We’re entering a new era of AI-powered business applications, and today we’re excited to publish the 2026 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and role-based agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, outlining a broad set of capabilities slated for release between April 2026 and September 2026. These updates reflect our ongoing commitment to making AI an essential partner in how organizations operate, innovate, and grow.

Dynamics 365 leads this wave with AI-powered, agentic innovations across sales, service, finance, supply chain, human resources (HR), and commerce—helping organizations unify data, automate processes, and elevate customer and employee experiences. Microsoft Power Platform continues to expand modern app development, intelligent automation, and enterprise-grade governance to empower makers and developers to innovate with confidence. Role-based agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot further evolve into intelligent daily command centers, helping to deliver richer, data-grounded insights and extensibility that help teams work smarter across every role.

To help you stay current on the most important and innovative capabilities, we’re moving beyond bi-annual launch events to lighter, more frequent business applications updates, featuring expert insights and demonstrations from Microsoft product leaders and engineers.

• Watch on demand: Dynamics 365 Business Applications Update
• Register for the Power Platform and Copilot Studio update April 15 at 9 AM PDT

Be sure to stay updated on the latest features and create your personalized release plan using the release planner.

Highlights from Dynamics 365

2026 release wave 1 updates for Dynamics 365 deliver AI-powered, agentic experiences across sales, service, finance, supply chain, commerce, HR, projects, sustainability, and enterprise resource planning (ERP)—bringing deeper Copilot integration, intelligent automation, unified customer and operational data, and enhanced cross-app capabilities to help organizations drive efficiency, elevate customer and employee experiences, and operate with greater agility and confidence.

Dynamics 365 Sales

Dynamics 365 Sales brings the power of AI to help sellers build their pipeline, enrich opportunities, and accelerate deal closure, while helping sellers easily access accurate, up-to-date information and recommending high-impact actions that sellers can take. Copilot experiences in Dynamics 365 Sales can draw on data spanning customer relationship management (CRM) and Microsoft 365 signals, like email and meeting recaps, to deliver actionable insights across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 experiences.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to enhance agentic capabilities across case management, email, customer intent, quality evaluation, and knowledge management. AI-infused admin and supervisor help to provide more transparency and quicker time-to-value. These investments strengthen end-to-end service orchestration, from helping identify customer intent to driving autonomous workflows that elevate service quality and responsiveness.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Dynamics 365 Contact Center advances the agentic contact center in 2026 release wave 1 with new AI-powered capabilities that improve self-service, support accelerate assisted service, and help organizations run contact center operations more intelligently in 2026 release wave 1. It expands to include emerging channels, supervisor insights, and extensibility, giving organizations a unified, AI-powered system to elevate the customer experience.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Dynamics 365 Field Service strengthens service execution across technician productivity, resource scheduling, and work order management. Investments focus on mobile usability and reliability, intelligent scheduling through the Scheduling Operations Agent, and end‑to‑end execution across assets, projects, and financial operations in this release wave. Together, these updates help organizations manage service complexity and deliver consistent service outcomes.

Dynamics 365 Sustainability

Dynamics 365 Sustainability introduces more intuitive reporting navigation, advanced calculation versioning, and granular data‑locking to reinforce governance and regulatory confidence in this wave. Expanded finance integration, streamlined workflows, and updated templates and factor libraries will further empower organizations to make informed decisions and support progress toward their sustainability goals.

Dynamics 365 Finance

Dynamics 365 Finance delivers continued global scale enhancements that drive greater financial automation, strengthen global regulatory compliance posture, and enhance financial planning and analytics—helping organizations operate more efficiently and achieve their financial and operational goals with confidence.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management’s 2026 wave 1 enhances supply and demand planning with price-demand correlation and capacity-to-promise (CTP) date protection. Supplier communication and engagement are streamlined, while warehousing gains AI-powered picking, inventory rebalancing, and hands-free scanning—driving supply chain efficiency.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Dynamics 365 Project Operations brings rich capabilities in 2026 release wave 1—from change order support and smarter project planning to smoother quoting, budgeting, and contract workflows. New enhancements streamline item consumption, mobile expense management, subscription billing, and modern-architecture migration—delivering connected project experience.

Dynamics 365 Commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce strengthens business-to-business (B2B) with multi-outlet ordering, unified sign-in, outlet-specific catalogs, and built-in credit management to help reduce friction and protect cash flow. It modernizes order management and assisted-selling workflows in retail stores, helping to improve associate productivity, and customer experiences across channels. It also enables cross-legal-entity inventory lookup and flexible, attribute-based pricing to help accelerate mass updates and help drive higher sales.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources

Dynamics 365 Human Resources continues to advance in areas such as recruitment, onboarding, reporting, and integrated workforce management. By merging enhanced user experiences with broader ecosystem integration and expanding regional payroll collaborations, the platform enables organizations to optimize employee engagement, support operational accuracy, and confidently achieve their workforce objectives.

Finance and operations cross-app capabilities

Finance and operations cross-app capabilities will introduce new enhancements that strengthen the foundation for AI experiences across Dynamics 365. These updates include improvements to Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, as well as the general availability of immersive home, which is an AI-powered workspace designed to help users stay focused and prioritize what matters most.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data acts as the grounding layer for CRM copilots and AI agents, delivering real‑time, unified customer profiles that help power accurate decisions. With enriched data, teams can act on insights directly in their workflow to deliver timely, personalized experiences that deepen engagement and drive better outcomes. The result is an AI-ready data core that elevates agents and helps deliver more connected, intelligent CRM experiences.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys empowers end-to-end, agentic customer engagements across sales, marketing, and service, allowing businesses to proactively react to customer behavior using Copilot and AI agents. With smarter orchestration tools, teams can deliver impactful campaigns at scale to drive stronger relationships, higher efficiency, and revenue growth. Part of Dynamics 365, every interaction within your organization benefits from shared data and consistent intelligence across Microsoft CRM applications.

Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central accelerates the move to agentic ERP with enhancements to our AI‑powered agents that automate sales and purchase scenarios in 2026 release wave 1. Alongside new business capabilities, we invest heavily in developer productivity to support extensibility—improving advanced language (AL) testing, debugging, Copilot extensibility, and agent design.

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio

2026 release wave 1 updates for Microsoft Power Platform deliver modernized app experiences across Power Apps and Power Pages, AI-powered automation and agent innovation in Power Automate and Copilot Studio, enhanced Dataverse intelligence and programmability, and strengthened governance, security, and cost management capabilities to help organizations build, scale, and manage intelligent solutions with confidence.

Power Apps

Power Apps continues to modernize app experiences with a refreshed model-driven user interface (UI), improved mobile and offline capabilities, streamlined search, and expanded AI features. This release brings standardized modern theming to everyone, real-time Dataverse access for offline-first canvas apps, enhanced search in grids and lookups, and broader availability and extensibility of generative pages to help teams build and scale intelligent apps faster.

Power Pages

Power Pages will further empower pro-developers and low-code makers to build intelligent business portals for your employees, customers, citizens, and partners through better integration with market leading AI tools. Additionally, enhanced security agent features will further support low-code makers, pro-developers, and admins with actionable insights and abilities for securing their websites.

Power Automate

Power Automate is Microsoft’s comprehensive automation platform for cloud flows, desktop flows, and process mining. This release introduces AI agent authoring, optimization, and self-healing capabilities for desktop flows, Copilot Studio-powered actions in cloud flows, enhanced maker and collaboration tools across both, general availability of object-centric process mining, and consolidated governance reporting.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft Copilot Studio continues its journey to make agent and agentic workflows even easier to build and more powerful. Now you can further customize agents built with Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot, and power your automation with high value AI actions. Deeper governance, multi-agent orchestration, and evaluations enable further scaling. With connections to Microsoft Foundry and Work IQ, your agents can use the latest AI technology in coordination with your organizational data.

Microsoft Dataverse

Microsoft Dataverse continues to invest in enterprise-ready agentic and low-code data platform capabilities. The spotlight is on Work IQ and Copilot integration, delivering organization-specific decisions with adaptive learning and full auditability. We’re also enhancing agent programmability with Dataverse APIs, MCP servers, and Python SDK, plus new storage management tools for enterprise-grade compliance at scale.

Microsoft Power Platform governance and administration

Microsoft Power Platform governance and administration introduces admin controls for agent security, real-time risk assessment in Copilot Studio, and AI-powered governance agents that automate tenant monitoring and remediation in this release. Enhanced visibility into usage patterns, granular Copilot credit consumption with pay-as-you-go (PAYG) caps, and connector dependencies help you optimize costs, demonstrate return on investment (ROI), and enforce compliance with organizational policies using features within the Power Platform Admin Center. GitHub integration and deploy from Git mature your application lifecycle management (ALM) practices with full audit trails.

Business Applications Update

Power Platform &

Copilot Studio edition

April 15, 9AM PDT

Register now

Updates to role-based agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot

2026 release wave 1 updates for Microsoft role-based agents transform Sales Agent and Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot into intelligent daily command centers, helping to deliver richer, data-grounded insights, enhanced chat and mobile experiences, contextual support across Outlook and Teams, and strengthened governance and extensibility to help organizations drive productivity and scale AI responsibly.

Sales Agent

Sales Agent becomes the seller’s daily command center with richer Sales Chat and Sales Home experiences across desktop and mobile in 2026 release wave 1. Sellers will gain streamlined access to deal and account insights through configurable record summaries, contextual support in Outlook and Teams, and improved email and meeting intelligence. New governance and extensibility controls will also help organizations scale AI responsibly.

Finance Agent

Finance Agent helps finance professionals and their stakeholders interact with financial information from their ERP within the flow of work. In 2026 release wave 1, we continue expanding how this financial assistant supports common finance tasks such as reconciliation, variance analysis, and data preparation in Excel, as well as customer communications in Outlook. By bringing financial insights and assistance directly into familiar productivity tools, the Finance Agent helps teams investigate issues faster, respond to stakeholders more efficiently, and spend less time manually preparing or reconciling data so they can focus more on financial analysis and decision support.

For a complete list of new capabilities, please refer to the Dynamics 365 2026 release wave 1 plan, the Microsoft Power Platform 2026 release wave 1 plan, and role-based agents 2026 release wave 1. We also encourage you to share your feedback in the community forums for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

Business Applications Update

The Business Applications Update offers an early preview of new capabilities coming in the months ahead. This refreshed structure is designed to reflect the reality of our time: innovation does not happen twice a year; it is constant. Whether you are a strategic leader or a hands-on practitioner, this new cadence is built to get you quickly up to speed.

• Watch on demand: Dynamics 365 Business Applications Update
• Register for the Power Platform and Copilot Studio update April 15 at 9 AM PDT

The post 2026 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot Studio offerings appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Three forces are converging. The interface layer is shifting to AI assistants. Agents handle workflow orchestration. And an intelligence layer is consolidating information across structured and unstructured sources. Together, these forces mark Frontier Transformation, where AI moves beyond basic efficiency to open new opportunities for creativity, innovation and growth.

This transformation also creates a new kind of business application: one that is integrated with the AI assistant people use every day, accessible to agents and grounded in the unique intelligence of each organization.

We call these agentic business applications. The applications themselves still reflect real business processes. But how people interact with them, how work moves through them and how they connect to the rest of the business is fundamentally different.

Today, we’re taking a significant step forward in bringing agentic business applications to life across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform.

Interact with business applications inside Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is becoming an interactive workspace for business applications. Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and custom apps built with Power Apps will surface directly as agents with rich UX inside chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Agents using Apps SDK and MCP Apps can also bring Microsoft partner apps into the conversation, including tools teams already use, like Adobe Express, Figma, and Wix. This is the interface layer shift in practice. Instead of switching between applications, users state what they need in Copilot and the system responds. You can review data and take action without leaving the conversation. Copilot becomes the place where work gets done.

As an example, a human resources (HR) employee can now call on their custom HR app, built with Power Apps, right within Copilot to compile a list of office locations with the highest new hire counts this quarter, viewing the results in an organized table with filter options. Additionally, they can prompt the application to show the results in a map view, all without leaving their Copilot interface.

Or a customer service representative can begin their day in Microsoft 365 Copilot by reviewing a summary of priority cases they need to focus on, easily viewing and updating their data from Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Public preview for this capability will be available later this month for Power Apps, with availability for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service launching in early April 2026. Throughout the next month, we’ll also introduce support for this capability across a handful of Microsoft partner apps, including Adobe Express, Adobe Acrobat, Base44, Box, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Miro, Monday.com, Optimizely, and Wix. All pre-built partner app experiences will be accessible via the Microsoft 365 Agent Store for users with Microsoft 365 Copilot.

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Bring Copilot and agents into Dynamics 365 and Power Apps

The experience works in both directions. Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents like Researcher and Analyst will be accessible directly within Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and custom apps built with Power Apps. Employees get the same Copilot capabilities they trust across Microsoft 365 while staying grounded in their operational systems.

Customers can continue to benefit from pre-built agents in Dynamics 365, including Sales Qualification Agent, Case Management Agent, and Account Reconciliation Agent, which help teams automate routine work and focus on higher value decisions.

Consider a seller working in Dynamics 365 Sales who asks Researcher to generate a full account overview: customer relationship management (CRM) context, internal knowledge, and external research combined in one response, surfaced in place. The unit of value shifts from “find the right screen” to “get the answer and act.” This creates a more consistent experience across productivity tools and business applications. Work moves from insight to execution with less friction between systems.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and canvas apps in Power Apps will be available in public preview by early April 2026. Microsoft 365 Copilot in model-driven apps built with Power Apps will reach general availability by early April 2026. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. This experience with Power Apps also requires a Power Apps premium license.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Power Apps allows us to ask questions and make decisions directly against our Dataverse data, while also combining insights from Microsoft 365 when needed. The experience now feels truly unified, allowing our users to summarize complex operational data, trigger actions, and seamlessly access insights. We’ve seen significant increases in the value provided to both our internal solutions and customer-facing products.

Peter Kestenholz, Founder & Head of Innovation, Context&

Grounded in your organization’s intelligence with Work IQ

Underpinning all of this is Work IQ. Work IQ connects signals from Microsoft 365 with operational data from Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. It follows work as it happens across documents, meetings, chats, and business processes. This is the intelligence layer: the thing that resolves entities and relationships across structured and unstructured sources, so agents and Copilot share a common understanding of what is happening across the business.

Decisions discussed in a meeting or email can connect to live data in a business application. Changes in one place surface where attention is needed elsewhere. And because this intelligence is grounded in Dataverse and your organization’s own data, actions stay aligned to real processes and real context.

For example, when a pricing change is discussed in a meeting, Work IQ understands how that decision impacts active opportunities in Dynamics 365 Sales, surfacing the affected opportunities within Copilot for review.

Work IQ plays an important role in making business applications agentic. Without it, agents operate on partial information. With it, they act on the full context of the business.

Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can experience Work IQ with Dataverse integration directly inside Power Apps, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service in public preview by early April 2026.

See how it all comes together

Copilot, agents, and Work IQ come together as a system of work. Within that system lies a new generation of business applications: applications that understand context, respond to intent, and support execution where work actually happens. The business application stack is entering a significant architectural shift. What we’re announcing today is one step in that larger transition. We are building a platform where applications, intelligence and execution converge so teams operate with more clarity and less overhead.

You’ll see this foundation expand across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft 365 as we bring more agentic capabilities into the flow of work. Agentic business applications are already taking shape.

• Tune in to the Microsoft Frontier Transformation digital event on March 9, 2026 at 8:00 AM PT.
• Register for the Business Applications Update event streaming on March 18, 2026 at 9:00 AM PT.

The post A new way of working is taking shape: Frontier Transformation appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

In today’s fast-paced market, poor inventory visibility can lead to stockouts, excess holding costs, and missed revenue opportunities. Conversely, a well-orchestrated inventory strategy drives efficiency, reduces waste, and strengthens resilience against disruptions. It enables businesses to optimize working capital, improve cash flow, and deliver on promises consistently. So, how can an agent-ready enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform reinvent the inventory-to-deliver process?

Microsoft Cloud and agent platform enables inventory to deliver transformation

Microsoft Dynamics 365 can transform inventory management from a reactive task into a strategic advantage with an agent-ready foundation that spans across finance, supply chain, sales, and operations for a single source of truth that is both scalable and secure.

This same data foundation enables customers to buy, build, and customize agents to infuse across processes. For a refresher on understanding the agent landscape available today, visit Reinventing business process with AI: Agents in record to report where we explore the difference between first party, third party, and custom agents.

Automate vendor communication with a first party agent from Dynamics 365

The Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is designed to automate routine procurement communications between purchasing teams and vendors. Traditionally, these interactions—such as following up on purchase orders or confirming changes—are manual, repetitive, and often handled via email, even in organizations using electronic data interchange (EDI). The Supplier Communications Agent can streamline these low-complexity tasks by automating vendor outreach and updates, freeing procurement professionals to focus on strategic activities. This not only seeks to improve efficiency but also reduces overall procurement costs by minimizing time spent on administrative work.

Explore partner agents to support the inventory to deliver process

Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers are configurable bridges between the business data within your line-of-business apps and the partner or custom-built agents you want to use. MCP serves as a universal intermediary, unlocking access to a unified platform and app data, modernizing how AI agents are interoperable with your apps. Let’s explore a few partner-built agents that will help you realize value across your supply chain today.

Warehouse Advisor Agent by MCA Connect

The Warehouse Advisor Agent leverages machine learning and predictive analytics to automate and improve key processes such as slotting, inventory consolidation, and cycle counting. By analyzing real-time data and historical trends, the agent delivers actionable insights that help warehouse teams make smarter, faster decisions.

This solution is ideal for warehouse managers, operations leaders, and supply chain professionals in distribution and manufacturing industries who are looking to reduce inefficiencies, improve inventory accuracy, and increase labor productivity. It integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), enabling users to deploy intelligent automation without disrupting existing workflows.

Inventory Acquisition and Re‑Balancing Agent from RSM

The Inventory Acquisition and Re‑Balancing Agent from RSM enables smarter inventory decisions by analyzing demand signals, supply availability, and stock imbalances in Dynamics 365. The agent can recommend rebalancing and acquisition actions to reduce stockouts, minimize excess inventory, and improve working capital efficiency.

Inbound Load Agent from Fellowmind

Fellowmind’s Inbound Load Agent can streamline inbound logistics by intelligently composing and optimizing loads based on demand, capacity, and operational constraints within Dynamics 365. The agent seeks to help logistics teams reduce transportation costs, improve warehouse utilization, and simplify complex inbound planning decisions.

Get started with agents for inventory-to-deliver processes

The Microsoft platform brings together secure, scalable cloud services with Dynamics 365’s unified ERP capabilities to streamline the entire inventory-to-delivery process. By leveraging real-time data and intelligent workflows, businesses gain supply chain agility to better meet customer expectations with precision. Partner-built agents, powered by MCP, amplify this value, enabling autonomous actions and predictive insights that transform operations from reactive to proactive. Together, these innovations create a resilient, future-ready foundation for delivering efficiency and growth at scale.

The post Agentic AI for inventory to deliver: From procurement to fulfillment appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Customers are using Sales Qualification Agent in two ways: 

1. Helping boost revenue beyond current sales capacity
   • Responding to inbound leads within minutes instead of days, increasing response rates and in turn, qualified opportunities.
   • Engaging leads that sellers are unable to follow up on due to capacity constraints, or those deemed economically unviable to pursue.
   • Increasing pipeline quality by focusing the seller’s time on a handful of high intent, engaged leads recommended by the agent.
2. Helping reduce sales costs
   • Reducing back-office costs related to lead research and validation, using Sales Qualification Agent in “Research only” mode to hand-off only the leads that meet the ideal customer profile criteria.
   • Automatically disqualifying low-quality leads, saving hours of seller time during the week.

Continuing benchmarking the quality of sales AI agents

Microsoft is building the future of agentic Sales technology with prebuilt AI agents, such as Sales Qualification Agent, the Sales Research Agent, and the Sales Close Agent available in Dynamics 365.

At Microsoft, we’re committed to delivering quality, trust, and transparency with our agents, and that requires rigorous evaluation. As we continue to build new agents and improve existing ones for critical sales workflows, evaluation benchmarks provide a structured and transparent way for our customers to measure quality for the jobs the agent does.

Today, we’re announcing the Microsoft Sales Bench—a new collection of evaluation benchmarks designed to assess the performance of AI-powered sales agents across real-world scenarios. This framework brings together purpose-built metrics, hundreds of sales-specific scenarios, and composite scoring validated by both human and AI judges.

The Sales Bench isn’t starting from scratch. It now formalizes and expands what began with the Sales Research Bench, published on October 21, 2025, which evaluates how AI solutions answer business research questions for sales leaders.

Today, we’re extending the Microsoft Sales Bench with a second benchmark: the Microsoft Sales Qualification Bench, focused on measuring how effectively AI agents qualify leads and generate high-quality pipeline.

Introducing the Sales Qualification Bench for lead qualification

This Microsoft Sales Qualification Bench evolved from rigorous evaluations we conducted since the Sales Qualification Agent’s public preview in April, with the goal of objectively measuring quality as we further developed the agent, partnering with customers from a diverse set of industries. Since the preview, we measured every update against these standards, ensuring improvements are real and repeatable.

We generated a synthetic dataset modeled after companies from three different industries, with 300 leads, with attributes such as name, company, and email ID—representative of what sales teams typically work with before any enrichment or hygiene is performed. In addition to these typical attributes, we also added key knowledge inputs such as value proposition of the products being sold, customer case studies, and documentation for answering customer questions.

In addition to Sales Qualification Agent, we used the evaluation framework to measure ChatGPT by OpenAI on the same dataset. Since we didn’t have access to an autonomous agent from OpenAI, we mimicked how a human seller would use ChatGPT to recreate the three key jobs SQA performs. We provided each system—Sales Qualification Agent and ChatGPT—the exact same lead inputs, knowledge sources, and contextual signals under controlled evaluation configurations. We used a ChatGPT Pro license with GPT-4.1. This model is the closest match (and slightly better) to Sales Qualification Agent’s GPT-4.1 mini, which we intentionally chose to deliver optimal quality at lower cost per lead than newer models. Additionally, Pro license was chosen to optimize for quality: ChatGPT’s pricing page describes Pro as “full access to the best of ChatGPT.”¹

The framework evaluates outputs from the three jobs across Sales Qualification Agent and ChatGPT:

• Research: Company research for the lead—background, strategic priorities, financial health, and latest news.
• Outreach: A personalized email generated based on research, to make initial contact with the lead.
• Engagement: The agent’s conversation with a lead until it’s qualified or dispositioned.

Our scoring metrics span core quality (accuracy, relevance, completeness), trustworthiness (grounding and citations), and business-specific success criteria (e.g., relevancy of company research to highlight interest in the seller’s offerings, personalization of the initial outreach emails sent to catch the lead’s attention, accuracy of responses to the lead’s questions to drive purchase intent, and the timing of handoff to a seller when the lead is ready to engage).

Outputs were scored independently by both human reviewers and an LLM judge built with GPT-5.1, using a 1–10 scale for each metric. These metric-specific scores were then rolled up using a simple average to produce a composite quality score. The result is a rigorous benchmark presenting a composite score and dimension-specific scores to reveal where agents excel or need improvement. Our methodology, metrics, and their definitions are described in this technical blog.

Results

In evaluations completed on December 4, 2025, using the Sales Qualification Bench, Sales Qualification Agent outperformed ChatGPT on each of the three jobs required for sales qualification:

1. Research: The Sales Qualification Agent outperformed ChatGPT with 6% higher aggregate scores, leading on relevancy and completeness in research results that highlighted the lead company’s interest in the seller’s offerings.
2. Outreach: Sales Qualification Agent demonstrated 20% better results compared to ChatGPT, generating email drafts with accurate personalization and mentions of relevant recent events that will resonate with the lead.
3. Engagement: Sales Qualification Agent’s email responses to engage a lead over a multi-turn conversation scored 16% higher than ChatGPT’s. SQA generated emails that responded to the lead’s questions with accurate answers that develop their purchase interest and with precise discovery questions that qualify the lead before handing off to a seller.

In addition to performing better on these metrics, Sales Qualification Agent has the ability to run autonomously, which can help significantly reduce the time spent generating pipeline while helping sales teams build better quality pipeline.

Sales Qualification Agent scores well on these three jobs as its optimized for sales-specific scenarios and uses the following techniques to get great results:

1. It uses agentic Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to relentlessly research each lead, ensuring greater completeness. More on this in the following section.
2. With knowledge of what the company sells, it can contextualize every workflow to increase relevancy for both the seller and the lead.
3. It can retrieve organizational knowledge from attached documents and internal repositories like SharePoint with greater precision, boosting accuracy of its responses when engaging with the lead.

The technical blog details which metrics SQA excels at relative to ChatGPT, where it falls short, and why.

Translating evals to real-world impact

Running evals led to major Sales Qualification Agent improvements during its six-month preview. Early results prompted us to try agentic AI design patterns, especially agentic RAG, which improved our company research by allowing iterative web searches and real-time reasoning. They also led us to enhance data coverage by auto-linking existing CRM records to each lead and inferring company names from lead emails. These updates provided sellers with deeper insights, revealing strategic opportunities and risks beyond basic facts.

For instance, when researching leads for a security company, Sales Qualification Agent can link news on recent cyberattacks to increased demand for its software. As highlighted in the technical blog, research synthesized by the agent makes such inferences more consistently than ChatGPT. Enhancing the agent’s research also improved the relevance and personalization of outreach emails, helping agents better engage leads and clarify their ability and intent to purchase before handing them off to sellers.

Sandvik Coromant, a leader in precision cutting tools, partnered with us to pilot Sales Qualification Agent for their Digital Commerce program. After the updates, Pia Cedendahl, Global Sales Manager for Strategic Channels/Partners and Online Sales, noted, “Sales Qualification Agent’s answers became far more on-point to our business—it’s like having a research assistant that already understands what we care about.” Sandvik Coromant saw improved lead conversion and higher engagement from their Digital Account Managers, validating the impact of our evaluation-driven approach. Pia joined Microsoft leaders at the Microsoft Ignite 2025 session, “Accelerate revenue and seller productivity with agentic CRM,” where she shared how the team saved more than 120 hours and $19,000 in just the first three weeks since launching a pilot, and forecasted a 5% increase in revenue with full rollout.

Better insights, more personalization, proven value

Equipped with agentic AI design and backed by data-driven evaluation, customers can confidently use the Sales Qualification Agents so that:

• Sellers receive comprehensive company overviews, timely news highlights, and actionable recommendations that are consistently delivered with high quality—drawing a clear line from insight to action.
• Sales leaders can expand their qualified pipeline cost efficiently, with the agent ensuring high lead quality.
• Prospects benefit from more personalized outreach, enhancing their experience and supporting increased conversion rates.

What’s next

We’ll continue to refine Sales Qualification Agent using agentic design patterns, aiming to make every improvement measurable and meaningful. Stay tuned for the full evaluation results and methodology for the Sales Qualification Bench, which will be published for transparency and reproducibility. We also intend to add more evaluation frameworks and benchmarks to the Microsoft Sales Bench collection including benchmarks that cover future sales agent capabilities.

¹ChatGPT pricing page, accessed November 24, 2025

The post Dynamics 365 sets the bar for agentic sales qualification on new benchmark appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Every shift in the 4,400-page Harmonized Tariff Schedule puts supply chains at risk. A single misclassification can mean six-figure fines, delayed shipments, or missed revenue targets. Compliance teams burn endless hours chasing updates, while procurement and operations scramble to adjust forecasts and supplier contracts. And despite all that effort, if there is an unexpected policy change, most companies pay the price in lost time, money, and customer trust. The reality is that no human team can easily keep pace with this level of volatility and should instead look to agents and AI to help reduce the busy work and stay ahead of disruptions.

Tariffs are a textbook example of where agents have the potential to excel. No team can realistically monitor 4,400 pages of classifications that shift as chaotically as they do today. Agents take on the repetitive monitoring and data tracking that overwhelm even the best compliance team. When these kinds of tasks are handled by agents, leaders and teams can focus on decisions that move business forward. Microsoft offers multiple ways to make that real, whether you want to start small or transform your entire approach to tariff intelligence.

The Microsoft advantage: 3 ways to build tariff intelligence

Microsoft offers three distinct paths for tackling tariff changes, whether you’re ready for a complete transformation or need to start small and scale up.

1. Use first-party agents in Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 offers a built-in supplier communication agent that automatically researches supplier information and generates outreach so you can quickly navigate tariff changes and supply chain disruptions. It pulls data from your procurement history, current inventory levels, and supplier performance metrics to identify suppliers that can answer questions about capacity, lead times, and alternative shipping routes.

When tariff changes threaten your delivery schedules, you can quickly compose communications that include relevant data from multiple systems. You no longer need to hunt through spreadsheets to find supplier contact information or manually request alternative sourcing options.

2. Build custom agents in Copilot Studio

With Copilot Studio, you can build custom agents that can calculate the impact of tariff changes on your products and contracts when asked, surface sourcing alternatives, and flag agreements that may need renegotiation.

These agents can connect to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule and Outlook as knowledge sources, and monitor supplier communications for mentions of tariffs, delivery delays, or capacity constraints. Document scanning capabilities mean contracts, shipping manifests, and regulatory updates become searchable, contextual data that informs agent recommendations. Behind the scenes, Microsoft Dataverse maintains data integrity and security with its unified structure and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). You can deploy quickly without sacrificing governance.

These agents can also connect with your Dynamics 365 and other enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, whether that’s SAP, Oracle, or another platform, alongside your product data, supplier information, and procurement contracts through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

MCP is an open standard that enhances the relevance of agent responses. It facilitates the connection of AI agents to various data systems and standardizes how applications provide context to large language models (LLMs). With integration between LLM applications and external data sources, the protocol is useful for building AI-powered tools and workflows like customized tariff agents.

Security and compliance controls are built into the platform, so you can deploy agents rapidly while maintaining governance over what data they can access and what actions they can take. Want an agent that can read tariff schedules but not modify procurement contracts? Copilot Studio makes those boundaries clear and enforceable.

3. Explore partner solutions through the agent ecosystem

Microsoft’s partner ecosystem extends your capabilities with specialized agents tailored for industry-specific needs. Partners like Avanade are already building tariff and trade solutions that plug directly into Dynamics 365, so you can scale faster with proven expertise.

Avanade’s Tariff Navigator provides a single, intelligent agent experience to assess tariff exposure, model “what-if” scenarios, and proactively adjust purchasing, sourcing, and pricing decisions. The cost of inaction is steep and includes margin erosion, unexpected cost spikes, and reactive decisions that weaken competitiveness. And trying to tackle these challenges alone often leads to fragmented efforts and limited impact. Avanade is a trusted advisor with deep technical expertise and experienced industry specialists. Its consultative approach means Tariff Navigator is built around your people, tailored to how they work and the unique business challenges they face.

Using Microsoft’s low-code technologies, Avanade also allows for fast deployment of customized approaches that integrate with your existing systems and empower your teams to act quickly. The result is a practical, business-first application designed for measurable impact.

The Tariff Navigator solution by Avanade doesn’t just manage tariffs—it strengthens your organization’s ability to compete in a volatile global market. It’s about protecting profitability today while building the agility to seize opportunities tomorrow.

Beyond tariffs: Building resilience for what’s next

Tariff management offers you the opportunity to reimagine how supply chain operations handle complexity and uncertainty. The same agent architecture that helps you navigate trade policy changes can tackle other operational challenges, such as supply chain disruptions and vendor performance monitoring.

Agents you build in Copilot Studio or access from Microsoft Marketplace and the partner ecosystem have the potential to help organizations prepare trade agreements, navigate natural disasters, accidents, and other events that reshape supply chains temporarily or permanently. From a Suez Canal blockage to a geopolitical shift that reroutes global trade overnight, agents help you adapt fast.

Ready to take on changing tariffs?

Tariff volatility isn’t slowing down, and the next policy shift could hit tomorrow. The question is whether to react after the fact or build resilience now to better navigate future disruptions. Microsoft empowers customers to get started today, with custom or prebuilt agent options, depending on your needs. Dynamics 365 gives you the intelligent foundation and embedded supplier communications features. Copilot Studio lets customers build custom agents that track schedules, calculate impacts, and surface risks. Or you can use our partner solutions, like Avanade, to extend and customize agents. Either path puts AI agents to work for you, protecting margins, safeguarding compliance, and addressing volatility before it disrupts your supply chain.

Next steps

• Explore updates from the Copilot Studio and Power Platform teams to learn about Power Platform Community Conference 2025.
• Visit Avanade Tariff Navigator.
• Visit Dynamics 365 ERP solution page.
• Watch part 1 and part 2 of the day-in-the-life of a procurement manager videos on YouTube

¹Harmonized Tariff Schedule, United States International Trade Commission.

The post 3 ways to navigate changing tariffs with AI agents appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Business leaders are facing a new reality. AI and agents are transforming traditional systems of record into systems of action, becoming applications that not only store data but use it to drive decisions and outcomes.

In this new model, the user experience becomes almost invisible. What matters most is the foundation: structured data, clear governance, and business logic that allows agents to operate effectively. 

These are agentic business applications. They can help teams scale up capacity, lower operational costs, grow topline revenue, and surface key insights on an ongoing basis for smarter, faster decisions.

But technology alone isn’t enough. Business transformation requires functional leaders to align processes with these new capabilities. That means rethinking how work gets done. Agents can operate in the background, continuously monitoring, analyzing, and acting. They surface insights and take action, helping leaders stay focused on outcomes.

Early adopters—what we call Frontier Firms—are building the right foundations now. They are investing in agentic customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource management (ERP), and contact center solutions (CCaaS), as well as rethinking how to align business processes with agents. They realize there must be a fundamental shift in how work gets done.

Microsoft agentic business applications: Toolkit for the frontier

To help organizations move to the Frontier, Microsoft offers a suite of agentic business applications with Dynamics 365—bringing enterprise-grade AI and Microsoft Copilot experiences across CRM, ERP, and CCaaS. Organizations can extend Dynamics 365 with Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio to build custom AI-powered applications and agents tailored to unique business needs.

At the core of every agentic business application there are three components: 

1. Agents that transform business processes. 
2. Copilot that empowers every employee to maximize productivity. 
3. A unified, secure data platform that connects insights across the enterprise. 

Let’s take a look at each of the components of the stack. 

Expanding Dynamics 365 agents in key business functions

Over the last year, we have launched more than a dozen business process agents in Dynamics 365, giving organizations a starting point to transform sales, service, finance, and supply chain. We’re continuing to expand our agent portfolio to deliver proactive and growth-oriented outcomes.

In Dynamics 365 Sales, the new Sales Close Agent (in public preview beginning October 25, 2025) help sellers prioritize high-value opportunities, identify and mitigate risks for deals in pipeline proactively, and close simple transactions—accelerating deal velocity and improving win rates.

Also in Dynamics 365 Sales, agents are moving to public preview and general availability, including Sales Research Agent (public preview began on October 1, 2025) and Sales Qualification Agent (with general availability beginning October 25, 2025).

In Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center, the new Quality Evaluation Agent (general availability beginning October 24, 2025) gives supervisors and service teams a real-time pulse on service quality across both human and AI-led interactions. Unlike traditional, manual approaches that review a small fraction of engagements, this agent uses the speed and scale of AI to evaluate the majority of cases and conversations, uncover actionable insights, and assess AI-handled interactions. It monitors quality metrics, detect anomalies, and initiate corrective actions—enabling broader, faster, and more consistent quality management.

In addition, service agents moving to general availability beginning October 24, 2025, include: Case Management Agent in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Customer Knowledge Management Agent, and Customer Intent Agent in Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Contact Center. In Dynamics 365 Field Service, Scheduling Operations Agent, in public preview, keeps schedules agile and service running smoothly.

“By adopting agents in Dynamics 365 service solutions, we’re making every interaction faster and more empathetic. In a service where demand exceeds capacity, this can be a game changer.

Agents help gather information, route contacts based on need, and streamline resolution—enabling counselors to focus on direct support to young people.

In our fundraising unit, we’re also exploring how agents can manage inbound calls to reduce abandonment rates from 20 to 30% to under 5%—directly lifting revenue streams that fund vital services.”

—Helen Vahdat, Chief Information Officer, yourtown (Kids Helpline)

In our ERP portfolio, customers can use Account Reconciliation Agent in Dynamics 365 Finance and the Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to complete reconciliation faster and process inbound supplier emails autonomously.

“The Account Reconciliation Agent pilot sharpened our team’s understanding of AI in practice and paved the way for a confident move toward the Supplier Communication Agent where we see clear potential to drive efficiency and enhance collaboration.”

—Wolfgang Bauer, ERP Team Lead, Haas Baumanagement GmbH

Additionally, customers can access Sales Order Agent and Payables Agent in Dynamics 365 Business Central and Time and Expense Agent and Activity Approvals Agent in Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

To further support organizations on their journey to the frontier, we’re making it easier to get started with agents. Beginning in late November 2025, Dynamics 365 Premium SKUs—including Dynamics 365 Sales Premium, Customer Service Premium, Supply Chain Management Premium, and Finance Premium—will include 1,000 Copilot Credits per user, per month, pooled at the tenant level. New and existing customers can use these credits to run agents in the scenarios most meaningful to their business. When the included capacity is exhausted, customers can add more capacity with additional Copilot Credits as needed.

Benchmarks—The Sales Research Bench 

As organizations begin using agents to transform core processes, the next priority is ensuring these solutions deliver measurable value so that leaders can make confident high-impact decisions. Microsoft is meeting this need through benchmarks that provide a standardized evaluation framework to continuously measure quality of output from AI solutions. The most recent example is the Sales Research Bench, which uses a 100-point scale to measure what we have heard from sales leaders that matters most to them: accuracy, relevance, clarity, and transparency. More specifically, the Sales Research Bench evaluates how AI solutions generate text and data visualizations in response to the strategic, multi-faceted questions that sales leaders have about their business data. 

The Sales Research Bench runs 200 business research questions typical of enterprise sales leaders on a sample customized data schema that reflects the complexities of enterprise environments. It assesses performance across 8 quality dimensions with scoring by large language models (Azure Foundry out-of-box evaluators for two dimensions and OpenAI’s GPT 4.1 model with specific instructions for the other six dimensions). Dimension-specific scores are weighted to create a composite quality score.

In evaluations executed by Microsoft using the Sales Research Bench framework, the Sales Research Agent in Dynamics 365 outperforms both ChatGPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5. More details on the benchmark methodology and results are available here. We intend to publish the full evaluation package including the 200 benchmark questions and sample dataset in the coming months, so others can run these evaluations themselves.

With this approach, we’re creating purpose-built agent benchmarks aligned to the priorities of business leaders. Our intent is to demonstrate a new standard for trust and transparency, providing clear insight into the quality and performance of agents in a specific business function. We also plan to publish agent performance regularly to reduce friction and help leaders make confident, data-driven decisions.  

Empowering everyone with Microsoft Copilot

The next critical layer in agentic transformation is Microsoft Copilot, which is embedded across Dynamics 365 enhancing sales, customer service, and finance. By automating routine tasks, such as summarizing key opportunities, drafting email responses to customer queries, and predicting and acting on supply chain disruptions, Microsoft Copilot frees employees to focus on strategic work to drive more impact.

With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can spend less time in their CRM, and more time nurturing customer relationships. For example, Copilot can provide quick summaries of sales opportunities and leads, meeting preparations, and account-related news.

Grand & Toy uses Copilot’s real-time insights, dashboards, and time-saving features like chat summarization, email creation, and sentiment analysis to deliver exceptional customer service.

Connecting businesses on a unified, trusted platform

Lastly, there is the data layer—the foundation of agentic transformation. When unified, it can connect every interaction, insight, and action. With integration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, organizations can unify data and workflows, so teams can stay focused and make faster decisions.

Built on Microsoft Dataverse, Dynamics 365 agents deliver real-time insights across departments like sales, service, and finance without silos and enabling faster and more collaborative decision-making.

Banco PAN is a strong example of this transformation, using Dataverse as a core part of their Dynamics 365 solution to enable real-time integration across systems.

“Our operators now have immediate access to the customer’s history and can resolve issues more quickly.”

—Tulio Prado, Service Superintendent at Banco PAN

Dynamics 365 seamlessly connects with Power Platform and Copilot Studio, creating a unified foundation for apps, agents, and AI. This deep integration empowers everyone—not just professional developers—to build, customize, and deploy intelligent solutions that adapt to business needs. By bringing low-code innovation and enterprise-grade security together, organizations can streamline processes and workflows, reduce costs, and unlock new ways to work smarter.

Explore more

With today’s business applications varying widely in capability and impact, organizations face critical choices. Agentic business applications are the path forward. Discover how leading companies are moving on that path with Dynamics 365, beyond static systems of record to intelligent systems of action to drive real-time insights, automation, and growth.

• Tune into the Business Applications Launch Event streaming October 23, 2025 on YouTube to see real-world solutions built on Microsoft agentic business applications.
• Join us at Microsoft Ignite 2025 in San Francisco, California from November 18 to 21, 2025. Connect with industry leaders, explore hands-on demos, and be there to get the latest product announcements. Attend Innovation Sessions that delve deeper into how agentic business applications are reshaping the future of work and actionable strategies for leadership.

¹ Methodology and Evaluation dimensions: Sales Research Bench includes 200 business research questions relevant to sales leaders that were run on a sample customized data schema. Each AI solution was given access to the sample dataset using different access mechanisms that aligned with their architecture. Each AI solution was judged by large language model judges for the responses the solution generated to each business question, including text and data visualizations. We evaluated quality based on 8 dimensions, weighting each according to qualitative input from customers, what we have heard customers say they value most in AI tools for sales research: Text Groundedness (25%), Chart Groundedness (25%), Text Relevance (13%), Explainability (12%), Schema Accuracy (10%), Chart Relevance (5%), Chart Fit (5%), and Chart Clarity (5%). Each of these dimensions received a score from a large language model judge from 20 as the worst rating to 100 as the best. For example, the large language model judge would give a score of 100 for chart clarity if the chart is crisp and well labeled, score of 20 if the chart is unreadable or misleading. Text Groundedness and Text Relevance used Azure Foundry’s out-of-box large language model evaluators, while judging for the other six dimensions leveraged Open AI’s GPT 4.1 model with specific guidance. A total composite score was calculated as a weighted average from the 8 dimension-specific scores. More details on the methodology can be found in this blog: The Sales Research Agent and Sales Research Bench. 

The post From systems of record to systems of action: Dynamics 365, agentic business applications for the frontier appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

The Business Applications Launch Event offers an exclusive first look at new capabilities launching over the next few months.

With a newly streamlined presentation format, you can quickly get up to speed on the most important and innovative capabilities—with expert insights and demonstrations from Microsoft product leaders and engineers. It’s our way of helping you stay current, make informed decisions, and move faster in the era of Copilot and AI agents.

The update is your opportunity to:

• Get insights about the latest low-code and AI innovation transforming business from Charles Lamanna, President, Business and Industry Copilot.
• Get a sneak preview of upcoming capabilities across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot Studio with live demonstrations from Microsoft product leaders and engineers.
• Discover where to access materials to learn about and plan for new and upcoming capabilities.
• All in a new presentation format designed to quickly get you up to speed on the latest updates, so you can get the most from them.

During this update, you’ll hear from the product leaders and engineers behind the technology, including new Copilot and AI agent innovation for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Demo highlights will include:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Learn about updates to the Sales qualification agent. It autonomously researches and engages with leads, helping sales teams quickly identify those with real purchase intent. In this wave, the agent goes further—moving the lead closer to full qualification and boosting the team’s opportunity pipeline with greater precision and impact.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center

The latest release wave of Dynamics 365 Contact Center helps service reps better understand customer needs and deliver what they need—quickly, efficiently, and with a human touch. Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to enhance agentic and Copilot capabilities for case and knowledge management, as well as AI-based routing. Dynamics 365 Contact Center will also focus on expanding agentic and Copilot capabilities to automate service journeys across digital and voice channels, along with introducing new omnichannel and supervisor features in the 2025 release wave 2.

Dynamics 365 ERP products and solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Dynamics 365 Finance expands the capabilities of the Account Reconciliation Agent. Today, it supports your team in effortlessly resolving voucher amount mismatches. In this wave, it extends support to include ledger not in subledger and subledger not in ledger exceptions. Instead of relying on manual exception handling and static reports, the solution reviews all transactions on an ongoing basis, services exceptions, and presents them to you. The agent then suggests the most appropriate action for resolution, and you have the freedom to accept it or choose another path. Core updates to Dynamics 365 Finance also include the automation of remittance advice processing.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces capabilities that make AI-led demand planning more flexible. You can now bring in multiple external signals like inflation, weather, and industry indexes right into your forecast.

And new autonomous and intelligent productivity capabilities for finance solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot will reshape the finance process, from reconciliation to collections to advanced analytics help reduce repetitive work and surface actionable insights.

Explore our updates in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Finance agents for Microsoft 365:

• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management—Improve customer impacting predictions with the Data Quality Agent
• Finance agents for Microsoft 365—Automate finance tasks to improve accuracy and efficiency

Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform is getting a major boost with AI and collaboration features. Power Apps now lets people and agents work together—agents can help with tasks like data entry, visualization, and app creation just by describing what you need or sharing an image. Power Automate is evolving with smarter automation tools, including generative AI actions, intelligent document processing, and new human-in-the-loop experiences like advanced approvals. It’s also, it’s adding stronger governance and security controls to help manage automation at scale. Power Pages is making it easier than ever to build secure, data-driven websites, with new tools for low-code makers and developers, and enhanced security insights to keep everything protected.

See wave two highlights for Power Automate—Proactively spot and resolve automation issues

Copilot Studio

Copilot Studio continues to make agent creation and operation even easier and more powerful with autonomous agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, the ability to build complete teams of agents that work seamlessly together, and improved governance for enterprise scalability. Copilot Studio will offer even deeper integration with Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Graph, helping ensure your agents can use the latest AI technology alongside your data in the Microsoft Graph.

Catch the wave—Mark your calendar for BALE

The Business Applications Launch Event will be live on the Dynamics 365 YouTube channel on Thursday, October 23, 2025, starting at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time. We’ll see you there!

The post Explore new AI innovation for Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Copilot Studio at the Business Applications Launch Event appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

To streamline R2R operations, finance teams are increasingly adopting AI-powered agents. These agents accelerate tasks like document summarization across systems—such as audit reports, contracts, and lease agreements—and assist with time-intensive, period-end activities like reconciliations and variance analysis. According to the Microsoft Work Trends Index 2025 report, The Rise of the Frontier Firm, 68% of finance leaders identified automation as a top priority for improving accuracy and speed in the close process, while 72% reported a reduction in manual effort since adopting AI-powered solutions. As a result, finance professionals can shift their focus from routine tasks to more strategic analysis and decision-making, fundamentally transforming the way financial operations are managed and enabling businesses to stay agile in fast-moving markets. 

Microsoft has introduced several first-party ERP agents designed specifically to streamline and enhance finance and operations. These agents are seamlessly integrated within the Microsoft ERP ecosystem, automating tasks such as account reconciliation, expense management, and supplier communications. Through a combination of first-party (1P), third-party (3P), and custom-built agents, let’s delve into real-world applications of ERP agents, highlighting how organizations can automate, optimize, and elevate to enter R2R lifecycle.  

Agentic ERP Solutions

Drive growth with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that streamlines operations and decisions.

Discover more

Understanding the agent landscape 

Before diving into the impact AI and agents have on R2R, it’s important to distinguish between the three agent types: 

• 1P agents are developed and maintained by Microsoft and embedded directly into Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 experiences. Examples include the Account Reconciliation Agent, the financial reconciliation and variance analysis features in the Finance solution, and Time and Expense Agent. These agents are purpose-built for high complexity scenarios, encompassing a variety of edge cases or patterns.
• 3P agents are partner-owned services that operate within or alongside Microsoft ecosystems such as Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 and often use industry or function specific expertise. Due to their integration with Microsoft platforms and access to data across the organization, these agents are subject to additional compliance and governance requirements, including Microsoft 365 Certification, data protection policies, and administrative controls.
• Custom agents can be built using Microsoft Copilot Studio or Azure AI, tailored to specific business or user needs. Using natural language and knowledge sources, customers can quickly build agents that offer deep orchestration, multi-agent coordination, and integration with external systems like SAP, Oracle, or proprietary ERPs. 

Each type plays a unique role in supporting R2R, and together they form a powerful toolkit for finance transformation. 

Automating reconciliation with 1P agents 

One of the most time-consuming tasks in R2R is reconciliation—whether it’s matching transactions between subledgers and general ledgers or reconciling bank statements and intercompany balances. The Financial Reconciliation Agent, a 1P solution, has already demonstrated its value in reducing manual effort and improving auditability. 

Users can initiate reconciliation directly from Excel, define matching logic, apply tolerances, and generate detailed reports. Templates allow for repeatable automation, and agents can be triggered by events like file uploads or scheduled runs. Organizations like U.S. AutoForce have reported time savings of up to 80% using these agents. 

Driving insight with the finance solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot 

Variance analysis is critical for understanding deviations between actuals and forecasts. The variance analysis capabilities, available in Microsoft 365 Copilot, enables finance teams to perform multi-dimensional analysis across products, regions, and time periods. It supports both natural language queries and structured prompts and can generate executive summaries and actionable insights. 

These role-based solutions are particularly useful during month-end close, budgeting cycles, and performance reviews. By automating variance detection and explanation, agents can free analysts to focus on strategic decision-making. 

Extending capabilities with 3P agents 

Microsoft is accelerating the development of out-of-the-box finance agents by collaborating with our partner ecosystem to deliver finance-specific solutions through the AppSource framework. These agents are purpose-built in response to direct customer feedback, ensuring they address real-world financial challenges with precision and relevance. 

Among the standout examples is the Lease Agent developed by Crowe, which automates lease data extraction and validation, and seamlessly integrates with Dynamics 365 Finance to streamline the lease accounting processes. Another impactful solution is the PayFlow Agent by HSO, designed to eliminate the repetitive task of responding to vendor payment inquiries. Operating behind the scenes, it analyzes incoming emails, retrieves real-time data from Dynamics 365 Finance, and delivers accurate responses within seconds. 

These are just two of many 3P agents currently in development, with more expected to launch in the coming months. 

Extending capabilities with custom agents 

While 1P and 3P agents offer robust out-of-the-box functionality, many organizations require deeper customization. Enter custom agents, built in Microsoft Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry. These agents can: 

• Connect to external systems through Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, APIs, or OData connectors.
• Perform write-back operations (such as creating journal entries in ERP.)
• Orchestrate multi-step workflows across departments.
• Comply with enterprise-grade security and governance standards. 

Examples include agents that monitor service disruptions, generate alerts, and initiate corrective actions; or agents that automate work item creation in DevOps based on finance triggers. 

Custom agents are ideal for complex workflow automation, advanced need, or when integrating with legacy systems or handling complex business logic. 

Real-world impact across the R2R lifecycle 

Let’s map agent capabilities to key R2R stages: 

This alignment shows how agents can support both tactical execution and strategic oversight. 

Unlock your financial potential with agents 

The convergence of 1P, 3P, and custom agents marks a new era for finance operations. By automating routine tasks, surfacing insights, and enabling intelligent workflows, agents empower finance teams to focus on what matters most—strategic decision-making and value creation. 

As organizations embrace AI-first transformation, the R2R process stands to benefit immensely from agentic innovation. Whether you’re just starting or scaling your deployment, now is the time to explore how agents can reshape your finance function. 

The post Reinventing business process with AI: Agents in record to report appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

This milestone comes at a time when AI is fundamentally changing how healthcare organizations operate and serve patients. AI is powering self-service interactions, guiding service representatives in real time, and autonomously handling end-to-end workflows. As these capabilities expand across the care journey, trust and data protection are becoming just as important as innovation.

Healthcare leaders are asking: How do we harness AI to improve patient experiences without compromising privacy? What safeguards are needed as both AI and human representatives engage in sensitive interactions across channels? How do we build future-ready systems that are both innovative and compliant?

A secure, HITRUST-certified platform helps provide the foundation to confidently address those questions.

HITRUST: Setting a new bar for secure, AI-led patient engagement

HITRUST, governed by healthcare industry representatives, developed and maintains the Common Security Framework (CSF). This certifiable framework builds on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act—United States healthcare laws that define requirements for the use, disclosure, and safeguarding of individually identifiable health information, and enforce penalties for non-compliance. HITRUST provides a standardized compliance framework, assessment, and certification process that cloud service providers and covered health entities can use to measure their compliance.

As AI becomes foundational to patient engagement, from summarizing service interactions and routing inquiries based on patient intent to helping agents triage across digital and voice channels, this level of assurance is critical. With HITRUST certification, Dynamics 365 Contact Center delivers the governance patients, providers, and regulators expect, while enabling innovation in the agentic AI era.

Helping healthcare organizations achieve more

Dynamics 365 Contact Center is an AI-first Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution that unifies AI agents, channels, real-time analytics, and human service representative support in a secure, extensible, and composable platform. With HITRUST certification now in place, healthcare organizations can confidently apply AI in ways that drive real operational impact:

• Automate with assurance: Use AI voice and digital agents for scheduling, triage, and intake while protecting protected health information (PHI).
• Empower human service representatives securely: Give service reps compliant escalation paths, governed knowledge retrieval, and smooth handoffs.
• Streamline operational workflows: Use autonomous agents to automate back-end processes and help reduce manual effort.

This certification builds on our earlier HIPAA compliance announcement and adds to Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s broader set of assurances including FedRAMP, System and Organization Controls (SOC), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and multiple International Standards Organization (ISO) standards.

Built for what’s next

As healthcare organizations modernize their service operations, unify data across systems, and adopt agentic AI to improve business processes and patient experiences, Dynamics 365 Contact Center helps ensure that trust and compliance remain central to every interaction.

To learn more about our compliance journey and explore resources, visit the Dynamics 365 Contact Center compliance page. Additionally, explore the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Contact Center and sign up for a free trial.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Deliver intelligence, automation, and efficiency across channels.

Learn more

The post Raising the bar for healthcare security: Dynamics 365 Contact Center achieves HITRUST certification appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Most teams looking to “graduate” from simplistic accounting software or outdated systems of record turn to cloud-first, and increasingly AI-powered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to deliver on this end-to-end vision.

If you’re thinking about end-to-end business management, and your business runs on Microsoft applications already for things like email, productivity, and business intelligence, there’s a Microsoft solution tailor-made for you: Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Dynamics 365 Business Central

Connect finance, sales, service, and operations.

Learn more

We believe that Business Central is a rock-solid ERP solution in its own right, helping over 45,000 small and medium businesses (SMBs) worldwide manage finance, operations, sales, and service in one solution—but it doesn’t end there. On top of that rock-solid foundation, you get the muscle of Microsoft AI, the extensibility of thousands of apps on AppSource, and, yes, native connectivity to the Microsoft 365 services and applications you’re already using.

Here’s a taste of what that means in practice:

• Data connectivity: Business Central synchronizes financial, operational, and customer data with Microsoft 365 apps, enabling users to access up-to-date information and edit that data in familiar interfaces like Excel without the need for middleware.
• Workflow automation: With Microsoft Power Automate, users can create automated workflows that bridge Business Central and Microsoft 365, streamlining processes such as approvals, notifications, and document management. Tools like Agent Builder and Microsoft Copilot Studio are enabling businesses to deliver powerful, AI-first workflows that run through Microsoft systems and beyond.
• Embedded experiences: Users can interact with Business Central data from within Microsoft 365 apps. For example, they can view and edit Business Central records in Excel, manage invoices and quotes in Outlook, and collaborate on business data in Microsoft Teams—all without switching contexts.
• Security and identity: Both platforms share Azure Active Directory for authentication and authorization, ensuring secure access and unified identity management across the integrated environment.
• AI and insights: The integration enables AI-powered features such as Microsoft Copilot and both prebuilt and custom agents, leveraging combined data from Business Central and Microsoft 365 to provide intelligent recommendations, automate routine tasks, and deliver actionable insights within daily workflows.

This architecture empowers SMBs to streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and enhance customer experiences by leveraging unified data, automated processes, and AI-powered tools—all inside the applications teams use every day.

The nuts and bolts of seamless systems

Let’s take a deeper look at how these integrations can work in practice, the value that it can offer businesses, and the steps needed to manage these processes.

Outlook: Business Central can be made available in Outlook’s sidebar, and administrators even have the option to make finance, customer, and inventory insights available to users without a Business Central license. Advanced tools like Sales Order Agent in Business Central take this interconnectivity even further. With Sales Order Agent, inbound order requests can be fulfilled in Business Central automatically, taking into account inventory and customer preferences. All of this saves time and allows staff to focus on growth, not busy work.

Excel: Business Central allows users to view and edit business data—such as financial reports, budgets, or inventory lists—directly in Excel. The two-way synchronization means that changes made in Excel are instantly reflected in Business Central, and vice versa. This eliminates manual data exports and imports, reduces errors, and empowers finance teams to work with live data in a tool they know well. AI again can take these synergies a step further through Back Reconciliation with Copilot, saving hours of time and effort on month-end operations.

Teams: Collaboration is enhanced through Teams, where users can share Business Central records, discuss transactions, and make decisions together without switching apps. Teams’ chat and meeting features combine with Business Central’s business data—enabling sales, finance, and operations teams to work together in real time. This boosts transparency and ensures everyone is aligned on the latest information. With tools like Copilot Studio, you can create AI-powered agents in Teams that automatically update customer information, generate sales quotes, and centralize operational and engagement data in one place.

These connections work so well that you won’t even think about them, enabling better customer experience, faster growth, and a future-ready foundation for innovation.

Customers reaping the benefits of end-to-end connectivity

This of course isn’t a hypothetical—customers are seeing the benefits of unifying Business Central within the broader Microsoft ecosystem every day.

You can read many of these customer stories right now.

We see in many of these case studies how customers benefit significantly from the integration of Microsoft 365 and Business Central thanks to the seamless ease of use across familiar tools. By embedding business insights and workflows into applications like Outlook, Excel, and Teams, users are empowered to complete daily tasks without constantly switching between different systems. This intuitive experience minimizes the learning curve, reduces manual data entry, and ensures that employees can access real-time information within the environments they use every day. As a result, even those without a Business Central license can gain valuable insights, making financial and operational data more accessible and actionable for a broader range of users. 

The interconnectivity between Microsoft 365 and Business Central creates a unified digital workspace where data flows freely and processes are automated. Teams can collaborate in real time, make informed decisions together, and maintain alignment across departments through shared records and synchronized updates. This shared digital language eliminates silos and fosters transparency, allowing everyone in the organization to speak the same “data language.” Ultimately, these capabilities drive efficiency, enable faster innovation, and support growth by creating a future-ready foundation where technology adapts to business needs rather than standing in the way. 

A future-ready foundation

Integrating Business Central with Microsoft 365 is more than a technical upgrade—it’s a strategic shift. By unifying data, automating workflows, and embracing AI, SMBs gain the agility, resilience, and speed to grow confidently.

Whether you’re a manufacturer optimizing your supply chain, a finance team closing faster in Excel, or a partner building vertical solutions, Business Central + Microsoft 365 gives you a future-ready platform ready to tackle today’s challenges and set you up to own the future.

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