We’re excited to announce a major upgrade to how sellers interact with Copilot summaries in Dynamics 365 Sales. Beginning with the 2025 Release Wave 2, Copilot summaries for Opportunities, Leads, and Accounts will appear directly at the top of the record in a sleek insights bar. This update brings AI-powered insights directly into the seller’s workflow, thereby reducing clicks, improving focus, and enabling faster decisions.

Why This Matters 

The sidecar experience has been useful, but many sellers find it disconnected from the main form and difficult to use due to limited space. Scrolling through long summaries in a narrow pane often slows down productivity and disrupts focus. 

The new insights bar presents key insights directly on the form, at the top of each record. This eliminates the need to open a separate pane. With this streamlined experience, sellers can ramp up faster, stay in context, and respond more effectively to customer needs. 

This change is not just a visual update. It is a step toward making selling more intelligent and contextual. Whether you’re new to the sales team or an experienced seller, this improvement ensures that essential insights are always visible when you need them.  

What’s Changing 

Summary displayed at the top of the record form 

The new insights bar provides a one-line synopsis for quick scanning. It remains visible in a collapsed state and can be expanded to view more details. An example synopsis for a lead is: 

“Acme is exploring Airpot coffee machines for their new manufacturing site with a $24.9K budget expected to close by May 25th, 2025” 

You can expand the insights bar to read more details: 

You can click on options like “See full summary“ to open the lead’s research page:

For organizations using the Sales Qualification Agent, the insights bar displays agent-generated summary. Sellers can navigate to the agent’s research page to access deeper insights about the lead’s company, view tailored recommendations, and identify clear next steps.  

What’s coming next

We are working to bring the same agent-powered experience to Opportunity and Account records. Until then, these records will continue to display summaries in a popup. 

Once the agentic experience is available, sellers will get access to a full research page for these records as well. 

What’s not changing 

• Earlier summary customizations will be honored in the new experience. 

• Ability to copy the generated summary. 

• Providing thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback on summary quality. 

• Using copilot sidecar chat to generate summary for any specific record. 

Launch plan and next steps 

The new summary experience is part of the 2025 Release Wave 2 updates for Dynamics 365 Sales: 

• Early access of the new experience is available from July 2025. Opt in to early access updates. 

• General availability starts in September 2025, with that, the new experience will be default enabled for users. 

We recommend enabling early access in your environments and preparing your sellers for the new summary experience. Share any feedback or challenges with us so we can continue to make selling easier and more effective. 

The post Introducing the new summary experience in Dynamics 365 Sales appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s fast-paced sales landscape, prioritizing core selling activities over low-value tasks is crucial. Time spent on tasks that don’t directly contribute to sales represents missed opportunities to connect with prospects and close deals. With Dynamics 365 Sales, we’re committed to using AI to support sellers in focusing their time on what truly matters: forging meaningful connections, establishing trust, and nurturing long-term relationships to increase their sales productivity. Copilot empowers sellers to achieve greater results with less effort, enhancing your sales organization’s effectiveness. We’re happy to share that the following features are releasing this month.

Copilot chat Q&A in Dynamics 365 Sales

Copilot chat with Q&A transforms how sellers access data in your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Instead of building complicated queries or manually searching for information, sellers can ask questions using natural language. They can access vital information immediately, allowing them to focus on high-value activities like engaging customers and closing deals. The result is more time for meaningful interactions, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

Natural-language Q&A is particularly valuable in fast-paced sales environments, ensuring quick, informed actions. This feature elevates customer interactions, positioning teams for higher sales productivity. Its impact extends beyond convenience, shaping the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.

Sales-specific chat experience  

One of the key features of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales is that the chat experience is specific to the sales process. Sellers can use common sales terms and phrases to ask questions and get answers from the CRM system, without having to navigate through complex menus or screens. This saves time and effort for sellers, allowing them to focus on their customers and prospects.

Some of the sales terms that Copilot understands are conversion rate, deal cycle, pipeline, deal size, win rate, and deal value. Sellers and managers can use these terms to query various aspects of the sales process, like the performance of individual sellers, teams, or regions, the progress of opportunities, and the trends and forecasts of sales outcomes. Copilot can also handle complex queries with multiple terms, filters, and aggregations.

For example, you can ask Copilot:

• “Show the opportunity conversion rate for the last 4 quarters by quarter.”
• “What’s the win rate for Kenny Smith?”
• “What is the average deal size for successful opportunities?”

These examples illustrate how Copilot can help sellers access relevant information from your CRM system in a natural and intuitive way, using sales-specific terms in a chat experience. Copilot chat Q&A enhances your sales team’s productivity and efficiency and their ability to meaningfully engage with customers and prospects.

Your CRM data is always secure

Copilot respects the security and user access privilege settings of your CRM system. This means that if a seller doesn’t have permission to view or edit certain records, those records aren’t included in Copilot’s responses. For example, if you ask Copilot about the pipeline value for a region that you aren’t assigned to, Copilot informs you that you don’t have sufficient privileges to view the requested data. This ensures that Copilot maintains the integrity and confidentiality of your CRM data while providing insights and recommendations. 

Immersive Copilot workspace

We are also launching the public preview of a new immersive Copilot experience in Dynamics 365 Sales. An expanded workspace enhances focus on productive conversations with Copilot, while real-time insights and effortless natural language chat functionality help sellers efficiently manage sales activities, nurture customer relationships, and drive sales success. Seamless access to insights from CRM data simplifies prioritizing actions and smarter decision-making. 

The immersive experience works in sync with the Copilot chat pane. Start a conversation in the immersive workspace, select a record, and continue the conversation in the Copilot chat. The coherent experience makes it easy to navigate in the app without losing context. 

Use the immersive workspace

The immersive experience is in preview so that we can make improvements based on your valuable feedback. To use the immersive experience in your environment, you’ll need to turn on preview features for Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales. In the Sales Hub app, Copilot is automatically added to the site map under My Work. If you use a custom app, add the Copilot page to your app’s site map. To enter the immersive workspace, select My Work > Copilot.

Transform your sales processes with Copilot

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales helps your sellers save time and stay focused on the things that really matter. They get the information they need faster with less context switching, making their day-to-day activities more efficient and boosting your team’s overall sales productivity.

Next steps

Learn more about Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales

Turn on and set up Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales 

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales user? Sign up for a free trial today.

The post Transform seller effectiveness with Dynamics 365 Sales Copilot appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sellers need to navigate large amounts of information to better engage with customers. It’s imperative that they can do that with ease. With the world becoming much more technology aware, sales people expect the business applications they use to be as easy to engage as an app they use in their personal life. 

Well, we have some good news for you: the modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps is now generally available! From April 2024, it will be turned on by default for all users.

The modern update is a new design option that gives your model-driven apps such as Dynamics 365 Sales a sleek and modern appearance, with improved readability, accessibility, and usability. It also aligns with the Fluent Design System, Microsoft’s design language for creating harmonious and engaging experiences across devices and platforms. 

The features and benefits of the modern update include: 

• Updated read-only style with a lock icon to indicate non-editable fields. 
• Updated option set, date time, and duration fields with new Fluent drop-down and combo box controls. 
• Updated dashboards with a new command bar and integrated sub grids that use the new Power Apps grid control. 
• Customizable app header colors to match your organizational branding. 
• A new feature toggle in the header that lets end users try the new look and switch back at any time. 

We understand that each organization has its own nuances and may need more control over the look and feel of the application. They also need added flexibility to switch between different styles according to preference. The modern update is an opt-in feature that does not affect your existing apps or customizations. You can try the new look, by turning on the toggle in the top header bar. 

As soon as you do that, your app will convert into the new look. You can go back to the classic look by turning off the toggle. 

We plan to make the new look as default experiences in the upcoming releases. As we are constantly improving the system based on your input and suggestions, please share your feedback with us.

You can read more about these changes in this blog from the PowerApps team: Modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps is generally available (GA) | Microsoft Power Apps 

Next steps:

Learn more about the modern look: Modern, refreshed look for model-driven apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn. 

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Sales customer? Take a tour and start your free trial today. 

The post Refresh the Sales experience with Dynamics 365 Sales modern update appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 sales accelerator helps sellers sell smartly by building a strong and prioritized pipeline, offering context, and suggesting next actions through sales sequences that expedite the sales process. We’ve made three improvements to sales accelerator that can help sellers be even more productive:

• Sellers can now build their own sales sequences
• We’ve made the sequence designer even easier to use
• Sellers can add the Up next widget to any form

Let’s examine each of these improvements in more detail.

Empowering sellers to build their own sales sequences

Before now, sales managers enforced best practices by defining a set of consecutive activities for their sellers to follow throughout their workday. Managers could connect these sequences to leads and opportunities that appeared in the sellers’ work queue. Sales sequences helped sellers prioritize their activities and focus on selling to be more productive and to better align to business processes.

Now, we’re empowering sellers to build their own sequences. Often sellers are in a better position to decide the best engagement strategy to follow with a prospect. Now they can create sequences for themselves and connect them to records. They can also personalize a sequence with their own language and steps.

The following screenshot shows the new functionality in the Personal settings > Sequences page in the Sales Hub app:

Use security roles to manage permissions to create, connect, and share sales sequences.

Improved design experience for sales sequences

As we give sellers the power to create sales sequences, we need to make sure it’s easy to do. That’s why we created a new sequence designer with a modern UX and an enhanced editing experience. Sellers will realize several immediate benefits:

• Consistency between the marketing journey and sales sequences means sellers don’t have to learn two different systems.
• A side panel makes editing easier and scalable with more space.
• Changes are automatically preserved in the browser and can be saved with a single click.
• The updated top command bar shows relevant options, leaving more space for editing.
• An exit icon effortlessly identifies the end of any sequence branch.
• Enhanced error handling enables easy identification and resolution of any errors.

Add the Up next widget to any form

Sales organizations may have hundreds or even thousands of records their sales teams are working on. As they start using sales sequences, they typically create a few to try out and use them to determine the best way to grow and scale based on business needs. The trouble with that is that then the organizations have a few records that are connected to sequences and a multitude of records that aren’t. For sellers, this means that only the few connected records appear in the Up next widget in their worklist, because the Up next widget is fed by sequences. They have to juggle the worklist and their leads, opportunities, and other entities tables, where their non-sequenced records live.

To solve this challenge, we now allow sellers to add the Up next widget to any form. Previously, the Up next widget and sales sequences were available only in the sales accelerator workspace.

To help new users easily discover the benefits of the sales accelerator, we’ve started adding the Up next widget to the default lead, opportunity, contact, and account forms. Sellers can easily start using the sales accelerator to create sequences, streamline customer interactions, and win more deals.

Learn more

New to Dynamics 365 sales accelerator? Watch the overview video and read the documentation: Configure the sales accelerator | Microsoft Learn

Read how to add the Up next widget to any form: Add the Up next widget to a custom form | Microsoft Learn

Read how to allow any security role to create or connect sequences: Sequences in sales accelerator | Microsoft Learn 

Read the seller guide to creating sequences: Create and connect sequences for yourself | Microsoft Learn 

The post New sales sequences experience improves seller productivity appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 provides a tailored experience for sellers by minimizing the time spent searching for the best next customer to reach out to. It’s a workspace optimized with AI and suggested activities that guide sellers through customer interactions. The sales accelerator enables your sales team to prioritize their pipeline, reach out to prospects most likely to buy, and respond to recommendations, speeding up the sales process.

Our teams are constantly reviewing customer feedback and optimizing the experience. We have two new updates you’ll see immediately in your environments:

• Sales Hub users now get out-of-the-box access to the sales accelerator workspace. (If you use a custom app, additional steps might be required to surface the capabilities.)
• Sales engagement managers can discover and configure the sales accelerator in a newly streamlined onboarding process.

Let’s take a deeper look at these improvements.

Out-of-the-box access to the sales accelerator workspace

Sales Hub users will now be able to instantly access the sales accelerator from the left pane on the site map menu. As they access the sales accelerator, sellers will immediately see any activities scheduled for them in the worklist. Without navigating away from the screen, they can see who to contact next, filter and sort the records to their chosen priority, and then take the best next action.

Sales Hub is a Microsoft app that’s designed around the sales processes that most organizations follow. If you’re new to Dynamics 365 Sales and wondering whether to use the Sales Hub app or create a custom app, this comparison will help you decide.

If you’re already using a custom app, you’ll need to add the sales accelerator to your site map to allow users to see and select it from the left pane.

Simple onboarding and setup

The following improvements help sales engagement managers and admins discover and engage with the right options to implement and deploy the sales accelerator more efficiently:

• Independently configured sales accelerator workspace and optimized assignment rules
• Context-specific settings
• Setup recommendations

Independently configure access to the workspace and assignment rules

Assignment rules enable new leads and opportunities to be automatically assigned to sellers or sales teams. This helps reduce the time and effort required to manually assign records, prevent the loss of unassigned records, and balance assignments among sellers.

Assignment rules can now be independently used or aligned to the use of the sales accelerator. This allows you to select the right options for your sellers and ensure they receive the records to work on, regardless of workspace area. We’ve introduced the ability to set security roles to separately control access to the sales accelerator workspace and assignment rules.

A security role defines how users may access different types of records. You can modify existing security roles, create new security roles, or change which security roles are assigned to each user. Learn more about security roles.

To configure access to the sales accelerator workspace, choose security roles in the Manage access and record type section of the workspace settings page.

To configure access to assignment rules, choose security roles in the Team settings section of the assignment rules settings page.

Context-specific settings

Advanced settings for sequences, assignment rules, and sales teams are now available in context, on the page, rather than requiring navigation to another settings area. This screenshot shows an example of the new in-context settings, using seller availability:

Personalize your workspace

To improve sellers’ productivity, we help them focus on who to engage next. To that end, you can now customize the workspace filters. For example, sellers might want to filter work items based on the lead source, such as website inquiry. Add a filter based on Lead as the record type and Leadsource as the field.

We encourage you to try out different capabilities to get the most out of the sales accelerator. To help you discover its capabilities, we show recommended next steps in workspace settings. Recommendations are tailored to the sales process and based on where your organization is in the setup process, taking away the guesswork and guiding you on a recommended path for a successful implementation.

Stay tuned for more exciting improvements to come, such as customizable worklist cards, advanced sorting, and a new sequence designer experience!

Next steps

• Read the blog post: Improve seller productivity with a sales cadence.
• To start building your own sequences in Dynamics 365 Sales, check out the documentation: Manage sequences.
• If you use a custom app, learn how to add a work list site map to a custom app.

The post Streamline sales actions with Dynamics 365 sales accelerator appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In sales, planning is everything. Without a plan, a sales rep might give up too easily on a prospect or appear too aggressive. A potential customer might forget about a proposal or become annoyed by too-frequent contacts. Creating a step-by-step plan for how to follow up with prospects in each stage of the sales process is the basis for a sales cadence. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales tools help you create, manage, and scale customized sales cadences across your organization.

The top salespeople have a well-crafted plan to get their desired results, whether they are demonstrating a product or following up with leads. A successful plan, or sales cadence, involves knowing where your prospects are in the buyer’s journey and understanding how to reach them the right way, with the right message, at the right time to move them to the next step.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

A modern proverb

In this post, you’ll learn:

• What a sales cadence is
• What to consider when designing a sales cadence
• What an effective sales cadence looks like
• How Dynamics 365 Sales can help you build a sales cadence

What is a sales cadence?

A sales cadence is a detailed plan to connect with prospects and close deals. A sales cadence includes a prescribed sequence of activities, like reaching out on LinkedIn, sending emails, making calls, sharing case studies, arranging meetings, and sending text messages, which happen at specified intervals.

An effective sales cadence improves the efficiency of sales reps. A sales cadence guides sellers on which prospects to connect with, what communication channel to use, and what information to share at each touchpoint. This structured approach reduces guesswork and aims to grow the sales pipeline and conversion rate.

Managers create a sales cadence to guide sales reps in handling different types of prospects and sales scenarios. For example, one cadence could be used for inbound inquiry leads, and another cadence could be used for upcoming renewals.

As organizations mature, they can evolve their cadences to adapt to specific geographies, industries, companies, languages, and other parameters.

A strong sales cadence library also helps you scale your sales organization. Automated sales cadences ease the onboarding process for sellers as you grow, building in best practices and sequencing their activities.

How to design a sales cadence

When you design your sales cadences, consider these five elements:

• Prospects: It all starts with knowing your potential customers. What challenges or obstacles do they have? Why are they looking for a solution? What platforms do they use? What constraints do they contend with? What are their skills? Who is the decision maker?
• Communication channel: Reach out to prospects using the right channel, such as email, a phone call, messaging apps, or LinkedIn.
• Wait time: Consider a strategic delay between subsequent steps. You don’t want to be too soon or too late in your follow-ups.
• Attempts: Understand the optimal number of touchpoints to establish contact and build a relationship.
• Messaging: Use the right messaging, content, tone, and personalization to engage with prospects.

It’s important to note that creating an effective plan is not a one-time process. It takes time and iteration to fine-tune your sales cadences.

Example: A sales cadence for inbound inquiries

Here’s an example of a sales cadence for responding to inbound inquiries.

• Target: Leads that have reached out through your website or other channels.
• Purpose: Focus on and respond to high-priority inquiries to improve your conversion rate.
• Description: By responding immediately and through multiple channels, you are more likely to achieve a higher conversion rate. Since responding within the first hour increases your chance to close the deal by seven times, start with an automated email response, then follow up with a phone call. Connect on a social platform like LinkedIn. Finally, send an email that provides relevant information about your product or services. 

Create a sales cadence with sequence designer

The sales accelerator capability in Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers spend less time searching for the best next customer to reach out to. Design and build your sales cadences in the sequence designer. Sales accelerator gathers information from multiple sources to build a strong and prioritized pipeline, offers context, and surfaces recommendations throughout each step in the sequence, speeding the sales process.

To create a sequence, you go to the Sales Insights settings area and open the Sequences page. For more details, check out the documentation: Create and activate a sequence.

You can use the sequence designer to configure sequences of activities for specific prospects, leads, opportunities, contacts, and so on, applying different strategies depending on priority. For example, leads of lower priority might have more automated email steps, whereas leads from your targeted accounts might have more personalized touchpoints.

As in the example sales cadence shown earlier, sequences can include multiple activities, with wait times between activities as needed. You can branch activities based on the response, such as if an email is opened or a reply is received. Using sales accelerator’s tight integration with LinkedIn, you can even send LinkedIn InMail or create a connect request as part of your sales cadence.

Next steps

A good sales cadence is a necessary to improve seller productivity, increase conversion rates, and close more deals. As we adjust to virtual ways of working, digitizing sales becomes a priority for most organizations. To get started, use sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales to set up a sales cadence for the most common scenarios faced by the sales team.

To start building your own sequences in Dynamics 365 Sales, visit the documentation: Manage sequences. If you use a custom app, also refer to this section of the FAQ page for sales accelerator: How to add work list site map to your custom app.

See how sequences are performing by using the dashboard in sales acceleration reporting (preview).

Sales accelerator, plus three other AI-powered and collaborative digital selling capabilities, previously available only to Dynamics 365 Sales Premium customers, are now available for all Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise customers to try. Read more in this blog post that offers an overview of the digital selling capabilities.

The post Improve seller productivity with a sales cadence appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.