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.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’ve launched 2024 release wave 2 for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and role-based Microsoft Copilot offerings—introducing a rollout of new features and enhanced capabilities releasing between October 2024 and March 2025. These updates include advanced Copilot capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Finance to empower your workforce, optimize business processes, and enhance customer engagement.
Copilot and agents are the future of AI for business
2.1 million users engage with Copilot across Microsoft business applications every month, including employees at companies like PayPal, HP, Lumen, and McKinsey & Company. These Copilot experiences can drive new levels of productivity and efficiency while offering high standards of privacy, security, and compliance.
Moving forward, we envision AI-first organizations will comprise people, Copilot, and agents. Copilot is your AI assistant, designed to work for you. With Microsoft Copilot Studio, you can create, manage, and connect agents to Copilot. Organizations will have a network of agents, ranging from simple prompt-and-response systems to fully autonomous entities, that will operate on behalf of individuals, teams, or functions to execute and orchestrate business processes. Copilot serves as the interface for interacting with these agents, which can handle tasks such as accelerating lead generation, processing sales orders, and automating supply chains. At the Business Applications Launch Event, we showcased new features across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform that demonstrate what’s possible with Copilot and agents.
Thrive with customer experience applications
2024 release wave 2 brings exciting new features to Dynamics 365 customer experience apps designed to deliver connected and personalized experiences for both customers and employees. These innovations focus on optimizing customer interactions and streamlining sales processes across your organization.
New capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales include a multilingual bot (supported languages), Copilot-generated prompts, in-line email functionality, and more. These features are set to transform how businesses engage with customers and manage internal processes.
During the launch event, we showcased how Lynk & Co, an innovative car company, is leveraging the multilingual Copilot Studio bot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. By using AI-powered voice recognition and Copilot-generated prompts, they’ve been able to optimize customer wait times and improve case resolution speed. These tools have enabled Lynk & Co to significantly reduce case review times while keeping their sales team in the loop, thanks to seamless data sharing between service and sales teams.
With Copilot’s intelligent automation, sales managers at Lynk & Co can now focus on building customer relationships rather than manually sorting through documents. By streamlining workflows and providing actionable insights, Copilot empowers sales professionals to work more efficiently and drive business growth. These new capabilities—combined with tools like real-time prompts, the Sales Qualification Agent, and account summaries generated by Copilot—offer businesses a modern, intuitive way to stay connected with customers and make smarter decisions faster.
Defining autonomous enterprise resource planning (ERP) with innovative agents
Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP solutions introduce significant enhancements aimed at improving both core functionalities and autonomous capabilities. These updates include the introduction of five autonomous agents for Dynamics 365 designed to streamline processes and boost organizational efficiency. By automating routine tasks, businesses can focus more on strategic decision-making and adapt to the dynamic market landscape.
For Lifetime Products, a leading global producer of outdoor consumer goods, these improvements have substantially enhanced the productivity of their finance team. The Account Reconciliation Agent for Dynamics 365 Finance autonomously identifies discrepancies between subledgers and ledgers, offering actionable recommendations and reducing manual effort. Additionally, automated bank reconciliation now matches transactions and summarizes histories, saving time and improving accuracy. These features have streamlined their month-end close process across multiple legal entities, enhancing both efficiency and compliance.
In parallel, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central updates have improved operations for more than 40,000 customers. The Sales Order Agent enables businesses like Stoneridge Software’s clients to manage sales orders without needing additional staffing, speeding up order processing while maintaining service quality. Interoperability between Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service has streamlined service order management, reducing manual data entry and errors. This automation allows technicians to work more efficiently, improving the overall customer experience and ensuring timely service delivery.
Unlock value everywhere with Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio
Microsoft Power Platform offers new capabilities that enhance automation and app development using AI-powered tools. Copilot simplifies workflows, generates apps, and assists with complex processes, enabling businesses to manage tasks more effectively. With new AI-driven features across Microsoft Power Platform you can create solutions across your organization in record time.
At the launch event, we highlighted how Applied Information Sciences (AIS) is improving workforce efficiency in vendor invoice management using AI-enabled features in Microsoft Power Automate. With Copilot, automating processes such as routing and approvals based on predefined rules, AIS can handle a large volume of invoices daily, reducing manual input and increasing productivity. Users can easily update workflows with a few clicks, and the new summary functionality ensures clear tracking and sharing of updates.
AIS’s onboarding process for new consultants supports ongoing training with Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps. “Search with Copilot” allows users to retrieve records using natural language queries, while the AI-enabled paste feature efficiently fills out onboarding forms, reducing manual data entry. Copilot Studio improves IT Helpdesk automation with task assignment and grounding third-party data sources through knowledge management. This provides analytics for monitoring agent performance and improves accuracy while also enabling a continuous improvement process.
The latest improvements in Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Finance focus on enhancing user experience by automating routine tasks and providing actionable insights through autonomous agents. These advanced functionalities allow sales teams, customer service representatives, and finance professionals to offload repetitive activities, enabling them to concentrate on strategic initiatives. As a result, organizations can optimize efficiency and improve overall productivity.
For instance, companies like Lumen and Genpact have experienced significant time savings with Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales and Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance capabilities. Lumen reported a 94% reduction in research time for sales data, while Genpact achieved over a 50% decrease in payroll processing time through automated reconciliation. These enhancements demonstrate how Copilot agents are not only improving workflows but also positively impacting the workforce’s efficiency.
Schneider Electric is another example of a company benefiting from these advancements. Its sales team can now effectively prioritize leads with the help of the Lead Intelligence Agent, which analyzes customer interactions and external data to deliver enriched insights. This streamlined approach allows sales representatives to engage with prospects more strategically, ultimately supporting their goal of enhancing efficiency and driving revenue growth.
Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event
Join us for the on-demand Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to discover the latest enhancements in Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft Copilot apps. The event features in-depth demos of new autonomous agents and other capabilities designed to optimize your workflows and streamline operations.
Don’t forget to review the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Stay updated on the latest features and upcoming enhancements, and create your personalized release plan using the release planner to ensure you’re equipped with the knowledge needed to maximize these new capabilities.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Working together can turn great ideas into reality and bring people together as a team. We’ve been paying attention to our customers’ evolving needs in the AI-powered workplace, which require faster, simpler, and smarter solutions to achieve more.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re expanding our ambition to bring AI-first business process to organizations. First, we’re announcing that the ability to create autonomous agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio will be available in public preview in November 2024. Learn more on the Copilot Studio blog.
Second, we’re introducing 10 new autonomous agents in Microsoft Dynamics 365 to build capacity for sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams. These agents are designed to help you accelerate your time to value and are configured to scale operational efficiency and elevate customer experiences across roles and functions.
Scale your team with new autonomous agents
Discover more ways to drive impact with autonomous agents and Copilot Studio.
Microsoft Copilot is your AI assistant—it works for you—and Copilot Studio enables you to easily create, manage, and connect agents to Copilot. Think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world. We envision organizations will have a constellation of agents—ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual, team, or function to execute and orchestrate business process ranging from lead generation, to sales order processing, to confirming order deliveries. Copilot is how you’ll interact with these agents.
Introducing autonomous agents for Dynamics 365
New autonomous agents enable customers to move from legacy line of business applications to AI-first business process. AI is today’s return on investment (ROI) and tomorrow’s competitive edge. These new agents are designed to help sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams drive business value—and are just the start. We will create many more agents in the coming year that give customers the competitive advantage they need to help future-proof their organization. Today, we’re introducing ten of these autonomous agents which will start to become available in public preview later in 2024 and continue into early 2025.
Sales: Help sellers focus time on building customer relationships to close deals faster
Agents will help sellers focus time on engaging customers to move through the sales cycle faster. The Sales Qualification Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales can free up time for the seller to spend on higher value activities by researching and prioritizing inbound leads in the pipe and developing personalized sales emails to initiate a sales conversation.
For small to medium-sized businesses, the Sales Order Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central will automate the order intake process from entry to confirmation by interacting with customers, capturing their preferences. See Sales Order Agent in action.
Operations: Empower teams to grow the business, optimize process, and meet customer demand
To maintain smooth business operations, it’s crucial that process in key areas such as finance, procurement, and supply chain are optimized to minimize cost, mitigate risks, and accelerate decisions. Autonomous agents operate around the clock to execute a range of process, helping professionals spend less time on manual work and more time on strategic tasks like planning and decision making.
The Supplier Communications Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management autonomously manages collaboration with suppliers to confirm order delivery, while helping to preempt potential delays. With agents performing all the tasks related to confirming purchase orders, procurement specialists can focus on managing supplier relationships and improving overall supply chain resiliency.
Additional agents:
FinancialReconciliation Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance helps teams prepare and cleanse data sets to simplify and reduce time spent on the most labor-intensive part of the financial period close process that leads to financial reporting. Learn more in this brief video.
Account Reconciliation Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, designed for accountants and controllers, automates the matching and clearing of transactions between subledgers and the general ledger, helping them speed up the financial close process. This enhances cash flow visibility and can result in faster decisions to drive business performance. Watch this video to learn more.
Time and Expense Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations autonomously manages time entry, expense tracking, and approval workflows. It helps get invoices to customers promptly, preventing revenue leakage and helps ensure projects stay on track and within budget. See Time and Expense Agent in action.
Service: Transform customer experiences across self- and human-assisted service
Contact centers face interconnected, compounding challenges to successfully and efficiently serve customers. For example, keeping vital knowledge base articles current relies on manual process. Valuable insights from seasoned customer service representatives are often locked away in chat logs, call recordings, case notes, and other data silos. And self-service tools rely on inflexible, hard-coded dialog with embedded knowledge that must be predefined for potential customer issues.
The CustomerIntent and Customer Knowledge ManagementAgents, available for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, help contact centers transform customer experiences across self-service and human-assisted service. The CustomerIntent Agent enables evergreen self-service by continuously discovering new intents from past and current customer conversations across all channels, mapping issues and corresponding resolutions maintained by the agent in a library. The CustomerKnowledge ManagementAgent helps ensure knowledge articles are kept perpetually up to date by analyzing case notes, transcripts, summaries, and other artifacts from human-assisted cases to uncover insights.
Additional agents:
Case Management Agent for Customer Service automates key tasks throughout the case lifecycle—creation, resolution, follow up, closure—to reduce handle time and alleviate the burden on service representatives. See Case Management Agent in action.
Scheduling Operations Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enables dispatchers to provide optimized schedules for technicians, even as conditions change throughout the workday—for example, accounting for issues such as traffic delays, double bookings, or last-minute cancellations that often result in conflicts or gaps.
Collectively, these agents are trained to autonomously learn to address new and emerging issues via self-service, improve the quality of issue resolution across channels and help drive time and cost savings.
As agents become more prevalent in the enterprise, customers want to be confident that they have robust data governance and security. The agents coming to Dynamics 365 follow our core security, privacy, and responsible AI commitments. Agents built in Copilot Studio include guardrails and controls established by maker-defined instructions, knowledge, and actions. The data sources linked to the agent adhere to stringent security measures and controls—all managed in Copilot Studio. This includes data loss prevention, robust authentication protocols, and more. Once these agents are created, IT administrators can apply a comprehensive set of features to govern their use.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Combining SCM Pricing Management with Commerce and Retail Discounts
In today’s competitive market, businesses need to leverage every possible advantage to stay ahead. Pricing is one of the most powerful tools at their disposal. Enter Unified Pricing Management, an innovative solution that merges attribute-based pricing with advanced Supply Chain Management (SCM) pricing management and comprehensive commerce and retail discount solutions.
The Need for Unified Pricing Management
Companies across industries face numerous challenges when it comes to pricing management. Traditional pricing methods often fall short in addressing the complexities of modern commerce, where factors such as customer segmentation, product attributes, market demand, and competitive actions all influence pricing decisions. The Unified Pricing Management solution addresses these challenges by providing a holistic and integrated framework that empowers businesses to make informed and strategic pricing decisions.
What is Unified Pricing Management?
Unified Pricing Management is a sophisticated attribute-based pricing solution designed to transform the way businesses approach pricing strategies. By considering a myriad of attributes and integrating data from SCM and other sources, this solution allows businesses to set more accurate, competitive prices that enhance profitability and customer satisfaction.
The Power of Attribute-Based Pricing
At the heart of Unified Pricing Management lies attribute-based pricing. This approach takes into account various attributes, such as product characteristics, customer demographics, and purchasing behaviors, to tailor pricing strategies that resonate better with the market. The ability to customize prices based on specific attributes ensures that businesses can meet diverse customer needs while maximizing revenue.
Converging SCM Pricing Management with Commerce and Retail Discounts
Unified Pricing Management supports SCM pricing management, enabling businesses to harness the full potential of their supply chain data. This convergence allows for more informed pricing decisions, ensuring that prices reflect real-time supply chain dynamics. The result is a more responsive and agile pricing strategy that can adapt to changing market conditions.
In addition to SCM pricing management, Unified Pricing Management also incorporates commerce and retail discount capabilities. This means that businesses can manage discounts more efficiently, ensuring consistency across all promotional efforts. The unified platform streamlines discount management, making it easier to implement and track various discount strategies.
Unified Pricing data model
Unified Pricing Management introduces the concept of price trees, which are essential for structuring pricing models. These price trees support multiple versions, allowing businesses to maintain and compare different pricing strategies over time. This capability ensures that businesses can continuously optimize their pricing approaches to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Activating and Utilizing Price Groups for Pricing Calculations
A crucial element of Unified Pricing Management is the concept of price groups. This common concept exists in both SCM pricing management and commerce and retail solutions. In Finance and Operations, as well as POS machines, price groups can be associated with channels, loyalty programs, affiliations, and attributes from sales order headers. They can also be defined as an attribute within the header attribute group, providing even greater flexibility in pricing strategies.
Set Up Price Groups: Define price groups based on relevant criteria such as customer segments, or geographical regions. This initial setup is critical as it lays the foundation for your pricing strategy.
Assign Price Rules: Assign specific pricing rules to each price group. These rules can include base prices, margin components, and discounts. This ensures that each segment is priced according to its unique characteristics and market conditions.
Apply Price Groups to Sales Orders and POS: When creating or modifying sales orders, apply the relevant price group to ensure that the correct pricing rules are used. This step is essential for maintaining consistency and accuracy in your pricing.
Monitor and Adjust: Use the unified pricing management system to monitor the performance of your pricing strategy. Make adjustments as needed based on real-time data and analytics to ensure that your pricing remains competitive and profitable.
Conclusion
Unified Pricing Management represents a significant advancement in the field of pricing management. By combining attribute-based pricing, convergent SCM pricing management, and comprehensive commerce and retail discount capabilities, it provides businesses with a powerful tool to navigate the complexities of modern pricing. The enablement of price groups and the flexibility to use single and multiple price trees further enhance its adaptability and effectiveness.
In an era where pricing can make or break a business, Unified Pricing Management offers a strategic advantage that can drive profitability, customer satisfaction, and long-term success. Embrace this innovative solution and unlock the full potential of your pricing strategies.
Recent Comments