If small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have one thing in common, it is that they are all unique. Differentiate or fail is especially true when it comes to small and midsized business strategy. The secret sauce is what helps leaders of these companies blaze new trails and disrupt industries with innovative products and services. However, disrupting industries requires more than passion and great ideas; SMBs also need the ability to quickly adapt business and operating models to deliver on their vision and brand promises. And the level of business agility required for success takes an ecosystem to deliver.

Adapt faster with Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a connected cloud business management solution for growing SMBs. Connected means you can bring together your finance, sales, services, and operations teams within a single application to get the insights needed to drive your business forward and be prepared for what’s next. While the out-of-the-box capabilities meet the needs for standard business operations, Dynamics 365 Business Central offers operational flexibility to help SMBs adapt faster to changing market conditions and customer expectations.

Our customers use Microsoft Power Platform, connected to Dynamics 365 Business Central, Office 365, Microsoft Azure, and hundreds of other apps, to further analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents. Microsoft Power Apps turns ideas into organizational solutions by enabling everyone to build custom apps that solve unique business challenges.

We also work closely with our partners to support unique business processes, workflows, and operational models at scale. Our partners build a solution based on industry best practices, so you don’t have to recreate the wheel. You can find over 1,400 apps on Microsoft AppSource to easily tailor and extend Dynamics 365 Business Central to meet unique business or industry-specific needs. Filter for Dynamics 365 Business Central on AppSource and you will find apps for everything from A to Z allocations, banking, and construction to warehousing, XML, yield, and zoning.

At our Directions North America partner conference on April 26, 2021, we will introduce some new applications that will be coming soon to Microsoft AppSource, including:

• Bill.com streamlines accounts payables and receivables automation workflows and payments: Announced earlier this month, Bill.com will integrate with Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics GP. Bill.com is a leading provider of cloud-based software that automates complex back-office financial operations for SMBs. Mutual customers will now be able to take control of their financial processes, save time, and scale with confidence through the power of the integrations’ accounts payables (AP) and accounts receivables (AR) intelligent automation workflows and payments. The Bill.com and Microsoft Dynamics 365 automatic sync is now live. Find out more information on the Bill.com Sync with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
• Square lets you accept payments quickly, easily, and securely: Make accepting card payments fast, painless, and secure so that you don’t miss a sale. Whether you’re selling in person, online, or on the go, Square helps you get paid fast, every time. Using the Square Payments app from AppSource will automatically sync with Dynamics 365 Business Central so you can keep track of all of your payments in one place.
• ODP Corporation (parent company of Office Depot) digital procurement platform: As announced on February 22, 2021, the ODP Corporation is partnering with Microsoft to transform how businesses buy and sell. ODP is working to bring the power of their new digital procurement technology platform to Dynamics 365 Business Central customers to help them realize immediate purchase savings and procurement automation. This exciting integration will be coming later in 2021.

Work smarter with Dynamics 365 Business Central

As Dynamics 365 Business Central is part of the Microsoft cloud, our customers also have the ability to extend the solution using Office 365, including Teams, Outlook, Excel, and Word. Don’t let disconnected processes and systems hold your people back. Connecting your business application with productivity tools can help support remote work, improve security, and control costs. Ensure your people can be more collaborative, productive, and impactful by seamlessly connecting Dynamics 365 Business Central with Microsoft 365 apps.

No matter how you choose to manage customer workflows, processes, and unique models, Dynamics 365 Business Central provides the operational foundation and flexibility that is required for success.

Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Business Central partners can learn more at Dynamics 365 Business Central the Directions North America virtual event on April 26-28, 2021.

The post Success for small and midsized businesses requires agility appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app helps your frontline workers manage and complete their service tasks while onsite at a job. The mobile app enables them to view their daily schedule, complete inspections, bill for products and services, send reports to customers, and submit their time-off requests.

The Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app is built on Microsoft Power Platform. If your organization is using the mobile app built on the Xamarin platform, you’ll need a plan to move workers to the Power Platform mobile app by June 2022.

As you transition your organization to the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app, follow these best practices and tips for setup and deployment.

Tip 1: Assign the Field Service-Resource security role or equivalent permissions

To make sure that frontline workers have access to the right tables (entities) and columns (fields) on the mobile app, you might need to edit the security role assigned to them.

Assign each frontline worker, or resource, the Field Service-Resource security role and field security profile because many processes check for users with that security role. For more information, check out the frontline worker setup instructions.

For example, the Booking and Work Order form is visible to users with the Field Service-Resource security role by default, but users with other security roles need to be given access explicitly.

Augmenting the Field Service-Resource role

If you want to augment the security privileges of the Field Service-Resource security role, you need to create a new role with the permissions you want to add, and then assign the new security role to users in addition to the Field Service-Resource security role. The same principle applies for field security profiles.

Removing privileges from the Field Service-Resource role

If you intend to remove or lower security privileges, then we recommend that you copy the Field Service-Resource security role, make your changes to the copy, and then assign the copied security role to the frontline worker users. Then, give your newly created copy of the security role access to the Booking and Work Order form included with Dynamics 365 Field Service. This form is used to view scheduled jobs (see the next tip).

Read about Field Service security roles for more information and steps to copy security roles.

Performance considerations

Using the mobile application with a role that has broad access to data, like an admin role, might result in larger data downloads and longer sync times of offline data. Test your application with the security role applicable to end users.

For more information about security roles, check out Install and set up the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app.

Tip 2: Use forms and controls included with the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app

It’s important to use the forms that come with Field Service rather than creating new ones, because the default forms and controls are optimized for performance and usability on mobile devices.

For example, use the Booking and Work Order form to show frontline workers their schedules and job information. The Booking and Work Order form has custom code that is purpose-built for field service scenarios. Add your organization’s schedule and job information into the form.

The same is true for controls. Use the controls that are included with Field Service where possible. Examples include the booking map for job locations and the calendar control for schedules.

Here is an example of some of the mobile optimized forms and controls included with the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app, such as at-a-glance agenda view, customer information with address and maps, and an intuitive experience to track the services performed and parts consumed:

Performance considerations

Surface the most relevant fields and information to technicians up front. Overloading the form with less-used fields and controls will impact app performance, so consider creating new sections or tabs to host custom content. Take feedback from users to determine what content is necessary and what can be removed or hidden from forms.

For more information, go to Edit the sitemap (home screen), forms, and views.

Tip 3: Follow best practices when using offline profiles

Offline profiles control which data is downloaded to the device. We strongly recommend that you use the offline feature, even if your frontline workers always have internet access.

Using downloaded data is much faster than using data on the server that is accessed over the internet, thus improving overall performance. Set up an offline profile, and then add users and teams to the offline profile.

Here are a few more pro tips for using offline profiles:

• Use the offline profile included with Field Service – The Field Service Mobile Offline Profile provides an ideal starting point for offline configuration, with defaults for out-of-the-box entities and sync intervals. Use this profile and build upon it by including your custom entities. By working within the provided profile, default entities can still receive updates over time.
• Avoid removing default entities from the offline profile – These default entities are purposefully added to ensure the right data is available to the frontline worker. Focus on adding the entities you need to the offline profile rather than removing ones you do not need.
• Avoid using “All records” as an offline filter – The offline profile is the gate that controls the amount of data downloaded to the frontline workers’ devices. To keep sync times fast and efficient, avoid including “All records” as an entity filter and avoid wide date ranges. As an example, rather than downloading all customer asset records, download only the records related to scheduled work orders. This will reduce the number of customer asset records without impacting work that needs to be done.
• Use offline JavaScript Organizations often need to run workflows on mobile devices to execute business processes. However, Power Automate flows only run when the device is connected to the internet or on the next sync. Use offline JavaScript to run workflows on the device quickly and without internet access. For more information, go to Workflows and scripts for the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app.
• Understand how the app works offline. Lastly, it is important to know that once you set up an offline profile, the mobile app prioritizes offline operations. This means the app will use downloaded data when there is no internet access, and even when there is internet access. The only difference is that, when there is internet access, data will be synced back to the server every few minutes or when the frontline worker manually syncs the app. When there is no Internet access, the sync runs later, when a connection is restored.

Performance considerations

By using offline profiles, data will be downloaded to the device. With offline data, in-app performance such as displaying forms will be much better. Limiting the amount of data in the offline profile to what is needed by the user will improve sync performance.

For more information, go to Configure offline data and sync filters for the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app.

Tip 4: Use up-to-date devices that meet recommended requirements

Many organizations follow a “bring your own device” (BYOD) policy where frontline workers use their personal phones or other devices for business. The Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app works on many devices running iOS or Android software, and support for Windows 10 devices is planned.

For the best performance, make sure your team has newer devices that run the latest operating system versions. Review the supported mobile platforms for recommendations about operating system versions, RAM, and storage.

Tip 5: Take advantage of Microsoft Power Platform

The Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app is built on Microsoft Power Platform, so the mobile app can take advantage of several capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform.

Here are just two common examples:

• Use Power Automate to send push notifications to frontline worker devices based on predefined triggers and events. For more information, go to Enable push notifications.

• Use Power Apps component framework to create new controls for the Field Service mobile app. For more information, go to Power Apps component framework overview.

Planning for your deployment

In addition to these Field Service best practices, here are a few more planning tips that can be helpful for your project:

• Do user acceptance training. Ensure buy-in across your organization by bringing the people who will be using the application into the release process early. Select a diverse set of users across geographies or business units. Set up feedback channels to understand pain points and address problems before going live.
• Do a phased roll out. Reduce risk by segmenting your release over phases; commonly this is done by geography, or by business group. Take feedback from users and expand the deployment once stable.
• Pilot the mobile apps side-by-side. If you are a current customer of Field Service, you can pilot the new Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app alongside the Field Service Mobile (Xamarin) app, as well as other Field Service apps your organization might be using. This will help you assess how your frontline workers are currently using the apps: what data is most important and what information is most commonly viewed and edited. In this way, you will better understand what functionality to include in the new Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app.
• Measure performance. How the mobile app performs is a big factor in how much frontline workers enjoy using the app. Add performance measures to the deployment plan and test how editing forms, the mobile offline profile, and workflows affect app performance. Take feedback from users to determine what is necessary and what can be removed or hidden from forms.

Next steps

We’ve put together some resources to help you before and during your mobile deployment.

• Field Service mobile adoption playbook – Get guidance on how to plan for and adopt Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile, along with information on how to manage migration from the previous mobile app.
• Dynamics 365 Field Service docs Find details to set up and use every feature of the mobile app, along with configuration considerations and FAQs.
• Field Service videos Watch step-by-step video tutorials to set up and use the mobile app.

The post 5 tips for implementing the Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s complex economic landscape, your business needs the latest digital capabilities to engage customers, connect people, insights, and processes across the organization, and grow revenues. 2021 release wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 continues our commitment to continuously deliver capabilities that help you adapt to rapid change in your industry, innovate and solve challenges collaboratively, and harness insights to stay focused on what matters.

Designed to help you build agility and resiliency into every layer of your business, this six-month release wave of new and updated capabilities spans end-to-end customer experience and commerce, including supply chain and finance.

Connected customer experiences

Customer experience is built on consistent and personalized experiencesfrom the customer’s first interaction with the company through purchase and support. Microsoft is committed to helping you deliver personalization at scale, starting with rich insights to better understand preferences and needs, coupled with orchestrated customer journeys that open doors to new ways to attract, engage, and delight customers with a more human and empathetic approach.

Microsoft customer data platform (CDP)

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insightsthe Microsoft customer data platform (CDP)connects data sources to gain the most comprehensive view of the customer, providing real-time insights that drive action in moments that matter.

This release wave extends audience and engagement insights for a more holistic view of customers. Audience insights enable every organization to unify and understand their customer data to harness it for intelligent insights and actions. Engagement insights enable individual and holistic interactive analytics over web, mobile, and connected products customer journey touchpoints. New turnkey integrations make it easier to share insights with other Microsoft or third-party applications, including Bing Ads, Google Ads, Facebook, HubSpot, Marketo, and many other popular services.

In addition, we’ve added AI-powered suggestions to help segment customers for more personalized messages, as well as features like predicted customer lifetime value and transaction and subscription churn to identify high-value and at-risk customers.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights works in lockstep with customer journey orchestration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing (below) to power even more personalized experiences.

Read more 2021 release wave 1 highlights for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice empowers organizations to easily scale feedback capture for agile responses and personalized customer experiences, all in a robust feedback management solution. The new wave of updates enhances personalization and analysis capabilities, making it easier than ever to understand your customers and build better experiences.

Custom survey headers provide more flexibility and personalization in outreach to customers, while customer survey scoring empowers users to create and unlock the insights that matter to their business.

Read more about updates to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Marketing

New customer journey orchestration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing bring together the worlds of customer experience and marketing automation to engage customers in real-time based on interactions across marketing, sales, commerce, and service. And the enhanced cross-journey customer insights and analytics capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights help create more personalized experiences.

A completely redesigned email editor leverages AI to help you quickly create impactful, professional, and personalized content and deliver it at the right time. And enhanced integration with Microsoft Teams adds new webinar capabilities within Teams and the improved event participant engagement functionalities within Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Read more 2021 release wave 1 highlights for Dynamics 365 Marketing.

Sales

Release wave 1 updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales showcase the best of Microsoft productivity, collaboration, and intelligence in one business app to guide sellers to close deals faster.

Sellers can automate time-consuming sales tasks, such as creating and sending emails to customers, as well as updating customer records with up-to-date profile data from LinkedIn. Conversational intelligence automatically extracts actionable insights directly from sales calls.

An embedded Teams chat experience allows sellers to share Dynamics 365 information in Teams chats and channels and access linked Teams chats and channels within Dynamics 365. And an optimized seller workspace helps sellers understand pipeline health with out-of-box interactive charts and metrics and course-correct fading deals with AI-driven relationship and opportunity scores.

Explore more 2021 release wave 1 highlights for Dynamics 365 Sales.

Service

New capabilities help customer and field service teams deliver more consistent and engaging experiences, from the call center to on-site visits.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is delivering the all-in-one contact center, now with first-party voice built on Microsoft Azure Communication Services and intelligent, skill-based, and omnichannel routing across channels. In addition, we are enhancing agent productivity capabilities in knowledge management, timeline, email, and agent dashboards.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces a comprehensive experience for customers that will allow them to self-schedule service and rate technicians to ensure maximum satisfaction. Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and Microsoft Teams enable field technicians to stay connected to work orders, information, and experts in real-time.

Learn more about updated capabilities to transform customer service and field service.

Connected operations

Complex organizations depend on the seamless flow of data, consistent business processes, and collaboration across finance and operations departments. This release wave further brings together people, data, insights, and processes with cross-app capabilities.

Commerce

Earlier this year, we announced the preview of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, bringing together business-to-consumer (B2C) and B2B e-commerce capabilities onto a single unified retail and commerce platform. The 2021 release wave 1 will further empower Dynamics 365 Commerce users to better understand, serve, and engage with their customers while efficiently running operations across the value chain.

B2B e-commerce capabilities previously in preview are now generally available, bringing intelligent and user-friendly features available to B2C e-commerce retailers to business partners. This release offers partner onboarding, order templates, quick order entry, account statement, invoicing management, and more. In addition, we are delivering native integration to Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service for unified customer engagement across touchpoints.

Other enhancements include new AI-powered intelligent shopping features for more personal and relevant shopping experiences, such as the ability to shop similar looks and similar descriptions. We’ve also invested in expanding omnichannel capabilities, including the ability for retailers to notify frontline workers on mobile devices through the Microsoft Teams mobile app.

Retailers will also be able to synergize task management between Dynamics 365 Commerce and Microsoft Teams to improve productivity. And support for curbside pickup scenarios allows customers to pick up orders with a safe, contactless experience.

Retailers can further connect experiences across the end-to-end shopper journey with Microsoft Cloud for Retail, announced at NRF 2021.

Read a comprehensive overview of updates to Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Fraud Protection

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection brings together account protection, payment protection, and loss prevention, providing a 360-degree view of the fraud landscape to merchants.

Two new features significantly improve insights that can help better detect suspicious activity. Velocities help customers prevent loss from fraud by using the relationships and patterns between transactions to identify suspicious activity. External calls let Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection ingest external data from third-party information providers or in-house data models.

Read more about updates to Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.

Finance

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance provides real-time visibility into operations, predictive outcomes, and data-driven decisions that drive business agility and growth.

Release wave 1 brings intelligent cash flow forecasting to preview with automation based on predictive results. These updates include users’ experience out-of-the-box machine learning, including when customers are predicted to pay, forecasting the budget, and viewing forecasted cash positions based on actual accounts payable, accounts receivable and project transactions, and predicted outcomes.

Finance insights bring the power of AI into finance processes, with configurable and extensible models to help you accurately and intelligently predict your company’s cash flow. Globalization capabilities deliver localization for Egypt, general availability of a new electronic invoicing service, public preview of tax calculation service, and several other highly requested features.

Explore the full set of updates in the release plans.

Supply Chain

Major shocks to supply and demand over the past year have exposed the fragility of the global supply chain. Moving forward, organizations must architect resiliency into their supply chains with the capacity to scale operations to meet demand and proactively remedy disruptions, as well as streamline order fulfillment.

We are introducing new capabilities to ensure a smooth-running production line and improve day-to-day work on the factory floor. The new Cloud and Edge Scale Unit add-ins for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enable companies to easily scale production and distribution during peaks and keep critical processes running at high throughput on the edge.

Additional updates increase the visibility of inbound goods and automate landed cost calculation, streamline and automate rebates and royalties, help overcome disruptions by managing changes in process manufacturing master data, and improve overall warehouse operating efficiency.

Read how these updates help you architect resiliency into your supply chain.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, announced at Microsoft Ignite, is a new application that can help accelerate omnichannel transformation across order and fulfillment. It provides the flexibility companies need to capture orders from any order source, including e-commerce, marketplace, mobile apps, or traditional sources like electronic data interchange (EDI).

Service-based operations

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations unifies operational workflows to provide the visibility, collaboration, and insight needed to drive success across teams from sales to finance. Updates in release wave 1 deliver rich new experiences with the ability to forecast, use, and invoice non-stocked materials on projects. Also included is the ability to set up contractual commitments like billing methods and chargeability rules by task or by work breakdown schedule. Customers using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation will be able to upgrade to Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Read more about updates to Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

Business management for small and midmarket organizations

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a connected cloud business management solution for growing small to medium-sized businesses (SMB), bringing together finance, sales, service, and operations teams within a single application. Updates in this release wave help you adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. New customer onboarding capabilities provide getting started checklists and in-app contextual guidance to help speed time to productivity for employees. Improved interoperability with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel empowers a more collaborative, productive organization. In addition, this release wave expands availability to more countries, including India, Greece, Romania, and Turkey.

Discover the latest innovations for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Human Resources

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources provides HR leaders with the tools needed to optimize workforce programs such as leave and absence, benefits, and compensation, as well as transform the employee experience with self-service. A new app for Microsoft Teams enables employees to view time-off balances and submit leave requests from within the unified collaboration workspace they already use. The app has been enhanced to include support for benefit notifications and a summary statement providing a consolidated view of benefits for employees. Other updates continue to broaden the human capital management (HCM) ecosystem through integration APIs and strategic partnerships.

Learn more about new and planned capabilities for Dynamics 365 Human Resources.

Catch up on the 2021 release wave 1

For a complete list of new capabilities, please review the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2021 release wave 1 plans, as well as the overviews of new capabilities for Dynamics 365, integrated Microsoft Teams experiences, and new Power Platform capabilities announced at Microsoft Ignite in early March.

The post Highlights from 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Over the last several months, we have continued to see the agility and resiliency shown by businesses across the globe in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the holiday trading period, we saw businesses adapt to new customer needs across digital channels, along with enhancing and streamlining in-person buying experiences. As vaccines become available, many retail businesses are looking at the future shopping needs of their customers and what the return to in-store buying will mean for customer experiences. Along with this, business-to-business (B2B) buying has also been transitioning from in-person to more digital and self-service buying options for accounts and partners.

Building atop the great features released in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce 2020 release wave 2, we are bringing additional capabilities to Dynamics 365 Commerce 2021 release wave 1, grounded in intelligence to help businesses meet the needs of their customers across consumer-facing and business-to-business segments. We are delivering innovation across the following key investment areas:

1. New digital commerce capabilitiesto further enhance customer experience and business outcomes: We continue to build upon the foundation e-commerce capabilities including announcing the general availability of B2B e-commerce capabilities on a single connected platform.
2. Enhancements through ingrained intelligence to drive growth and efficiencies: Utilize enhancements with AI and machine learning to further improve insights into business operations and deliver differentiation.
3. Expand on omnichannel capabilities to improve business performance: We continue to invest in core capabilities that support unified commerce capabilities along with enhancements with broader Microsoft and Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the new capabilities and highlights we are bringing to our customers within the Dynamics 365 Commerce 2021 release wave 1.

Build rich, relevant, and intuitive digital commerce experiences for every customer

With the acceleration of digital commerce channels amidst COVID-19, we continue to invest in building the best e-commerce platform available on the market. With the addition of business-to-business e-commerce capabilities for Dynamics 365 Commerce, we are bringing intelligent and user-friendly features available in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce to business partners.

B2B e-commerce capabilities now available: B2B e-commerce capabilities for Dynamics 365 Commerce enables organizations in varied industry segments to digitize their B2B transactions with personalized, user friendly, and self-serve driven B2C e-commerce-like experiences while still providing the unique capabilities needed for a B2B user to be productive in their job function.

As e-business teams look for solutions in the market, not only are they benchmarking their future-state online buying experience against B2B peers, but also against B2C leaders. They need solutions with a best-in-class foundation of B2C features, such as robust marketing and merchandising and experience management tools. With this release, we are bringing a range of B2B e-commerce capabilities to market including partner onboarding, order templates, quick order entry, account statement and invoicing management, and more. In addition, we are delivering native integration to Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service for unified customer engagement across touchpoints. Unique B2B capabilities such as contract pricing, quotes pricing lists, e-procurement, product configuration and customization, guided selling, bulk order entry, and account, contract, and budget management can also be layered on top of our rich e-commerce capabilities to deliver a great buying experience for every partner.

Enhanced search engine results: Improve SEO rankings for product landing and display pages to enable quicker page discovery through native support for schema.org/product metadata. Product pages can utilize existing Dynamics 365 Commerce headquarters product data to simplify and streamline merchandising workflows.

Enhancements through ingrained intelligence to drive growth and efficiencies

Unlock immersive AI-powered intelligent shopping features that enable more personal and relevant shopping experiences for every customer.

Shop similar looks: Bring fresh and appealing choices to the forefront of the shopping experience using the power of AI and machine learning. The effect can be transformative and can create additional selling power as shoppers find more of the things they want in an easy-to-use visual experience.

Shop by similar description: This recommendations service enables customers to easily and quickly find the products they need and want (relevant), find more than they had originally intended (cross-sell, upsell), all the while having an experience that serves them well (satisfaction). For retailers, this functionality helps drive conversion opportunities across all customers and products, resulting in more all-up sales revenue and customer satisfaction.

System monitoring and diagnostics across in-store and e-commerce: Access to system diagnostic logs allows better visibility for IT administrators and enables improved time to detection, time to mitigation, and time to resolution of live-site incidents. IT administrators are able to determine key contributing factors of incidents, which allows for targeted engagement with Microsoft support teams, or with implementation partners, ISVs, or other stakeholders.

Cloud-powered customer search (preview): Customer data is the lifeblood for businesses, and yet almost all businesses run into the problem of duplicate customer records because of inefficient customer search algorithms. If cashiers are not able to easily find a customer, they end up creating new customers. With this enhancement, businesses will be able to easily switch their current customer search experience from SQL-based search to cloud-powered search to gain performant, relevant, and scalable search capabilities.

Expand on omnichannel capabilities to improve business performance

We continue to see the rapid evolution of technologies supporting business, employee, and customer shopping experiences. With this, comes the need to deliver tools that span across channels to streamline purchasing experiences and empowers staff to perform at their best. In this release, we are continuing to invest in making Dynamics 365 Commerce the best solution for omnichannel shopping and bringing new capabilities to customers and frontline workers alike.

Better together with Microsoft Teams: Administrators now can provision Microsoft Teams from Dynamics 365 Commerce and create teams for stores, add members from a store’s worker book, and more in Microsoft Teams, and synchronize the changes in the future. They can also notify frontline workers on mobile devices and synergize task management between Dynamics 365 Commerce and Microsoft Teams to improve productivity.

Additional features and improvements to Curbside Pickup

In today’s world, it is important that organizations can offer safe and flexible fulfillment options to meet their customers’ ever-changing needs. Building on Dynamics 365 Commerce’s existing capabilities that enables buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), Dynamics 365 Commerce now offers additional features to optimize convenient and COVID safe curbside pickup. These capabilities will make it easier for businesses to deploy mobile POS devices and allow their store associates to efficiently manage orders that need to be fulfilled and picked up. With this release, we have added the following features and improvements to Dynamics 365 Commerce:

• Ability for shoppers to set their preferred pick-up location on E-Commerce channel.
• Ability for businesses to offer multiple pickups and delivery options for shoppers to choose from.
• Flexible configuration of pickup time slots per day by location and allowing shoppers to choose a pickup time slot on E-Commerce channel.
• Improved email receipts and notifications with the ability for businesses to customize email receipts, configure by deliver mode, etc.
• Enhanced order fulfillment visibility for store associates with live tile and notifications to monitor and address orders that need to be fulfilled.
• Streamline order pick-up flows, including support for QR codes.

Enhancements to inventory visibility, movement, and adjustments

Inventory management and visibility is key to business success in order to give customers clear insights into where stock is located, reduce out-of-stock situations, and empower our sellers, managers, and merchandisers to make better decisions. With this update, we have made a range of improvements touching inventory and stock management including enhancements to e-commerce inventory availability lookup API, inventory aware product discovery for e-commerce customers, improvements to inventory lookup operations via in-store point of sale, along with comprehensive in-store inventory management capabilities.

Chat in Dynamics 365 Commerce with Power Virtual Agents and Dynamics 365 Customer Service (Preview)

Customer service functionality will be added to Dynamics 365 Commerce by leveraging the capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Power Virtual Agents. Site administrators will be able to configure the chat widget on the e-commerce site with proactive notification capability based on different criteria.

This will be supported via native integrations with Dynamics 365 Customer Service chat or virtual agents into Dynamics 365 Commerce. With this, contact center agents will be able to look up customer information using Dynamics 365 Commerce Call Center and act on customer’s details and orders as required.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce

Please share your thoughts with us about the 2021 release wave 1 updates for Dynamics 365 Commerce. We will continue to bring new capabilities and enhancements to Dynamics 365 Commerce and look forward to sharing more in the future.

The post Continued innovation in Dynamics 365 Commerce 2021 release wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s increasingly complex business environment, project-centric organizations face a variety of challenges to succeed; challenges like winning new deals, optimizing resource utilization, simplifying time and expense processes, streamlining project financials, and gaining key business insights. Ultimately, project-centric organizations are always looking for ways to optimize their operations and improve their bottom line.

Since its launch, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations has connected sales, resource management, project management, and finance teams within one application to help win more deals, accelerate project delivery, and maximize profitability. In our first 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 Project Operations, we’ve refined and enhanced features that will continue to empower your project-centric business.

Non-stock materials for projects

With this update, sales and account managers using Project Operations deployed for lite and resource or non-stocked scenarios can provide more accurate quotes based on estimates, including non-stocked materials and their pricing as well as project contracts that contain services and materials. This update will also allow consumption tracking of these materials during the project delivery phase so project accountants can invoice customers for their use.

Procurement agents will have the ability to record pending vendor invoices for projects and provide these insights to all personas involved, from the project manager to the project accountant. Project team members and project managers will be able to track and approve non-stocked material usage against the project, enabling downstream accounting. Accounting and finance can see non-stock material costs immediately and invoice customers for their usage.

Task-based billing

In project-centric businesses, account and project managers often face the challenge of accommodating their customer’s complex billing and contracting needs. Sometimes a set of project tasks are complimentary or not chargeable, like proof of concept or presales activities, while the remaining tasks may require fixed fee or time and materials billing. Another example of complex contracting requirements is when multiple organizations need to be billed for different sets of tasks under the same project. Project Operations deployed for resource or non-stocked scenarios now support multiple billing scenarios with the flexibility to define what to bill for, whom to bill, and when to bill for each contract line all the way down to the task level.

Customers will now have the flexibility to use multiple billing methods in the contract while keeping the work in the same project for easy management and invoicing. Finance and leadership now get combined, accurate project profitability analysis for the work under a contract, regardless of its billing requirements.

Improvements to project planning and task scheduling experiences

Since its release, Project Operations has leveraged project management capabilities from Microsoft Project for the web. Project Operations customers have benefited from new features released by the Project team like Export to Excel, Export Timeline to PDF, Create Attachments on Tasks, and more. Learn more about what’s new in Project.

One 2021 release wave 1 feature we’d like to highlight is Scheduling modes, which will enable project managers to designate how Project Operations calculate task assignments depending on what makes the most sense for a particular project. Define the amount of work needed to complete an assignment (fixed effort) or the amount of time it will take to complete (fixed duration). Alternatively, set a completion date or the amount of work, and let Project Operations determine the allocation of resources needed to meet the deadline (fixed units).

Throughout the 2021 release wave 1, the Project team will bring even more new features to Project for the web and to Project Operations as well.

Enhanced Project Operations APIs

Project for the web capabilities in Project Operations were preventing certain scheduling entities from create, update, and delete programmatic access. We have now enabled enhanced APIs so customers can develop custom solutions to utilizing this API. Learn more about Schedule APIs.

Learn more about these features and how Project Operations connects project-centric businesses in one application

Learn about these capabilities by reading the What’s New April 2021 release notes and the Project Operations 2021 release wave 1.

We invite you to watch on-demand event sessions showcasing these features, Reimagine Project Management with Microsoft.

To learn more about Projects Operations, watch videos on how Project Operations can help you:

• Win more bids with better deal management
• Optimize resource utilization
• Accelerate project delivery
• Enhance collaboration and simplify time and expense
• Drive project performance
• Increase business agility

The post Discover the latest capabilities in Dynamics 365 Project Operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.