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

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

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

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Dynamics 365 release wave

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

Learn more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early access period 

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

For a complete list of new capabilities, please check out the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 1 plan and the Microsoft Power Platform 2024 release wave 1 plan, and share your feedback in the community forums via Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform.

The post 2024 release wave 1 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform now available appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today, at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, we kicked off the 2023 release wave 2 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a six-month rollout of new and enhanced capabilities scheduled for release between October 2023 and March 2024.

This release wave introduces hundreds of new features across Microsoft Power Platform applications, including enhanced capabilities for governance, administration, and professional development. Updates for Dynamics 365 include innovation to help employees be more productive, create exceptional customer experiences and deepen relationships, and drive meaningful growth across the business. This release also features new AI capabilities in Copilot—which more than 130,000 organizations have now experienced—that help to improve insights, save time, and enhance creativity across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.  

Tune in to the launch event, live or on-demand, for a concise overview of the release wave, as well as a firsthand look at how organizations like Nestlé, Kodak Alaris, Northern Trust, Centrica, Spark NZ, Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland, and Suffolk are adopting these capabilities to drive transformative changes in their businesses.

Some of the themes at the event include:

• A new era of AI-powered customer service and field service
• Transforming enterprise resource planning (ERP) with AI
• Enhancing customer experience through AI-driven transformation
• Leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development with Microsoft Power Platform

A new era of AI-powered customer service and field service

As a frontline for customer loyalty, service agents and field teams need access to information and insights to understand customer needs and respond appropriately. New Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service will help reduce time spent on common tasks, as well as introduce enhancements to the Customer Service workspace. Updates include improved inbox functionality, a redesigned voice experience, enhanced collaboration through Microsoft Teams, and integrated diagnostics for administrators—all aimed at boosting agent productivity and operational efficiency.

During the session led by Jeff Comstock, Corporate Vice President, Customer Service, we demonstrated how Copilot assists customer service and field service processes, including customer self-service, across various channels.

We also revealed how customers like Northern Trust Corporation, a leading wealth and asset management institution, can use Copilot to assist the client services team with tasks ranging from account reviews and case investigations to post-resolution wrap-ups. Northern Trust Corporation has not only gained recognition for its innovative financial services, but also for its unwavering commitment to customer service. With Dynamics 365 Customer Service as a steadfast component of its journey, the latest capabilities in release wave 2 can help the client service teams at Northern Trust be even more efficient, effective, and customer-focused, streamlining its workflow and enhancing its ability to provide timely and accurate support to clients. 

The session also delved deeper into the field service domain, where Centrica, a global energy services company, effectively manages its sizable workforce of 12,000 field operatives on site by harnessing the new capabilities of Dynamics 365 Field Service, streamlining processes from task assignments to issue resolution.

To learn more about release wave 2 capabilities for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Field Service, visit the release planner.

Transforming ERP with AI

The new release wave harnesses AI, automation, and analytics to help organizations drive greater operational efficiency across finance, supply chain, and operations—capabilities that enhance visibility, automate processes, extend coverage, and deliver a more integrated experience across departments.

Updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance include the general availability of extended planning and analysis, which brings together operational and financial planning to continuously plan, act, and analyze. In addition, the general availability of business performance analytics streamlines financial reporting by centralizing data from multiple business processes and in an easy-to-use interface.

Updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management include improvements in demand planning, as well as procure-to-pay processes. Copilot will now suggest actions that can help purchasing agents make better decisions in response to new and updated information that affects open purchase orders.

At the launch event, Georg Glantschnig, Vice President, AI ERP, showcased how Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland is improving its demand planning accuracy by using AI. These new features have greatly enhanced its capacity to serve more customers by precisely planning food requirements, thereby reducing food waste, and improving environmental sustainability through more efficient facility operations. Additionally, the process of fulfilling purchase orders has also seen a remarkable enhancement, thanks to Copilot.

We also demonstrated how New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and digital services provider, Spark NZ, is transforming its finance and supply chain operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365. It can now automate many of its financial processes—including vendor invoice processing, automatic revaluation of foreign currency transactions, transaction reconciliation, billing, and complex tax calculations. Human resources can also streamline processes, from hiring to self-service vacation time requests and tracking.

See the release plans for Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, Project Operations, and Human Resources.

Enhancing customer experience through AI-driven transformation

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, and Copilot you can use data and insights that used to be hidden, unlock capabilities previously out of reach, and reach new levels of productivity and collaboration.

The new release wave introduces a variety of solutions to help marketers and sales professionals use Copilot to deepen their understanding of their target customer base, streamline engagement processes, and push the boundaries in crafting exceptional customer experiences. 

In the closing keynote session, Lori Lamkin, Corporate Vice President, Customer Experience, demonstrated how Kodak Alaris, a global technology company, effectively used Copilot within Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Insights. Taking advantage of the new AI capabilities, it tapped into previously hidden data to target its customer base, unlocking capabilities that were once out of reach. Using Copilot, it was able to create unique personalized content to keep customers informed about its services and effortlessly establish new levels of productivity and customer connection, attracting new businesses like never before.

For more details, review the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development with Microsoft Power Platform

Copilot in Power Platform ushers in a new era of AI-assisted low-code development. Copilot features in release wave 2 make it even easier to quickly create solutions.

At the launch event, Sangya Singh, Vice President, Power Pages, showcased how Copilot plays a vital role in democratizing development, enabling a broader audience—both citizen and professional developers—to create innovative solutions using natural language.

Through the lens of Suffolk, one of America’s largest construction companies, we demonstrated how Microsoft Power Automate helped them streamline critical material request processes, enabling teams to use Copilot in Power Automate to build flows by describing what they need.

We also showcased how Microsoft Power Apps can help Suffolk facilitate efficient coordination of construction status updates, and how the generative answers capability in Microsoft Power Virtual Agents can search industry resources for answers, reducing manual research. We also demonstrated how Microsoft Power Pages improves collaboration with multiple partners on construction projects, and how Microsoft Power BI can help Suffolk visualize safety data at construction sites across the globe, highlighting the trends, causes, and outcomes of incidents and near misses so that preventative actions can be easily identified and implemented.

In addition to enhancing daily business operations, Copilot within Microsoft Power Platform has significantly improved the governance and administrative experience, expediting the development of these applications.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform release planner for more details.

Tune in to the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event 

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Tune in live or on-demand for a concise overview of the release wave.

Watch now

Watch the launch event on-demand for in-depth insights and demonstrations of the new capabilities across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. You can also delve into several deep-dive presentations on topics including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, responsible AI practices, and a fireside chat that explores the latest features in this release wave.

Don’t forget to explore the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform to stay informed about what’s new and on the horizon.

We also invite you to learn more about the latest AI innovation at Microsoft Ignite 2023, taking place in Seattle from November 14 through November 17, 2023, with online sessions available live and on-demand on November 15 and November 16. Register today.

The post Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event introduces wave of new AI-powered capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

AI is ready to support work—the question is: What will your business do with it?

Join us at the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event on October 25 and explore how to create an AI-powered business that helps people and teams be more productive, solve problems quickly, and focus more energy on building revenue.

This will mark our tenth Business Applications Launch Event—a milestone in our commitment to business app innovation, our customers, and our partners. But we’re just getting started. To see what’s next—and what it means for your organization—you’ll hear directly from Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI, customer service, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and low-code solutions.

Register for a glimpse at the future of business AI, with thought leaders and Dynamics 365 experts guiding you. Be first to see the latest AI advancements in action, including:

• The latest AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales that provides relevant recommendations, summarizes data, retrieves information, and performs actions within the flow of work.
• Advanced Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service that streamline agents’ workspaces, let them see transcripts of live chats and voice calls in their inboxes, and allow them to respond to customers quickly with the right information.
• New Microsoft Sales Copilot features that help compose emails, update customer relationship management (CRM) records, recap meetings, and offer real-time tips to help sales teams close more deals.
• Enhanced automation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance to help handle accounts payable and bank statements, complex tax scenarios, and e-invoicing requirements in more markets.
• New Copilot features in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to help marketers quickly create memorable customer experiences using whole new levels of personalization for emails, images, and layouts.

Plus, learn about updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources—all ready to help your employees be more productive, build customer loyalty, and drive meaningful growth. You’ll also hear from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, about what’s driving innovation today. Then catch some of the newest AI capabilities in action, with demos led by the people behind the 2023 release wave 2, offering expert guidance on how these updates will help you:

• Improve insights, save time, and fuel creativity with the latest AI-powered solutions.
• Empower your employees to focus on revenue-generating work and avoid repetitive tasks with automation.
• Connect people, data, and processes across your organization using modern, AI-enhanced collaboration tools.

Insights on putting AI to work for you

The Business Applications Launch Event is more than our chance to showcase hundreds of new features and updates. It’s also a great opportunity for you to learn expert tips on how to apply these new technologies to some of your business’ biggest challenges. And if you have questions about new features, the role of AI at work, the evolution of copilots, or what’s ahead for business apps, get them answered by experts—we’ll be hosting a live Q&A chat at the end of the event, so be sure to stick around.

It’s been inspiring to see all the new features that the Dynamics 365 team has been working on, and we’re looking forward to celebrating 10 events’ worth of advancing business applications ahead.

Business Applications Launch Event

Explore how to create an AI-powered business.

Register now

We hope you’ll join us.

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

 9:00 AM–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

The post Discover new AI for Microsoft Dynamics 365 at our tenth Business Applications Launch Event appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We surveyed more than 500 CFOs and senior business leaders for our 2023 Future of Finance Trends Report and found that many organizations continue to struggle with lack of IT resources, overwhelmed employees, and disconnected systems. In fact, while 79 percent outlined that they were shifting to owning business model innovation and empowering transformation across the organization, 88 percent said they don’t have the IT resources or tools needed to drive operational efficiency and minimize busy work for their teams. Finance, human resources (HR), and project operations leaders need to reimagine processes to help their teams achieve more, faster. 

With the 2023 release wave 1, we are delivering enhancements across Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Dynamics 365 Human Resources that focus on helping our customers adapt faster, work smarter, perform better, and operate more sustainably.

Adapt faster with simplified financial consolidations and close

Financial reporting and close—whether year-end, quarterly, or monthly—can be challenging for finance teams as they must quickly aggregate data from across the organization and handle the close and consolidation process on time without compromising accuracy. With these latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365, we are further streamlining the close process while improving speed and accuracy, enabling organizations to adapt faster to changes.

Improved speed and accuracy

With these latest updates, we’re providing new features that take the hassle out of recording certain types of transactions, improving speed and accuracy. 

Changes in exchange rates cause the book value of open transactions in foreign currencies to vary over time. Recording these fluctuations accurately at a granular level is incredibly important, yet it’s difficult in practice. Our updated currency revaluation posting profile enables finance teams to post currency revaluation adjustments per currency and module. Accounts payable and accounts receivable subledgers are updated automatically to reflect the unrealized gain or loss, helping to ensure these adjustments are accurately recorded.

Similarly, determining how certain transactions, such as the disposal of a fixed asset as a scrap, should be recorded can be complicated. Elimination of these transactions affects balance sheet accounts, such as acquisition adjustment, depreciation adjustment, revaluation, and write-up and write-down accounts, so recording these adjustments accurately is incredibly important. These latest updates provide options that allow you to determine the posting details of fixed asset disposal scrap/sale based on your business needs.

More granular tracking and reporting

While businesses need to quickly consolidate financial data to close their books, it is also essential that they have sufficient granularity in their reporting to provide finance leaders with the visibility they need to drive strategic decisions. 

After transactions are posted, it’s common for organizations to require visibility into subledger data so that certain transactions can be analyzed. With this update, we are including new ways to define financial tags. Financial tags let organizations track user-defined fields on accounting entries posted to the general ledger. Financial tags can also be used to track the subledger data and are now available for matching within ledger settlement, reducing the number of transactions to be manually matched.

In addition to supporting new financial tags, we’re also improving how vendor and customer payments are recorded to the bank subledger. This feature allows an organization to post vendor and customer payments in separate vouchers but update the bank account in summary to match the bank statement, making reconciliation easier and ensuring smoother bank reconciliation.

Accelerate global expansion and operations

As companies look to better manage the complexities of international operations, globalization studio enhances the globalization capabilities for numerous countries’ new laws around reporting. With this latest update, we are bringing new capabilities to help make it easier for companies working in certain parts of the European Union (EU), Latin America (LATAM), and Asia Pacific area (APAC). 

These updates include the extension of multiple tax ID reporting to more EU countries, which helps ensure accurate tax numbers for transactions, streamline compliance, and raise operational efficiency for global companies. We’re also expanding out-of-the-box regulatory compliance coverage to additional LATAM countries, including Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Colombia, and Uruguay. By providing localized solutions, Dynamics 365 Finance users can confidently navigate the regulatory landscape, reduce compliance risks, and fortify their operational efficiency across multiple LATAM countries.

Work smarter with automation that minimizes repetitive tasks and data entry

For many companies, financial processes still involve many manual and repetitive tasks, which require a large number of resources and take finance leaders away from more strategic work. According to our 2023 Future of Finance Trends Report, 88 percent of financial leaders feel they are primarily responsible for transactional functions, such as creating financial reports, as opposed to the more strategic functions of running a business, like advising on innovations. Similarly, 88 percent of finance leaders reported not having the automation tools they need to automate repetitive tasks (for example, digital invoicing software and online payroll) and free up their time for more innovative work. With this latest release, we’ve added new capabilities to help finance teams work smarter by using automation to minimize manual and repetitive tasks. 

Streamline invoicing to reduce the time from procure to pay

Processing vendor invoices is a manual and repetitive task in every organization. Not only is this process resource intensive—requiring a high volume of document processing—it is also ripe for human error.

By digitizing and automating invoicing, businesses can save time and reduce errors. Dynamics 365 Finance includes accounts payable automation with invoice capture to provide continuous AI-driven automation with reading and recognition of vendor invoices. With this release, we added additional capabilities for non-purchase order (PO) invoices and the vendor invoice journal. We’ve also enhanced the invoice process with the ability to process free text invoices faster and invoice automation that enables the processing of vendor invoices during import, all of which save time and effort while helping to improve accuracy. This eliminates the need for additional background processing and frees accounts payable staff to focus their efforts on exceptions.

Improve processes

Working smarter as a company requires integrating systems of record to provide greater visibility and continuity across the organization. With this update, we have added some key integrations that will make it easier for companies to operate strategically.

In this update, we’ve enabled resource management integration. By significantly streamlining the project resourcing process for organizations by consolidating employee data, resource managers can swiftly identify and allocate suitable resources based on skills, certificates, and availability. We’ve also enabled learning management integration, which offers users a centralized view of training data and other employee information, streamlining workforce development, boosting productivity, and fostering a more informed decision-making process.

Simplify manual processes

Organizations are often burdened by manual tasks, which draw valuable resources and are prone to error. For those tasks that require manual inputs, making those experiences as simple and intuitive as possible is critical. 

One such experience is time entry. We’ve taken steps to modernize the user experience for time entry in Dynamics 365 Project Operations, making it more efficient and user-friendly. The modernized interface optimizes usability, accessibility, and extensibility, allowing consultants to enter time more effectively and accurately.

Perform better with enhanced business performance analytics

As finance leaders continue to take on more strategic responsibilities with organizations, the need for high-quality data and insights is increasingly important. Yet getting this visibility across the organization remains a challenge for many businesses. The new Dynamics 365 features significantly improve business performance analytics. 

Turn data into insights

To be successful, business leaders don’t just need data; they need actionable insights that help drive corporate strategy. New record to report and procure to pay data models will provide financial and non-financial data and metadata into Microsoft Dataverse and transform it into analytical tables. Structuring this complex data provides a single data source for reporting, allowing users to build well-defined and readily available relationships between ledger, subledger, and source documents from multiple systems.

The new reporting hub and base reports on data governance, as well as row-level and role-level security. These features help finance teams quickly locate, edit, and share relevant reports by business process easily and quickly—helping to put insights into action.

Advanced data gets enhanced security

Security is paramount for financial data. We’re furthering our investment in security by providing additional security controls in Dynamics 365 Finance. Business performance analytics provides row-level and role-level security capabilities to multiple users in your organization’s finance and accounting teams, as well as to the staff in other departments. This helps ensure that reports are only seen by those with appropriate permission.

When paired with the extensibility of the data model, users can be set up to view reports by dimension and legal entity. This lets teams create refreshable, prewritten reports that can be distributed beyond the finance organization, making it easier and safer to circulate data.

Making it easier to navigate taxes

Streamline tax calculation and reporting processes for import/export businesses through direct currency conversions and localized support for Indian taxation. Additionally, you can simplify interoperation with tax solution ISVs, enabling efficient management of complex tax rates across multiple jurisdictions. The withhold tax calculation during invoicing also helps customers meet their compliance obligations, reducing manual effort for businesses operating in countries with specific tax requirements.

By integrating these features into a single comprehensive solution, businesses can achieve greater accuracy in tax declarations, seamless integration between project management and accounting modules, and improved tax management across various jurisdictions. These capabilities ultimately help organizations drive efficiency, fulfill legal compliance, and make better decisions, allowing businesses to thrive in an increasingly globalized market.

Operate more sustainably

We are introducing new features aimed at helping businesses improve traceability tied to sustainability by utilizing the power of automation, digitization, and compliance with evolving global regulations. These features include archiving data and electronic invoicing services for various countries. Implementing these solutions can help organizations reduce power usage, improve efficiency, and comply with local and international regulations.

Reduce data storage energy expenditures

The archive data feature allows companies to save storage space and improve performance by reducing the data set they work against. This enables organizations to archive data consistently and securely while still allowing for reporting and analysis of historical data through standard reporting.

Eliminate paper waste

Electronic invoicing services support the move towards a paperless environment by helping companies automate the entire invoicing process. By eliminating the need for physical paperwork, electronic invoicing reduces paper waste. This newest release offers electronic invoicing services for France, Poland, and Japan.

Additionally, the global e-invoicing feature addresses the growing market driven by tax digitization and invoice automation. By interoperating with government services and intermediate-certified operators, the global e-invoicing feature helps businesses efficiently exchange electronic invoice documents with tax authorities and other businesses.

Try out the capabilities

Many users started testing the new features in an early access period starting January 30, 2023. This allowed users and partners to validate the latest features in a non-production environment. For those already in an early access non-production environment, these new features will be automatically enabled with the April 2023 upgrades.

Watch this YouTube video to learn more about these updates or get started with a free trial.

Dynamics 365 release planner

See the new features for Dynamics 365 Finance and Project Operations

Explore release planner

The post 2023 wave 1 releases AI, automation, and analytics in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Project Operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Microsoft Ignite returns live next week—a digital and in-person event in Seattle, Washington on Wednesday, October 12, and Thursday, October 13. Register today for two content-packed days where you’ll explore the future of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform and join other technologists in immersive learning experiences, product demos, breakout sessions, and expert meet-ups.

This year, the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform teams will showcase new and upcoming capabilities as well as demonstrate how your organization can make the most of AI and automation to streamline business processes, enhance collaboration, and improve customer and employee experiences.

Register now for the in-person or digital event. The free digital event will be the foundation of Microsoft Ignite this year, offering hours of sessions and interactive learning, Q&As with experts, live discussions, roundtables, and much more, all streaming live and on-demand, at no cost.  

Dynamics 365 at Microsoft Ignite: Essential sessions and activities

To help you plan your experience from the variety of sessions and activities, we’ve compiled some essential presentations, sessions, and viewing tips. Click the linked titles to learn more and add each event to your session scheduler.

Ignite opening keynote

Wednesday, October 12 | 9:00 AM–9:50 AM Pacific Time

Join the opening keynote, hosted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, for an overview of innovations that will shape the future of business.

Core Theme Session

Wednesday, October 12 | 11:00 AM–11:30 AM Pacific Time
Deliver efficiency with automation and AI across your business

Learn how organizations across industries are applying AI, automation, and mixed reality to streamline business processes, enhance collaboration, and improve customer and employee experiences. You’ll get a first-hand look at how products like Microsoft Viva Sales, Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, and Microsoft Power Platform rapidly enable AI and automation with modern capabilities.

Into Focus

Wednesday, October 12 | 3:00 PM–3:40 PM Pacific Time
Business Applications Into Focus: Biz Apps 2022 Release Wave 2 Launch

Don’t miss this first look at the new Dynamics 365 and Power Platform innovations coming to market. We’ll debut new technologies not previously announced, as well as give you a first look at innovations in release wave 2—features that are planned for release between October 2022 and March 2023. We’ll also spotlight organizations that will use these new technologies to drive better operational outcomes and customer success.

Dynamics 365 breakout sessions

After the keynote, learn what’s new and on the horizon for Dynamics 365 in these featured sessions:

Wednesday, October 12 | 11:05 AM–11:30 AM Pacific Time
Re-energize your workforce in the office, at home, and everywhere in between

In today’s shifting macroeconomic climate, technology can help organizations in every industry overcome challenges and emerge stronger. From enabling hybrid work to bringing business processes into the flow of work, learn how Microsoft 365 helps organizations deliver on their digital imperative, so they can “do more with less.”

Wednesday, October 12 | 2:00 PM–2:30 PM Pacific Time
Jumpstart your physical operations transformation with technologies built for the industrial metaverse

Explore what the industrial metaverse means today and where the technology is headed. From autonomous automation to connected field service and mixed reality to digitization of connected environments, we’ll showcase a maturity model that you can use to guide your implementation over time while solving business challenges each step of the way. We’ll also share how innovative customers are using this technology now to secure a competitive edge and build for the future.

Wednesday, October 12 | 12:00 PM–12:40 PM Pacific Time
Microsoft Viva: Latest innovations and roadmap for the new digital employee experience

Hybrid work presents new challenges for engaging, motivating, and growing a workforce. IT leaders and human resources (HR) leaders have an opportunity to partner on a more advanced digital experience to support various ways of working. We’ll explore how Viva puts people at the center, connecting them to company information, communications, workplace insights, knowledge, and learning. Product leadership will share the latest innovations from Viva to prepare your organization for the new digital employee experience, today. 

Wednesday, October 12 | 12:00 PM–12:35 PM Pacific Time
Unlock new customer experiences with NLP at scale

Organizations around the world use Microsoft’s natural language processing (NLP) capabilities to simplify tasks and support human connection, from helping employees better understand customer needs to helping customers find information more quickly. Learn why technology leaders are doubling down on NLP, and get a deeper understanding of NLP capabilities available across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services that can help transform customer and employee engagement at scale.

Wednesday, October 12 | 2:00 PM–2:30 PM Pacific Time
Create rich connections and customer experiences with Microsoft Teams Phone and contact center capabilities

Staying connected with colleagues, partners, and customers is more important than ever. Join us to learn how Teams Phone and contact center capabilities for Teams can create richer communications while helping organizations turn customer service into a team sport. We’ll share the latest updates on our mobility innovation and discuss how organizations are using Teams Phone enterprise-grade calling.

Attend live or watch on-demand

In addition to the live streams above, each segment will be rebroadcasted throughout the event. The key segments are open to everyone, but we encourage you to register in advance to unlock the full Microsoft Ignite experience—from digital breakout sessions with live Q&As to conversations with Microsoft experts and your global community.

More to explore

Microsoft Ignite will include live segments and Q&As, available across time zones. Check out all of the events and activities hosted by our team of experts:

• Ask the Experts: An opportunity to ask questions at sessions with experts in cloud, desktop, mobile, and web development for specific guidance on your project or interests. 
• Table Topics: A live discussion with the community on camera and in chat. Get inspired by community experts, learn best practices, and share helpful resources with other attendees. 
• Local Connections: An opportunity to engage with attendees local to you, no matter where you are in the world. Dedicated time to help find developers, Microsoft experts, and partners with similar interests in your area. 
• Learn Live: Guided online content with subject matter experts to direct you through Microsoft Learn modules that you can complete on your own at any time. 
• Product Roundtables: Two-way discussions direct with Microsoft engineering. 
• Cloud Skills Challenge: A collection of interactive, online learning modules to complete for a chance to earn a free certification exam. 
• One-to-One Consultations: A unique opportunity to connect with an expert during the event to get the technical answers you need. These 45-minute sessions provide the event’s only one-to-one setting.

Get the most of your Microsoft Ignite experience

Be sure to follow Microsoft Ignite on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay up to date and connected with the community, and register for Microsoft Ignite today.

The post Your guide to Dynamics 365 at Microsoft Ignite 2022 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Think about the time spent between the moment you open an email or chat, find, and reply with the requested information, and then get back into the flow of your work. Add up those minutes-long interruptions, and you begin to realize why we often can’t finish everything on our to-do lists.

We want to dramatically reduce those disruptions by bringing together business processes, information, communication, and collaboration, enabling an integrated workspace for teamwork. Not only does this save time and improve collaboration throughout the day but frees up time so you can stay focused on customers.

At Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing a breadth of more connected and engaging experiences between Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams, bringing together the features you depend on into a unified digital workplace for collaboration across your entire organization. These new capabilities help everyone work together from anywhere in a more seamless and natural way, as well as better engage with customers for more personalized experiences.

We’re making it simple to meet, chat, call, and collaborate right from within your Dynamics 365 workspace. For example, as you browse a customer record, you can see related conversations and people, and then start or continue a chat without switching to Teams. Similarly, while working in Teams, you can seamlessly access and share business processes, records, and information from Dynamics 365—so everything you need to stay focused and productive is in context to the task at hand.

Whether you work in sales or marketing, service, finance, commerce, or human resources—any role that depends on teamwork—the unified collaboration features in Dynamics 365 applications and Teams will help you get daily activities done in a way that simply keeps everyone connected virtually in a natural way.

Let’s take a closer look at how our approach to unified collaboration makes an impact across the organization.

Sales: boost collaborative digital selling and engagement and transform customer interactions into revenue

Strong team collaboration and communication is essential in a sales organization, helping every seller identify, track, and share leads and opportunities. With Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, we are helping put collaboration in context and providing actionable next steps using AI-driven insights. This allows sellers to be more productive, work together better, and build stronger customer relationships.

Today we are announcing several new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Sales to boost collaboration across sales teams.

We are introducing an embedded Teams chat experience for Dynamics 365—a side panel that shows recent and ongoing chats, channels, and people in Teams related to the customer record in view.

As a seller browses customer records, the side panel displays (1) Teams chats and channels that mention the customer or account, as well as (2) suggested chats and contacts based on colleagues who are working on the account. Without switching to the Teams app, sellers can start or continue the conversation thanks to a (3) Teams chat experience which also (4) displays the customer record and quick actions to help avoid switching apps to find relevant information.

Recent years have witnessed a radical shift in buyer behavior that has led most businesses to alter traditional sales methods and adopt digital sales to stay relevant, maintain a competitive advantage, and cater to the buyer’s needs without losing the all-important personal touch. Voice and video now are important channels to ensure sellers keep connection and drive valuable conversations without missing any follow-ups.

Today, we are introducing both an embedded Teams dialer experience for Dynamics 365 as well as an extensible video or audio Teams meeting experience that seamlessly ties back to Dynamics 365 Sales.

As a seller is presented with the next best customer to reach out to, they can click-to-call—a side panel showing the teams dialer opens, including real-time business-critical insights such as transcript with important mentions highlighted (1), a place for note taking (2), and automatic detection of action items (3) sellers can ensure actions are captured ready for follow up.

We also cater for Teams meetings that are scheduled and tracked by the seller. When they join the call from Outlook, Teams, or Dynamics 365 the familiar Teams client opens where—aside from the custom video, avatar, or shared content—the seller will be presented with the same real-time insights as they did during the audio call, including the transcript with important mentions highlighted (4), a place for note-taking (5), and automatic detection of action items (6) sellers can ensure actions are captured ready for follow up.

All insights are tied back to the relevant record in Dynamics 365 Sales CRM with zero effort on the seller’s side. Within seconds of completing the conversation, the summary page will be available; including conversational KPIs representing the seller’s behavior during the call (7), commitment and follow-ups made during the call (8), important mentions (9), and the full playback option alongside sentiment analysis and segmentation of the call to topics (10).

These new team collaboration experiences are supported by multichannel engagement capabilities in Teams that help improve the way sellers connect with other sellers, prospects, and customers. The Dynamics 365 app for Microsoft Teams enables sellers to engage with audio and video online meetings, and support for third-party outbound and inbound calling ensures advanced call control functionality is right where is should be: alongside the information that is fueling sellers’ conversations with the caller. Conversation intelligence automatically transcribes calls and analyzes content, sentiment, and behavioral style—insights that can improve the way sellers engage with prospects and customers.

Learn how VITAS Healthcare, C.H. Robinson, Microsoft Inside Sales, and Grant Thornton transformed sales with Dynamics 365 Sales and Teams.

Marketing: turn event attendees into loyal customers

Virtual meetings and webinars are now a preferred way to connect and engage with audiences. With Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing, planning online events and nurturing your attendees is fast and easy.

Customers can set up, promote, and report on events hosted on Teams from within Dynamics 365 Marketing. In a few simple steps, they can export attendee data and view customer segments created in Dynamics 365 Marketing based on audience attendance. Customer journeys, including starter emails, are also automatically created to nurture attendees. Users can then further customize the content and experiences for attendees based on how they engage and orchestrate personalized customer journeys.

Today we’re announcing that commercial Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 customers will soon get six months of Dynamics 365 Marketing at no additional cost. We’ll have more details on this offer to share soon, along with eligibility details, and we are excited to see you reap the benefits of these solutions together.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Marketing or visit our help documentation to get started. Also, discover how Project Management Institute Minnesota and Discoveries, Inc are using these event management capabilities in the real world to improve engagement with event attendees.

Customer service: resolve customer issues faster using the power of collaboration

As cases that reach your live agents become increasingly more complex, it’s more important than ever that your customer service tools are designed to make life as easy as possible for your agents to resolve customer issues. This includes how cases get assigned and how your agents collaborate with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) within your organization. Key features such as unified routing and assignment capabilities leverage rule-based and machine learning classification to ensure incoming work items are routed to the best-suited agent or queue. But, there are still times when customer service agents need support from other colleagues to quickly address customer issues without having to escalate or transfer the case. With the new embedded Teams chat capability, directly accessible from the Dynamics 365 Customer Service agent desktop, agents can collaborate with SMEs to resolve cases faster and more effectively, ultimately improve the customer experience.

The Teams chat feature enables agents to easily start conversations with SMEs and other peers, avoiding the disruption of switching apps, while maintaining a seamless flow of work. The enhanced collaboration feature reads the context of the customer record and suggests relevant collaboration contacts for the agent. Related Teams chats initiated from Customer Service are visually differentiated to enable faster discoverability. In addition, agents can link relevant Teams chats to the customer record so that the conversation, information, and context is immediately available. 

Field service: enhance collaboration across field service

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and Teams work together to enable field technicians to stay connected to work orders, information, and experts in real-time, even from some of the most remote job sites.

Technicians and field service agents can use the integrated Teams experience within Dynamics 365 Field Service to collaborate in real-time with experts on work orders, as well as use Dynamics 365 Virtual Agents for Customer Service to enhance their productivity as they complete service tasks. Technicians can access the content they need related to the task at hand—from customer records to schematics—from a mobile device or for a hands-free experience, a Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality headset.

The solution is enabling surgeons at hospitals within the Mount Sinai Health System in New York to advise counterparts 7,000 miles away at Kyabirwa Surgical Centre in Eastern Uganda. “Microsoft Teams, Dynamic 365 Remote Assist, and HoloLens 2 allow us to bring our knowledge into a community, share that knowledge, and make it part of that surgical community on a long-term basis,” explains Dr. Michael L. Marin, Chairman of the Department of Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief at Mount Sinai. “It helps us create a sustainable program of surgical care.”

Retail: maximize retail collaboration and staff efficiency

On the retail frontlines, it’s critical to have the most current and accurate product and inventory information customers need in the moment. With Teams and Dynamics 365, retailers can provide the frontline with streamlined mobile tools to connect with peers and get near-instant access to information they need to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

With Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, we are also removing the barriers between the head office and individual stores by providing new task management functionality right within Teams. Task management functionality in Dynamics 365 Commerce allows managers and workers to create task lists, manage assignment criteria, and track task statuses integrated between Dynamics 365 Commerce back office, store commerce, and Teams applications.

Users can easily track task completion across all relevant stores, re-assign tasks, and give feedback and proof of execution where applicable.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce and check out our task management capabilities.

Human Resources: simplify employee leave and absence management

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources provides a comprehensive personnel management solution, including performance, leave and absence, and payroll integration. A new update, now generally available, enables employees to view time-off balances and submit leave requests from within Teams where they are already collaborating and getting their work done.

Employees simply type in keywords and a chatbot responds immediately to let them know leave balances or request time off. Managers can just as easily review and approve time-off requests with just a few clicks. By enabling employee and manager self-service, HR teams can stay focused on more strategic tasks while empowering employees to better manage their leave and absence benefits.

Learn more about the employee leave and absence experience in Teams.

Boost collaboration for better customer experiences across the organization

These integrated collaboration capabilities are just the start. We continue our investment in innovation to transform work, so everyone can be more efficient, more collaborative, more insightful – and ultimately, deliver the best customer experiences possible.

Learn more on the Microsoft Teams blog and explore all of the ways Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams help move projects forward and keep people connected with chat, suggested actions, and records in collaborative workspaces. Sign up for a free trial of Dynamics 365 Marketing.

The post Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams: extend collaboration across teams appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In the complex world of human resources, organizations often find it challenging to manage and administer employee leave and absence plans in a competitive and compliant way. Each country and company have unique needs and programs to effectively manage employees’ time away from work.

With leave and absence impacting every employee in an organization, streamlining processes and providing employees with the information they need are critical to a company’s digital transformation. In early October 2019, we announced an agreement to license the leave and absence capabilities from FourVision that will start to be introduced to Dynamics 365 Human Resources in the  2020 release wave 1. Today we’re excited to dive deeper into these capabilities and how they will help organizations stay compliant, while also helping employees with the leave benefits they expect.

Suspend leave for employees meeting certain criteria

For some organizations, employees on certain types of leave, such as long-term leave, need to have their other leave suspended for the duration of that leave. Dynamics 365 Human Resources will support this scenario by allowing HR professionals to define start and end dates for the leave suspension and prorate the leave accrual based on those suspension dates. This streamlines the leave suspension process by automating key aspects and eliminating manual intervention resulting in more accurate results.

Create leave rules to meet company and regulatory policies

Organizations each have unique needs related to employee time off. Whether it’s driven company policy or regulations required by the government, they need to be able to configure a leave and absence system to fit their business processes.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources will enable organizations to:

• Define leave expiration rules. Reduce the need for leave and absence managers to manually remove employees from leave plans and adjust balances.
• Specify carryforward to different leave types. Enable human resources managers to create policies around carryforward being used within a certain period of time when used in conjunction with leave expiration rules.
• Automatically adjust leave for bank holiday corrections. Streamline the accrual process by automatically making adjustments instead of leave and absence managers manually adjusting employee balances to account for bank holidays.
• Accrue based on full-time equivalent (FTE). Simplify leave and absence management by allowing for a single leave plan to be used for both full-time and part-time employees.
• Round leave balances. Provide employees with a better understanding of the days they have available for time off requests.

By providing this type of flexibility, organizations are able to configure leave to meet specific needs.

Review who is and isn’t at work via calendars

Being able to see who is and isn’t at work helps managers determine which requests should be approved or not. It also gives HR a view into who is taking time off and when. Dynamics 365 Human Resources will support not only managers and HR with a calendar view of time off, but employees as well. These calendars can be configured to show both pending and approved time off as well as when a calendar is available to view.

Allow employees to buy and sell leave

It’s becoming more and more common for organizations to provide employees with the ability to either buy more leave to take additional time or sell their existing leave to increase their pay. Dynamics 365 Human Resources will provide HR professionals with a way to configure when employees can buy and sell their leave, along with the prices for doing so. Along with that, buy and sell requests can go through an approval process to enable the organization to control when and how much leave is being bought and sold.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Human Resources

The new leave and absence features join a full range of HR capabilities within Dynamics 365 Human Resources that help your organization create a workplace where employees can thrive. Learn more about these and other upcoming capabilities planned in the 2020 release wave 1, including new benefit plan configurations, and explore more ways your HR team can access the workforce insights needed to build data-driven employee experiences across HR functions including compensation, benefits, leave and absence, compliance, payroll integrations, performance feedback, training and certifications, and self-service programs.

The post Improve the leave and absence experience across the organization appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As the war for talent intensifies, companies are offering a broader and richer set of benefits to attract and retain their best employees. We understand that this can be a complex and time-consuming process. Our new benefits capabilities in Dynamics 365 Human Resources will help with benefits administration by providing more flexible plan configurations, as well as enable open enrollment and life event changes through self-service experiences. These new capabilities are available today in preview, and will be generally available as part of the 2020 Release Wave 1.

Here’s an overview of the upcoming benefits capabilities.

Enhanced plan configuration

Benefit plans often have different costs depending on the characteristics of the policy holder.  For example, life insurance rates can vary based on gender and age. With our benefits capabilities, complex rate tables can be setup to capture differences in rates for age, salary, gender, full time equivalent designation, job type, compensation region, and compensation level. Benefits can be bundled together to ensure that employees select the correct prerequisite plans before selecting dependent plans, enabling a seamless self-serve experience. These enhancements will allow HR professionals to offer a richer set of plans to employees.

Efficient administration

With additional flexibility often comes complexity. As we have introduced these new capabilities, we will have focused on providing an efficient administration process. Plans can be configurable to enable auto enrollment based on the previous year enrollments. Also, life event processing is supported and integrated into employee self-service. Life events, as listed in IRS section 125 are supported, as well as other events such as the ability to age out of benefits, loss of spousal coverage, or even employee address changes. Administrators can choose which life events to process and how to process them by plan type, so they can administer benefits based on their unique company and regulatory policies. Lastly, employees can self- serve via an open enrollment shopping cart experience.

Extensive eligibility setup

The benefits capabilities will provide the flexibility needed to setup multiple types of eligibility rules and coverage options. Benefit managers can easily create flexible and robust eligibility rules that ensure the right benefits are available for the right employees in an easy to use experience. Custom fields can also be used within the eligibility process to ensure that a company’s unique eligibility rules set can be met.

Flex credit programs

Companies often want to showcase the cost of benefits to employees as well as give the employees control over the way they spend their benefit dollars to help them align to their unique needs. With the enhanced benefits capabilities, flex credit programs can be established to support the scenarios above. Also, flex credits can be prorated to support retirement and other life event changes.

With these new benefits capabilities in Dynamics 365 Human Resources, we will now offer our customers more flexibility to support unique benefit scenarios in a flexible and easy to use experience. We’re excited to bring these features, including advanced rates, life event processing, enhanced eligibility, and many more, to your organization. Learn more about these and other features headed to Dynamics 365 Human Resources in the coming months, including updates to leave and absence management.

The post Preview new benefits capabilities for Dynamics 365 Human Resources appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Microsoft delivers solutions that enable businesses to build winning teams and create a workplace where people can succeed. To help ensure we are providing the very best solutions to empower employees, and as we look at LinkedIn’s unique strengths in the talent acquisition market, we plan to refocus our HR technology roadmap and partnership investments for Dynamics 365 across four key areas:

• Transforming employee experiences: Empowering employees with modern, mobile, mixed reality, self-service experiences that enable information access, guided learning, and task execution without requiring intervention from HR.
• Optimizing HR programs: Improving people operations with optimized benefits, compensation, leave and absence, certifications and training, compliance, and payroll programs.
• Improving organizational agility: Helping people thrive as the business changes with adaptable, secure, and scalable HR solutions that are easy to tailor, extend, and connect to current systems.
• Enabling workforce insights: Centralizing HR data to get insightful people analytics and guidance delivered by Microsoft’s leading business intelligence and AI technology.

As part of this, starting February 1, 2020, our current core HR capabilities will be renamed Dynamics 365 Human Resources. The new name reflects our commitment to helping HR professionals create data-driven programs that improve the employee experience. In October, we announced our investments in the rights to strategic solutions from FourVision and Elevate HR to accelerate HR operations innovation within leave and absence, time and attendance, and benefits administration. These new capabilities will begin rolling out within Dynamics 365 Human Resources in early 2020.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources will provide the workforce insights needed to build data-driven employee experiences across compensation, benefits, leave and absence, compliance, payroll integrations, performance feedback, training and certification, and self-service programs. Dynamics 365 Human Resources will connect people and operations data to ensure businesses can optimize workforce costs and take better care of employees.

As we focus on the capabilities for Dynamics 365 Human Resources, we will be transitioning away from development efforts around talent acquisition specifically and our Dynamics 365 Talent Attract and Dynamics 365 Talent Onboard applications will be retired. To ensure customers have time to plan, the Attract and Onboard services will continue to be available until February 1, 2022. You can learn more about this topic in our community.

We will work to transition Attract and Onboard customers to a solution of their choice, including LinkedIn Talent Hub a new Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that lets you source, manage, and hire all in one place. LinkedIn Talent Hub allows complete visibility at every stage of the hiring process, from candidate pipeline, interviews, or feedback to extended offers. It uses the actions, skills, and experience of more than half a billion LinkedIn members to deliver insights about potential talent pools and candidates. LinkedIn also has the option of Recruiter System Connect (RSC) that connects LinkedIn Recruiter with some of the largest ATS providers to allow you to more efficiently recruit talent and see up-to-date LinkedIn profiles directly within your ATS.

With LinkedIn solutions to attract, hire, and develop talent and with Dynamics 365 Human Resources to optimize HR programs and enable workforce insights, Microsoft can continue helping business leaders digitally transform HR practices and build winning teams where people can thrive.

Creating value for any part of the talent organization is a huge opportunity, and we look forward to sharing more on how we plan to work with LinkedIn in the future to innovate and bring more seamless ways to digitally transform HR practices.

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources

Learn more about LinkedIn Talent Solutions 

The post Building a more successful workforce with Dynamics 365 Human Resources appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Our vision for Dynamics 365 Talent is to balance operational excellence, organizational agility, and the employee experience to create a workplace where people and the business thrive.

To help our customers achieve this mission, we’re investing heavily in our core HR capabilities. Today we’re excited to announce that we have procured the rights to strategic solutions from FourVision and Elevate HR to accelerate HR operations innovation within leave and absence, time and attendance, and benefits.

Strengthening workforce practices for a connected workplace

Within today’s business climate of constant disruption, HR organizations must be agile to develop a workplace and workforce that can support the organizational mission. Core HR capabilities within Dynamics 365 Talent help organizations meet these objectives by centralizing workforce data and driving operational excellence across HR programs.

As people resources are the most expensive part of operating expenses, the imperatives of efficiency and cost reduction have always been a part of the HR mandate. However, when workforce practices are disconnected and lack a cohesive strategy across the company, the result is high turnover rates, longer hiring cycles, and lower employee engagement. This can impact the organization through a lack of product innovation, expensive operational errors, less satisfied customers, and ultimately, suboptimal financial results.

Continued innovation through strategic investments

The IP acquisitions announced today will support our customers throughout their transformation journey, breaking down people data silos and providing a centralized view of the workforce, as well as automating key tasks that may have historically been done on paper or using Microsoft Excel.

We’ve acquired licensing rights to FourVision’s HR solutions covering leave and absence, sickness management, and timesheet, as well as Elevate HR’s benefits management capabilities that will be incorporated natively within Dynamics 365. These new capabilities will greatly enhance our ability to help HR teams drive operational excellence across these critical employee experiences:

Leave and absence

Managing leave and absence plans is critical for employers to ensure business coverage and provide time away benefits to their employees. Leave and absence plans vary greatly in the rules that govern eligibility, accruals, limits, usage, and carry over. This is further complicated by complex laws that many countries enforce on these types of entitlement programs. Our investment in this area will enable an enhanced set of capabilities for leave and absence plans, including programs such as family and sick leave to help HR better manage the numerous complex laws and bargaining agreements enforced on these types of entitlement programs.

 Time and attendance

Tracking the actual attendance and time away of employees via timesheets is critical for many operational processes such as payroll, benefit, and pay eligibility.  Our investment in this area will enable organizations to support the complex policies that vary greatly by country, industry, and organization for tracking time worked. Manufacturing, retail, and professional services organizations now have the ability for simple, quick, and accurate time entry integrated with leave and absence.

 Benefits management

Organizations need to develop and manage highly competitive benefits programs to competitively attract and retain employees. Managing these programs requires highly configurable systems that also bring intuitive and modern self-service capabilities for employees to understand and manage the benefits available to them. This key investment will help our customers manage complex benefit programs, including tiered benefit rates, and eligibility. The new capabilities will have a configurable self-service enrollment process that is flexible to allow for benefit groups, hierarchies, flexible credits, and auto-enrollment. We will also be providing benefit managers with the ability to integrate employee and enrollment information with their benefit providers.

These new strategic investments will enable HR to operate with the dexterity and speed required by the rest of the enterprise and enable employees to self-serve their critical HR tasks. Optimizing HR operations also frees up teams to better advise, consult, and innovate with their C-suite stakeholders. We will be providing updates on when these new capabilities will be delivered in the product via our release plans and roadmap.

 Core HR and Dynamics 365 Talent

As part of the Dynamics 365 portfolio, core HR helps power your people process through the Common Data Service and integrations with other Dynamics 365 applications such as Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

Over the last year and a half, customers across retail, nonprofit, manufacturing, and professional services industries have been selecting the core HR capabilities within our Dynamics 365 Talent application to accelerate their digital transformation of human resources and our usage continues to double every six months. With these additional strategic investments, our customers will be able to tackle workforce transformation even faster.

“We have four main pillars in our company—people, clients, operations, and finance —and people always come first. Deploying Talent was a strategic decision that fits within our long-term roadmap of accelerated global expansion, and it’s already starting to pay off.  We’ve seen Microsoft devote considerable resources to expand and enhance the product to make it a diverse human resources solution. These new investments are a great example of that effort and help position our team for future growth in the Multi-Site construction industry.”  – Chris Galazka, Vice President of Human Resources, Sevan Multi-Site Solutions

Learn more

You can find more information on the complete set of core HR functionality that currently resides in Dynamics 365 Talent on our website.

The post Strategic investments in core HR drive operational excellence appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.