Welcome to a new era in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, powered by AI. In recent years, businesses have embraced AI to automate and enhance processes from planning to forecasting. Now, generative AI is taking center stage as a game-changing technology that promises to modernize the way work gets done, driving innovation across ERP; from streamlining operations to speeding time to actionable insight.

Dynamics 365 Copilot, announced in March, takes advantage of recent advancements in generative AI to automate tedious tasks and unlock the full creativity of the workforce. In April, we shared how generative AI can be applied to key supply chain processes, and today we are introducing more AI-powered assistance across our ERP portfolio, included in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. To activate these new Copilot features within your Dynamics 365 products, work with your IT admin.

ERP systems have long been the central nervous system of modern businesses, centralizing data for better business insight from core functions like finance, HR, procurement, resourcing, and supply chains. However, traditional ERP solutions have struggled to keep pace with the dynamic nature of today’s global markets. Complex and rigid processes within ERP create more work for people, and repetitive manual data entry overwhelms departments. Dynamics 365 Copilot promises to help finance managers, collections agents, project managers, and procurement professionals complete time-consuming tasks and get insights faster.

Speed time to insight—get the most from your ERP data

Harnessing big data is even more crucial as we enter a new era defined by next-generation AI. At Microsoft Build 2023, we announced how Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Fabric work with Dataverse and our business intelligence tools to deliver actionable insights and reporting. Our upcoming extended planning and analytics solution will build on this powerful foundation to help finance managers and business analysts spend less time slicing and dicing data. With the ability to use familiar tools like Microsoft Power BI and Excel infused with Copilot capabilities, these professionals can:

• Use natural language to bring data to life by simply describing the visuals and insights that one is looking for. Copilot will help create a Microsoft Power BI dashboard or report—complete with visualizations and summaries—and help refine it. One can dig into the data further by asking questions. Copilot will find the right answer.
• Collaboratively align plans, budgets, and forecasts with business strategy.
• Streamline sales and operations planning.
• Automate financial consolidation for seamless book closing.
• Strategically close talent gaps for an empowered workforce, gain a comprehensive view of cash flow dynamics, and access highly accurate predictions through advanced predictive analytics powered by machine learning and AI.

By using these tools and technologies, finance managers can optimize their performance, allocate resources effectively, and drive better financial outcomes for their organizations.

Deliver more strategic value with intelligent automation for project managers

Project managers frequently struggle to complete projects on time and within budget. Today, we are announcing Copilot capabilities for Dynamics 365 Project Operations to dramatically reduce the time spent on project status reports, task planning, and risk assessments.

With Copilot, project managers can rapidly create new project plans for new engagements in minutes, instead of hours, simply by describing details of the project using natural language. Copilot will generate a project plan that can be further refined by the project manager.

Once the project is underway, the project manager can use Copilot to create a project status report, which Copilot will help generate in moments—reducing the hours often spent manually researching and writing. To ensure project success, Copilot then can be used to identify risks and suggest mitigation plans on a continuous basis. For example, the project manager can prompt Copilot to search across all open projects to identify common project risks that can derail a project, such as significant delays or budget overruns.

With Copilot, project managers can improve efficiency, reduce risks, and focus on more strategic and value-added activities.

Supercharge productivity of collections agents and procurement professionals

Today, we are announcing Copilot capabilities that will help collections agents and procurement professionals enhance productivity and better collaborate with customers.

Timely payments and healthy cash flows are increasingly important in times of economic uncertainty. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance, collections managers have quick access to credit and payment history so they can prioritize and personalize customer communication, helping to increase successful collection rates and proactively keep customers in good standing.

Disruptions to supply chains are an everyday occurrence, and supply and demand can shift quickly. Workers like procurement professionals and buyers are tasked to sort through large volumes of purchase order change responses daily and need more intelligent and agile tools to help address and streamline this process. Order responses oftentimes require changes to ordered quantities, delivery dates, or products delivered. Today, procurement professionals must review the changes for individual orders one by one to identify the risk to plan and potential downstream impacts. With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, users are able to efficiently handle changes to purchase orders at scale and assess the impact and risk to help optimize procurement decisions. 

They can quickly identify high-impact or low-impact changes and take rapid action to address any risk. Copilot enables quick collaboration with internal and external stakeholders that brings relevant information into Outlook and Teams using natural language. Users can also dig deeper with pointed questions to refine and approve changes so they can rapidly adapt their sourcing plans to meet customer and partner needs.

At Microsoft, we are fully committed to revolutionizing the future of ERP by harnessing the power of intelligent, composable technologies. With its ability to speed time to insight, intelligently automate processes, and foster productivity, Copilot can help you stay ahead in an increasingly complex business landscape. With Copilot, you’re in control as it is grounded in your business data and automatically inherits your valuable security, compliance and privacy policies, regulations, and processes. Stay tuned and join us on this exciting journey into the future of ERP.

Learn more about the latest AI breakthroughs with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot on the Dynamics 365 AI webpage.

Next-generation AI across Microsoft business applications

With next-generation AI, interactions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature.

Discover more about AI

The post Introducing next-generation AI and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot capabilities for ERP appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

A common scenario for Field Service organizations is to augment their staff with external vendor resources.  Leveraging Azure Active Directory B2B Guest Access, vendors can be added to the organizational directory without being created as full first party users within the organization. This allows a clean delineation of users to manage security and data access. 

Dynamics 365 has made this vendor onboarding process even easier with Wave 1 2023 by introducing Tenant Switcher for Field Service Mobile. Tenant Switcher provides a user interface where guest users can now easily switch between their Home and Guest Tenants. 

Other considerations to note: 

• Guest Users require a Field Service license and appropriate Security role for access to Field Service Mobile. 
• Model Driven Application Authentication supports work or school accounts. AAD B2B Guest users configured with a personal account would not be able to authenticate and access the Field Service Mobile application directly. 

Field Service (Dynamics 365) mobile app overview  – Dynamics 365 Field Service | Microsoft Learn

The post Guest Access with Field Service Mobile: Introducing Tenant Switcher for Field Service Mobile appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

‘Offline-first’ with the Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile application offers many advantages for frontline workers. The offline-enabled application will allow frontline workers to perform functions while they are in the field, without depending on an internet connection. This keeps them productive even in environments without high quality network coverage, which can be a common problem in rural locations or even remote urban areas where network coverage is poor.

In this blog post we will share details on recent enhancements to the Dynamics 365 ‘Offline-first’ as well as some new capabilities to help your organization debug customizations with the offline application. Let’s go!

Wave 1 2023 enhancements

With the release of Wave 1 2023, frontline workers will have a faster sync experience and better visibility into the sync status of their offline-enabled Field Service Mobile application. 

The offline sync icon is now moved from the sitemap to the header of the application providing an ever-present status of their offline app.

Based on states of the icon, the offline-enabled frontline worker can see if their application is connected to Dataverse, a sync is actively running, an up-sync in pending, or if the previous sync resulted in an error.  This will allow the user to make informed decisions while in the field. For example, if an up-sync is pending after a period of being without network access, they will know to connect and allow that sync to complete so all their changes can be viewed by the back office.

The offline status page is also enhanced with more details on the sync, the size on disk and app connectivity status.

In addition to offline-related interface update, the sync experience is faster and more reliable. This includes optimizations to intelligently sync table or metadata changes, and improved parallelization to bring down data faster – including when the application is accessed in a way which forces a record sync such as launching the app via push notification.

Debugging the offline application

Debugging on a mobile application can be a difficult task, which is made more challenging when introducing unique aspects of ‘Offline’ mode. To help support customers who require customizations and enhancements while working offline we have introduced debugging capabilities for the model driving applications running on Android and Windows platforms, iOS platform compatibility is coming soon.

Debugging on Android

Debugging on Windows

References & resources

Please check out Dynamics 365 Power Apps Documentation for even more information on Offline mode – best practices, limitations to consider, and more

Offline Profile Guidelines

Offline Capabilities & Limitations

The post Fire up your mobile field service game: offline enhancements for a seamless user experience appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Customer service agents in a digital contact center interact with multiple customers daily through live chat, phone calls, and social media channels. During customer interactions, often they find themselves searching for relevant information on various screens or other systems, resulting in increased wait time for the end customer. Also, they want to quickly capture or update the information about their conversation, in real time without having to create or link a case to a conversation. Recent enhancements to the Active Conversation form allow agents to access and edit relevant information without any screen switching.  

Now, agents have all the relevant information at their fingertips, so that they spend less time looking for information on different screens or systems and help customers quickly. This leads to a reduction in average wait time and better customer satisfaction.  

Customize the Active Conversation form

This feature allows administrators to add custom fields on the conversation form and embed canvas apps to display the information from external sources. To ensure agents can capture information quickly, it offers agents the flexibility to view pre-filled information and update it as needed while interacting with the customer. They can view the records related to the conversation on the sub-grids. 

Access the enhanced Active Conversation form  

The Active Conversation form now displays the Customer 360 card. This allows agents to view information related to the customer. They can also make inline edits without having to navigate to contact or account form. Similarly, it shows case details with information related to the case linked to the conversation and allows agents to make inline edits as needed. Administrators can configure the fields they want to show on both these cards.

Additionally, the form includes the configurable recent cases card. This shows the color-coded priority and case status for easy discoverability by the agents. Moreover, switching from the active to the closed conversation form is restricted when the conversation is still active. The reverse is true as well. 

Administrators can enable these enhancements in the Customer Service workspace application by navigating to the Customer Service Admin center > Workspaces > Active Conversation form settings. 

Learn more 

To learn more, read the documentation:  

View Active Conversation in Omnichannel for Customer Service | Microsoft Learn 

The post Customize and access the improved Active Conversation form  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Organizations in different industries need to visualize their customer interactions in different ways. With customized columns in the conversation table, organizations can enable agents to quickly summarize the purpose of the interaction, and they can associate conversations with leads. The ability to customize the conversation table improves agent productivity and creates positive customer outcomes.  

Improve agent productivity and CSAT with conversation table customization 

When agents converse with customers, the Active Conversation form helps capture the details of the interaction. And consequently, supervisors and other agents can easily understand it. 

Ana is a customer service agent at Contoso who works tirelessly, juggling multiple customer problems over chat throughout the day. After every conversation with a customer, she patiently reviews her interaction, summarizes the issue, and writes wrap-up notes. She wishes there were a better way to quickly capture the outcomes of customer interactions and move on to serve other customers instead of spending time wrapping up the conversation.   

Dynamics 365 Customer Service does not have an out-of-the-box solution to serve her needs. However, admins can now customize the conversation table to help agents like Ana wrap up cases more quickly. Conversation table customization now supports adding columns, charts, views and connecting conversations to leads or any other activity-enabled table. 

Now that the conversation table is customizable, contact centers can tailor the agent experience to business-specific use cases like Ana’s. When the conversation table is customizable to Ana’s needs, she can save time, serve more customers, lower wait times for customers, and leave them happy with Contoso’s service.  

Create positive customer outcomes by associating leads with conversations  

Contoso enabled Conversation disposition as a custom column on the conversation table and added it to the active conversation form.  

Olivia, a Contoso customer, contacts Contoso support over webchat. She wants to find out why she was charged full price for her coffee subscription instead of the promotional price. The agent assigned to address Olivia’s concern, Ana, checks with her account team, and rectifies the error. Ana quickly wraps the conversation by specifying “Pricing dispute” disposition instead of having to write elaborate notes. Ana or any other agent connected to Olivia in the future can quickly get the context and complete interaction history through dispositions instead of having to go through one note after the other.

With the ability to view service and sales data in a single record, Ana can pitch a special offer to Olivia and associate a lead to this conversation immediately in the same form. Contoso’s sales team can follow up with Olivia subsequently through the lead.  This single source of information offers a true end-to-end customer experience without having to juggle between sales and support lines.  

Contact center supervisors can review interactions like Olivia’s pricing dispute or other dispositions and take appropriate preventive measures based on aspects of the conversation such as volume or sentiment.  

The use cases for customization are truly limitless and best left to the imagination of our customers and their business scenarios.  

Customize the conversation table 

Now you can extend the conversation table just like any other Dynamics 365 table from the customization experience in Power Apps. Use the Regarding column to associate any activity enabled entity to Conversation. You can create additional columns, views, and charts. This feature is enabled by default for all customers with our April 2023 release wave.  

Learn more

Watch a quick video introduction.

To find out more about conversation customization in Customer Service, read the documentation:

• Customize the Active Conversation form | Microsoft Learn
• Customizations supported by the Conversation table and form | Microsoft Learn 

The post Customize the conversation table for your business needs  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.