This April at Hannover Messe, the world’s leading industrial trade fair, organizations across engineering, digital technologies, energy, and more will gather to demonstrate solutions for high-performance, sustainable industries. Microsoft is honored to attend this year’s event to showcase how Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps manufacturers: 

• Modernize service operations with AI to close work orders faster.
• Deliver end-to-end personalization to customers and improve efficiency.
• Increase visibility into your product genealogy across steps in the supply chain.

Modernize service operations with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service  

New Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enhance data insights, boost productivity and deliver more customization for field service managers. These capabilities are generally available today.

Managers can now interact with Copilot to find pertinent information about work orders, prompting Copilot using natural language for details and insights, right from the Dynamics 365 Field Service web app. By simplifying data retrieval and minimizing time spent searching for information, managers can boost the efficiency of work order processes.

In addition, Copilot can provide work order summaries, reducing time spent reading through lengthy work orders to quickly get an overview and understanding of key points of the work to be done. Organizations now have more control to include specific data in the summaries for their users, which can lead to more useful and actionable summaries.

To help ensure smooth communication flows when using the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, field service managers can ask Copilot to compose clear and concise email content recapping details of scheduled work orders, which can then be edited or further customized before sending. And with the Dynamics 365 Field Service plugin for Copilot, field service managers and technicians can find key information about work orders and Dataverse records from within a Microsoft Teams chat using natural language. Starting today, technicians can also ask Copilot to search through lengthy product manuals to find answers to help resolve product issues faster. 

Also starting today, technicians can easily launch a Dynamics 365 Remote Assist call natively within Microsoft Teams mobile to increase first-time fix rates. Access to Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is available with Dynamics 365 Field Service, at no additional cost, and licensed customers can try out the mixed reality tools available in preview starting today within their Teams mobile app for iOS. 

Dynamics 365 Field Service users with the Field Service app in Teams can now share links to work orders that automatically expand to provide key details. This link unfurling capability eliminates the need for technicians to switch between apps. Visit Modernize Service Operations with AI booth at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06 to discover new ways to transform your service operations with generative AI and mixed reality.

Deliver end-to-end personalization to customers and improve efficiency 

At Hannover Messe, we’ll highlight the end-to-end customer experience for manufacturing teams. At our booth and across multiple sessions, we’ll showcase how manufacturing teams across sales, service, and marketing can leverage the power of Copilot and Dynamics 365 to enhance their customer interactions and deliver personalization at scale by refining internal workflows.

Harnessing the end-to-end, unified platform of Dynamics 365 across the teams enables better visibility and deeper personalization. A prime example is Sonepar, a leading global electrical distributor. They’re now leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to deliver exceptional experiences to their customers.

“With this platform, we are able to transfer data regarding customer needs and requests between teams, measure the service provided to our customers and the time taken to resolve problems”.

Denis Ravel, CRM Director, Sonepar

Learn more about their recent transformation and see how Dynamics 365 helped to empower a new standard of excellence at Sonepar.  

Improve visibility into product genealogy with traceability 

Today, we’re announcing the upcoming preview of traceability for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Traceability allows you to increase visibility into product genealogy through the different steps of the supply chain. You can track events and attributes throughout supply chain processes, and query and analyze the data with an intuitive interface. This capability supports you in meeting industry-specific regulatory requirements, tracking the achievement of sustainability and ethical supply chain goals, and gaining deeper insights into how supply chain events impact product quality and customer satisfaction.  

Traceability is designed to work seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, using the data already tracked in Dynamics 365. This removes the need to purchase or integrate a separate traceability solution, which can be costly and complex. Now, you can benefit from the simplicity and performance of using the built-in capabilities. Check out traceability at Demo L in the Microsoft booth at Hannover Messe.  

Join us at Hannover Messe 

Visit us at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06, to explore demos of new capabilities announced today, and learn about our end-to-end, AI-powered solutions for manufacturers across industries.

Hannover Messe 2024

Join is at the world’s leading industrial trade fair.

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The post Microsoft unveils AI features for manufacturers at Hannover Messe 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Delivering exceptional service is key for building customer preference and loyalty. Today, we’re introducing new capabilities for Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service that help service managers and technicians efficiently find the information they need to resolve issues right the first time while keeping customers updated at every step of the process. Additionally, with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist capabilities within Microsoft Teams and seamless data flow across Dynamics 365 Field Service, finance, and operations applications as well as Microsoft 365, we’re helping break down application silos and making it easier to stay in the flow.

Streamlining work order management with next-generation AI

With new capabilities generally available starting today, field service managers can interact with Copilot to find pertinent information about work orders using natural language in the Dynamics 365 Field Service web app. Copilot can assist in retrieving work order details, summarizing them, and presenting them in an easily digestible format. Copilot can also go beyond searching work orders to searching other Microsoft Dataverse records, including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. In addition, organizations can now configure the data that Copilot uses to generate work order summaries in Dynamics 365 Field Service to meet their specific business needs.

“The introduction of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service, with its powerful summarization capabilities, is a game-changer. Not only does it benefit our leaders, but it also streamlines internal communications, aids finance, and helps customers stay up to date. By automating this process, we reduce manual work and ensure critical information isn’t overlooked.”

Amit Nene, Business Applications Director, BW Packaging Platform, Barry Wehmiller

With new capabilities generally available starting today in the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, field service managers can go beyond asking Copilot for help creating work orders based on customer emails and scheduling them. They can now also ask Copilot to draft email updates to customers recapping details of scheduled work orders or suggesting next steps for unscheduled work orders.

Boosting technician efficiency with new tools in Teams

With the Dynamics 365 Field Service plugin for Microsoft Copilot now generally available, field service managers and technicians can use natural language chat in the flow of work in Teams to find key information about their work orders and other Dataverse records. Starting today, technicians can also use this experience to ask Copilot to search through lengthy product manuals and find relevant answers to resolve product issues faster.

Should technicians need additional assistance from remote experts to resolve issues, starting today they can access Dynamics 365 Remote Assist capabilities in the flow of work in Teams. As a technician shares what they see through their mobile device’s camera during a video call, the mixed reality tools enable technicians and remote experts to use annotations and arrows to refer to specific parts of a machine. These spatial annotations stay anchored even if the camera moves. Access to Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is available at no additional cost with Dynamics 365 Field Service, and licensed customers can try out Remote Assist’s spatial annotation capabilities available in preview starting today within their Teams mobile app for iOS.

To further streamline collaboration among field service managers, technicians, and remote experts in Teams chats, meetings, or channels, Dynamics 365 Field Service users who have installed the Field Service app in Teams can now share links to work orders that automatically expand to provide key details. This link unfurling capability is generally available starting today.

Introducing efficiencies with more integrated offerings

To help the frontline and back office stay in sync as service deliveries impact financial and inventory systems, the Dynamics 365 Field Service integration with Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications is now generally available. Additionally, for small businesses, seamless financial and inventory data flow between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is also now generally available.

Learn more at Hannover Messe 2024

Next week at Hannover Messe 2024, the world’s leading industrial trade fair, organizations across engineering, digital technologies, energy, and more will gather to demonstrate solutions for high performance, sustainable industries. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service team is honored to attend to showcase how the innovations announced today can help manufacturers. Visit us at the Hannover Messe expo, Hall 17, Stand G06 to discover new ways to transform your service operations with generative AI and mixed reality.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

New capabilities generally available today.

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We’re excited to announce the general availability of new and enhanced experiences in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service as part of our 2024 release wave 1 cadence. This release focuses on extending Microsoft Copilot capabilities by infusing generative AI into customer, agent, and supervisor experiences. We’re also enhancing voice, messaging, and email channels to provide a unified, omnichannel experience.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service helps organizations improve every aspect of contact center operations. We’re continuing to invest in generative AI to help contact centers create seamless self-service options for common questions. Plus, it helps every agent become a super-agent when it comes to more complex, high-touch issues.

Copilot and AI innovation in Customer Service

Since we announced Copilot capabilities a year ago, organizations have been realizing the benefits of generative AI in the contact center. Copilot answers agents’ questions, drafts email, provides case and conversation summaries, and automates time-consuming tasks. We’ve enhanced the email drafting capability further by including a contextual inline email editor, making it even easier for agents to deliver personalized service.

Also in this release, we’re enabling agents to generate AI-powered timeline highlights to get an overview of key activities like emails, notes, appointments, tasks, phone calls, and conversations. This minimizes the amount of clicking and scrolling an agent must do to get caught up on case and customer details.

Organizations can extend Copilot capabilities with prompt plug-ins in public preview this month. With plug-ins, agents can generate a summary of their customers, products, cases, or any other entities in Microsoft Dataverse without having to switch tabs or log in to a separate app.

Generative AI in external apps with Microsoft Copilot for Service

In February, we introduced Microsoft Copilot for Service, which enables organizations to use Copilot capabilities with their existing customer relationship management (CRM) solutions such as Salesforce, and other productivity apps like Microsoft Teams and Outlook. It helps organizations by making their knowledge more accessible. This speeds up training and problem-solving, making work easier for agents.

In Teams, agents can save time by accessing a customer’s CRM records during a meeting. Agents can update the case and contact details, and link to open CRM records from Teams.

In Outlook, Copilot for Service can draft personalized, contextual customer service emails based on predefined intents, or agents can provide their own custom intents. Copilot can also help agents catch up on email quickly by generating summaries of long email conversations and display summaries of all the activities and information of a case. They can then save the summary to the CRM system and access it later.

Preparing for meetings is easier for agents because Copilot for Service provides the case summary associated with the meeting, along with access to view and edit CRM records. Furthermore, Copilot for Service can recommend CRM updates to agents based on information it finds in Outlook, such as contacts, emails, meetings, and summaries.

Voice channel enhancements in Customer Service

The omnichannel capabilities in Dynamics 365 Customer Service help organizations provide support to customers across multiple channels, including email, voice, text message, chat, and social media. This release brings several voice channel enhancements and certifications.

With enhancements to outbound dialing, agents can easily search for a customer in the outbound dialer and open the customer record right from the call history. They can now test the microphone and speakers before and during calls. Agents can also rate the call quality using a five-star rating system with the ability to describe issues with lower quality calls. We’re also enhancing customer trust, compliance, and security with sensitive data masking in data storage, during interactive voice response (IVR) sessions, and agent sessions.

IVR enhancements to the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Omnichannel add-on help customers self-serve before they must speak with an agent. In addition to improved speech recognition accuracy, these new voice features enable organizations to set prompts on silence, control timeouts, enable barge-in at any step, and suppress noise. The result is a smooth, contextual experience for customers.

Customers in Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) Moderate can now access features from the voice channel. In addition, we’re submitting Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certifications for the components of the omnichannel stack in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This high-level certification for government clouds will ensure the security of newly integrated features.

Workforce management

Intelligent forecasting with Dynamics 365 Customer Service introduces an AI-powered forecasting feature designed to predict service volumes and agent demands effectively. By analyzing historical data and trends, this intelligent model provides accurate predictions for up to six months into the future. Organizations can use this capability to optimize resource allocation, streamline operations, and improve customer satisfaction, thanks to daily and intraday forecasts for cases and conversations.

Forecasting is tailored to the unique needs of front-office and back-office operations. It distinguishes between direct customer interactions (conversations) and internal processing (cases), offering flexibility in forecasting for different service channels. This allows organizations to plan resources efficiently, ensuring optimal service levels and agent availability for both immediate and future service demands.

Operational metrics such as service level, shrinkage, and concurrency are considered in forecasting agent demand, aligning capacity with operational constraints. The model’s auto-detection of seasonality and holidays further refines accuracy, enabling businesses to adapt to service demand variations. User-friendly charts and the ability to slice forecast data by channels and queues provide valuable insights, while the export functionality enhances usability and integration with other tools.

Email enhancements

An intuitive agent experience is key to connecting with customers. Dynamics 365 Customer Service offers a robust agent desktop with generative AI, collaboration tools, and productivity features in a customizable workspace.

Agents now have a more efficient way to search for customers. They can use any part of the customer’s name to quickly find the right recipient. Email addresses are displayed alongside recipient names, making it easier for agents to identify and select the correct contact. Additionally, agents can see if recipients have set an out-of-office status, so they can adjust their communication accordingly.

The enhanced email attachment experience allows agents to quickly drag and drop attachments in emails. It also includes a reminder system that prompts agents if they mention an attachment in the email but forget to include it. These capabilities help agents save time and increase productivity when handling email communications.

To benefit the support organization, we’re also introducing the ability to create multiple cases from emails. The feature allows for automatic case creation for all mailboxes that receive an email, ensuring full visibility into customer issues. It enables teams to respond independently to customer issues, without case transfers, leading to quicker first responses and improved handling times. By avoiding case transfer delays, teams can more quickly meet service level agreements.

Next-generation AI that’s ready for enterprises

Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service offers a range of privacy features, including data encryption and secure storage. It also allows users to control access to their data and provides detailed auditing and monitoring capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is built on Azure OpenAI, so enterprises can rest assured that it offers the same level of data privacy and protection.

AI solutions built responsibly

We are 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’re putting those principles into practice across the company to develop and deploy AI that will have a positive impact on society.

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Learn more about how to elevate your service with AI and enable Copilot features for your support agents.

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