We are thrilled to announce the general availability of Collaboration spaces in Viva Sales, transforming the way sales teams collaborate. Collaboration is essential for sales success, yet many organizations struggle to stay organized and find the right digital tools to bring them together. In the pursuit of closing deals, sellers find themselves collaborating with an average of over 15 cross-functional teams within their organizations, while simultaneously serving their customers. This intricate web of interactions adds a significant layer of complexity to their already demanding work.

With Collaboration spaces, sellers now have an organized and effortlessly created space, tailored to their needs, where they can collaborate seamlessly with their colleagues and customers.

Collaboration made easy with Sales templates

Sales templates in Viva Sales simplify the process of creating purpose-built Collaboration spaces in Microsoft Teams, directly linked to D365 or Salesforce accounts or opportunities. Collaboration spaces are set up with predefined channels and pinned apps, providing a ready-made environment for effective collaboration built on the secure and trustworthy framework provided by Teams.

Once set up, sales teams can conveniently access these Collaboration spaces from the Viva Sales app in Outlook or directly from the Sales app, within the context of their accounts or opportunities. This eliminates the hassle of searching for the right place to collaborate, saving valuable time for the sales team.

We are excited to offer two sales templates as part of this release:

1. Account team template: The Account team template is designed for seamless collaboration within account teams and with customers. Applied at the team level and linked to a CRM account, this template provides a comprehensive solution. It comes equipped with predefined channels and pre pinned apps, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow for effective collaboration.

2. Deal room template: The Deal room template is tailored for focused collaboration on deal related activities. Applied at the channel level and linked to a CRM opportunity, this template provides a dedicated space for efficient teamwork. With predefined channels and pre pinned apps, it streamlines communication and enhances productivity, allowing sales teams to effectively collaborate and drive successful deal outcomes.

Eliminate set-up overhead for effortless teamwork

Setting up a Collaboration space is now easier than ever. With just a few clicks, sellers can create their own space for collaboration. By clicking on the ‘Set up account team’ or ‘Set up deal rooms’ button from Collaborate in Teams card in Viva Sales app within Outlook, sellers can quickly get the set up going. The process involves three simple steps: choosing a new/existing team, reviewing default team/channel names, and adding recommended team members to new teams.

Convenient access within sales workflows

Once set up, sales teams can conveniently access these Collaboration spaces from the Viva Sales app in Outlook or directly from the D365 Sales app, within the context of their accounts or opportunities. This eliminates the hassle of searching for the right place to collaborate, saving valuable time for the sales team.

Next steps

New to Viva Sales? Sign up here: Microsoft Viva Sales | Microsoft Viva
Learn more about Collaboration spaces: Introducing Collaboration spaces for sales teams

The post Purpose built Collaboration spaces in Viva Sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Join me, Lori Lamkin, and my esteemed colleague Nathalie D’Hers, as we take you on an extraordinary journey through the development, deployment, and continuous improvement of Microsoft Viva Sales. As the Corporate Vice President (CVP) of Dynamics 365 Customer Experiences, I bring extensive leadership experience and strategic vision to guide the product team responsible for Viva Sales. Viva Sales is a tool that maximizes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce seller teams’ productivity with AI-assisted experiences in Microsoft 365 apps. Nathalie, another accomplished CVP, leads the deployment efforts across Microsoft, positioning the Microsoft sales field as customer zero. Together, we bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to revolutionize the way sellers engage with customers through Viva Sales. In this Q&A session, we will share our insights, experiences, and the remarkable story of Microsoft’s journey in unlocking the full potential of Viva Sales. Get ready to be inspired!

Rapid deployment: Unleashing the potential of Viva Sales

Lori: It’s been six months since you’ve deployed Viva Sales, what results are you seeing? What key considerations did you have when rolling out a generative AI tool like Viva Sales on a global scale?

Nathalie: Viva Sales is deployed across Microsoft. Being customer zero has been invaluable in this process. It has allowed us to confirm the product, learn important insights, and make improvements along the way. We’ve been focused on turning on Copilot features to enhance the seller experience, and the feedback we’ve received from our own teams has been instrumental in refining and perfecting the deployment. I’m so excited to partner with our teams to see the first commercial solution at Microsoft to combine Copilot and Viva Sales.

Since the launch of Copilot in March, we have seen incredible adoption with nearly 4,000 users taking advantage of its capabilities. The impact has been significant, with approximately 37,500 draft emails generated through the power of generative AI. It’s encouraging to see the positive response from our users and the value they are experiencing. In fact, during a recent customer conversation, the Senior VP of Sales expressed their enthusiasm to partner with us as early adopters, emphasizing their willingness to invest in any technology that enhances the productivity of their sellers. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of Copilot and its ability to drive tangible benefits in the workplace.

Nathalie: It’s been quite the journey since we launched Viva Sales to our Microsoft sellers. What were the main goals your team hoped to achieve with this product?

Lori: We’ve been focused on seller productivity gains through taking advantage of conversation intelligence, enabling Copilot features, and ultimately improving customer connection, job satisfaction, and revenue for our sellers. Microsoft being customer zero has provided us with a unique advantage. It has allowed us to test these features within our own organization, gather valuable feedback, and fine-tune the experiences before rolling them out to more customers.

In the new update, we are adding some exciting capabilities to Viva Sales that have been influenced by your team’s customer zero work. Sellers can get real-time suggestions and guidance as they craft emails, pulling insights from automated email summaries. It’s like having a virtual assistant right at their side, helping them to generate compelling content and ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Our sellers have embraced these features with enthusiasm, recognizing how it significantly boosts their productivity and enables them to focus on building strong customer relationships.

Nathalie: Speaking of Copilot, how does your organization ensure that the implementation of Copilot features align with Microsoft’s ethical and responsible AI principles?

Lori: Supporting ethical and responsible AI practices is of paramount importance to us and our customers. As we use generative AI, we are committed to helping our customers be transparent, fair, and accountable to their employees and their customers.

As you know, one of the ways we do this here is with our works councils, where a few of our colleagues volunteer to help us protect the privacy of all our employees when we deploy new technology like Viva Sales. More importantly, they make sure we follow privacy laws in each of the countries and regions where we operate. We roll the feedback that we get from them directly into our products, which helps our customers protect their own employees. It’s this kind of thinking—and these kinds of checks and balances—that helps with the ethical use of AI in Viva Sales.

Lori: We were so excited to be the first Microsoft product to bring Copilot to our users; the feedback we have received from sellers has been incredibly positive! How have our newest Copilot in Viva Sales features influenced your thinking about supporting the employee experience?

Nathalie: It helped a lot! Seeing a tangible implementation of Copilot with real value opened our eyes to what was possible and is influencing ways that we’ll incorporate generative AI into our own employee experience. Kudos to you and your team for dreaming big and acting fast to bring that experience to the market!

Lori: Thank you. So, tell me more about this employee experience and how deploying Viva Sales Copilot in Microsoft has given your team insights and learnings that shaped your approach to using AI?

Nathalie: Just like Viva Sales provides conversation summaries and next actions for sales opportunities, we’re thinking through scenarios that will enable us to transform the way employees interact with our different services—like support and HR—to make them more personalized and efficient.

Broadly, our efforts fall into three categories—AI for IT, AI for the hybrid workplace, and AI for the employee experience. AI for IT includes investments to help us proactively detect and remediate issues in our employee services and IT infrastructure. AI for the hybrid workplace includes investments to help us perfect space planning and to enhance the experience when employees come into the office. Finally, AI for the employee experience is all about transforming the ways that Microsoft employees interact with our services and support. Across each of these investment areas, Viva Sales provided us with a great benchmark for how AI can really propel employee productivity.

Microsoft Viva Sales

Learn more about our internal deployment of Microsoft Viva Sales.

Read here

Talking about works councils and deployment

Lori: Nathalie, as the leader responsible for deploying Viva Sales across Microsoft, I understand that your team has been actively engaging with works councils. Can you provide insights into the impact of working with works councils during the deployment process?

Nathalie: Absolutely, Lori. Works councils play a critical role in standing for the interests of employees within our organization, particularly in European countries where they are prevalent, and they make sure that whatever we deploy internally within the company protects the privacy of the employees who live in that region. Engaging with works councils ensures that we consider the perspectives and concerns of the workforce during the deployment of Viva Sales. Their input is valuable in addressing compliance, privacy, and employee relations matters, making our deployment process more robust and aligned with local regulations.

Lori: What have you found to be some of the challenges in managing a global-scale deployment of Viva Sales?

Nathalie: Deploying any new technology globally has challenges, but the speed and efficiency with which we were able to roll out this transformative product was truly remarkable. We are working on a brand-new solution that is revolutionizing the way generative AI changes the workplace, and being customer zero has given us some unique advantages. We’ve had to navigate compliance and obtain necessary approvals for deploying AI features on a global scale. Our active engagement process, which includes working closely with works councils, has been instrumental in streamlining the deployment process and ensuring that our global teams can receive help from Viva Sales. Despite the challenges, the feedback from sellers has been incredibly positive, especially with the AI-generated email content enhancements we’re introducing. The best part is how easy and painless it is to enable Viva Sales, allowing our teams to quickly harness its productivity-boosting capabilities and experience a seamless transition to a more efficient way of working.

Lori: It seems like building an effective approval process is crucial. How replicable has Microsoft made this process for other companies?

Nathalie: At Microsoft, we have developed a globally recognizable, efficient process for enabling Copilot scenarios. By supporting open dialogue, we can gather feedback, address emerging concerns, and align our deployment approach with evolving regulations. We recently set up a framework with European works councils to supply valuable insights into employee needs and expectations, enabling Microsoft to tailor the product and deployment process accordingly. We encourage all companies to get connected with their respective works counsels to achieve a balance between rapid implementation and compliance, ensuring that their employees are protected, and the organization meets regulatory requirements.

Lori: It’s truly exciting to see the transformative power of Viva Sales in action and see the positive impact it’s having on our organization!

Learn more about Viva Sales

To learn more about our internal deployment of Viva Sales, read about how we’re simplifying sales with Viva Sales. You can also read more about our internal deployment of Viva at Microsoft by visiting our “Viva la vida! Work life is better at Microsoft with Viva” content suite. Learn more about other applications and capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales using the links below:

• Learn more about tips Microsoft has for working with works counsels.
• Take a look at Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales release wave documentation on Microsoft Learn.
• Watch the Copilot in Viva Sales demo.
• Stay up-to-date on Viva Sales features and updates on the Viva Sales Blog.

If you’re not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, check out our Dynamics 365 Sales webpage where you can take a guided tour or get a free 30-day trial.

The post The power of AI in Viva Sales: Insights from Lori Lamkin and Nathalie D’Hers appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Finance teams’ roles have evolved—and expanded—into new realms. As economic pressures demand that everyone deliver more with fewer resources, finance professionals’ plates are increasingly crowded with analysis, strategy, even supplier relationships—plus all the traditional finance processes they’ve long been responsible for.  

It’s not just moving invoices along—finance teams are being asked by upper management to bring cost-saving, time-optimizing, and value-adding insights to the table when business model evolution and digital transformation are discussed. And they’re looking for any solution that will give their overstretched employees time back in their day to think bigger, by tightening up tedious processes that drain human energy and douse the spark of innovation. 

The Future of Finance

Streamline your accounts payable process and free up resources to fund your business transformation

Watch the webinar

For finance teams, incorporating automation into accounts payable (AP) is a great place to start. After all, the work of capturing invoices, processing and verifying them, then paying vendors can be complex—with plenty of sub-processes to support the end goal of on-time payments and stronger customer relationships. Automating parts of the accounts payable process lets finance teams spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on higher-value work that builds agility in finance operations and across your business.  

5 ways accounts payable automation elevates finance operations

To get started on your AP automation journey, check out this webinar, The Future of Finance: Unlocking the Benefits of Accounts Payable Automation, and learn how automating accounts payable data can help you:

1. Focus on strategy—not tedious data tasks

Allow your finance teams to put more energy where it matters—fulfilling, strategic work that keeps them engaged—not cumbersome accounts payable processes that waste time and drag down productivity.  

2. Reign in costs and unnecessary fees

Understand payment trends, analyze vendor performance, and improve processing time to drive significant savings. Cut paper costs by automating manual processes, while helping avoid handwritten errors that lead to mistakes and late payment fees downstream.

3. Stop small errors from becoming big problems

Improve accuracy with automated accounts payable software that limits the unavoidable errors inherent with manual data entry—so you sidestep risk now while dialing in what you need for compliance later.

4. Get to know your vendors

Strengthen vendor relationships by automating AP processes to pay them on time, every time. And over time, analyze accounts payable data to reveal valuable cost-saving insights that put you on more solid footing for future negotiations.

5. Gain more visibility

Put more eyes on your cashflow to help people across your business focus more on cost savings. Empower everyone—not just data specialists or finance operations teams—to support larger initiatives with more readily available data.

When should you automate accounts payable?

To keep pace with competitors, you’re probably looking at ways your finance team can integrate new technology into traditional processes like accounts payable that have long kept business’ bottom lines in order. Because the pace of business isn’t slowing, nor are potential disruptions retreating. To respond to changing business conditions and guard against long-term risk, finance leaders are starting to recognize how the latest AI-powered automation can help them take on what’s currently taking up too much of their employees’ time: 

• Complex processes: The more complex the process, the more challenging it can be to manage effectively. Inefficient processes with too many steps are not only a drag on people’s time and energy, they’re often a barrier to digital transformation. When that leads to a delayed payment, it can damage customer relationships that have taken years to build—putting the wrong kind of spotlight on finance teams. 
• Strained IT: When organizations are facing flat (or shrinking) IT budgets and people don’t have the tools they need, it’s hard to build consistent processes. A lack of IT budget is more than annoying; unreliable systems can overwhelm employees, get in the way of strategic work they’d rather be doing, and make it tougher to follow processes that finance regulations demand. 
• Data overload: Invoices, payment records, information on multiple vendors—all that data is difficult to manage on its own. When people naturally turn to manual processes to make sense of it all, it’s often time intensive and susceptible to errors, fraud, and missed opportunities for insights. 
• People power: Freeing up resources to hire new talent is tough enough, and retaining that talent is even tougher when mundane tasks fill up their plate. Engaging them in their current role with opportunities to be creative and offer strategic insights is often a better investment than trying to find, onboard, and retain a new hire. 

If these obstacles sound familiar, automating accounts payable processes is a cost-efficient way to start moving your organization past them. When your company is ready to shift from managing cumbersome accounts payable operations to supporting strategic initiatives, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance can help. 

How Dynamics 365 Finance modernizes accounts payable operations

Dynamics 365 Finance modernizes accounts payable operations by capturing invoices in multiple formats (digital and manual), processing them while coding and resolving errors with full automation, then automatically paying vendors on time—with analytics around payment scenarios and compliance gathered in real time. Be sure to watch the webinar to learn more, including how one Microsoft customer cut invoice costs in half and reduced overall costs by 25 percent by streamlining procedures across their business, including invoice processing, with accounts payable automation. It also features a demo of how to use AI-powered automation to accelerate digital transformation with Dynamics 365 Finance.  

The post 5 ways accounts payable automation drives digital transformation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Introduction

Companies seek efficiency in their customer engagement activities. Front office salespeople, traveling sales representatives, account managers, and others need to engage efficiently with customers while using Dynamics 365 Sales without spending time to ensure that data flows efficiently between their front-office work environment and the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management back-office environment. True end-to-end process integration must work seamlessly across applications, using an integrated process flow from quotation to invoice, to help businesses drive efficiencies in their sales and fulfilment processes, improve accuracy, and reduce lead times.

We are excited to announce the general availability of a set of new features and capabilities that will enhance the efficiency of the prospect-to-cash integration between Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. These additions to the prospect-to-cash integration aim to improve efficiency and cover several new features in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 10.0.34, as well as a new Dual-write Supply Chain solution version 2.3.4.203.

This new feature set enables businesses to achieve true end-to-end process support and unlock various benefits. In this blog post, we will briefly showcase and explain the advantages that companies can gain by leveraging this feature set in an integrated scenario between Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Integrate Sales Quotation Lifecycle

Sales quotations can be created and processed throughout their lifecycle in both Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 SCM. It is crucial that when a sales quotation is processed in one application, it is accurately reflected in the other application. Let’s consider a scenario where Dynamics 365 Sales serves as the CRM application. Salespeople utilize Dynamics 365 Sales to create, edit, collaborate on, and communicate sales quotations with customers. From a back-office perspective, it is essential for these sales quotations to be visible in Dynamics 365 SCM. This visibility allows for insights into expected demand, supporting back-office supply planning.

Furthermore, it is equally important for these sales quotations to be accessible in Dynamics 365 SCM to enable collaboration between back-office staff and front-office salespeople. This collaboration enhances sales quotations by incorporating necessary information that only back-office staff possess insights into. Lastly, but certainly not least, it is critical that when a sales quotation is activated and communicated to the customer by the front-office, this event triggers the appropriate quotation update in Dynamics 365 SCM.

With our new feature set, we now allow for such an integrated scenario with fewer touch points, better efficiency, and improved transparency.

Key benefits of this feature include:

End-to-end quotation lifecycle integration:

The sales quotation process can be initiated in either Dynamics 365 Sales or Dynamics 365 SCM and completed in either application, ensuring that changes and lifecycle updates seamlessly flow between both applications. This eliminates the need for manual duplication of sales quotation data and processing.

Unambiguous and transparent quotation lifecycle processing:

With the introduction of new concepts of origin and ownership, it is always clear and transparent which application is responsible for processing the sales quotation. This eliminates human errors in the quotation process.

Reduced cost of ownership:

The end-to-end lifecycle integration is supported without the need for customizations, resulting in reduced costs of ownership.

The integrated sales quotation lifecycle is supported by Dual-write Supply Chain solution version 2.3.4.203 and the following Dynamics 365 SCM 10.0.34 features: Integrate Sales Quotation lifecycle with Dynamics 365 Sales, Copy Supply Chain Management sales quotation data to sales orders synced from Dynamics 365 Sales, Set default ownership for sales quotations when integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales.

To learn more about these features, follow the link:

Add efficiency in quote-to-cash with Dynamics 365 Sales – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Integrate Pricing

Before the release of Dual-write Supply Chain solution version 2.3.4.203, in conjunction with Dynamics 365 SCM 10.0.34, the recommended method for integrating pricing between the two applications was to configure Dynamics 365 Sales to utilize the system price calculation. This setup, coupled with the synchronization of totals and subtotals from Dynamics 365 SCM to Dynamics 365 Sales, along with the utilization of price quote and price order actions in Dynamics 365 Sales, as well as the implementation of manual discounts in Dynamics 365 Sales, could lead to a loss of transparency. This lack of transparency pertains to identifying which application controls and calculates the monetary values associated with sales quotations and sales orders, including prices, discounts, subtotals, and totals.

In Dynamics 365 SCM 10.0.34, we introduce two features to simplify and enhance transparency in calculations related to price, discount, subtotal, and total when integrating with Dynamics 365 Sales. The first feature is to designate Supply Chain Management as the price master when integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales. The second feature enables the calculation and pushing of prices, discounts, and totals specifically for selective sales orders and sales quotations when integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales.

Key benefits of these features include:

• Calculations for extended amounts, summary amounts, subtotals, and totals for sales quotations and sales orders are not performed in Dynamics 365 Sales; All calculated monetary fields are calculated in and synchronized from Supply Chain Management.
• Front-office salespeople can now, if authorized, manually apply a discount from Dynamics 365 Sales which is fully integrated with discounts in Dynamics 365 SCM.
• Back-office staff can now calculate and push, whenever needed, all price and discount related updates for one or more sales quotation and sales orders from Dynamics 365 SCM to Dynamics 365 Sales.

To learn more about these features, follow the link: 

Work with added efficiency in quote-to-cash with Dynamics 365 Sales – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Asynchronous or synchronous processing of events

Front-office salespeople using Dynamics 365 Sales need to work efficiently on quotations and sales orders without unnecessary wait times. They also need to maintain efficiency when Dynamics 365 Sales is integrated with Dynamics 365 SCM. The same applies to back-office staff working on quotations and sales orders in Dynamics 365 SCM. Achieving a smooth user experience and efficiency in these tasks heavily relies on asynchronous processing of events.

Asynchronous processing of Sales-integrated events allows events to be processed asynchronously in Dynamics 365 SCM using the message processor framework. This approach significantly enhances the user experience and performance of sales order and sales quotation integration in various use cases.

• Front-office salespeople in Dynamics 365 Sales activates a quotation. This event will update the Sales Quotation in Dynamics 365 SCM to Sent and create a quotation journal.
• Front-office salespeople in Dynamics 365 Sales creates an order from a sales quotation won. This event will update the Sales Quotation in Dynamics 365 SCM to Won, create a quotation confirmation journal, link the resulting sales order with the sales quotation, and, if setup, copy sales quotation data from the Dynamics 365 SCM sales quotation to the Dynamics 365 SCM sales order, and synchronize the changes to the sales order in Dynamics 365 Sales.
• Back-office staff in Dynamics 365 SCM recalculates and pushes prices and totals for one or more sales quotations and sales orders to Dynamics 365 Sales

Key benefits of this feature include:

• The user experience of front-office salespeople in Dynamics 365 Sales will not be impacted any additional time it may take to process integration related events.
• Companies can flexibly decide which events to be processed synchronously and which to be processed asynchronously to provide the optimum user experience.
• Improved system performance which will have a positive impact on user experience in both applications.

To learn more about this feature and Supply Chain at Microsoft, click below:

Feature Insights:

Work with added efficiency in quote-to-cash with Dynamics 365 Sales – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Supply Chain at Microsoft

Take a tour – Supply Chain Management | Microsoft Dynamics 365

We’re excited to launch Free Trial | Microsoft Supply Chain Center Preview ,  which harnesses generative AI to assist Supply Chain managers in real-time communication with suppliers regarding specific news

The post Boosting Productivity: Unleashing the Power of Dynamics 365 for Prospect-to-Cash Efficiency appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In this blog post, we will show you how to get started on your journey with generative AI for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Microsoft’s unique partnership with OpenAI allows us to bring the innovative power of large-scale language models (LLM) to the Business Central ecosystem in a unique, complete, and responsible way. Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service provides access to OpenAI’s advanced models such as GPT-4, GPT-3, Codex, and DALL-E with the security and enterprise features of Azure. 

Over the last few months, we’ve listened to many community ideas on how generative AI can enrich existing features, or deliver entirely new customer value, and the follow-up question is always the same: how do I get started with AI in AL and Visual Studio Code? We’ve collected a few tips, including sample code, to make it easy for you to start exploring Azure OpenAI and share your learnings with the community. 

New to generative AI? 

We appreciate that there is much to learn about this new and exciting technology. If you’re new to this branch of machine learning and Azure OpenAI, these links are a great introduction to understand the basics. 

• Watch the inspiring video: AI at Microsoft Build 2023 

• Learn how other customers are using Azure AI 

• Understand and compare Azure OpenAI and OpenAI 

• Work through Introduction to Azure OpenAI Service training module 

• Explore key Responsible AI guidelines and principles at https://aka.ms/RAI 

How to get started with your AL code 

We’ve shared some sample code as an extension that enables you to explore the possibilities of LLM. This code is designed to simplify the process of setting up and running LLM experiments, starting with easily configuring and testing your connection to the Azure OpenAI service. After that, you can extend your AL logic to do more exciting things with this code. 

The sample code uses Azure OpenAI to suggest an item category based on the item description field. 

The extension’s source code is available at the Business Central BCTech repository on GitHub. You can get to it directly at https://aka.ms/BCStartCodingWithAI. You can either download or install the sample extension to your sandbox environment or clone the source code for your own projects. 

How to get an Azure OpenAI key 

To use Azure OpenAI Service, you need to have an Azure subscription and apply for access to the service. Azure OpenAI is generally available with a limited access policy to promote responsible use and limit the impact of high-risk use cases. Once you apply and are approved, you will receive an email with instructions on how to create an Azure OpenAI resource and get your API key. 

How to use the Azure OpenAI playground 

Azure AI Studio offers an Azure OpenAI playground: a web-based interface that allows you to explore the capabilities of generative AI models and try them out with your own prompts and data. You can access the playground from the Azure portal or from this link: Azure OpenAI Studio. 

If you’re not a developer but have played around with ChatGPT or similar, you will find the playground to be a convenient place to experiment and assess whether ChatGPT is a suitable tool to solve the problem at hand. It’s perfect for product managers, designers and consultants looking to get their feet wet without having to write code or without having to build a deep understanding of the underlying technology. 

And if you’re ready to dive into the more technical side of things, the playground lets you choose a model, a scenario, and a few shot learning examples to generate outputs. You can also modify the parameters such as temperature, top-p, frequency penalty, and presence penalty to control the randomness and diversity of the outputs.  

How to get started with prompt engineering 

Prompt engineering is the art of crafting effective inputs for generative models to produce desired outputs. Prompt engineering involves understanding the model’s capabilities and limitations, choosing the right format and tone for the input, providing relevant examples and instructions, and evaluating the output quality and reliability. Prompt engineering is a crucial skill for using Azure OpenAI Service effectively and responsibly. Here are some short links that can help you learn more about prompt engineering: 

• Read the guide on how to design prompts for Azure Open AI Service 

• Browse the collection of example prompts and outputs for various scenarios and models 

• Put responsible AI to practice with Azure Open AI Service 

Join the conversation  

While Microsoft is hard at work bringing more generative AI to Business Central, we hope that these simple tips will get you started on your AI journey with Azure OpenAI. The product team is eager to hear your feedback on how we can support your use cases and help you design, build, and deliver AI solutions quickly and responsibly in the AI era: community partners are invited to join us at the Copilot and AI Innovation group on our Yammer partner community network. And if you’re looking for inspiration on how to enrich your features with generative AI, check out our 30 minute video where we present the details around our first generative AI feature in Business Central: Marketing Text Suggestions. 

Happy experimenting! 

The post Get started with developing generative AI features for Dynamics 365 Business Central  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.