This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Sellers often need to manage numerous long documents to understand customers’ unique requirements and deliver the personalized attention advancing deals. These documents require sellers to invest significant time reviewing and understanding them, leaving sales team less time for their customers. With the summarization capabilities provided by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can now obtain pertinent details from sales documents in minutes. Sellers quickly gain insights into customer requirements, budget details, timelines, and main decision makers, enabling them to prepare for prospect meetings more effectively and engage in more informed and meaningful conversations.
Close deals faster with seller-specific document summary
Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales can create summaries of sales documents that include insights specific to your sales team’s needs. For example, sellers can quickly get details about the issuing organization, items to be procured, deadlines and timelines for submitting a proposal, contact information and meetings with stakeholders mentioned in the document, and other important information needed to move a deal forward, such as compliance and legal considerations.
Sellers can ask Copilot to summarize sales documents stored in SharePoint or associated with any lead, contact, opportunity, and account in Dynamics 365 Sales.
Next steps
Learn more about summarizing documents linked to records in Dynamics 365 Sales.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Revolutionizing Your Scheduling Experience
Welcome to the next chapter in scheduling. Today, we are thrilled to unveil the dramatically enhanced Schedule Board on Universal Resource Scheduling.
A Seamless Transition
At the core of this update, we are moving from the legacy ExtJS to a modern React component for the schedule board. Our guiding principle for this upgrade has been visual parity. The Resource panel, Requirements panel, Filters, and Views are all exactly as you know and love. But look closer, and you’ll discover the subtle enhancements we’ve made based on your valued feedback.
Performance You’ll Feel
You’ll notice that everything feels a little bit snappier, and that’s because it is! A more efficient React infrastructure means
a 30% reduction in load times when navigating through pages in the resource panel
a 40% reduction in load times when switching views
a 55% reduction in load times when saving bookings
a staggering 68% reduction in load times when switching tabs
and more.
This isn’t just performance improvement; it’s a performance revolution.
Intuitive Usability Enhancements
We’ve heard your feedback and incorporated your top requested usability improvements:
1) Days of the Week: With the new React board, you can now filter which days of the week you want to have displayed on your board’s hourly view. For example, if your technicians only work Monday to Friday, you can exclude the non-working days Saturday and Sunday for a more space-efficient board.
2) Reorder Tabs Control: Another top request from you was the ability to reorder tabs. For example, you can now prioritize your frequently used tab to load first when you open the schedule board. You can also multi-select more than one tab and move them all at once! This additional flexibility streamlines your day-to-day operations, making your workflow smoother and more intuitive.
3) Ellipsis control: In the past, your dispatchers may not have known that there was other capabilities off the resource panel such as View resource card or Get driving directions. Now with the new ellipsis (3 dot) control, they can access these options quickly and intuitively.
4) Dayline: On the previous schedule board, locating your current time and day position on a dense board was be a challenge. The new dayline makes it easier than ever to navigate the schedule board with precision and ease.
Experience the Next Chapter Today
The new Schedule Board on Universal Resource Scheduling is not just an upgrade; it’s a transformation. It’s faster, smarter, and more flexible, all while maintaining the familiarity you rely on. We can’t wait for you to experience the new level of efficiency and usability it brings to your scheduling tasks.
Join us in embracing this leap forward on 1 Nov 2024. Your scheduling, reimagined.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As organizations globally grapple with the accelerated development and adoption of AI, business leaders are keen to use the potential of generative AI in transforming revenue-generating functions like sales. Investing in cutting-edge AI capabilities will set up sales teams to bolster customer experience, being able to understand the customer needs and delivering a highly personalized buying experience at a much faster pace.
Today, many sales teams are bogged down with legacy customer relationship management (CRM) systems designed decades ago, manually entering data and dealing with interfaces built for a slower pace, all of which leaves little time for what truly matters: connecting with customers. Sales leaders are now looking for AI-powered technology that helps them build a stronger pipeline, convert opportunities quicker, and build strong relationships with customers. By using technology that reduces the amount of time spent on manual tasks, sellers gain valuable hours each day to work on opportunities that are already in motion. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, B2B sales organizations using generative-AI-embedded sales technologies will reduce the amount of time spent on prospecting and customer-meeting prep by more than 50%.1
Figure 1: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms** (25 August 2024)
How Microsoft is making selling easier
Close more deals and spend less time on tasks
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enables sellers to close more deals and increase personal productivity with a feature-rich CRM system that includes next-generation AI features out-of-box. Sellers can confidently develop and prioritize their pipeline with lead and opportunity qualification. Sales helps sellers deliver high-quality engagements with prospective customers by helping them prepare with relationship insights, next-step recommendations, and suggestions for improving their interactions. Sales managers can build high-performance sales teams with the ability to identify sellers who need coaching, monitor business health with intelligent forecasting, and scale best practices with automated sales sequences.
Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales works as a companion for sales representatives by providing generative AI-powered features designed to reduce manual and time-consuming work for sellers. For instance, sellers can quickly get up to speed with accounts, opportunities, contacts, and leads with record summarization and recent changes in the prospective customer organizations. They can also get news updates on accounts along with answers and content recommendations for that account using access to sales documents in SharePoint. Sellers can get help summarizing long email threads and responding to threads with Copilot drafting emails with infused CRM context. Right before taking meetings with customers, sellers can ask Copilot for meeting preparation assistance as well.
Access sales insights everywhere, no matter where you choose to work
At Microsoft, we know first-hand that sellers often spend their time outside of their CRM in productivity apps like Outlook and Microsoft Teams. That’s why Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales seamlessly brings CRM insights right into the seller’s flow of work. Copilot for Sales brings together Microsoft 365 Copilot with a role-based agent that connects with your CRM platform to bring sales insights and generative AI into the flow of work. Sellers can simplify their daily tasks by using Copilot to draft e-mails, set up meetings, or summarize previous meetings and e-mail threads. They can save time with Copilot by generating pitch decks, meeting preparation briefs, and data visualizations in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. When it’s time for a sales call, sellers can use Copilot to get insights right within Teams, with AI-generated sales tips, related information, and answers to customer’s questions. After the call, Copilot provides a rich meeting recap that allows the seller to stay focused on next steps.
Integration with an expanded ecosystem
Organizations can unlock the full potential of the Microsoft Cloud to empower their sales teams with seamless integration at every step. The Sales integration with Teams fosters open communication and collaboration across marketing, sales, and service departments. With automatic data synchronization between Microsoft 365 apps and Sales or other CRM platforms, sellers can access customer and opportunity information directly within Teams and Outlook. Additionally, sales operation leads and managers can utilize Microsoft Power BI to analyze trends and generate reports. Microsoft Power Platform further enables sellers to automate workflows, develop apps, and analyze data, enhancing agility and driving innovation.
Our customers’ success
First West Credit Union is headquartered in Langley, British Columbia, and operates through four locally-known brands to serve members across the province. After a comprehensive request for proposal (RFP) process involving multiple vendors, First West decided to replace its earlier CRM solutions with Sales. The implementation was completed in record time.
“In my experience, these are typically 24-month journeys. The initial deployment of our Sales system was completed in just 11 months. This expedited rollout enabled us to seamlessly transition from and decommission our outdated legacy CRM systems, marking a significant achievement in our digital transformation journey.”
Darrell Jaggers, CIO & Chief Transformation Officer, First West Credit Union
The sales advisors at First West Credit Union are already realizing value. The manual reporting process used to take 20 minutes, but member discovery now takes only a few minutes with Sales, driving productivity gains of more than 75%. Within the first month of launching Sales, First West’s advisors had completed more than 2,600 member discoveries, marking a 54% surge in adoption compared to the previous approach.
Alkemy, a specialty chemical systems company, transformed its sales operations by adopting Sales in 2019. Partnering with Intelibis, they automated customer segmentation, digitized sales processes, and integrated with Power Automate and SharePoint. This shift reduced their operational burden by 90%, generated over 2,900 reports, and significantly improved customer service. Alkemy now aims to become fully digital, using predictive controls to expand in the marketplace.
As organizations continue to adopt AI at an unprecedented pace, at Microsoft we are focused on delivering the most cutting-edge experiences built on trust and security in leading products like Sales.
Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about the value and return on investments, as well as the best way you can get started with Sales and Copilot for Sales.
Sources:
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Varun Agarwal, Steve Rietberg, 24 August 2024.
*Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Starting February 2025, new Customer Service customers with Enterprise licenses will only see the Customer Service workspace app. The Customer Service Hub (CSH) app will no longer be available for all new organizations with Enterprise licenses.
The recent release wave introduced an exciting set of new features to help support representatives be more productive. Dynamics 365 Customer Service users from all over the world are incorporating Copilot capabilities into their day-to-day contact center operations, as well as taking advantage of multisession improvements, such as omnichannel experiences and inbox enhancements. When you migrate to Customer Service workspace, you can use all these features out of the box.
What is Customer Service workspace?
Customer Service workspace is a multisession app that increases support representatives’ productivity by enabling them to multitask as they work on multiple cases. The app provides a browser-like, tabbed experience within one window. By contrast, its predecessor Customer Service Hub is a single-session app, so users must open multiple browser windows as they take on more work items.
Customer Service workspace enables representatives to respond to email, chats, messages from configured social media channels, and calls from our native voice channel, for a truly omnichannel experience. They can view, filter, and sort all their conversations and work items in the Outlook-style agent inbox. Administrators can create custom inbox views to meet the specific needs of the organization.
Out-of-the-box Copilot capabilities
For users who want to try Copilot, we recommend Customer Service workspace because it eliminates the need for additional configuration work. When administrators enable Copilot, support representatives can use these generally available capabilities:
Summarize cases with Copilot
Summarize conversations with Copilot
Ask Copilot a question
Draft an email response
The ability to summarize cases and conversations with Copilot can drastically reduce the amount of time representatives need to type notes and bring themselves up to speed on cases. Administrators can enable these capabilities on the Summaries page of the Customer Service admin center. For case summaries, admins can specify which fields Copilot uses to generate a summary. For conversations, admins can specify when to generate a summary or let representatives generate one on demand. In both cases, Copilot requires about 38 words to create a summary.
When admins enable Copilot features in the Customer Service admin center, representatives can ask questions and get answers in natural language. Copilot bases its answers on knowledge sources and up to five trusted domains that the admin specifies. Copilot can process up to 100,000 of your organization’s published knowledge articles, but you must have at least 50 published articles to get started.
With Customer Service workspace, you can leverage your organizational knowledge in new ways and streamline workloads to make your representatives more productive. The result is smoother contact center operations and happier customers.
Note: Customer Service workspace is not supported in mobile devices, Unified Service Desk, and with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises).
Next Steps
In February 2025, new organizations with Enterprise license will no longer see Customer Service Hub (CSH). We will continue to support the application for all existing organizations and new customers of other license types (e.g., Customer Service Professional license).
If you are an existing customer and are setting up a new environment for testing purposes, you can enable Customer Service Hub, if needed. You can also refer to our migration frequently asked questions document to help answer any other questions you may have about the migration process.
Please contact your Success Manager, FastTrack representative, or Microsoft Support if you have any additional questions.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In an ever-evolving business landscape, the pressure to create meaningful, real-time connections with customers has never been greater. At Microsoft, we understand this challenge, which is why we’re incredibly proud to announce that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.*
Figure 1: Gartner Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms** (23 September 2024)
We feel this recognition, for the third consecutive year, highlights the strides we’ve made in enabling marketers to harness the power of data, AI, and automation to drive personalized customer experiences. Last year, we took the bold step of connecting customer data and journeys directly within one product—Customer Insights—to strengthen the connection between data and engagement. This move has allowed us to focus even more on breaking down silos, empowering teams, and delivering a unified understanding of customers across departments.
In 2023, we introduced Microsoft Copilot as part of our commitment to evolving the way marketers and data analysts interact with customer insights. By using generative AI, marketers can now automate time-consuming tasks, such as drafting emails, designing forms, and segmenting customers. In the past year alone, we’ve expanded these capabilities with over 15 new Copilot features, including the ability to:
Use Copilot to draft, revise, and optimize marketing content.
Automatically align communications with brand guidelines.
Build customer segments with conversational AI.
Summarize lead interactions and even predict customer behavior patterns.
By incorporating Copilot into Customer Insights, we’re not just enhancing efficiency—we’re enabling creativity and strategic thinking that can transform a company’s marketing efforts.
Breaking down data silos for better customer experiences
One of the key advantages Gartner identified is our ability to unify customer data across marketing, sales, and service functions. Too often, customer experiences are fragmented as information remains stuck in departmental silos. With Customer Insights, companies can create seamless journeys by ensuring data flows smoothly between touchpoints, providing a cohesive customer experience from start to finish.
This unified approach has been crucial in helping our customers, including Kodak Alaris, Lynk & Co, and Team Rubicon, revolutionize how they engage with their customers. For example:
Kodak Alaris has saved more than 60% in costs while gaining visibility into customer journeys with Customer Insights.
Lynk & Co uses the platform to capture and utilize customer data to create personalized, seamless car sharing experiences.
Team Rubicon enhances its volunteer and donor engagement efforts using Customer Insights, helping to build and maintain lasting relationships that fuel their critical disaster work.
Global support with local expertise
Our vision of making personalization accessible to organizations worldwide remains a cornerstone of our strategy. We provide support in more than 40 languages and maintain a direct sales presence across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. This, combined with a robust network of more than 350 partners and 7,000 resellers, allows us to deliver powerful solutions globally while tailoring them to local market needs.
The road ahead
As we reflect on this recognition from Gartner, we remain focused on continuing to innovate and support our customers. Whether it’s through the expanding capabilities of Copilot, deeper data integration, or our commitment to breaking down barriers between departments, Customer Insights is positioned to help businesses create more meaningful, personalized, and scalable customer engagements.
Figure 1: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Rick LaFond, Jeff Cohen, Alan Antin, Upasna Chandna, Nicholas Mortensen, 23 September 2024.
*Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose
**This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
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