Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2021 release wave 1 includes a new, intuitive timer control that displays service-level agreement (SLA) milestones for service cases or any SLA-enabled entity. The new timer addresses key feedback that we received from our customers. The timer is optimized to display SLA metrics, and it supports the display of multiple SLA metrics at the same time.

The SLA timer can be added to SLA-enabled entity forms, and the timer then tracks all SLAs associated with that entity. The timer shows the remaining time with a ticking timer, displays the latest status, and offers a refresh option so that agents can be sure they are seeing the latest status.

Here’s an example of an SLA timer control that shows all the SLAs with their time remaining, status, and timestamp of the last update:

Key capabilities

These key capabilities of the new timer improve agent experience:

• Near-real time ticking timer: For each SLA, the timer shows the time in days, hours, minutes, or seconds, depending on the remaining time.
• Multiple SLA KPIs: The timer control shows all the SLA KPIs applicable to that case or entity.
• Distinct icons for each status: Distinct and clear icons indicate each possible status so that agents can immediately understand the state of their SLAs. For example, the status can show hold/paused, succeeded, failed/expired, nearing noncompliance, in-progress, or canceled.
• Dynamic icons show near-real time progress: For every SLA, a dynamic icon progresses and is updated in near-real time.
• Manual refresh and timestamp: An icon in the grid allows agents to manually refresh the status of all SLA KPIs without having to wait for an auto-refresh. The timestamp of last refresh is also updated.

Configuration options give admins more control over SLA timers

Administrators enable the timer control on their entity forms depending on business needs. There are a few configuration options to provide the optimal experience to the agents, and admins can use the classic form designer to configure the SLA timer control.

The following configuration options are available:

• Filter SLA KPIs: Choose the SLA KPIs to be shown on the form. Control the view by using Data source and views.
• Update frequency: Choose how frequently all the SLA KPIs will be automatically updated with the latest status. We recommend that you use an auto-refresh interval of 30 minutes or greater for optimal form performance.

Next steps

To learn more about the SLA timer control and how to configure it, read the documentation:

Add an SLA timer to an SLA-enabled entity

Timer control for SLA-enabled entities

Define service-level agreements

Manage service configuration settings

The post Improved SLA timer control helps agents track KPIs appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

It’s amazing how much change we’ve seen across the world in a year.

One year ago, all of us were adapting to a world in lockdown. At today’s Microsoft Business Applications Summit, the worldwide community comes together still dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even as challenges continue to reverberate across industriesfrom supply chain disruptions to recurring restrictionsmost businesses are taking steps toward recovery. They’re taking stock of vulnerabilities and opportunities across their organizations, markets, and industriesand the steps needed to move forward into the future.

That’s why today’s Microsoft Business Applications Summit is so timely. As global business communities set sights on what’s next, today’s event is an opportunity for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform community to come together, assess what we’ve learned over the past year, and explore ways to proactively reimagine every layer of business.

Building the agile digital business

Everyone joining the Microsoft Business Applications Summit plays an integral part in moving business forward. Today, we are sharing stories of people and teams transforming the way they do business to be more adaptable, innovative, and impactful.

This past year demonstrated that businesses with a strong digital foundation can push the boundaries of what’s possible and achieve more, even when faced with a global crisis. Without digital capabilities, it’s next to impossible to adapt to rapid change.

At Patagonia, a leader in outdoor clothing and gear, the pandemic accelerated a journey to deliver more meaningful customer experiencesin ways no one expected. Before the crisis, the organization was preparing to move its direct-to-consumer business and selling channels onto Dynamics 365. When lockdowns shut down physical locations, from offices and retail stores to call centers and warehouses, the team turned to Microsoft Teams to coordinate the launch and rapidly adapt operations to a new retail model. With retail locations closed to customers, the team leveraged distributed order management capabilities in Dynamics 365 to turn retail locations into mini-warehouses, keeping employees working and online orders fulfilled, followed by curbside pick-up.

Equipped with the right digital capabilities, the teams at Patagonia demonstrated incredible agility in the face of changepivoting complex operations nimbly and quickly to keep customers equipped with the outdoor gear they depend on.

New ways to connect with your community

Patagonia’s story reminds us that, together, as a team, we can accomplish great things. In a year defined by keeping one’s distance, it’s critical to help our community stay connected.

Today, more than775 user groups bring together more than 2.85 million active community members to connect, learn, and engage one another on topics related to Microsoft technologies. The Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 communities connect you directly with Microsoft, your industry peers, and high-value content in a diverse, supportive environment.

Today we are introducing a new user group experience with tools to help you find, join, start, and run local user groups for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

We are supporting the user groups with an administrative team and connection to local Microsoft employees around the world. You can engage with experts to answer questions, learn about the latest innovations, and influence future product roadmaps.

Our goal is to enable a global network of local user groups that are Microsoft-supported and community-led. We invite you to explore the preview of the new experience and get started by creating or joining a local user group.

Helping you move business forward

It’s been a tough year. Every business has had to make difficult decisions, rethink plans, and readjust to conditions few could predict in advance. Moving forward means reshaping the business now to be prepared for future disruptions, large and small. That’s why we are dedicated to continuously providing the technology you need to build agility and resiliency into every layer of your business.

In April, we launched a six-month wave of hundreds of new capabilities, feature updates, and applications across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. This release wave continues our dedication to empower everyone to make an impact with technology that surfaces insights and guidance to the next best step, across every department. By harnessing the data generated across your business, everyone across the company can break through barriers to perform their best and focus on what’s best for the customer.

One way we are bringing this vision to life is by helping you deliver consistent, personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint, from the first point of awareness of your brand through purchase and service, both from the call center and in the field. Today at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, we’ll catch you up on the latest marketing technologies that help you engage individual customers at scale.

In our keynote presentation, we will demonstrate how the Los Angeles Clippers are able to make game night more personalized by engaging fans with the experiences they prefer. They can now use Dynamics 365 Customer Insightsthe Microsoft customer data platform (CDP)to connect data from a variety of sources to gain a comprehensive view of fans’ preferences and use Dynamics 365 Marketing to orchestrate customer-led journeys in real-time to deliver hyper-personalized experiences for fans on game night. With the combined power of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing, organizations can deeply understand customer behavior and intent and leverage real-time insights to personalize journeys at scale, unlocking new ways to attract, engage, and delight customers with a more human and empathetic approach.

With the new integration between Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Microsoft Advertising, advertisers can now create and export limitless set of customer segments from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights into the Microsoft Advertising platform to target on the Microsoft Search Network and Microsoft Audience Network using Customer Match targeting. These segments can be also used on third-party destinations including Google Ads, Marketo, MailChimp, dotdigital, SendGrid, and Autopilot.

Learn more by joining sessions focusing on Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, including the featured session, “Customer engagement transformed: hyper-personalize experiences to drive better business results.”

Microsoft Power Platform: Making your business more flexible

Innovation and problem solving doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Everyone in the business can play a role in moving the business forward with the right set of digital tools. Our vision for Microsoft Power Platform is to empower every creator in your company to build business solutions, increase collaboration between business and IT teams, and inject more flexibility into your business.

Humana, a U.S.-based healthcare innovation and community wellness company, is helping to bring this vision to life. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Humana used Microsoft Power Platform to rapidly build solutions catering to the needs of their millions of Medicare and specialty members and vulnerable communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our keynote presentation, we will demonstrate one of the solutionsa vaccine scheduler and community tracking applications to help members book vaccination appointments with local providers.

As part of this demo, we will also spotlight goals in Power BI, launching in preview today. Goals enables teams to easily curate business metrics that matter most and aggregate them in a unified view. From there, teams can measure progress against their goals, proactively share updates with their teammates, and dive deeper into their data when something needs further analysis. Attend today’s sessions on the Power BI roadmap and new features announcement, and read this overview to learn more.

With Microsoft Power Platform, anyone can solve business challenges with low-code apps, or automate common processesat scale, across departments, or on one’s desktop. Barriers that have blocked innovation and productivity for years are removed.

Join the conversation at Microsoft Business Applications Summit

There’s much more to explore at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit. In addition to the sessions above, we invite you to explore the full catalog of learning sessions and product roundtables. We also invite you to connect, learn, and share with peers and experts to ask questions, engage in discussions, and view content in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 communities.

For more details about what’s new for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, explore recent product updates and the 2021 release wave 1 plans.

The post Live from Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2021: Moving forward faster, together appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Even with 195 countries across the globe, today, our world can feel like a small place. We live in a time when you can instantaneously communicate with people who are on the other side of the planet. The digitalization of commerce means that we can quickly buy goods from all over the world. And with teleconferencing, we can even purchase services globally without the additional cost of travel. As consumers, the web has drastically changed our expectations of how and where we can transact business. Whereas global expansion used to be for big multinational brands who had the resources to address the complexities of serving local markets, the internet has made globalization a must for companies of all sizes.

While global expansion has many strategic advantages, such as a broader reach, new suppliers, and more revenue streams, it also introduces significant complexity. Trying to compete online in foreign markets or open offices in new countries can make you quickly realize the vastness of our world. With different languages, currencies, date formats, time zones, regulations, laws, taxes, banking requirements, and cultural differencesyou need the right adaptation strategies to seize the opportunities provided by effective global operations. Learn what’s new in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Globalization in our product updates.

Simplify global operations

At Microsoft, we are helping companies by making it easier for businesses to manage complex global operations, expand more efficiently, and operate more effectively around the world. The Microsoft operations apps include built-in localization and regulatory support for 43 countries and regions and are translated into 48 languages, with partners worldwide providing additional localization solutions (over 50 plus localization extensions have been published on Microsoft AppSource). And with the 2021 release wave 1, we are doing even more to help organizations manage their global operations with global expansion support, new electronic invoicing, and tax calculation services.

Expand globally with more out-of-the-box localizations

We extended support to five new countries and regions in October 2020, and we will be adding support for Egypt in May. We will continue to expand our support for country localizations, targeting regulatory requirements and languages based on demand and market opportunities.

Go paperless with electronic invoicing

Many governments now require electronic invoicing as it reduces tax fraud and accelerates the invoicing process. Businesses are also moving to electronic invoicing as it lowers costs and reduces manual data entry while also improving traceability and reducing end-to-end processing time.

Electronic invoicing also allows companies to quickly adapt systems and processes to what can often be an ever-changing regulatory environment. As a means of digitizing tax and minimizing tax evasion and fraud, governments are increasingly implementing mandatory e-invoicing, forcing buyers and sellers to register invoices with tax authorities electronically when a transaction occurs. Whether you are entering new markets or evolving software to meet new government regulations, e-invoicing provides substantial benefits to your business.

The updated electronic invoicing will roll out for Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Project Operations with other applications to follow in subsequent releases. The new hyper-scalable multitenant service enables configurable formats, processing of electronic invoice documents, and configurable document exchange. The new service allows companies to:

• Provide a consistent experience in electronic invoice processing and exchange across different geographies.
• Quickly and cost-effectively configure and exchange electronic invoices in the required local formats for business-to-business and business-to-government transactions.
• Accelerate invoice delivery by going paperless, speeding up processes, and improving traceability with configurable electronic invoice documents and exchanges.
• Simplify adherence to the latest electronic invoicing standards in different countries and regions.

Learn more about how electronic invoicing expands capabilities for Dynamics 365 business applications, or visit our electronic invoicing overview.

Improve compliance with tax calculation

The digitalization of tax and the steady stream of indirect tax regulations that global businesses encounter, such as VAT and GST, have further complicated existing processes by introducing new industry and compliance risks that challenge leaders in every global enterprise.

Tax calculation allows you to improve compliance with associated local regulations. The new configurable microservice (preview) enhances the tax determination and calculation capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Tax calculation is fully integrated out-of-the-box and enables you to:

• Automate and standardize tax determinations and calculations across countries or regions.
• Utilize a configurable tax determination matrix and flexible calculation designer to configure and execute complex tax determination rules and calculations using formulae and conditions.
• Simplify compliance maintenance for local tax regulations.

Learn more about the tax calculation features in our tax calculation overview.

Meet changing global and local requirements

In addition to the e-invoicing and tax calculation requirements mentioned above, a multinational company must meet other country-specific laws and business rules in the areas of tax reporting, banking, business document formats, etc. Some of these are legally required, while others are adopted based on local business practices. Legal requirements are frequently changed by tax authorities, often with very tight law enforcement dates. The existing configurable Electronic Reporting and Business Document Management capabilities in the Dynamics 365 operations apps make it easy for companies to handle these types of requirements on a global scale. And because document and report template configurations for both inbound and outbound transactions are no-code or low-code, users can create customizations based on the industry-standard data models and adapt to changing legal or other local requirements quickly.

Easily support custom configurations

In the 2021 release wave 1, we also enhanced the Regulatory Configuration Service (RCS), our configuration authoring and lifecycle management service. This no-code or low-code service extends Electronic Reporting authoring and lifecycle management capabilities so that users can now:

• Create custom configurations for the new electronic invoicing and tax calculation microservices.
• More simply configure, set up, and manage multi-component globalization features.
• Publish, store, and share custom configurations in the global repository to simplify configuration management without requiring the use of the Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS).

Better manage global operations and expansion

With expanded out-of-the-box global coverage and no-code or low-code globalization services within Dynamics 365 operations apps, businesses can manage the challenges of global operations and expansion more effectively. This enhanced flexibility allows you to quickly adapt to the unique needs of different markets at scale. Our customers and partners are using these services and capabilities to extend the standard functionality and have already created several thousand configurations for over 100 countries and regions.

Learn more about what’s new in Dynamics 365 Finance and Globalization in our product updates.

The post Reduce complexity across global operations with Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Later this year, Microsoft will launch a new Publisher program to modernize our Dynamics 365 Business Central ISV approach to support a cloud-first strategy. This new approach will ensure all future customers can choose Dynamics 365 Business Central online, while also finding the right apps on Microsoft AppSource to meet their unique requirements. This change will require ISVs to have a cloud-first strategy by the end of 2022 for their solutions listed as Microsoft AppSource apps.

The new Publisher program replaces the Registered Solution Program (RSP) and the Certified for Microsoft Dynamics (CfMD) program, which will be deprecated after being in place for more than a decade.

We’ll share details about the new Publisher program closer to launch. In the meantime, the following guidance will ensure that you are ready to transition:

• Publishers with a cloud-first strategy in place are set up for success.
  ISVs who have modernized their existing C/AL solutions by converting them into AL and full extensions, and published those Apps to Microsoft AppSource, will be more competitive. These publishers will be able to adapt faster and can focus more on their prospects and customers, instead of writing code.

The Publisher program will reward partners with a cloud-first strategy by freeing them from program fees or additional test efforts, outside of what is required for publishing to Microsoft AppSource.

This policy doesn’t mean publishers are required to have a cloud-only approach. If partners comply with the cloud-first approach, they’ll be able to easily implement Business Central online, on-premises, and partner-hosted apps.

• Better serve your customers by bringing existing Dynamics NAV or Dynamics 365 Business Central code-customized solutions into Microsoft AppSource.
  As of April 2021, Microsoft AppSource hosts almost 1,500 apps specifically built for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Over the past few years, hundreds of our partners have embraced this transition and incorporated a cloud-first strategy. Those who have transitioned to Microsoft AppSource have shared with us how they and their customers benefited from that investment.

To remain competitive, relevant, and provide digital transformation strategies to customers, we are asking all our partners to embark on a modernization journey. If there is a strong business case to continue selling to new customers, then you should avoid further delay and bring your apps to Microsoft AppSource.

From September 2022 onward, we will introduce gradually increasing fees for publishers whose resellers have sold on-premises solutions to new customers without an equivalent cloud-based solution. The fees will only be applied to sales in countries where the Dynamics 365 Business Central online service is available. Solutions registered to existing customer licenses before the program cut-off date will not be impacted by program fees. However, adding new non-AppSource solutions after the cut-off date will be impacted.

Avoid fees by creating a transition plan now. The longer you wait to bring your solutions into Microsoft AppSource, the more fees you will incur.

This change also means that publishers now have a shared responsibility with their resellers to only resell cloud-first solutions to new customers.

Just like the RSP and CfMD programs, the new Publisher program is designed to drive customer-obsession behavior, not revenue, and promote a cloud-first strategy for publishers. Our objective is to ensure customers can choose cloud deployments without exception.

Next steps

Further details about the program will be shared in the coming months. We understand that our partners are in different stages of their modernization journey. We’ve put together learning and coaching resources to support you in your transition journey. Please reach out to your regional operational center if you have any questions or concerns. We’ll connect you with the best resource to further your path forward.

The post New Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Publisher program coming in 2021 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.