On January 25, 2024, we published the 2024 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a compilation of new capabilities planned to be released between April 2024 and September 2024. This first release wave of the year offers hundreds of new features and improvements, showcasing our ongoing commitment to fueling digital transformation for both our customers and partners.

This release reinforces our dedication to developing applications and experiences that contribute value to roles by dismantling barriers between data, insights, and individuals. This wave introduces diverse enhancements across various business applications, emphasizing improved user experiences, productivity, innovative app development and automation, and advanced AI capabilities. Watch a summary of the release highlights.

Explore a heightened level of convenience when examining Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans using the release planner. Enjoy unmatched flexibility as you customize, filter, and sort plans to align with your preferences, effortlessly sharing them. Maintain organization, stay informed, and remain in control while smoothly navigating through various active waves of plans. For more information, visit the release planner.

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Dynamics 365 release wave

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales enhances customer understanding and boosts sales through data, intelligence, and user-friendly experiences. The 2024 release wave 1 focuses on providing sellers timely customer information, expediting deals with actionable insights, improving productivity, and empowering organizations through open configurability and expanded generative AI leadership. Check out this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave.

Microsoft Copilot for Sales continues to deliver and enhance cutting-edge generative AI capabilities for sellers by enriching the Copilot in Microsoft 365 capabilities with sales specific skills, data, and actions. Additionally, the team will focus on assisting sellers on the go within the Outlook and Microsoft Teams mobile apps.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through Copilot, filtering response verification, diagnostic tools for admins and agents, and usability improvements to multi-session apps. Additionally, we’re making enhancements to the voice channel, and improving unified routing assignment accuracy and prioritization. Watch this video about the exciting new features in Customer Service.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service is a field service management application that allows companies to transform their service operations with processes and experiences to manage, schedule, and perform. In the 2024 release wave 1, we’re introducing the next generation of Copilot capabilities, modern experiences, Microsoft 365 integrations, vendor management, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Operations integration.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance continues on its journey of autonomous finance, building intelligence, automation, and analytics around every business process, to increase user productivity and business agility. This release focuses on enhancing business performance planning and analytics, adding AI powered experiences, easing setup of financial dimension defaulting with AI rules guidance, increasing automation in bank reconciliation, netting, expanding country coverage, tax automation, and scalability. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Finance can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enhances business processes for increased insight and agility. Copilot skills improve user experiences, while demand planning transforms the forecast process, and warehouse processes are optimized for greater efficiency and accuracy. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations is focused on enhancing usability, performance, and scalability in key areas such as project planning, invoicing, time entry, and core transaction processing. The spotlight is on core functionality improvements, including support for discounts and fees, enhanced resource reconciliation, journals, approvals, and contract management, with added mobile capabilities to handle larger projects and invoices at an increased scale. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Project Operations can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides is bringing several new capabilities and enhancements including supporting high-detail 3D model support through Microsoft Azure Remote Rendering and greatly improved web content support that enable customers to build mixed reality workflows that are integrated with their business data. Additionally, support for Guides content on mobile will be generally available in the coming wave through a seamless integration with the Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile application.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources will continue to improve recruiting experiences with functionality to integrate with external job portals and talent pools and offer management. We will continue to expand our human capital management ecosystem to include additional payroll partners and build better together experiences that span the gamut of what Microsoft can offer to improve employee experiences in corporations of any size and scale across the globe. See how the latest enhancements to Dynamics 365 Human Resources can help your business.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce continues to invest in omnichannel retail experiences through advancements in mobile point of sale experiences like Tap to Pay for iOS and offline capabilities for Store Commerce on Android. The business-to-business buying experience is enhanced with new capabilities, and a streamlined order management solution for buyers who work across multiple organizations.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is delivering substantial enhancements, with a central emphasis on harnessing the power of Copilot. Available in more than 160 countries, the team is focused on Copilot-driven capabilities to streamline and enhance productivity through enhanced reporting and data analysis capabilities, elevated project and financial management, and simplified workflow automation. We have also upgraded our development and governance tools and introduced improvements in managing data privacy and compliance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data empowers every organization to unify and enhance customer data, using it for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. With this release, we’re making it easier and faster to ingest and manage your data. AI enables quick insights and democratized access to analytics. Real-time data ingestion, creation, and updates further enable the optimization of experiences in the moments that matter. Check out this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys brings the power of AI to revolutionize how marketers work, enabling businesses to optimize interactions with their customers with end-to-end journeys across departments and channels. With this release, we empower marketers with a deeper customer understanding, we enable them to create new experiences within minutes, reach customers in more ways, and continuously optimize results. Thanks to granular lead qualification, we continue to boost the synergy between sales and marketing to achieve superior business outcomes. Check out this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave.

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

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Watch this video about the most exciting features releasing this wave in Microsoft Power Platform.

Microsoft Power Apps focuses on integrating Copilot to accelerate app development with AI and natural language, enhancing user reasoning and data insights in custom apps. The team is also simplifying the creation of modern apps through contemporary controls, responsive layouts, and collaboration features. Additionally, they’re facilitating enterprise-scale development, enabling makers and admins to expand apps across the organization with improved guardrails and quality assurance tools.

Microsoft Power Pages interactive Copilot now supports every step of site building to create intelligent websites—design, page layouts, content editing, data binding, learning, chatbot, accessibility checking, and securing the site. Connect to data anywhere with the out-of-the-box control library and secure the website with more insights at your fingertips.

Microsoft Power Automate is bringing Copilot capabilities across cloud flows, desktop flows and process mining. This will allow customers to use natural language to discover optimization opportunities, build automations, quickly troubleshoot any issues, and provide a delightful experience in managing the automation estate. For enterprise-scale solutions, maintenance is made easier with improved notifications on product capabilities.

Microsoft Copilot Studio brings native capabilities for extending Microsoft Copilot, general availability for generative actions, and geo-expansions to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Norway, Korea, South America, and South Africa. We’re also introducing rich capabilities to integrate with OpenAI GPT models, along with new channels such as WhatsApp, and software lifecycle capabilities such as topic level import/export and role-based access control.

Microsoft Dataverse continues to make investments focusing on enhancing maker experience by improving app building productivity infused with Copilot experiences, seamless connectivity to external data sources, and AI-powered enterprise copilot for Microsoft 365.

AI Builder invests in three key areas: prompt builder for GPT prompts, intelligent document processing with new features and models, and AI governance improvements, including enhanced capacity management and data policies. These initiatives aim to empower users with advanced generative AI, streamline document processing, and strengthen governance across AI models within Power Apps.

Early access period 

Starting February 5, 2024, customers and partners will be able to validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These features include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled for users in production environments during April 2024. To take advantage of the early access period, try out the latest updates in a non-production environment and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform or visit the early access FAQ page. For a complete list of new capabilities, please check out the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 1 plan and the Microsoft Power Platform 2024 release wave 1 plan, and share your feedback in the community forums via Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform.

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In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, organizations must make fast decisions and embrace agile practices to reshape their operations while ensuring stability and continuity. Inflexible, outdated, and disconnected systems often pose risks that hinder their ability to respond promptly, seize new opportunities, and minimize disruption. 

In the recent Microsoft Dynamics 365 Future of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Survey, we discovered that 93% of business leaders advocate the benefits of adopting flexible and integrated ERP systems. However, only a mere 39% expressed confidence in their current ERP system’s flexibility and integration capabilities to effectively leverage resources for business model transformation.¹ This insight is crucial, particularly for organizations with legacy on-premises solutions that may struggle to meet new business demands. 

Businesses relying on on-premises ERP and business management systems face challenges including: 

•  Slow responsiveness and delayed decision making due to disconnected data and lack of real-time information. 
• Greater vulnerability to security threats and challenges in meeting compliance due to a lack of advanced capabilities and resources.
•  Difficulty competing with peers that embrace new AI-powered technologies dependent on cloud solutions. 

In this blog post, we’ll discuss how the shift to cloud solutions empowers organizations to tackle challenges and thrive in a demanding era. We’ll also explore Microsoft’s Accelerate, Innovate, Move (AIM) program for a smooth cloud transition. 

Make the cloud work for your business

Realize AI-guided productivity in the cloud

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Meet new demands with cloud innovation 

The importance of business agility in today’s quickly shifting economy can’t be emphasized enough. With economic volatility and swiftly changing consumer preferences, 77% of business leaders acknowledge that these conditions are the most critical factors driving the need for agile business operations.² Prioritizing agility enables organizations to respond effectively to evolving market conditions and gain a competitive advantage. 

One customer that capitalized on the opportunity to meet new business challenges by moving from on-premises to the cloud was Ullman Dynamics, a world-leading provider of highly sophisticated suspension boat seats that serves organizations in more than 70 countries, including the United States Navy.  

Serving customers is Ullman’s highest priority, but as the company grew, outdated technology kept it from meeting customer demands in key markets. With a recent surge in growth, experiencing up to a 50% annual increase, Ullman required warehouse expansion every two years. Concurrently, its products had to evolve to meet customer demands. This escalating scale and complexity strained its legacy business solution. 

“Our traditional, on-premises ERP solution wasn’t able to handle the complexities of our modern business. We needed to consolidate our data into a more powerful system that could provide a full overview of our operations.” 

Carl Magnus, Chief Executive Officer, Ullman Dynamics

In selecting a new business solution, Ullman had exacting criteria. It sought a solution that could scale and support its expanding global enterprise while also demanding exceptional flexibility. 

By implementing cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Ullman has enabled flexibility, efficiency, and access to valuable insights needed to improve quality service to its expanding client base.

“We’re number one in the world everywhere except for the United States. Now that Dynamics 365 Business Central has removed the barriers to growth, we are fully integrated into the US market, and Ullman Dynamics USA is poised for great success.” 

Carl Magnus, Chief Executive Officer, Ullman Dynamics

Improve security when moving to the cloud

Another vital benefit that organizations gain by migrating to the cloud is the rapid innovation of security and compliance capabilities. The cloud helps protect business continuity, streamline IT operations, and navigate challenging compliance obligations as businesses grow. 

Microsoft invests heavily in security measures and has the resources and expertise to implement and maintain higher levels of security than an individual organization could achieve on-premises. This is particularly important for small to medium-sized businesses, which often lack the resources to keep pace with evolving security threats. 

A recent Microsoft study shows that 70% of organizations with under 500 employees are susceptible to human-operated ransomware attacks³, with these attacks becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect. They often target unmanaged devices, which lack proper security controls, and 80 to 90% of successful ransomware compromises originate from such devices.³ This poses a significant security risk for on-premises organizations that lack the advanced security available in the cloud. 

Microsoft customers benefit from 135 million managed devices providing security and threat landscape insights and utilize advanced threat detection with 65 trillion signals synthesized daily using AI and data analytics.⁴ Moving to the cloud enables organizations to rapidly innovate and simplify the implementation of essential security practices, threat detection, and device management, granting them better protection. 

While cloud technologies offer enhanced cybersecurity, they also help simplify compliance with regulatory standards, which is equally important. Managing complex certifications independently is challenging, with 65% of firms struggling with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance.⁵ Microsoft assists customers in assessing data protection controls and offers solutions for compliance, including GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), International Organization for Standardization 27701 (ISO 27701), International Organization for Standardization 27001 (ISO 27001), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), and more, enabling rapid and scalable compliance. 

With Dynamics 365, organizations can confidently improve the security of their business systems when they move to the cloud. With access to advanced technology for scaling and managing security, as well as a network of thousands of specialized security experts, Microsoft provides tools and resources to ensure your migration goes as smoothly as possible.

Unlock AI and productivity with the cloud  

One compelling reason for business leaders to transition from on-premises to the cloud is the potential for enhancing daily work and productivity with collaborative applications and AI. With 73% of business leaders emphasizing the importance of productivity improvements and 80% acknowledging the transformative role of AI, the cloud offers the means to establish hybrid work models, harness automation, and leverage artificial intelligence, resulting in a significant boost in overall productivity.⁶  

With the recent introduction of Microsoft Copilot, businesses can use transformative AI technology that offers new ways to enhance workplace efficiency, automate mundane tasks, and unlock creativity. At a time when two in three people say they struggle with having the time and energy to do their job, Copilot helps to free up capacity and enables employees to focus on their most meaningful work.⁷ 

While productivity can be enhanced with Copilot and AI, the combination of these tools with other cloud capabilities, such as collaborative applications, transforms the way work is conducted. By seamlessly connecting Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Excel) with Dynamics 365, businesses can swiftly make strides in improving productivity through cloud adoption. This connection between employees, data, and applications reduces context switching, centralizes workflows, and promotes efficient actions. 

According to Harvard Business Review, the cost of switching between applications is just over two seconds, and the average user toggles between different apps nearly 1,200 times per day.⁸ This translates to spending just under four hours per week reorienting themselves after switching to a new application. Annually, this adds up to five working weeks or 9% of their total work time. The opportunity to connect employees to data and collaborative tools with the cloud will save valuable time and enable organizations to achieve more.  

Move to the cloud with AIM 

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower organizations to embrace cloud technologies and help enable a smooth transition. To accomplish this goal, we have introduced AIM, which stands for Accelerate, Innovate, Move. 

AIM is a comprehensive program designed to provide organizations with a tailored path to confidently migrate critical processes to the cloud. This initiative helps organizations optimize their systems for enhanced business agility, security, and AI technology integration. AIM offers qualified customers access to a dedicated team of migration advisors, expert assessments, investment incentives, valuable tools, and robust migration support. 

With AIM, customers gain access to a range of licensing and deployment offers aimed at reducing costs and maximizing their investments. On-premises customers can take advantage of discounted pricing when transitioning to the cloud, allowing them to optimize their investments as their businesses continue to grow. 

When moving from on-premises to the cloud, customers can anticipate a positive ROI. Comprehensive studies reveal that over a three-year period, Dynamics 365 ERP solutions demonstrate strong customer ROI: 

• Dynamics 365 Business Central with an impressive 172% ROI⁹
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management yielding a solid 90% ROI¹⁰ 
• Dynamics 365 Finance demonstrating 122% ROI¹¹

With Microsoft Dynamics 365, organizations can confidently embrace cloud migration, equipping themselves with essential capabilities to excel in a rapidly changing economy. 

Start your journey today.

Sources:

• 1,2: Future of ERP: Empowering businesses and people with AI-guided productivity, Microsoft 2023 
• 3,4: Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023 (MDDR) | Microsoft Security Insider, Microsoft 2023 
• 5: Managing compliance in the cloud, Microsoft, 2019 
• 6,7: Microsoft Work Trend Index Annual Report, May 2023, Microsoft 2023 
• 8: How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications? Harvard Business Review, 2022  
• 9: Total Economic Impact™ of Business Central, Forrester, 2023 
• 10: Total Economic Impact™ of Supply Chain Management, Forrester, 2021 
• 11:  Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Forrester, 2022 

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Across industries and around the world, field service leaders face any number of challenges in areas including digitalization and modernization of traditionally paper-based processes, rising customer expectations, and employee training and retention. With these challenges top of mind, we have continually invested in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service as a solution to meet the growing requirements of field service management (FSM) operations. That’s why we take great pride in sharing we’re the only vendor positioned as a Leader in the following four IDC MarketScapes:

• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US49989523e December 2023)
• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Service Life-Cycle Management Platforms 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US49989623, October 2023)
• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Solutions for Utilities 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US50036223, October 2023)
• A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Solutions for Oil and Gas 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US50040023, November 2023)

Field service management applications

According to the 2023 report “Product Innovation and Aftermarket Service Survey,” IDC notes that “the top metric prioritized by service leaders as determining success in service was customer satisfaction (46.2%), followed by customer retention (39.0%).” This means frontline worker roles such as service agents and field technicians are absolutely critical to ensuring the best possible customer experience. That’s why we’re continuously developing Dynamics 365 Field Service so that organizations can equip those workers with modern digital tools to make them more responsive and efficient.

Microsoft was positioned as a Leader in the 2023-2024 IDC MarketScape for worldwide field service management applications based on two strengths: “innovation at scale and pace” and “infusion of AI into field service processes.” The IDC MarketScape notes that “Microsoft’s end-to-end service experience capabilities aid field service companies in a continuous transformation journey. As customer expectations evolve, frontline workforces shift, and business models get disrupted, Microsoft leverages its platform to incorporate technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), mixed reality, industrial metaverse, and digital twins.” In addition, the IDC MarketScape says that in the areas of AI and generative AI, which would include Copilot in Field Service, “Microsoft is enabling service organizations to realize near-term and long-term strategies around this innovative technology.”

The IDC MarketScape suggests that organizations consider Microsoft field service solutions “if they are looking for a vendor that can incorporate end-to-end capabilities with innovative technologies for transformation and growth.”

Service life-cycle management

IDC has noted that service is no longer something that happens only after a sale is complete. More and more, organizations are aligning services and sales to help drive greater revenue through better alignment and new service offerings. This IDC MarketScape report highlights two key Microsoft strengths: an integrated platform supporting the front and back office, and innovation accelerators that enhance experiences.

From an integration standpoint, the IDC MarketScape notes that “the service team can no longer operate in a silo and requires tools that allow it to connect to other business functions, customers, and the wide network of partners. Microsoft’s integrated platform of back-office, midoffice, and front-office applications aids customers across their digital journey and not just within a single function.” The integration of Dynamics 365 Field Service with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams is key. Dynamics 365 Field Service integrates with Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft Viva Connections so that frontline workers and managers can create, view, and manage work orders within Outlook and Teams. This integration enhances collaboration between dispatchers, frontline technicians, and managers by enabling work order data to sync automatically between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. Additionally, frontline technicians can quickly start their day with access to key workday information at a glance, with work orders visible from the Viva Connections homepage in Teams. Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 empower technicians with the right information to resolve issues the first time, which is key to creating a positive customer experience.

When it comes to innovation, the IDC MarketScape explains, “Microsoft through its AI, GenAI, IoT, and mixed reality capabilities and tools allows service organizations to deliver enhanced experiences for the service team and the customer. Microsoft customers value this level of shared innovations, which has cemented partnerships for shared growth.” Dynamics 365 Field Service can be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on Microsoft HoloLens, Microsoft HoloLens 2, Android, or iOS devices to enable technicians to collaborate more efficiently by working together from different locations. This means service technicians can find and connect with technical experts working at other locations to share what they’re seeing, receive remote assistance, and quickly resolve customer issues. Dynamics 365 Field Service can also be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides to attach mixed reality guides to Field Service tasks. Overall, the integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Dynamics 365 Guides, and tools like HoloLens helps to elevate field service operations by enabling them to optimize processes and deliver unparalleled customer experiences.

The IDC Life-Cycle Management report suggests organizations “consider Microsoft when searching for capabilities that will enable continuous exploration of innovation across the service life cycle and partner networks. Microsoft has enabled a broad set of innovation capabilities, which support collaboration, co-innovation, and prescriptive service at speed and a global scale.”

Field service management for utilities

For customers in the utilities industry, the IDC MarketScape explains that a key strength for Microsoft is that “[customers] recognize Dynamics 365 Field Service as a well-engineered, flexible FSM solution, offering a solid user experience in terms of usability, configurability, ease of integration into complex landscapes, and extensibility thanks to the Microsoft portfolio.”

The IDC MarketScape also notes, “Microsoft is putting considerable resources behind the product, including significantly increasing the engineering budget this year.” It also states that “[the] ability to instantly access this innovation through a pure-play SaaS ultimately results in good value for money.” Many Field Service customers experienced this with the addition of the Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in, which streamlines work order creation with relevant details pre-populated from emails and optimizes technician scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on factors such as travel time, availability, and skillset. Frontline managers can see relevant work orders and review them before creating new work orders, and they can easily reschedule or update those work orders as customers’ needs change.

Field service management for oil and gas

For customers in the oil and gas (O&G) industry, the IDC MarketScape stated, “Microsoft’s FSM solution comes in an integrated and comprehensive portfolio catering to core O&G field services and asset operations. By seamlessly integrating FSM with Mixed Reality, Microsoft 365, AI, IoT, and Azure, it provides customers the flexibility to tailor solutions, enhancing efficiency, driving innovation, and boosting productivity in a highly customizable manner.”

“Drawing on its long-established customer base, Microsoft works with major O&G players addressing a wide range of field service challenges. Typically, these collaborations focus on enabling frontline workers and optimizing planning and service workflow automation in vast scale operations spanning large assets such as refineries, petrochemical plants, LNG facilities, renewable gas plants, and the extensive network of gas stations.” For service technicians on the frontline, a primary benefit of Dynamics 365 Field Service is the Field Service mobile app which enables technicians to see their workdays at a glance so they can view and update work orders, customer assets, accounts, and more, no matter where they are working—even in areas with limited connectivity. Technicians can also easily access up-to-date inventory information, eliminating the need for cumbersome manual inventory checks and reducing delays caused by missing parts. The Field Service mobile app also incorporates safety checklists and real-time reporting, helping to ensure compliance with safety regulations and to improve the well-being of service technicians who often work under hazardous conditions.

We invite you to read the following IDC MarketScape report excerpts for full details:

• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Applications 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment
• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Service Life-Cycle Management Platforms 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment
• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Field Service Management Solutions for Utilities 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment

Learn more about how Microsoft customers are optimizing service operations with Dynamics 365 Field Service:

• G&J Pepsi optimize field operations, exceed service expectations while maximizing revenue and cost savings with Dynamics 365 Field Service
• Phillips Corporations modernized its service operations and increased revenue using Dynamics 365 Field Service
• Vattenfall streamlined service operations to help employees become more efficient and improve customer service and engagement.
• XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, tapped into IoT and the cloud to optimize operations and drive growth with Azure and Dynamics 365 Field Service.

Source: IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the circles.  

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During the 1^st quarter of 2024, D365 Sales conversation intelligence data will migrate from its current storage location (Microsoft provided storage) across to each customer’s Dataverse organization. This blog post describes this change and provides answers to questions raised by admins when preparing their organizations for this data migration.  

Sales conversation intelligence data is the general term for any outcome of the processing of phone calls made through the embedded Teams dialer within Dynamics 365. This includes files, such as the audio recording file or transcript file, as well as all the insights collected during a call. Examples include: 

• Sentiment 
• Tracked keywords 
• Asked questions  
• Summary suggestions 

Important: during the migration, no data will be transferred outside of your tenant.  

Moving the data into Dataverse allows you to meet the highest data management standards, such as data encryption using Customer Managed Key (CMK) – and management of customer data using Lockbox.  

The migration also allows for granular control over the conversation intelligence data: orgs can now allow access to specific types of data only for specific security roles. For example, the admin can assign privileges to the ‘sentiment’ entity in Dataverse only for sales managers. This granular control also allows for deletion of specific types of data while retaining others. For example, the admin can store sentiment data for only 1 month, while storing the transcript of the call for 1 year, and by this maximizing the Dataverse storage capacity. 

Having conversation intelligence stored in Dataverse also allows organizations and 3^rd party apps to consume the data per the organization’s needs. For example, organizations can create tailored dashboards and visualizations based on the data. Furthermore, the admin can allow third-party apps to access the conversation intelligence data and to provide extensible services based on it. 

Storage location by type

The following table describes the storage location of conversation intelligence data before and after the change: 

¹ After the data is successfully migrated, it will be deleted from the Microsoft-provided storage. 

² No change. This data is not migrated. 

After the successful migration of existing data, data from new calls will be automatically saved to Dataverse. 

Action required by admins:

For all organizations: 

1. Check the solution version (mandatory): 
   Make sure you have the latest version of the conversation intelligence solution (msdyn_Conversation_Intelligence version 9.0.1.1139 or higher) installed in your organization. 

2. Provide access to new Dataverse entities (mandatory): 
   Make sure the relevant security roles have read and write privileges to the new Dataverse entities (see below a list of entities). 

3. Make sure you have sufficient storage space in Dataverse (mandatory): 

Calculate the amount of storage space required: 

Note: The above numbers are based on average call duration and number of insights per call. Actual sizes may vary. 

4. Set a retention policy (optional):  
   Previously, conversation intelligence data was automatically deleted according to the retention policy set by the admin in the conversation intelligence settings. By default, data saved into Dataverse does not have an automatic retention policy like this. If you wish to set a retention policy for your conversation intelligence data in Dataverse, you can do so by following this documentation. 

For organizations currently using own Azure blob storage: 

1. Set up Service principal (mandatory): 
   To allow conversation intelligence access to your blob storage in a more secure way. See this article to learn more on this setup. 
    

Opting out of migrating the existing data into Dataverse 

By default, your existing data will be migrated to Dataverse. If you wish to opt out of the migration, (because your organization is no longer using conversation intelligence or you don’t want to migrate the existing files or insights for example), you will need to send an email, containing your first and last name and the organization ID to this email address: CI-data-migration@microsoft.com before January 31^st 2024.  
The data of organizations which opted-out of the migration will be permanently deleted by April 1^st 2024. 

Frequently asked questions

Here are some answers for questions you might have on this process: 

What will happen to my organization’s saved data? 
The data will be transferred from where it is stored today (Microsoft provided storage) to your organization’s Dataverse database. After verifying the transfer and customer confirmation, the data will be permanently deleted from the previous storage location (data will not be automatically deleted from your Azure blob storage). Note that data older than 90 days will not be migrated. 

What type of Dataverse storage will be used? 
Conversation intelligence uses 2 types of Dataverse storage: File storage will be used for storing the recording and transcript files (unless stored in your org’s Azure blob storage), while DB storage will be used for storing the conversation intelligence insights.  

What are the expected implications of moving the data into Dataverse? 

Migrating data into your Dataverse will require free Dataverse storage space. See above on how to calculate the required storage space. 

Who will have access to the transferred data? 

Out-of-the-box security roles (such as Salesperson and Sales Manager) will automatically receive privileges to the new entities where the data is stored. If your org uses custom security roles, make sure you assign them with the required privileges for the new Dataverse tables as listed below. You can do this prior to the migration of the data. 
List of new Dataverse entities: 

• Conversation Action item 
• Conversation Aggregated Insights 
• Conversation Comment 
• Conversation Participant Insights 
• Conversation Participant Sentiment 
• Conversation Question 
• Conversation Segment Sentiment 
• Conversation Sentiment 
• Conversation Signal 
• Conversation Subject 
• Conversation Summary Suggestion 
• Conversation System Tag 
• Conversation Tag 
• Ocrecording 
• Recording 
• SCI Conversation 
• Sci Environment Settings 
• Sci User Settings 
• Transcript 

Will users in my organization be able to continue using the conversation intelligence app? 

Once the data is migrated into Dataverse, the conversation intelligence app will no longer work. The aggregated conversation intelligence data will be available through a new Power BI based dashboard. 

How to opt-out of moving my organization’s existing data into Dataverse? 
You can opt-out of moving the existing data by sending an email to: CI-data-migration@microsoft.com before January 31^st 2024. If you chose to do so, the existing data of your organization which is currently saved in the Microsoft-provided storage will be permanently deleted by April 1^st 2024. 

What’s next? 
If you don’t choose to opt-out, your organization’s conversation intelligence data will be transferred to Dataverse between February 1^st 2024 and March 30^th 2024. You will receive an email with a confirmation of successful data migration. After the moves to Dataverse, all new conversation intelligence data will be saved to Dataverse as well. 

Learn more

Understand the new conversation intelligence entities in Dataverse 

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