In an era where service management is increasingly complex, the integration of core business functions has become critical. Fragmented systems can lead to a cascade of issues—inefficient scheduling, delayed invoicing, and a decline in customer satisfaction. Today we are thrilled to announce the general availability of the native integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central. This integration equips organizations with a comprehensive approach that harmonizes service delivery with financials, resources, and inventory management. It also equips frontline workers with modern tools, ensuring exceptional service from the outset. Let’s explore the advantages that this seamless integration provides.

Bridging the gap between Field Service and ERP systems

The division between Field Service and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems has long presented significant challenges, including:

• Lack of financial visibility: Without integration, businesses struggle to understand job costs and profitability, leaving their financial health in the dark.
• Inefficient scheduling: Siloed systems lead to inefficient scheduling of technicians, resulting in lost time and resources.
• Delayed invoicing: Manual processes and disconnected systems often cause delays in invoicing and payments, leading to cash flow disruptions.
• Data inconsistencies: Inconsistent data across systems creates errors and confusion, impacting decision-making.
• Costly and slow integrations: System integrations can be expensive and time-consuming, leading to slow time to value and ongoing maintenance cost. 

The integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central directly addresses these challenges by providing:

• Real-time visibility: Through comprehensive integration from front-line operations to back-office functions, organizations gain immediate visibility into all aspects of their operations, including finances, inventory, and resource management.
• Improved scheduling: With Copilot-assisted scheduling in Field Service dispatchers can match the right technician to the right job at the right time.
• Streamlined financial operations: Automated billing and invoicing not only accelerate the payment cycle, improving cash flow management, but also reduce errors, enhancing overall profitability, and transforming every work order into an opportunity for growth.
• Empowered frontline workers: Access to a modern mobile app empowers frontline workers to see their work on the go, access it offline, and make updates while on the job – providing more accurate data for the back office.
• Fast and cost-effective integration: This out-of-the-box integration reduces the cost and time associated with traditional integrations, leading to quicker time to value and less ongoing maintenance cost. 

Key Capabilities

The integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central not only addresses existing challenges but also enables new opportunities for businesses to enhance efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and drive growth. Key capabilities include: 

• Data synchronization: Ensures a single source of truth by synchronizing key data between the two systems.
  • Product inventory and pricing: Business Central provides the inventory data and price lists for Field Service, which helps with accurate work order creation and product usage tracking. When products are used, the inventory levels are automatically adjusted.
  • Projects and Accounts: Work Orders are seamlessly synced with Business Central Projects and Customer Accounts, ensuring precise project tracking and customer billing. 
  • Resources: Resources are automatically synced, enabling invoicing based on resource usage and rates established in Business Central for Work Order services.
• Accurate invoicing through automation: Automates the syncing of field activities with Business Central, minimizing manual effort and errors. Organizations have control over when information is synced, and can choose to post project journals manually or automatically upon Work Order completion.
• Efficient scheduling for dispatchers: Simplifies technician scheduling by suggesting the right resource based on availability, skills, and distance to the job site using Copilot-enabled scheduling capabilities in Field Service.

• Mobile access for frontline workers: Empowers technicians with the Field Service Mobile app, providing access to necessary information on the go, even in remote offline areas. Features like Inspections, Guides, and Remote Assist enhance technician capabilities.

• Comprehensive reports and analytics for service managers: Comprehensive data leads to comprehensive reporting. Organizations can access information on service delivery, financials, and inventory, allowing for improved business decision making.

Call to action

The integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central is a deliberate stride towards operational coherence and efficiency. Companies that adopt this integrated solution stand to witness an increase in operational productivity, revenue growth, and customer satisfaction metrics. Transform your operations today and unlock new growth opportunities with Dynamics 365 Field Service and Business Central integration. 

Ready to begin? Learn more about Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Already a customer? Dive into configuring this integration at Microsoft Learn.

The post Seamless integration, seamless operations: Introducing native integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Business Central appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today, we’re announcing the first pricing update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 in more than five years. Since our last pricing update, Dynamics 365 has transformed customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes with connected applications across lines of business—from marketing, sales, customer and field service, to finance, operations, and supply chain—and each year, we release hundreds of new features and enhancements designed to help people work smarter, reclaim time, and collaborate seamlessly. You can read the official Dynamics 365 blog post here.

Below is the list of products for which prices are being updated with effect from October 1, 2024¹:

Prices for Dynamics 365 on-premises customer engagement and operations products will increase by the same percentage as the respective cloud versions. Pricing for cloud products not listed above, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, will remain unchanged.

These increases will apply globally to new and existing customers (upon renewal as of October 1, 2024), and the products will be priced comparably in other currencies. To comply with local regulations, US government list prices for the same products will increase by 10% effective October 1, 2024, followed by another smaller increase effective October 1, 2025, to bring parity with commercial pricing outlined above.

Be sure to explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 to see the many capabilities recently released, and the Dynamics 365 release planner to check out those that are planned for release in upcoming months.

Notes:

¹ All prices are per user per month (or per device per month where noted). 
² Prices shown are for informational purposes only and may not be reflective of actual list price due to currency, country, region, and variant factors. Contact a Microsoft sales representative for additional information on pricing. 
³ Pricing per user per month will increase by $15 in all tiers in Microsoft Relationship Sales. Only 10-99 user tier shown for simplicity. 

The post New pricing for Microsoft Dynamics 365 effective October 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today, we’re announcing the first pricing update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 in more than five years. Since our last pricing update, Dynamics 365 has transformed customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes with connected applications across lines of business—from marketing, sales, customer and field service, to finance, operations, and supply chain—and each year, we release hundreds of new features and enhancements designed to help people work smarter, reclaim time, and collaborate seamlessly.   

While a lot has changed in the world in the last five years, our vision has stayed true: ensuring the Dynamics 365 experience helps organizations adapt to change and proactively transform their business. We have delivered on this through innovations that have helped organizations supercharge customer experiences with AI-powered, real-time customer insights for marketers, sellers, and service agents; as well as by optimizing operations and mission-critical processes with data insights, supply chain visibility, and end-to-end automation of financial processes. And today, we are seeing organizations of all sizes across industries benefit from Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365.

As we look ahead, our commitment to our customers is to continue to offer the most value and highest return on your investment in business applications, helping to fuel digital transformation.

The price changes will be effective October 1, 2024, and the products will be priced comparably across different currencies. The full list of Dynamics 365 products for which prices are being updated can be found here. Cloud pricing for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central will remain unchanged.

Be sure to explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 to see the many capabilities recently released, and the Dynamics 365 release planner to check out those that are planned for release in upcoming months.

The post New pricing for Microsoft Dynamics 365 effective October 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today, we’re announcing the first pricing update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 in more than five years. Since our last pricing update, Dynamics 365 has transformed customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes with connected applications across lines of business—from marketing, sales, customer and field service, to finance, operations, and supply chain—and each year, we release hundreds of new features and enhancements designed to help people work smarter, reclaim time, and collaborate seamlessly. You can read the official Dynamics 365 blog post here.

Below is the list of products for which prices are being updated with effect from October 1, 2024¹:

Prices for Dynamics 365 on-premises customer engagement and operations products will increase by the same percentage as the respective cloud versions. Pricing for cloud products not listed above, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, will remain unchanged.

These increases will apply globally to new and existing customers (upon renewal as of October 1, 2024), and the products will be priced comparably in other currencies. To comply with local regulations, US government list prices for the same products will increase by 10% effective October 1, 2024, followed by another smaller increase effective October 1, 2025, to bring parity with commercial pricing outlined above.

Be sure to explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 to see the many capabilities recently released, and the Dynamics 365 release planner to check out those that are planned for release in upcoming months.

Notes:

¹ All prices are per user per month (or per device per month where noted). 
² Prices shown are for informational purposes only and may not be reflective of actual list price due to currency, country, region, and variant factors. Contact a Microsoft sales representative for additional information on pricing. 
³ Pricing per user per month will increase by $15 in all tiers in Microsoft Relationship Sales. Only 10-99 user tier shown for simplicity. 

The post New pricing for Microsoft Dynamics 365 effective October 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Copilot analytics report within Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides a good overview of the usage of Copilot features by agents. You can derive insights into the most frequently leveraged features, impact of Copilot on agent productivity, and agent satisfaction with Copilot responses. While this report provides a good summarization of the impact Copilot has on contact center KPIs, we are seeing interest from customers to drill into individual interaction data, especially around the interactions voted as negative by their agents.

This blog provides an overview of the underlying data that powers the Copilot dashboard, and the additional data points available to you.  We hope that with this context, you can use model customization to modify these reports to better suit your organization’s needs. 

First, make sure your organization is storing agent experience data. You can ask your admin to validate this for you in the Customer Service admin center by making sure they select the Agent experience data checkbox in Copilot help pane. You can continue using Copilot with this setting turned off, but you won’t have historical interaction data to build analytics.

View and analyze agent experience data

When you turn on agent experience data, Dataverse stores the following:

• Transcripts from when agents chat with Copilot
• Agent actions such as copying a summary presented or using a suggested reply from Copilot
• Agent feedback on responses in the form of thumbs up, thumbs down and verbatim feedback

This data is stored in the msdyn_copilotinteraction, msdyn_copilotinteractiondata, msdyn_copilottranscript, and msdyn_copilottranscriptdata tables in Dataverse.

Let’s look at some examples of agent interactions you can view. For instructions on how to download this data, see Download Copilot transcripts | Microsoft Learn.

Interaction 1: Agent asks Copilot a question

The agent asks Copilot “How can I book a trip?” while working on a case. Copilot leverages a knowledge article to generate the following response.

Every interaction an agent has with Copilot is an entry in the msdyn_copilotinteraction and gets a unique interaction ID.

You can use the transcript id stored in msdyn_interactioncontext to get the full transcript of this interaction from the msdyn_copilottranscriptdata entity.

Interaction 2: Agent provides feedback on Copilot’s responses

The agent wasn’t fully satisfied with Copilot’s response and is choosing to rate the response with a thumbs down and provides verbatim feedback.  

Another entry in msdyn_copilotinteraction gets created with the same msdyn_scenariorequestid and msdyn_scenariotype, but with msdyn_interactiontypename set to “ThumbsDown”.

You can use the reference msdyn_interactiondataid to gather the verbatim feedback the agent provided from the msdyn_copilotinteractiondata entity.

Interaction 3: Agent asks Copilot to summarize a case

The agent picks up a case from a colleague and requests Copilot to generate a summary to catch up.  

Another entry in msdyn_copilotinteraction gets created with a new msdyn_scenariorequestid and msdyn_scenariotype set to “Case summary”. 

You can use the reference msdyn_interactiondataid to retrieve the summary that was generated from the msdyn_copilotinteractiondata entity.

Interaction 4: Agent uses Copilot to write an email

Agent decides to leverage Copilot to generate an email with troubleshooting steps using write an email feature. They request an email of type “Resolve the customer’s problem”.  
 
Another entry in msdyn_copilotinteraction gets created with a new msdyn_scenariorequestid and msdyn_scenariotype set to “Write an email”. 

You can use the reference msdyn_interactiondataid to retrieve the email that was generated, along with the knowledge sources used from  msdyn_copilotinteractiondata entity . 

Learn more about monitoring Copilot responses

For more information, read the documentation: Download Copilot transcripts | Microsoft Learn

The post Monitor Copilot responses in Dynamics 365 Customer Service  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.