) and near-field communication technology was perhaps the most widely adopted before the pandemic. Even at that, the need for increased cleanliness protocols and a desire to avoid touching surfaces where possible meant that the use of contactless payments has increased by 30 percent since COVID-19 started. With continued growth expected, savvy retailers will no longer allow the purchase experience to be tethered to specific locations or modes of payment.

4. Omnichannel retail

Like contactless payments, omnichannel retail plans had already been a high priority for many companies pre-COVID-19. However, the pandemic forced many retailers to speed up transitions from mostly brick-and-mortar to a proper omnichannel solution. Omnichannel has become an absolute requirement for modern retailers to survive. Part of this transition includes a re-thinking of the physical store itself. Rather than acting as the critical location in the retail journeya place for customers to browse for and purchase itemsthe store now serves as a place for customers to see, touch, and feel items they have discovered through other shopping channels before final purchase.

Microsoft is helping retailers deliver on their brand promises

In each of the trends mentioned, consumers rushed to welcome the added flexibility to the retail experience. As we continue through the pandemic and return to a new normal, consumers will be reticent to give their newfound conveniences.

At January NRF we announced Microsoft Cloud for Retail to help retailers deliver seamless experiences across the entire buying journey, and recently we announced even more capabilities within the Microsoft Cloud for Retail public preview to help businesses build flexibility into their systems in order to thrive in the post-pandemic world.

What’s next?

• Register for NRF Retail Converge and join our Big Ideas Session on June 21, 2021.
• Join the Retail Digital Forum on June 22, 2021.
• Contact Microsoft Dynamics 365 to get more information about Dynamics 365 solutions and capabilities.
• Stay informed aboutMicrosoft Cloud for Retail. Learn how you can connect your customers, your people, and your data.
• Follow Microsoft Retail on social.
• Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce.

The post 4 post-pandemic retail trends appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s fast-evolving global economy, organizations are increasingly pressed to find ways to accelerate their time to market and unlock value to achieve a significant return of investment (ROI) on their technological investments.

Companies worldwide are fast realizing the costly consequences of not having robust business continuity plans and remote-capable tools especially in times of crisis and uncertain macroeconomic conditions such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

With enterprise-ready mixed reality solutions like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for HoloLens 2, not only can companies survive these tough times, but many organizations spanning across a multitude of industries including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing have discovered that they were able to even thrive and accelerate their time to market when they embraced mixed reality technologies that enabled teams across geographic borders to collaborate seamlessly with 3D annotations and anchor critical work resources right within their real-world work environment.

In the manufacturing industry, we are also seeing a groundswell of interest in mixed reality technologies because of the tangible benefits that can be achieved in a short amount of time. Based on the Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) report for Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, organizations have reported numerous quantified benefits gained from using mixed reality technologies to empower frontline workers on production floors.

Some of these benefits (as detailed in the report) include:

• Customers typically resolving throughput-impacted issues five days earlier, saving an estimated $20,052 per issue. For each production hour saved, the composite avoids $950 in wasted labor, $2,500 in lost operating income, and $1,563 in direct costs such as rush shipping, waste, and fees. Mixed reality technologies have helped organizations to adopt practices that are kinder to the environment by avoiding travel and improving first-time fix rates to reduce wastage and the need for additional re-work.
• Experts avoid approximately 17 trips per year, saving $53,550 in travel costs and 384 hours per expert. When remote experts can help support frontline workers in real-time with 3D annotations right in their real-world work environment, companies now have the ability to develop business continuity plans by leveraging remote collaboration tools to ensure that the right expertise is accessible anytime, anywhere.

When coupled with Dynamics 365 Field Service, organizations can transform their entire service delivery experience, right from issue ticket creation to issue resolution. While Dynamics 365 Remote Assist enables field technicians to remotely triage issues before determining whether an onsite visit is required, Dynamics 365 Field Service further supports field technicians by optimizing the service management process. It enables organizations to optimize resource management to ensure that technicians with the right expertise are dispatched in a timely manner to the customer’s site. Once onsite, field technicians can then seamlessly access relevant work order information anchored right in the context of their real-world environment to get a comprehensive understanding of the issue. They can also create, edit, and save work orders while onsite, and include relevant image assets from their field visits for future reference. This wealth of service-related information ultimately enables customers to swiftly move from reactive to proactive service, and eventually even leverage predictive capabilities powered by AI to anticipate issues even before they occur.

Companies have also found innovative uses for mixed reality technology, including using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to conduct remote site visits of their production facilities and to conduct remote training to help onboard new employees. Read this inspiring story about EcoLab to learn how they successfully tested virtual service delivery at their pharmaceutical drug production facilitiesmore information is also available in their EcoLab press release.

Learn more

If you’re considering ways to infuse mixed reality technologies to accelerate your organization’s time to market and help build robust business continuity plans with mixed reality, learn more about Dynamics 365 Remote Assist via our free Dynamics 365 Remote Assist learning path.

Want to truly transform your customers’ end-to-end service experience? Learn more about using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist with Dynamics 365 Field Service to equip your field technicians with critical tools, resources, and access to remote experts while on the job.

Register for the Bringing Mixed Reality to BioTech webinar, available on-demand, to hear from Ian Curtinsmith, Chief Information Officer of Medlab Clinical, an ASX-listed biotechnology company to learn how mixed reality business applications has helped MedLab Clinical overcome global travel restrictions and accelerate their products’ time to market now that experts can remotely collaborate seamlessly in real-time from around the world. You can also read MedLab Clinical’s story.

Sources: The Total Economic Impact Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, June 2020

The post Accelerate time to market with Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for HoloLens 2 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Online fraud increased significantly during the recent pandemic and economic downturn, with losses of an estimated $12 billion worldwide.¹ To ensure continuous protection, organizations need modern solutions to protect from a range of fraudfrom payment fraud, bots, account takeover, and returns and discounts fraud.

We are partnering with Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, to help protect thousands of global organizations and their customers from a wide scope of fraud. Worldline will integrate our award-winning Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection services into their leading digital payments suite to provide their users additional security and trust by future-proofing their businesses.

Helping to protect world-class digital payments for a trusted world

With its global reach and its commitment to innovation, Worldline is the technology partner of choice for merchants, banks, and third-party acquirers as well as public transport operators, government agencies, and industrial companies in all sectors. Powered by over 20,000 employees in more than 50 countries, Worldline provides its clients with sustainable, trusted, and secure solutions across the payment value chain, fostering their business growth wherever they are.

Now, Worldline’s customers will benefit from Microsoft’s award-winning fraud prevention technology. Purchase protection can help protect revenue by improving the transaction acceptance rate reduce checkout friction. Account protection can help protect a business’s reputation and safeguard user accounts from abuse and fraud by combating fake account creation, account takeover, and fraudulent account access. Finally, loss prevention helps protect revenue by identifying anomalies and potential fraud on returns and discounts and provides the tools to quickly take action to mitigate losses.

How it works: scalable fraud protection across millions of transactions

Screening every transaction for traceable ‘fingerprints’ on fraudulent transactions would be impossible without technology such as the award-winning adaptive AI that powers Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Worldline customers can start with a mixture of pre-set fraud controls and adaptive AI that can learn to better identify fraud both on a client’s own site and as part of a globe-spanning fraud protection network. Customers will be able to see Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection working right away thanks to an intuitive user interface and real-time analytics.

Users can also customize their rules and controls to find the perfect balance of preventing fraud and reducing customer friction. Users will be able to curate their fraud prevention to meet their unique business needs with the help of a comprehensive dashboard that analyses false positives, optimizes rules to increase acceptance, and a virtual fraud analyst interface.

By leveraging the world-class digital payment and transactional services of Worldline and leading AI-powered fraud protection capabilities from Dynamics 365, customers can protect against the impact of fraud, which can range from severe disruptions to society to minor inconveniences; from widespread cyber-attacks across payment systems to day-to-day false-positive transaction alerts that can both be annoying to customers and harmful to businesses.

Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We are honored to be a part of Worldline’s leading payment solutions and to empower them to achieve their vision to “design and operate leading digital payment and transactional solutions that enable sustainable economic growth and reinforce trust and security in our societies. We make them environmentally friendly, widely accessible and support social transformation.” Read the full Worldline story.

Learn more

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection and our capabilities including how purchase protection helps protect your revenue by improving the acceptance rate of e-commerce transactions, how account protection helps protect your reputation by defending against bot attacks, fake account creation, account takeover, and fraudulent account access, and how loss prevention helps protect revenue by identifying anomalies on returns and discounts. For more advanced and technical details, check out our Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection documentation.

Don’t forget to read our free e-book “Protecting Customers, Revenue, and Reputation from Online Fraud” for a more in-depth look at Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.

1-“eCommerce Fraud Presents A $12 Billion Problem,” PYMNTS, March 14, 2020.

The post How Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection helps Worldline combat fraud appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The ongoing global pandemic has permanently changed our livesfrom how we interact, where we work, and how we work. If there’s one major takeaway we’ve learned from the continuously evolving macroeconomic climate, it’s that efficient, reliable, and timely service delivery has become more critical than ever. The sophisticated, often complex machinery and equipment that keep our businesses and society running smoothly depend on regular servicing and maintenance.

Efficient field service management is an area that is fast becoming a top priority for organizations worldwide. With the infusion of cutting-edge technology including mixed reality, machine learning, and AI, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service has enabled organizations to deliver timely service to their end customers and drastically reduced the need for onsite visits especially during a time of stringent travel restrictions and border closures.

For frontline workers who previously had to only focus on how to install, diagnose or repair a device, they now needed to focus on getting the job done with minimal in-person contact and social distancing measures. TSIA reported that 78 percent of field service organizations ceased deploying technicians to customer sites during the height of the pandemic.¹ This may have been a reaction to 75 percent of consumers not wanting a field technician physically in their home unless absolutely necessary.²

The heart of field service lies in its people-centricitythus, having to physically distance oneself from the customers whom you serve inevitably puts most companies in a challenging position. This frustration led to an evolution in service delivery. The pandemic compelled field service workers to rethink their overall approach to daily operations, including completing initial diagnostics and troubleshooting by telephone, video calling, and other digital tools where possible. To comply with social distancing measures, field technicians often had to arrange onsite visits only when customers would be on break or away from the site. Technicians made every effort to minimize their time onsite and needed to ensure they had all the right parts and tools ready so they would not have to return for follow-up visits to complete the task. These accommodations may have helped to maintain or at least reduce any negative impact on service delivery rates despite limited resources due to travel and other restrictions but may not be sufficient when organizations are faced with a sudden deluge of service requests.

Now, many companies have begun investing in tools like Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist that can help ensure the health and safety of both the technician and customers while maintaining business continuity regardless of ongoing global situations. Together, these tools enable organizations to deliver exceptional servicebe it remote or in-person, if neededto customers, automate time-consuming case creation and work order processes to ultimately help organizations develop resiliency to weather through challenging times.

Adoption of Connected Field Service

During the COVID-19 pandemic, service organizations pivoted to new work arrangements faster than they expected, and companies jumped quickly ahead into the future workplace. One of these pivots was the turn to virtual productivity platforms, namely Connected Field Service, which has provided a wealth of advantages. These platforms allow service providers to fix problems remotely and even proactivelyall while avoiding onsite services that could otherwise compromise employee and customer safety. The enormous value of this technology was realized during the height of the pandemic, making it useful and applicable across many industries. This realization fueled explosive growth in Connected Field Service, which would’ve taken a longer, slower path without the urgency of digital transformation during these critical times.

The global pandemic greatly accelerated innovation in service delivery with Connected Field Service and rapidly became a prerequisite for not only survival, but success in a variety of industries. Transitioning from the typical break/fix model, Connected Field Service has revolutionized this traditional business model, going beyond proactive to now even predictive service models that utilize multiple facets of asset maintenance, Internet of Things (IoT) diagnostics, scheduling, and inventory management on a single platform.

Connected Field Service has been proven to dramatically improve productivity and achieves a quick return on investment. This cohesive solution using Dynamics 365 Field Service and Remote Assist has truly transformed the field service management categorywhat used to take several technicians hours or even days to manage manually can now often be resolved in mere minutes with real-time support from remote experts using 3D mixed reality annotations right within the technician’s real-world environment. Now, service management cases can be easily created, edited, and managed end-to-end through one connected system to help track issues from ticket creation all the way through to issue resolution.

By using Connected Field Service, companies can identify and address issues more effectively with remote monitoring of IoT devices that can send IoT signals and trigger alerts via Dynamics 365 Field Service. Technicians can remotely diagnose and troubleshoot issues even before the customer detects the issue, minimizing costly downtime and time-consuming service calls. Field service organizations can also leverage device diagnostic data to proactively schedule device service and leverage predictive analytics with AI, increasing productivity and reducing costs associated with the reactive break/fix model.

Connected Field Service offers a solution to the dilemma of service delivery in a landscape where physical and digital environments are blending. As devices, sensors, gateways, data, and applications become more advanced and as connectivity methods become more economical like IoT plug and play, more technologies can be easily connected to these networks and achieve even greater efficiencies.

Predicting the future of Field Service Management

The need for Connected Field Service will undoubtedly continue to growaccelerating response times, increasing productivity, reducing operational costs with the ultimate goal of exceeding customers’ expectations to drive long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty. In fact, Juniper Research estimates that the number of IoT devices this year will reach 46 billion and this figure is expected to jump to 125 billion by 2030.³

Contact-free service will continue its evolution as more and more customers become advocates of the experience, embracing the idea of new technologies, processes, and procedures while driving migration to IoT devices. Meanwhile, AI-driven technician scheduling will help organizations optimize resources and minimize costs by ensuring that technicians with the right skillsets are dispatched whenever and wherever they are needed.

Advances in AI and mixed reality will help spur additional growth by increasing productivity with leading-edge tools such as Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on both iOS and Android mobile devices and the HoloLens 2. Field service organizations can enable Dynamics 365 Remote Assist One-Time Calling (OTC) for customers to walk them through processes to deliver remote, contact-free service. Mixed reality will also enable customers to share their real-time views with remote experts to help minimize the need for in-person, onsite support. No wonder some industry analysts expect shipments of mixed reality devices to exceed five million in the next three years.⁴

Of course, there will always be issues that will require in-person onsite support, such as emergency response or complex machinery repairs, but for a large segment of work, remote work is certainly a valuable option and is likely here to stay. For jobs that must be serviced onsite, advances in AI will help enhance the process by optimizing scheduling resources and dispatching technicians with the right expertise. For instance, advanced AI capabilities within Dynamics 365 Field Service will optimize technician schedules by automatically dispatching the most experienced technician closest to the customer site. Plus, the Field Service mobile app will automatically notify the customer by text so that they are aware of the service technician’s estimated arrival time, and can easily track the technician’s geolocation via the app.

When onsite, technicians can use mixed reality technology like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens 2 to access critical information about the device they’ve been sent to repair, including service history and diagnosticsall anchored within their real-world environment. If they encounter any unexpected complexities during the repair, they can simply connect with a remote expert to share their real-time view, and leverage 3D annotations right in their physical work environment to help guide them along.

Embracing innovation

Cloud-based technologies, the adoption of mobile-based, and Connected Field Service management solutions have all helped create the right conditions to enable field workers to complete their service requests remotely and efficientlymuch to the delight of customers.

These challenging times in human history have taught us to embrace innovationnot just to merely weather through the storm, but to ensure long-term resilience. Connected Field Service is no longer an option and mixed reality technologies like Remote Assist, HoloLens 2, and Dynamics 365 Guides are anything but science fiction. These technologies have all earned their place in service delivery and together, help to fuel business continuity, create additional revenue streams, and most of all, ensure customer satisfaction and long-term engagement. Discover how to deliver empathetic, connected service experiences today.

Find out more on Connected Field Service.

Learn about Dynamics 365 Field Service and delivering proactive service.

Get the latest on Dynamics 35 Remote Assist and Dynamics 365 Guides.

1-“Impact of COVID-19 on OEM Field Service Organizations“, Vele Galovski, TSIA, April 9, 2020

2-“Enhancing Remote Maintenance using Visual Technology“, Andrew Mort, CustomerThink, September 10, 2020

3-“How Many IoT Devices Are There in 2021?“, Juniper Research, March 29, 2021

4-“Mixed Reality For Field Service“, Danny Wieder, Field Service News, June 3, 2019

The post Driving empathetic, connected service experiences with Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.