In today’s connected world, voice communication remains a cornerstone of customer engagement. Whether it’s a support call for customer service or a telehealth session with a doctor, call quality and reliability are critical. That’s where our enriched telemetry and insights come in. Equipped with comprehensive telemetry data, developers and IT teams can monitor, detect, diagnose, and resolve issues with voice call performance, regardless of the calling service provider.

This blog post will guide you through the powerful diagnostics and telemetry tools available in Dynamics 365. You’ll see how they can enhance your contact center’s efficiency and customer satisfaction. By leveraging these tools, you can ensure seamless voice communication, proactively address potential issues, and deliver an exceptional experience to your customers! 

For either an inbound call where callers are calling into the contact center, or outbound calls where agents are contacting customers, there is a lifecycle to every conversation. This lifecycle is typically as below.  

We have a wide range of Azure monitoring tools, including Application Insights and Azure Communication Service (ACS) Call Diagnostics in Call Diagnostics Center (CDC). These tools, integrated through Azure Monitor and AppInsights, serve different layers of the communication stack and can be complementary when used together. The telemetry in these tools is usually available within 15 minutes, making them apt for monitoring. 

The conversation lifecycle in Application Insights

The conversation lifecycle paints a full picture of the call and does the following: 

• Captures operational conversation events: initiation, voice agent handoff, routing to queues, and agent assignment until resolution. 

• Enables monitoring workflow health, agent performance, and customer service representatives’ performance, as well as customer experience. 

• Integrates directly with Application Insights to track conversation telemetry and build custom dashboards.

• Enables telemetry analysis using our pre-built Azure Data Explorer dashboards. Or, you can simply use these queries to create your own custom queries suited to your business needs. See the sample query here: Configure conversation diagnostics (preview) | Microsoft Learn  

You can now enable out-of-the-box workbooks for viewing all this telemetry in one place. These are in preview right now to try out. Reach out to D365CS_Diagnostics@microsoft.com to enable the reports.

You can also build and edit your own queries in the editor to answer your business questions.  

ACS call diagnostics 

Azure Communication Service (ACS) call diagnostics in Call Diagnostics Center (CDC) help you analyze call telemetry and does the following: 

• Focuses on media telemetry: audio/video quality, jitter, packet loss, latency, device issues. 

• Enables technical troubleshooting of call quality and client-side performance. 

• Can be used for calls from any PSTN operator. 

• Enables data to be routed to Log Analytics via Azure Monitor for querying and alerting. 

You can see these insights in interactive timelines and log analytics workbooks, making it easier to pinpoint the root cause of call quality issues. To learn more, go to Azure Communication Services Call Diagnostics | Microsoft Learn. 

Performance in voice and video 

ACS recently rolled out additional telemetry on performance that is handy for identifying and debugging scenarios that have higher than normal latency. You can: 

• Identify calling SDK APIs that are high latency, for P95 or even P99.  

• Drill down into individual API scenarios to show detailed performance trend.  

Additional information is available in Azure Communication Services Voice and Video Insights | Microsoft Learn 

You can also see the P95 latency thresholds on this page to use as guidance.  

Use cases

Let’s understand how you can use these tools through a couple of common use cases.

Case 1: Optimizing for assignments

As a supervisor, you are tasked with keeping customer service representative assignment time around 3 minutes on average. If assignment time begins to rise, maintaining the same service level requires proactive measures. With assistance from an IT admin, you configure a monitor in Application Insights using conversation lifecycle telemetry. You set the average assignment time to 2 minutes and receive email alerts if the number rises, enabling adjustments.

traces 

| extend customDim = parse_json(customDimensions) 

| extend  

       conversationId =tostring(customDim["powerplatform.analytics.resource.id"]), 

       subscenario = tostring(customDim["powerplatform.analytics.subscenario"]) 

| where subscenario in ("RTQ", "AgentAccept") 

| project timestamp, conversationId, subscenario; 

let latestRTQsBeforeAgentAccept = subscenarios 

| where subscenario == "RTQ" 

| join kind=inner (subscenarios 

    | where subscenario == "AgentAccept" 

    | project agentAcceptTime = timestamp, conversationId) on conversationId 

| where timestamp  2min 

| project conversationId, assignmentTime 

With this query, the alert has a severity of 2, indicating Warning. Additionally, you can select how and when to summarize results, and how frequently to evaluate the calls, and where to send the alerts to. For a critical metric such as assignment time, selecting your evaluation to run every 15 minutes will cost $0.50 a month. 

In the midst of a typical day, an alert notifies you that assignment time has exceeded 150 seconds for more than 10 calls in the past 15 minutes. You reach out to the IT admin, who swiftly jumps into action.

Leveraging the tools at their disposal, they begin diagnosing. They first look at the conversations exceeding 150s in the dashboard they set up using Azure Data Explorer Dashboards. There are more than 30 conversations by now where assignment time has exceeded 150 seconds. They choose a few and view their conversation state flow within the built-in views. The IT admin observes an unusually high queue volume. To manage the surge, an overflow rule is triggered, initiating callbacks. The callback duration is then factored into the assignment time, resulting in a higher-than-normal average assignment times.

The IT admin quickly runs a query in AppInsights and identifies a queue with lower call volume. By routing calls to this queue as an overflow action, they can alleviate the strain on the queue experiencing higher assignment times. What once required extensive troubleshooting with Microsoft Support is now effortlessly resolved, with the answers at your fingertips. 

Case 2: Optimizing for network issues

As a supervisor, a few of your Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) report dropped calls and network error messages during calls. To investigate, you gather the conversation IDs from your team and reach out to your IT admin for support. The IT admin retrieves the call ID for these conversations by using a query in Application Insights. 

The IT Admin then filters for these call IDs in ACS Call Diagnostics and uncovers a recurring no network error confirming a contact center-wide outage rather than isolated network failures.

To prevent future disruptions, the supervisor ensures calls automatically switch to a backup connection when the primary network goes down, maintaining stability and avoiding dropped calls.

Case 3: Optimizing for call connectivity with SBC

As an IT admin, you are responsible for diagnosing calling issues that may involve a non-Microsoft telephony system connected to Azure Communication Services (ACS) via Direct Routing. These complex calling issues will span both Direct Routing SBCs and ACS. When you see a support ticket about a specific incoming call that traversed your Direct Routing SBC, you start with the call ID generated by the SBC. Your goal is to map this trunk call ID to its corresponding ACS correlation ID and uncover the root cause using end-to-end telemetry. 

Inside your ACS resource, you navigate to Azure Monitor, then to Monitoring > Logs. There, you run a targeted query on the ACSCallSummary table. Replace trunkCallId with the specific call ID from the Direct Routing SBC for the call you want to troubleshoot. 

ACSCallSummary 

| where ParticipantType == "PSTN" 

| project 

    | CorrelationId, PstnParticipantCallType, ParticipantEndReason, ParticipantEndSubCode, 

    | trunkCallId = parse_json (CallDebuggingInfo).trunkCallId, CallDuration 

| where trunkCallId has "" 

This query returns the ACS correlation ID linked to your SBC-generated call ID. With this correlation ID in hand, you proceed to ACS Call Diagnostics. Running the correlation ID through the diagnostic tools, you discover a recurring pattern: “No Network” errors appear consistently for calls routed through this path, confirming that the problem is not isolated to a single user or device. 

Instead, your investigation reveals a contact center-wide network outage impacting all calls passing through the affected Direct Routing SBC. With actionable evidence, you escalate the incident for resolution, ensuring future calls are routed via healthy trunks, and document your findings for compliance and proactive monitoring.

By leveraging intuitive dashboards, real-time alerts, and deep integration with Azure services, organizations can quickly identify bottlenecks, optimize performance, and deliver consistently exceptional customer experiences. Embrace these powerful tools to transform your operations, delight your customers, and stay ahead of the competition.

Learn more

To learn more, see Understand conversation diagnostics (preview) | Microsoft Learn 

The post Diagnostics and telemetry for Dynamics 365 Contact Center voice channel appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

For decades, growing revenue in business-to-business (B2B) sales meant expanding the sales team. More sellers, more deals. But AI is providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine customer relationship management (CRM), and business leaders are keen to use its potential to boost sales outcomes and do more with less. Organizations are building the sales teams of the future by investing in generative AI and autonomous AI agents that can empower sales teams to deliver faster, hyper-personalized buying experiences—deeply understanding customer intent and proactively guiding decisions to influence pipeline.

Autonomous agents can handle the manually intensive parts of a typical sales workflow; for example, researching sales leads while allowing reps to spend more time in front of the customers selling and closing revenue. This is what we call agentic sales—where humans guide agents through fully autonomous workflows, transforming the sales journey and delivering meaningful customer engagements. Becoming an agentic sales organization is top mind for leaders, but many don’t know where to start.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Close more deals and increase seller efficiency with an AI-powered CRM solution.

Get started today.

The pressure to deliver on customer expectations is higher than ever. Buyers want faster responses and better customer experience and are willing to walk away if those needs are not met. But with data barriers and organizational silos teams globally are struggling to meet these demands. In the face of these challenges, yesterday’s CRM systems are taking time away from what matters—building relationships and delivering personalized interactions across the sales journey. Sales leaders now rely on AI to provide sales insights and recommend next best actions from their customer data; and they are increasingly looking to agents to automate and augment work like researching, qualifying, and drafting outreach. Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024.¹

We’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant* for Sales Force Automation for the fifteenth consecutive year.

How Microsoft is making selling easier

Reimagine resource-intensive workflows across the sales pipeline

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to boost sales outcomes and improve customer experience powered by a CRM system that embeds AI and agents throughout the key stages of the deal cycle. Sellers can develop, prioritize, and close pipeline faster by adopting a consistent cadence across teams with autonomous AI agents and Copilot. Dynamics 365 helps sellers stay on top of their deals and deliver high-quality customer engagements across touchpoints with AI-powered engagement guidance and real-time action recommendations. With conversational intelligence built-in, sellers get real-time call transcriptions, sentiment analysis, and actionable insights that help them stay focused and responsive. Sales managers are able to use these insights to scale winning teams and grow their business with intelligent forecasting. Sales operations leads are able to tailor the agentic sales solution to meet the needs of the business and deliver sales efficiency with trust and accountability.

Integration with an expanded ecosystem 

Organizations can harness the breadth of the Microsoft Cloud to empower their sales teams with intelligent, connected experiences—easily integrating data, collaboration, and AI-powered insights. Integrated collaboration tools that streamline communication and drive accountability across marketing, sales, and service departments. Embedded Microsoft Teams chat within Dynamics 365 enables real-time discussions through dedicated teams and channels, fostering cross-functional alignment. With Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales sellers can easily share opportunities, leads, and account information plus set up deal rooms directly in Teams with automatic sharing of data and files from Dynamics 365 Sales. Copilot in Power Apps makes it easier than ever to tailor the sales experience. Whether it’s customizing dashboards, building forms, or automating workflows, sellers can use natural language to optimize the user interface around how you work. It’s a smarter, faster way to extend Dynamics 365 Sales—without needing to write a single line of code.

Our customer’s success 

Ricoh Japan drives digital transformation with Dynamics 365 Sales incorporating generative AI for enhanced sales capabilities and seamless integration with Microsoft 365.

Among the most significant benefits of implementing Dynamics 365 Sales for Ricoh was their new access to generative AI technology. As an example of how Ricoh Japan is using generative AI, product recommendations from four sources appear when users access the new system: from daily reports entered in Dynamics 365 Sales, from industry information on the web, from purchase history, and top-selling products by customer segment. “These all appear automatically,” says Kazunari Sakai, CRM Promotion Group Leader in the CRM Planning Office, Marketing Center, Digital Service Sales Division at Ricoh Japan. “Microsoft 365 Copilot is used to summarize Outlook emails as well as chats and meetings conducted using Teams.”

There are many strengths in our sales process that we have honed over a 20-year period and hope to carry forward. Dynamics 365 Sales integrates with Power Platform, a line of products facilitating low-code/no-code development and able to meet our Fit to Standard framework.”

—Makoto Nagai, General Manager of the CRM Promotion Office, DX Promotion Center, Corporate Planning Division, Ricoh Japan

As organizations continue to begin adopting AI agents, Microsoft is here guiding each team as they become an agentic sales organization built on trust and security in leading products like Dynamics 365 Sales.

¹Gartner®, Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2025, October 2024

²Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Steve Rietberg, Wendy Butler-Mafuz, 21 July 2025.

*The report was titled Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation from 2007-2008. Microsoft was recognized as Microsoft Dynamics CRM from 2011-2014 and as Microsoft (Dynamics CRM Online) in 2015-2016. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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

The post Microsoft named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Sales Force Automation Platforms    appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce a major upgrade to how sellers interact with Copilot summaries in Dynamics 365 Sales. Beginning with the 2025 Release Wave 2, Copilot summaries for Opportunities, Leads, and Accounts will appear directly at the top of the record in a sleek insights bar. This update brings AI-powered insights directly into the seller’s workflow, thereby reducing clicks, improving focus, and enabling faster decisions.

Why This Matters 

The sidecar experience has been useful, but many sellers find it disconnected from the main form and difficult to use due to limited space. Scrolling through long summaries in a narrow pane often slows down productivity and disrupts focus. 

The new insights bar presents key insights directly on the form, at the top of each record. This eliminates the need to open a separate pane. With this streamlined experience, sellers can ramp up faster, stay in context, and respond more effectively to customer needs. 

This change is not just a visual update. It is a step toward making selling more intelligent and contextual. Whether you’re new to the sales team or an experienced seller, this improvement ensures that essential insights are always visible when you need them.  

What’s Changing 

Summary displayed at the top of the record form 

The new insights bar provides a one-line synopsis for quick scanning. It remains visible in a collapsed state and can be expanded to view more details. An example synopsis for a lead is: 

“Acme is exploring Airpot coffee machines for their new manufacturing site with a $24.9K budget expected to close by May 25th, 2025” 

You can expand the insights bar to read more details: 

You can click on options like “See full summary“ to open the lead’s research page:

For organizations using the Sales Qualification Agent, the insights bar displays agent-generated summary. Sellers can navigate to the agent’s research page to access deeper insights about the lead’s company, view tailored recommendations, and identify clear next steps.  

What’s coming next

We are working to bring the same agent-powered experience to Opportunity and Account records. Until then, these records will continue to display summaries in a popup. 

Once the agentic experience is available, sellers will get access to a full research page for these records as well. 

What’s not changing 

• Earlier summary customizations will be honored in the new experience. 

• Ability to copy the generated summary. 

• Providing thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback on summary quality. 

• Using copilot sidecar chat to generate summary for any specific record. 

Launch plan and next steps 

The new summary experience is part of the 2025 Release Wave 2 updates for Dynamics 365 Sales: 

• Early access of the new experience is available from July 2025. Opt in to early access updates. 

• General availability starts in September 2025, with that, the new experience will be default enabled for users. 

We recommend enabling early access in your environments and preparing your sellers for the new summary experience. Share any feedback or challenges with us so we can continue to make selling easier and more effective. 

The post Introducing the new summary experience in Dynamics 365 Sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

IRS 1099 reporting is a critical compliance process in the United States, requiring businesses and financial institutions to report various types of non-employee income—such as payments to freelancers, interest, dividends, and rent—to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This ensures transparency and helps the IRS track income that may not be captured through traditional employment reporting. 

For years, Dynamics 365 Business Central has supported 1099 reporting through a familiar and straightforward process. Users could configure 1099 form boxes, designate vendors as 1099-liable, and manage reporting through the purchasing and payment workflows, culminating in year-end printing on preprinted IRS forms. However, due to frequent and often last-minute changes from the IRS—typically released in October or November—Microsoft had to delay updates, creating a stressful and unsustainable cycle for partners, customers, and users alike. 

Recognizing the need for a more resilient and modern approach, Microsoft has introduced a completely new 1099 reporting experience. This is not a redesign of the existing functionality, but a brand-new solution delivered as a preinstalled, standalone IRS Forms app in U.S. Business Central environments. This shift brings a fresh architecture and process flow, from setup to submission, with the most significant change occurring at the end of the reporting cycle. 

What does this mean to you? 

You can stop ordering preprinted 1099 forms from IRS. The new IRS Forms app no longer supports printing on preprinted forms. 

This change is driven by two key factors: 

1. Regulatory Compliance: In this moment, businesses filing 10 or more information returns, including all 1099 forms, are required to file electronically. This threshold means that even small businesses are now likely subject to e-filing requirements. 

2. Technical Simplification: Supporting preprinted forms is complex and error-prone, as even slight variations in form layout can cause misalignment. It also meant customers had to wait for Microsoft to release updates each year to unblock you. With digital files, updates are easier to manage, and the submission process becomes more reliable and efficient. 

But we haven’t forgotten about your vendors. The new app allows you to generate substitute 1099 copies with the same content as the official forms, which can be printed or emailed automatically. These reports are also configurable, enabling you to add new form boxes without needing support from Microsoft or a partner. 

We won’t cover all the new features here—there are many productivity enhancements worth exploring. We encourage you to review the full documentation: : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/localfunctionality/unitedstates/introduction-to-the-irs-forms.  

Get Ready Now 

Before this change becomes mandatory, we strongly recommend enabling the new IRS Forms app in your sandbox environment and testing it alongside your upgrade process as soon as possible. This will ensure a smoother transition and help you adapt to the new workflow with confidence. To do so, just enable new 1099 forms on the Feature Management page. 

Stay tuned. Based on early feedback from partners and MVPs, we’ll be rolling out additional improvements before the end of the year. 

The post Business Central and IRS 1099 Reporting in the USA: An Important Shift Ahead  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s retail landscape, payments have evolved into a strategic inflection point—where customer expectations, brand trust, and operational efficiency converge. No longer just the final step in a transaction, payments shape the overall customer experience and directly influence conversion, satisfaction, and loyalty. As consumers engage across physical stores, mobile apps, and digital platforms, they demand seamless, secure, and flexible payment options tailored to their context. At the same time, as retailers expand into new geographies, they must navigate a complex landscape of local payment preferences, regulatory complexities, and asynchronous processing requirements. Retail payment innovations are clearly needed.

A New Solution in Partnership with Adyen

Meeting these demands requires a payment infrastructure that’s not only omnichannel and secure, but also globally adaptive—capable of scaling across geographies while delivering localized, compliant, and consistent checkout experiences. In short, payments are not just an operational necessity—they’re a growth lever and competitive differentiator in an increasingly borderless retail economy. Dynamics 365 Commerce, in partnership with Adyen, offers a native payment connector which enables retailers to meet this challenge head-on, offering a modern approach to payments that supports global expansion, operational efficiency and elevates customer experience. 

Adyen is a global payment platform serving almost 100 countries and expanding rapidly. It supports a wide range of payment methods across regions and channels—from credit cards and digital wallets to Pay by Bank (open banking) and BNPL providers. Its unified commerce approach allows retailers to consolidate payment processing, fraud prevention, and reporting into a single system. The payment connector to Adyen is maintained and continuously enhanced by the Dynamics 365 Commerce product team in close collaboration with Adyen, which not only reduces technical overhead, but delivers secure, flexible checkout experiences across both physical and digital storefronts.  Recent updates focus on enabling secure, mobile-ready operations—empowering retailers to offer greater payment flexibility to consumers while positioning their businesses for future geographic expansion. 

Let’s explore some of the latest retail payment innovations helping retailers achieve these strategic goals. 

Wallet Payments 

NFC based wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay have moved from novelty to necessity. These contactless options not only offer enhanced security through tokenization but also speed up checkout times significantly. In addition to NFC wallets, the QR code-based wallets like Alipay, WeChat Pay, PayPay etc. enhance customer convenience and satisfaction. These digital payment methods offer a fast, secure, and contactless way to complete transactions, catering to the growing preference for cashless payments. Dynamics 365 Commerce leverages Adyen to help the merchants easily enable these wallets, and attract a broader customer base, including tech-savvy shoppers and international tourists who rely on these platforms. 

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) 

BNPL services have exploded in popularity, particularly among younger shoppers. By offering instant financing options at the point of sale, retailers can increase average transaction values while giving customers the flexibility they crave. Merchants using Dynamics 365 Commerce with Adyen connector can leverage BNPL providers such as Klarna and Affirm in stores which can help increase the Average Order Value without burdening the customer’s wallet. 

Mobility to In-Store Payments 

Enabling store associates to take payments wherever the customer significantly enhances the shopping experience by offering convenience and flexibility. This fundamentally changes the in-store experience by: 

• Reducing checkout lines and waiting times 

• Enabling personalized service where customers are, rather than forcing them to a central checkout 

• Allowing for immediate product information, inventory checks, and payment processing in a single interaction 

• Creating opportunities for clienteling and relationship-building throughout the shopping journey 

 A development in retail payments is the rise of using mobile phones for payment capture, particularly Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhone. This technology transforms standard iPhones into payment terminals, eliminating the need for traditional POS hardware. Merchants can now run the Store Commerce application on iPhones and leverage Adyen connector to accept the NFC based card payments on the iPhones. 

 Similarly, Android-based All in one payment terminals such as Adyen’s Castle devices enables the retailers to run the Store Commerce app from Microsoft and capture card and wallet payments.  

Pay by Link 

The Tap to Pay on iPhone is great for NFC based card payments while Android Castle devices are great for all types of cards i.e., with or without NFC chips and QR code-based wallet payments, however, supporting local payment methods which require asynchronous processing is usually a challenge. These payment methods require the commerce solution to listen to payment notifications from the payment processor and process the transaction accordingly. Dynamics 365 Commerce now supports a new payment method from Adyen named Pay by Link which generates an Adyen hosted payment link. Opening the link directs the in-store customers to a secure checkout page on their phones, enabling various payment methods supported by Adyen, including the local payment methods which require asynchronous processing.  

It’s important to call out that the Pay by Link payment method does not require any specialized hardware such as payment terminal or special tablets and does not even require a hardware station which means that even the web-based cloud point of sale can accept digital payments without a need to maintain a hardware station in the store. Pay by Link can be very effective for line busting scenarios as the store associate can scan the customer items and generate a payment link for the customers and suspend the transaction. The customers can make a payment while in line and when they reach the cashier’s counter, the cashier can recall the suspended transaction, print receipts and complete the transaction. 

 Using these various options, Dynamics 365 Commerce empowers merchants to accept payments anywhere—from pop-up shops to home delivery—while maintaining brand consistency and security standards. These mobility options also enable a more efficient use of floor space and help merchants to rapidly scale operations for seasonal demands without investing in additional terminals. 

Intelligent payment routing: the hidden cost-saver 

While consumers rarely think about payment processing networks, retailers know that every transaction carries costs. When a customer uses a debit card, the transaction can potentially be processed through multiple networks. While many retailers default to major card networks, regional debit networks like STAR, NYCE, and PULSE often offer substantially lower interchange fees. 

Merchants using Dynamics 365 Commerce can now benefit from Adyen’s capability to automatically identify eligible transactions and route them through the most cost-effective network. A retail payment innovation resulting in significant savings for merchants —without any change to the customer experience. 

Productivity through consistent user experiences 

The benefits of modern payment solutions extend beyond the customer-facing advantages to significantly impact associate productivity. When store employees interact with a consistent, intuitive user interface across all point-of-sale functions, training time decreases while efficiency soars. 

Dynamics 365 Commerce now supports a unified payment experience across all payment methods. This enhancement is aimed at eliminating the cognitive burden of switching between different interfaces for various payment methods. Associates can move seamlessly from processing a standard credit card payment to handling a BNPL transaction or a gift card payment without missing a beat. This consistency reduces transaction errors, speeds up checkout times, and allows staff to focus on customer service rather than struggling with cumbersome payment processes.  

The new payment flow is really a step in the right direction. There are numerous options available today, whether it’s cryptocurrency, financing, or other digital payment methods. The ability to easily navigate payment is important for both our company and the customer. Everyone will have a preference and being able to accommodate that easily allows our staff to focus on the customer instead of trying to coordinate complex exchanges between systems. We see a lot of potential in this style of payment flow, streamlining the process and reducing unnecessary button grids.

– Chad Davison, IT Systems Team, Memory Express Inc. 

Embedded fraud protection: securing the transaction ecosystem 

As retail payment innovations evolve, so do the tactics of fraudsters. Retailers with robust fraud protection not only minimize direct losses but also preserve customer trust. Dynamics 365 Commerce now enables the merchants to leverage the built-in risk management capabilities in Adyen for ecommerce and Pay by Link transactions. Any fraudulent transaction prevented represents both saved revenue and a protected customer relationship.   

Enabling post-visit and remote payment experiences 

Dynamics 365 Commerce continues to expand its support for asynchronous payments, aiming to give merchants greater flexibility in how and when customers complete transactions. One such planned future enhancement is the ability for store associates to generate orders—including shipping details—and send a secure payment link to the customer, enabling them to finalize the purchase at their convenience. If payment isn’t completed within a specified timeframe, the system can automatically cancel the order and release the inventory. 

This approach supports more flexible purchasing journeys, for example, when a customer needs time to consider a larger purchase. Future enhancements also aim to extend this capability to call centers, allowing representatives to send secure payment links instead of collecting payment information over the phone. This would support additional modern payment methods and improve both security and customer experience for remote transactions. 

Bringing It All Together 

Retailers making the most of today’s retail payment innovations often take a unified approach, treating technologies like digital wallets, BNPL, Pay by Link, and mobile SoftPOS not as isolated tools but as components of a cohesive payment strategy. With support for these capabilities, along with Adyen’s built-in risk management and intelligent routing features, Dynamics 365 Commerce helps merchants design payment experiences that can enhance convenience, improve operational flexibility, and support security standards. 

As the payment landscape continues to evolve, success will hinge not on selecting a single technology, but on integrating multiple options to align with customer preferences and operational needs. By building a flexible, future-ready payment foundation, retailers can better adapt to changing expectations and create experiences driving efficiency and customer satisfaction. Learn more about other retail payment innovations, along with what is new and what is coming to Dynamics 365 Commerce in our release planner.  

The post Next-Gen Retail Payments: Trends, Tech, and Transformation using Dynamics 365 Commerce + Adyen  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re entering the age of AI agents, a transformative moment reshaping the landscape of business applications and platforms. AI agents aren’t just making incremental improvements, they’re helping to redefine productivity and can fundamentally change how work gets done.

Published today, the 2025 release wave 2 for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot offerings introduces new and improved capabilities that help organizations to harness the full potential of this new era. These plans compile new capabilities slated for release between October 2025 and March 2026.
Integral to the wave 2 plans, AI assistants and agents not only help humans with day-to-day tasks, but also act as proactive partners to drive better business outcomes. Our upcoming release brings that vision to life, helping to make AI not just accessible but an essential component in daily operations. Whether it’s enabling sellers to close deals faster, providing service teams real-time trusted knowledge, or empowering finance professionals with AI-driven reconciliation and analysis, these enhancements can be transformative to the way we all work.

Be sure to stay updated on the latest features and create your personalized release plan using the release planner.

Highlights from Dynamics 365

The 2025 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 brings new innovation to transform functions across your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data enhances Microsoft Copilot and agents with real-time, unified customer profiles, enabling teams to act on insights within their workflow. With enriched data, seamless platform integration, and faster processing, businesses can deliver timely, personalized experiences that boost engagement and conversions.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys empowers businesses to craft personalized, AI-driven customer experiences across all touchpoints. With Copilot, agents, and enhanced orchestration tools, teams can engage the right audiences at scale, streamline lead generation, and accelerate growth.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales brings the power of AI to help sellers achieve their targets and automate busywork. Microsoft Copilot delivers actionable insights in the flow of work, while AI agents research and engage leads, drive purchase intent, and proactively bring key insights and emergent deal risks—helping sellers close more deals faster. A reimagined interface reorients sellers from data to insights. Watch this video to discover the new and enhanced features in this release wave for Dynamics 365 Sales.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service continues to enhance agentic and Copilot capabilities for case and knowledge management, as well as AI-driven routing.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center continues to enhance agentic and Copilot capabilities to automate the service journey across digital and voice channels, along with the introduction of new omnichannel and supervisor capabilities in the 2025 release wave 2.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service will deliver AI agents, enhanced scheduling tools, mobile usability improvements, and deeper Microsoft 365 integration in the upcoming release wave. With innovations across inspections, vendor coordination, and connectivity with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Field Service empowers organizations to deliver smarter, faster, and more seamless service at scale.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance brings global-scale finance and agentic operations to our customers, including agents that can lead to faster financial close, and provide additional automation and optimization across large scale operations, as well as enhancements to business performance analytics and planning solutions.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can enhance demand planning with event and promotion forecasting, and help improve quality management for sample handling; and the Supplier Communications Agent will automate vendor interactions. New supplier engagement tools and warehouse app upgrades will also be introduced to further streamline operations and boost efficiency.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations will continue to deliver powerful enhancements across the project lifecycle. These include improved mobile and browser experiences for time and expense, better project planning with enterprise custom fields, streamlined billing and invoicing workflows, and expanded support for stocked items, investment projects, and migrations to the modern architecture.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources can enhance the hire-to-retire journey with Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Viva Connections integration to help reduce duplication. New agentic capabilities will be introduced to streamline onboarding with guided experiences and automation. Recruiter assist will also now support job description generation and interview assistance, helping to improve efficiency across hiring and onboarding.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce advances in-store experiences by providing a mobile-first point-of-sale that provides business continuity even during a business outage. Improvements to the Adyen payment connector allows modern payments like Pay by Link across channels, offering more purchasing options for omnichannel customers. Additionally, omnichannel unified pricing enables retailers to establish more intricate pricing structures, helping them remain competitive.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central introduces AI agents to enhance efficiency and automation in the 2025 release wave 2. These agents seamlessly integrate to execute complex tasks, generate reports, automate processes, and optimize order creation using natural language processing. Additionally, this release focuses on quality management, subcontracting, sustainability, and e-document capabilities.

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio

2025 release wave 2 updates for Microsoft Power Platform bring new and updated ways for organizations to analyze, act on, and automate data to digitally transform their businesses.

Microsoft Copilot Studio continues its journey to make agent creation and operation even easier and more powerful with autonomous agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, the ability to build complete teams of agents that work seamlessly together, and improved governance for enterprise scalability. Copilot Studio will offer even deeper integration with Azure AI Foundry and the Microsoft Graph, helping to ensure your agents can use the latest AI technology in coordination with your data in Microsoft Graph. Watch this video to discover how the latest enhancements to Copilot Studio can benefit your business.

Microsoft Power Apps enhances human and agent collaboration with a new agent feed to supervise the work of agents and extensible built-in agents for common tasks like enter, explore, visualize, and summarize data. Bring business problems to Plan Designer and a team of agents will help you build enterprise solutions, including apps, agents, Microsoft Power BI reports, and more. Vibe code with the App Agent to create data-connected experiences—just describe what you need or provide an image, and it can be done.

Microsoft Power Pages enables businesses to build secure, data-driven portals effortlessly. In this wave, we will further expedite site building for low-code makers and pro developers to help build intelligent sites for your employees, customers, and partners. The introduction of enhanced security agent features will further empower low-code makers, pro developers, and admins with actionable insights and abilities for securing their websites.

Microsoft Power Automate is transforming how enterprises automate complex business processes through new human-in-the-loop experiences, such as advanced approvals and AI-native capabilities, such as generative actions and intelligent document processing. To manage complex automations at scale, a comprehensive suite of governance, observability, and security controls will be introduced to the Automation Center and Power Platform admin center.

Microsoft Dataverse continues to serve as a trusted low-code data platform, enabling the creation of scalable agents, Copilot applications, and automations. This update introduces enhancements to core agentic capabilities, including Dataverse for Agents and Dataverse Search to support smarter, AI-ready experiences. New features such as Dataverse Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server and AI-powered business logic tools further expand the ability to build dynamic, intelligent solutions grounded in enterprise data.

Microsoft Power Platform governance and administration will become the unified governance hub for managing intelligent agents, agent-driven apps, and automated workflows across the Microsoft ecosystem in this release wave. This will provide a secure, governable, reliable platform for agent development.

Updates to Copilot offerings

Agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot help maximize business impact across sales, service, and finance. Learn more about the 2025 release wave 2 updates for Copilot offerings. Agent updates for sales will help sellers work smarter, engage strategically, and close deals faster. Agent updates for service will expand CRM connectivity and enhance email insights and drafting—all within the tools reps use daily. Updates for finance will offer easily customizable agents that can be launched from familiar tools like Excel, boosting efficiency and insight.

Early access period

Starting August 4, 2025, customers and partners can validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These updates include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled in production environments by October 2025. Take advantage of the early access period to test these updates and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Explore the 2025 release wave 2 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform or visit the early access FAQ page for more information.

For a complete list of new capabilities, please refer to the Dynamics 365 2025 release wave 2 plan, the Microsoft Power Platform 2025 release wave 2 plan, and Copilot offerings 2025 release wave 2. We also encourage you to share your feedback in the community forums for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

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