This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Digital contact centers need to create support cases automatically when they receive incoming emails, phone calls, and messages from customers. They rely on this automation to avoid manual efforts in creating cases so they can address customer issues promptly. The activity monitor view helps diagnose automatic case creation issues and ensures this automation runs smoothly.
Today, Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers automatic record creation rules for creating support cases automatically based on the conditions defined by administrators. However, an incoming work item may not automatically convert to a case for multiple reasons. The activity monitor tool helps administrators diagnose those issues and provides the reason a work item was not converted to a case. Once they know the reason, administrators also need the system to provide them with suggestions on how to resolve the issues. Recent enhancements to the activity monitor tool provide recommendations to administrators with steps to avoid future case creation issues by making changes to the rule configuration.
Now, administrators can view recommendations for each activity monitor event to see why case creation was skipped or failed and steps to resolve the issue. The activity monitor form for each event contains the resolution steps and direct links to the rule settings that they should change. This helps administrators diagnose and self-solve their issues quickly.
Navigate to the activity monitor
In the Customer Service admin center, administrators can view the status of events for the past 7 days. They can see skipped, failed, and successfully processed events by automatic record creation rules with the status as Ready for Power Automate.
From here, administrators can navigate to the Activity monitor events for last 7 days view. This provides a grid view of the events processed in the past 7 days. It provides details like current state, rule name, and condition. Additionally, it contains the reasons and recommendations to resolve the issues if the state was skipped or failed. Admins can also view the Recommendations column in the existing All activity monitor events view.
View the form for a specific activity
Administrators can double-click on any part of the event record to navigate to the Activity monitor form. The form shows the Actions section with the Recommendations field. This field explains why case creation was skipped or failed and the steps to take to resolve these issues. Some contain direct links to the Advanced settings of the relevant automatic record creation rule with suggestions for configuration changes. Administrators can directly navigate to these settings and make the required changes. Once they make the changes, any future work items that use automatic record creation rules will convert to cases. Note that the changes will not impact the work items sent to Dynamics before the admin changed the configuration.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The work hour calendar multiple recurrence feature is a new URS functionality that allows you to create and manage work hour calendars with more flexibility and efficiency. You can now define multiple recurrence patterns for your work hour calendar events, such as daily, weekly or monthly, and specify different start and end dates for each pattern. This way, you can easily accommodate different work schedules, holidays, and special events in your organization.
The new multiple recurrence feature in the upcoming V2 work hour calendar can help you to:
Add multiple recurrences within a single day, to represent different instances of recurring shift work e.g. morning, afternoon and evening shifts in a single day with different recurrences
Have overlapping recurrences within a week e.g. A recurrence for Mon and Wed, and a recurrence for Tues. Previously the Tuesday recurrence would have deleted the Mon and Wed entries; now they can coexist alongside each other.
Input work hour events in different timezones, which is helpful for workers who travel. Previously, the calendar supports only one timezone across all work hour calendar events.
What are work hour calendar events and why are they needed?
Work hour events define when a resource is available to perform work, and they exist as 2 types:
Occurrences (one-time events) are work hour events that happen only once on a specific date and time. Occurrences always take priority over Recurrences. E.g. team cohesion days, seminars or emergencies.
Recurrences (repeating events) are work hour events that repeat on a regular basis according to a pattern and frequency. E.g. rotational shift work, weekly cadences, monthly client visits
Occurrences and recurrences can be used today in URS to define different types of work hours, such as working hours, non-working hours, breaks and time off.
How did URS handle work hour events before (V1 work hour calendar)?
Before this update, only 1 recurrence event is supported per calendar day, for a given date span.
Scenario 1, Jane is a doctor who does shift work at various clinics:
The old work hour calendar does not support more than 1 work hour event per calendar day, so this scenario would not be supported
Scenario 2, John is a utilities engineer with different work hours on alternating days:
Recurrence 1: 8am-5pm UTC, repeats Mon, Wed and Fri
Recurrence 2: 6am-8pm UTC, repeats Tues and Thu
Adding both recurrences was not supported in the old work hour calendar; Recurrence 2 would have deleted the Mon, Wed and Fri entries from Recurrence 1 for a given date span.
Scenario 3, Becca is a travelling salesperson who works in both Seattle and Singapore:
Recurrence 1 (work in Seattle): 8am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
Recurrence 2 (work in Singapore): 8am-5pm SGT, repeats all days of the week
Adding both recurrences of different timezones was not supported in the old work hour calendar.
How does URS handle work hour events now (V2 work hour calendar)?
The new V2 work hours calendar now follows the following logic:
Occurrences have a higher priority than Recurrence rules for a given calendar day. So if there were two rules (one occurrence and one recurrence) on the same day, the daily occurrence or time-off occurrence will take the priority over the weekly recurrence for the entire calendar day.(Unchanged from previous)
When there are multiple recurrences within the same date span:
If the times do not intersect, they will both remain on the calendar
If the times conflict, the rule that was most recently created/modified will be the one that is considered for the resource’s calendar. All other conflicting rules in the date span will be removed. In the event that some recurrences have conflicts on some dates but not on others, the rule will be spliced to retain the non-conflicting events, while removing the events on dates that do have conflicts.
Scenario 1, Jane is a doctor who does shift work at various clinics:
Create Recurrence 1, Recurrence 2, then Recurrence 3 in succession. All will now show up on the calendar as seen below
Scenario 2, John is a utilities engineer with different work hours on alternating days:
Recurrence 1: 8am-5pm UTC, repeats Mon, Wed and Fri
Recurrence 2: 6am-8pm UTC, repeats Tues and Thu
Create Recurrence 1, then create Recurrence 2 in succession. Both will now show up on the calendar as seen below:
Scenario 3, Becca is a travelling salesperson who works in both Seattle and Singapore:
Recurrence 1 (work in Seattle): 8am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
Recurrence 2 (work in Singapore): 8am-5pm SGT, repeats all days of the week
As seen above both Seattle and Singapore work hours are both easily expressed on the V2 work hours calendar. Note that the Singapore work hours are shifted to match the dispatcher’s Timezone i.e. Pacific Time – the timezone of the calendar itself is visible at the bottom left of the calendar, and the dispatcher can be altered this in <Personalization Settings>.
What else has changed/remains unchanged?
Previously in the V1 Work Hour Calendar, only 1 recurrence is allowed per calendar day, thus adding any new recurrences will completely override the work hour events for that calendar day.
With the V2 Work Hour Calendar, the previous work hour events will only be overridden if there is a direct conflict in time between the 2 recurrences.
For instance, Joel is an equipment technician with the following work hours:
Recurrence 1 (regular work hours): 9am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
Recurrence 2 (temporary work hours): 1-9pm PT, only from Jul 10-14
Create Recurrence 1, then create Recurrence 2 in succession. As seen below, Recurrence 2 overrides Recurrence 1 for the Jul 10-14 period because there is a direct conflict between the recurrences. All other work hour events remain.
The following dialogue will now appear whenever a new work hour event is added, in order to remind users of this behavior:
Occurrences remain unchanged from the previous V1 calendar i.e. Occurrences always take priority over Recurrences and will override recurrences for the entire day.
For instance, Duke is an equipment technician with the following work hours:
Recurrence 1 (regular work hours): 9am-5pm PT, repeats all days of the week
Occurrence 1 (team cohesion): 6-9pm PT, only on Aug 1
Create Recurrence 1, then create Occurrence 1 in succession. As seen below, Occurrence 1 completely overrides all other work hours events for the Aug 1 calendar day even if there is no direct collision between the Recurrence and the Occurrence.
When will the V2 Work Hour Calendar be available, and how can I get my hands on it?
The V2 Work Hour Calendar will be available early-September 2023 in our Early Adoption Wave 2 update. You can opt in through Power Platform Admin Center, as seen below:
How can I find out more?
If you want to learn more about the new work hour calendar multiple recurrence feature, you can:
We hope you enjoy the new work hour calendar multiple recurrence feature and find it useful for your business needs. We appreciate your feedback and suggestions on how to improve our products and services. Thank you for choosing Dynamics 365!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to announce a new AI-powered Skills in Viva service that will help organizations understand workforce skills and gaps, and deliver personalized skills-based experiences throughout Microsoft 365 and Viva applications for employees, business leaders, and HR.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We are excited and honored that Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Leader in their 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.* This evaluation of Microsoft was based on specific criteria that analyzed our overall Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. This is the third year in a row that we’ve been recognized as a Leader.
Agile enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for new ways of working
The way we do business has fundamentally changed. New business models are disrupting the way companies sell products and services, blurring industry lines and transforming customer experiences. ERP systems need to evolve from mere systems of transaction to systems of reasoning, offering their users prescriptive actions that they can take in their functional areas to accelerate growth.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 has already been helping thousands of organizations optimize finance and supply chains to create a connected enterprise by infusing automation and analytics powered by AI into the various ERP processes. Now, with Dynamics 365 Copilot in our ERP portfolio included in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, we can enable every person in every organization to be more productive, collaborative, and deliver high-performance results.
For instance, with Copilot, organizations can supercharge productivity of procurement professionals and collections agents. Procurement professionals can efficiently handle purchase order changes at scale and assess the impact of changes downstream to production and distribution before making the right decision. Copilot enables quick collaboration with internal and external stakeholders that brings relevant information into Outlook and Microsoft Teams using natural language to meet customer and partner needs.
Collections managers with quick access to credit and payment history can prioritize and personalize customer communication and increase successful collection rates while proactively keeping customers in good standing. With Copilot, project managers can rapidly create new project plans for new engagements in minutes, automate status reports, identify risks, and suggest mitigation plans on a continuous basis, saving a significant amount of time, preventing project delays and budget overruns.
At Microsoft, we are fully committed to revolutionizing the future of ERP systems by harnessing the power of intelligent, composable technologies. The ERP portfolio from Dynamics 365, powered by generative AI technology, has the ability to speed time to insight, intelligently automate processes, and foster productivity ensuring that organizations can stay ahead of their competition in an increasingly complex business landscape.
Cloud-native ERP systems on a composable platform
One of the key strengths of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance is their extensibility. The ERP portfolio is built on a composable platform, making it easy to extend the solution with Microsoft Power Platform, providing low-code tools like Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Automate.
Where ERP customizations were once a heavy, time-consuming task, these tools empower businesses to customize their solutions and build apps with a modern user experience so that they can adapt to their bespoke industry specific needs and end users can work the way they want. Furthermore, companies and users can leverage prebuilt customizations and industry-specialized solutions from our ISV partner network to help speed development even further.
One of our customers, Nestlé, chose Dynamics 365 as the preferred platform for agile and speedy business system requests for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities. Nestlé needed business applications that would provide flexibility to adapt to different business models across geographies that could be reused multiple times. The company needed rich out-of-the-box features that could be extended with low-code/no-code capabilities. With Dynamics 365, Nestlé was able to create reusable strategies and blueprints for migrating business data and operations that would enable faster and more efficient acquisitions and divestitures easily with limited disruptions to customers and employees. This also helped them adhere to compliance, security, and data privacy regulations effectively. In just four short months after the project kicked off, Nestlé went live with Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Commerce.
AIM for the future with Microsoft today
In conclusion, running a business on Dynamics 365 offers numerous benefits for organizations. From seamless integration and enhanced productivity to real-time analysis and smart decision-making capabilities, Dynamics 365 empowers businesses to thrive in today’s dynamic market. Microsoft is committed to empowering customers to take advantage of AI capabilities in every line of business.
Organizations relying on on-premises applications will struggle to compete with peers embracing these AI-powered technologies in the cloud. It is paramount for companies to migrate their critical business processes to the cloud now. That is why we introduced AIM (Accelerate, Innovate, Move) earlier. AIM offers organizations a tailored path to move critical processes to the cloud with confidence. It provides qualified customers with access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, expert assessments, investment offers, tools, and migration support.
Magic Quadrant reports are a culmination of rigorous, fact-based research in specific markets, providing a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the providers in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Providers are positioned into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. The research enables you to get the most from market analysis in alignment with your unique business and technology needs. View a complimentary copy of the Magic Quadrant report to learn more.
*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark 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.
Source: Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises,” Greg Leiter, Robert Anderson, Dixie John, Tomas Kienast, David Penny, September 26, 2023.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Introducing the first AI copilot experience for Dynamics 365 Commerce
For Merchandisers tasked with managing large product catalogs, the creation of high-quality “enriched” marketing content for their digital commerce channels can be a daunting and labor-intensive process. Especially if the Merchandiser is untrained in the creation of marketing copy. Yet it is incredibly important to have “enriched” content at the product level, where it can increase customer engagement, improve customer understanding, and drive natural search engine ranking, which all lead to higher conversion rates.
It is for this reason that Dynamics 365 Commerce is thrilled to announce the preview of ‘Commerce Copilot’, which provides a fast and efficient way of authoring product enrichment content for your B2B and B2C digital commerce websites.
Use Commerce Copilot to jump-start the creative process by first selecting a tone, configured by you, that aligns to your brand, like “adventurous”, “luxurious” or “bold”. Then select an audience choice from choices managed by you, like “sports enthusiast” or “college graduate”. Copilot will then use these prompts to craft compelling and engaging content that makes use of your existing product information like name, description, attributes, price and more!
You can further augment your newly enriched content with key product highlights or tune it to be optimized for search engines. But you always remain in control and have the ability to review and modify any content before it is published!
The Commerce Copilot for enriched product content is now available as a public preview for digital commerce customers based in United States. Additional market availability will be enabled soon.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
AI is ready to support work—the question is: What will your business do with it?
Join us at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event on October 25 and explore how to create an AI-powered business that helps people and teams be more productive, solve problems quickly, and focus more energy on building revenue.
This will mark our tenth Business Applications Launch Event—a milestone in our commitment to business app innovation, our customers, and our partners. But we’re just getting started. To see what’s next—and what it means for your organization—you’ll hear directly from Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI, customer service, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and low-code solutions.
The latest AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales that provides relevant recommendations, summarizes data, retrieves information, and performs actions within the flow of work.
Advanced Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service that streamline agents’ workspaces, let them see transcripts of live chats and voice calls in their inboxes, and allow them to respond to customers quickly with the right information.
New Microsoft Sales Copilot features that help compose emails, update customer relationship management (CRM) records, recap meetings, and offer real-time tips to help sales teams close more deals.
Enhanced automation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance to help handle accounts payable and bank statements, complex tax scenarios, and e-invoicing requirements in more markets.
New Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to help marketers quickly create memorable customer experiences using whole new levels of personalization for emails, images, and layouts.
Plus, learn about updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources—all ready to help your employees be more productive, build customer loyalty, and drive meaningful growth. You’ll also hear from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, about what’s driving innovation today. Then catch some of the newest AI capabilities in action, with demos led by the people behind the 2023 release wave 2, offering expert guidance on how these updates will help you:
Improve insights, save time, and fuel creativity with the latest AI-powered solutions.
Empower your employees to focus on revenue-generating work and avoid repetitive tasks with automation.
Connect people, data, and processes across your organization using modern, AI-enhanced collaboration tools.
Insights on putting AI to work for you
The Business Applications Launch Event is more than our chance to showcase hundreds of new features and updates. It’s also a great opportunity for you to learn expert tips on how to apply these new technologies to some of your business’ biggest challenges. And if you have questions about new features, the role of AI at work, the evolution of copilots, or what’s ahead for business apps, get them answered by experts—we’ll be hosting a live Q&A chat at the end of the event, so be sure to stick around.
It’s been inspiring to see all the new features that the Dynamics 365 team has been working on, and we’re looking forward to celebrating 10 events’ worth of advancing business applications ahead.
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