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Live in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Introduction
Barcodes and shipping labels are essential components in the supply chain landscape. They play a vital role in ensuring accurate inventory management, product tracking, and streamlining processes. Shipping labels are particularly important for navigating shipments complex global supply chains while maintaining end-to-end traceability. QR codes have also become a valuable tool for companies to engage customers and track their products worldwide.
With the 10.0.34 release, Supply Chain Management (SCM) has become even more robust, offering seamless integrations with third-party labelling solutions out-of-the-box.
Microsoft has partnered withSeagull Scientific BarTender and Loftware NiceLabel to enhance core Dynamics 365 SCM labeling capabilities and alleviate common pain points faced by many organizations.
This enhancement further strengthens the capabilities of SCM in managing barcodes and shipping labels effectively.
This feature enables direct interaction between Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and third-party solutions by providing a framework for communicating via HTTP APIs, without requiring the Document Routing Agent (DRA).
What capabilities does this unlock?
Integrating third-party labelling solutions is important for several reasons:
Label design: It provides user-friendly interfaces for designing custom labels, allowing businesses to create labels that meet their specific requirements and comply with industry standards. It includes possibilities to design labels with barcode or QR codes.
Printer compatibility: These labelling solutions support a wide range of printers, enabling businesses to print labels on various devices without compatibility issues. This flexibility ensures that labels can be printed efficiently and accurately, regardless of the printer being used.
Automation: It offers automation capabilities, allowing businesses to streamline their labelling processes and reduce manual intervention. By integrating with Dynamics 365 SCM, businesses can automate label printing based on specific triggers or events within the SCM system.
Centralized management: It provides centralized management tools that enable businesses to control and monitor their entire labelling process from a single location. Integration with Dynamics 365 SCM ensures that businesses can manage their supply chain and labelling operations cohesively.
RFID technology support: It support RFID encoding for various RFID tag types and frequencies, ensuring compatibility with a wide range of RFID systems as well as management of RFID-enabled labels for enhanced tracking and data management
In conclusion, Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM now provides a quick and simple method for linking Dynamics 365 SCM to many of the most popular enterprise labeling platforms. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM’s seamless integration and flexible configuration options, implementation is a pain-free and rapid. It allows for a a seamless flow of communication and transactions to optimize your printing workflow.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Over the past few months, the world has been captivated by generative AI and applications like the new chat experience in Bing, which can generate original text responses from a simple prompt written in natural language. With the introduction of generative AI across Microsoft business applicationsincluding Microsoft Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, and Power Platforminteractions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature. With Copilot, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform introduce a new way to generate ideas and content drafts, and methods to access and organize information across the business.
Before your business starts using Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, you may have questions about how it works, how it keeps your business data secure, and other important considerations. The answers to common questions below should help your organization get started.
What’s the difference between ChatGPT and Copilot?
ChatGPT is a general-purpose large language model (LLM) trained by OpenAI on a massive dataset of text, designed to engage in human-like conversations and answer a wide range of questions on various topics. Copilot also uses an LLM; however, the enterprise-ready AI technology is prompted and optimized for your business processes, your business data, and your security and privacy requirements. For Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform users, Copilot suggests optional actions and content recommendations in context with the task at hand. A few ways Copilot for natural language generation is unique:
The AI-generated responses are uniquely contextual and relevant to the task at hand informed by your business datawhether responding to an email from within Dynamics 365, deploying a low-code application that automates a specific manual process, or creating a targeted list of customer segments from your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Copilot uses both an LLM, like GPT, and your organization’s business data to produce more accurate, relevant, and personalized results. In short, your business data stays within your tenancy and is used to improve context only for your scenario, and the LLM itself does not learn from your usage. More on how the system works is below.
Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot is designed from the ground up on a foundation of enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy.
Read on for more details about these topics.
How does Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform work?
With Copilot, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform harness the power of foundation models coupled with proprietary Microsoft technologies applied to your business data:
Search (using Bing and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search): Brings domain-specific context to a Copilot prompt, enabling a response to integrate information from content like manuals, documents, or other data within the organization’s tenant. Currently, Microsoft Power Virtual Agent and Dynamics 365 Customer Service use this retrieval-augmented generation approach as pre-processing to calling an LLM.
Microsoft applications like Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, and Microsoft Power Platform and the business data stored in Microsoft Dataverse.
Microsoft Graph: Microsoft Graph API brings additional context from customer signals into the prompt, such as information from emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more.
Copilot requests an input prompt from a business user in an app, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales or Microsoft Power Apps. Copilot then preprocesses the prompt through an approach called grounding, which improves the specificity of the prompt, so you get answers that are relevant and actionable to your specific task. It does this, in part, by making a call to Microsoft Graph and Dataverse and accessing the enterprise data that you consent and grant permissions to use for the retrieval of your business content and context. We also scope the grounding to documents and data which are visible to the authenticated user through role-based access controls. For instance, an intranet question about benefits would only return an answer based on documents relevant to the employee’s role.
This retrieval of information is referred to as retrieval-augmented generation and allows Copilot to provide exactly the right type of information as input to an LLM, combining this user data with other inputs such as information retrieved from knowledge base articles to improve the prompt. Copilot takes the response from the LLM and post-processes it. This post-processing includes additional grounding calls to Microsoft Graph, responsible AI checks, security, compliance and privacy reviews, and command generation.
Finally, Copilot returns a recommended response to the user, and commands back to the apps where a human-in-the-loop can review and assess. Copilot iteratively processes and orchestrates these sophisticated services to produce results that are relevant to your business, accurate, and secure.
How does Copilot use your proprietary business data? Is it used to train AI models?
Copilot unlocks business value by connecting LLMs to your business datain a secure, compliant, privacy-preserving way.
Copilot has real-time access to both your content and context in Microsoft Graph and Dataverse. This means it generates answers anchored in your business contentyour documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings, contacts, and other business dataand combines them with your working contextthe meeting you’re in now, the email exchanges you’ve had on a topic, the chat conversations you had last weekto deliver accurate, relevant, contextual responses.
We, however, do not use customers’ data to train LLMs. We believe the customers’ data is their data, aligned to Microsoft’s data privacy policy. AI-powered LLMs are trained on a large but limited corpus of databut prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph and Microsoft services are not used to train Dynamics 365 Copilot and Power Platform Copilot capabilities for use by other customers. Furthermore, the foundation models are not improved through your usage. This means your data is accessible only by authorized users within your organization unless you explicitly consent to other access or use.
Are Copilot responses always factual?
Responses produced with generative AI are not guaranteed to be 100 percent factual. While we continue to improve responses to fact-based inquiries, people should still use their judgement when reviewing outputs. Our copilots leave you in the driver’s seat, while providing useful drafts and summaries to help you achieve more.
Our teams are working to address issues such as misinformation and disinformation, content blocking, data safety and preventing the promotion of harmful or discriminatory content in line with our AI principles.
We also provide guidance within the user experience to reinforce the responsible use of AI-generated content and actions. To help guide users on how to use Copilot, as well as properly use suggested actions and content, we provide:
Instructive guidance and prompts. When using Copilot, informational elements instruct users how to responsibly use suggested content and actions, including prompts, to review and edit responses as needed prior to usage, as well as to manually check facts, data, and text for accuracy.
Cited sources. Copilot cites public sources when applicable so you’re able to see links to the web content it references.
How does Copilot protect sensitive business information and data?
Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver enterprise-ready AI. Powered by Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot features built-in responsible AI and enterprise-grade Azure security.
Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft services like Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft 365, and automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy protections, and more make Copilot the AI solution you can trust.
Architected to protect tenant, group, and individual data. We know data leakage is a concern for customers. LLMs are not further trained on, or learn from, your tenant data or your prompts. Within your tenant, our time-tested permissions model provides safeguards and enterprise-grade security as seen in our Azure offerings. And on an individual level, Copilot presents only data you can access using the same technology that we’ve been using for years to secure customer data.
Designed to learn new skills. Copilot’s foundation skills are a game changer for productivity and business processes. The capabilities allow you to create, summarize, analyze, collaborate, and automate using your specific business content and context. But it doesn’t stop there. Copilot recommends actions for the user (for example, “create a time and expense application to enable employees to submit their time and expense reports”). And Copilot is designed to learn new skills. For example, with Viva Sales, Copilot can learn how to connect to CRM systems of record to pull customer datalike interaction and order historiesinto communications. As Copilot learns about new domains and processes, it will be able to perform even more sophisticated tasks and queries.
Will Copilot meet requirements for regulatory compliance mandates?
Copilot is offered within the Azure ecosystem and thus our compliance follows that of Azure. In addition, Copilot adheres to our commitment to responsible AI, which is described in our documented principles and summarized below. As regulation in the AI space evolves, Microsoft will continue to adapt and respond to fulfill future regulatory requirements in this space.
Next-generation AI across Microsoft business applications
With next-generation AI, interactions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature.
Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are helping our customers use our AI products responsibly, sharing our learnings, and building trust-based partnerships. For these new services, we provide our customers with information about the intended uses, capabilities, and limitations of our AI platform service, so they have the knowledge necessary to make responsible deployment choices.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Real-time analytics are critical for organizations that want to stay on top of their contact center operations. The ability to see what’s happening in real-time, and to focus on the metrics that matter most, enables supervisors to identify and address issues efficiently.
We built intraday analytics to help address this requirement. Intraday analytics uses an intermediary database to aggregate metrics from Dataverse and then use it to power the reports.
A better experience with real-time analytics
We received feedback from you about improvements you would like to see around supervisor experiences. Subsequently, we decided to build a feature from the ground up that improves upon the intraday analytics experience.
Starting this April, we are providing Real-Time Analytics for Omnichannel reports out of the box with Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The following diagram shows a high-level architecture diagram.
As you start utilizing these reports, you will notice some key improvements.
More frequent report refreshes
With a refresh frequency of less than 30 seconds, supervisors can see what’s happening in their contact center as it happens. This means they can identify issues and address them immediately as compared to getting their updates with a delay of five to 15 minutes with intraday analytics. Real-time analytics make it easier for supervisors to manage their teams’ performance and respond to customer needs in a timely way.
Improved information architecture
Real-time analytics provide supervisors with a better, more intuitive experience. By presenting data in an accessible format, supervisors can understand what’s happening in their contact center more easily. Redundant metrics have been removed, and ambiguity with definitions of some metrics have been addressed enabling supervisors to see more detail into their contact centers and identify areas for improvement more efficiently.
Greater focus on human agents
Real-time analytics distinguishes the performance of agents and bots. Unlike intraday analytics, which builds metrics off both agent and bot performance, real-time analytics considers only parts of the conversation handled by agent for its KPIs. This allows supervisors to measure agent performance. For example, customer wait times will be a measure of how much time your customer had to wait to get connected to a human agent. By starting the timer at time of escalation from the bot, it makes an accurate representation of the customer experience.
Connects directly to Dataverse
With real-time analytics, organizations can be confident that their data visibility and privacy rules are respected. You can ensure that data is only visible to those who need to see it, without any additional effort. Because the reports connect directly to Dataverse, there’s no risk of data being outdated or inaccurate.
Native visual customization and bookmarks
By personalizing their real-time reports, supervisors can focus on the metrics that matter most to their organization. This helps them identify trends, diagnose problems, and make data-driven decisions. Unlike intraday analytics, real-time analytics don’t require additional Power BI licenses to make visual changes and to store bookmarks.
Powerful supervisor actions
With the ongoing conversation dashboard built-in with real-time analytics, supervisors can identify unassigned work, assign work to agents, and actively monitor and intervene when required from a single place. This experience allows supervisors to act on data without having to leave the page or perform additional clicks, saving them valuable time.
With real-time analytics, Dynamics 365 Customer Service provides a powerful tool for supervisors to ensure high customer satisfaction. As hybrid work is actively disrupting the workforce and customers are seeking help across a variety of channels, now is the time to use advanced reporting. We can’t wait to hear your feedback and ideas around this!
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Organization charts enable sellers to better understand their customers’ organizational structures and identify key decision-makers. This information helps sellers develop and execute targeted sales strategies, improve their sales effectiveness, and build stronger relationships with their customers. Additionally, having an org chart in a CRM system helps improve collaboration among sales teams and improves overall communication and coordination with the customer’s organization.
With our new organization charts, you can build your entire org chart with ease and precision!
Creating organization charts made easy
The new feature in Dynamics 365 Sales makes building an organizational chart easier and more efficient, as users can create entire org charts with simple drag-and-drop actions. The list of all contacts of a given account is automatically gathered for you and displayed in the side pane. Through a simple drag-and-drop action, the entire org chart can be built in just a few minutes!
With the new organization chart, users can leverage tags to indicate key players and decision-makers in the org. This helps sellers quickly identify the right people to engage with during the sales process, reducing the time it takes to close deals and improving the overall customer experience. Users can create assistant cards to include executive assistants in the chart as well.
Organization chart
Monitor Contact Health
The new feature allows users to monitor the health and risks of customer relationships using relationship health embedded in organization charts. This capability helps sellers to identify potential risks to customer relationships, such as inactive accounts or unresolved issues, and take proactive measures to address them. It improves the overall health of customer relationships and reduces the risk of losing valuable customers. You can learn more about relationship intelligence by reading the Overview of Relationship intelligence | Microsoft Learn
Users can capture notes directly from organization charts on-the-go, enabling them to capture critical information about customers quickly. This feature helps sellers remember important details about their customers and allows them to keep track of their customer interactions. Users can access the org chart directly from the Contacts form, making it easier to navigate and manage customer information.
Contact health
Do more with LinkedIn
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool that enables sales professionals to build and maintain relationships with their clients and contacts. With a Microsoft Relationship Sales license, users can receive notifications when one of their contacts leaves an account. This feature is particularly useful for sales teams, as they rely on accurate and up-to-date information to achieve their goals. Additionally, with a Sales Navigator license, users can continue to send InMail and access the LinkedIn profile of their contacts. Therefore, organization charts offer even more, when you combine them with LinkedIn Sales Navigator as users get notifications that help maintain data accuracy.
Organization chart with LinkedIn update
To summarize, the smart organization charts offer the following capabilities:
Build the entire org chart via simple drag-and-drop action.
Leverage tags to indicate key players and decision-makers.
Create Assistant cards to include executive assistants in the organization chart.
Capture notes directly from org charts on-the-go.
Access your organization chart directly from the Contacts form as well.
Monitor the health and risks of the customer relationships using relationship health embedded in organization charts.
Get notified when contacts leave the organization with LinkedIn Sales Navigator License.
Next Steps
Increasing your sales team’s collaboration could be as simple as having an organization chart where you can visualize all your stakeholders and Dynamics 365 Sales makes it easy.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In March, we introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot—your copilot for work. Today, we’re announcing that we’re bringing Microsoft 365 Copilot to more customers with an expanded preview and new capabilities.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Are you tired of constantly searching for the same knowledge articles in Dynamics 365 Customer Service? Say goodbye to wasting precious time and hello to the new favorite feature!
We are excited to announce a new knowledge management feature in Dynamics 365 Customer Service that allows you to mark knowledge articles as favorites.
With this new feature, you can easily save up to 50 knowledge articles that you frequently use as favorites. This allows you to access them quickly while you’re working on a case, without having to search for them every time.
To use this feature, your administrator will need to enable it and provide privileges to specific roles. Once enabled, you can easily mark an article as a favorite by selecting the heart icon next to it in the search results.
Using your favorite knowledge articles
When administrators enable favorites, agents can
Select an article from the list of search results.
Click on the favorite (heart) icon to add the article to your favorites.
Remove an article from the favorites list by clearing the favorite (heart) icon.
All of your saved articles will appear in the My favorites tab. You can access this tab from various places within the app, including the app side pane, standalone search control, form-embedded control, and the reference pane.
The best part? The article you last marked as a favorite will appear first in your list of favorites. When you delete an article, it will no longer appear on your favorites list. Additionally, your favorite articles are saved in the language in which you viewed them when you marked them as a favorite. If you view a translated version of a favorite article, it won’t appear as a favorite. Also, when a favorite article has multiple versions, the new version appears as a favorite and replaces the earlier version.
If you’re using the Customer Service workspace or Omnichannel for Customer Service, selecting a favorite article will open it in an app tab.
We hope this feature makes it easier to access the knowledge articles you use most in Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
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