We’re excited to share that as of March 5, 2025, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center has officially become Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant. This significant achievement highlights our dedication to security, privacy, and regulatory standards, particularly benefiting customers in healthcare. 

Why HIPAA compliance matters 

Healthcare providers deal daily with sensitive patient information, making data security essential — not just for compliance, but to maintain patient trust. With Dynamics 365 Contact Center now meeting HIPAA standards, healthcare organizations can confidently use AI agent-driven interactions and human support, knowing patient data remains secure. 

With HIPAA compliance, healthcare providers can: 

• Safely utilize AI-driven voice agents (IVR) and digital messaging bots for tasks like patient scheduling and information management. 

• Provide human agents with compliant, secure tools to improve patient interactions. 

• Build greater patient confidence through robust data security measures. 

Recent compliance achievements 

In addition to HIPAA, Dynamics 365 Contact Center has achieved several other critical compliance milestones in recent months: 

• Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) Compliance (January 2025): Ensuring secure handling of financial transactions within contact centers. 

• International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Compliance (December 2024): Meeting rigorous international standards for security and operational excellence. 

• System and Organization Controls (SOC2) Compliance (November 2024): Demonstrating strong operational controls and reliable management practices. 

These certifications reflect our ongoing commitment to maintaining high security and privacy standards. To explore more about Dynamics 365 Contact Center compliance, visit the Dynamics 365 Contact Center Compliance page here. Additionally, you can learn about broader Dynamics 365 Customer Service compliance here. 

Recent enhancements in Dynamics 365 Contact Center 

Since launching in July 2024, Dynamics 365 Contact Center has continuously improved its capabilities, making it easier for agents to provide exceptional service and for customers to have better experiences: 

• Multilingual voice agents: Support multiple languages using a single voice agent authored in Copilot Studio, simplifying bot management, accelerating deployments, and allowing customers to switch languages seamlessly mid-call. Learn more 

• Enhanced speech sensitivity settings: Adjust voice recognition sensitivity according to your specific use cases, improving accuracy and interaction quality. Learn more 

• Advanced reporting dashboards: Quickly access real-time and historical data, with filters based on phone numbers, caller details, and interaction languages, enabling better decision-making and faster responses. Learn more 

• Enhancements in unified routing and automatic assignment: Assign work from higher-priority queues to agents first, update queue memberships for agents in real time, and use overflow to manage long waiting conversations in queues. Learn more  

• Improved third-party integrations: Seamlessly connect the customer service representative (human agent) experience with ServiceNow, accelerating integrations with third-party CRMs for enhanced efficiency. Learn More 

• Copilot Studio-powered Customer Feedback Surveys (preview): Easily gather valuable customer feedback during interactions, leveraging AI to continuously enhance service quality. Learn more 

• First-party WhatsApp integration (preview): Seamless integration of the WhatsApp channel into the contact center via Azure Communication Services.  Learn more 

• Self-serve customer facing diagnostics in AppInsights (preview): Customers can now view conversation lifecycle telemetry including routing to detect issues and drive for resolution. Learn more 

Learn more

Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides Microsoft Copilot Studio, the AI-agent authoring tool, to create intelligent agents for both customer self-service and support for customer service reps. Discover the latest innovations on the Copilot Studio blog. 

For additional details on Dynamics 365 Contact Center’s capabilities and compliance achievements, please reach out to your Microsoft representative — we’d love to connect. 

The post Dynamics 365 Contact Center strengthens patient trust with HIPAA compliance  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As a marketer, the key to optimize your email performance lies in understanding your customers. Every interaction with a customer is a goldmine of information, revealing critical insights into their behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns. Savvy marketers harness this data to tailor content, enhance customer experiences, and elevate engagement rates.

Despite the rise of new digital marketing channels, email marketing continues to be incredibly effective, with its value only growing over time. According to Forbes, email boasts an impressive average open rate of 36.5% for marketing campaigns, and people are three times more likely to make purchases through email marketing than social media. Hence, data and analytics are becoming indispensable tools for unlocking their full potential and optimizing campaigns.

In this context, we are excited to introduce 4 features to optimize your email marketing:

• Email Heatmap
• Device Types and User Agent Insights
• Link Insights
• Variation Insights

These enhancements are designed to offer a deeper understanding of customer engagement, empowering you to fine-tune your email campaigns and drive effectiveness to new heights.

Visualize engagement patterns to refine your email content and design

Understanding the effectiveness of email campaigns can often be complex, particularly when information and links are abundant. Gaining clarity on which areas or links captivate your audience and drive them to act is crucial for refining the user experience and boosting email performance, but it often requires compiling and analyzing various email metrics. To help simplify this process, you can leverage the click map for your emails. It provides a quick, visual way to understand engagement based on your email design. You can easily discern what is hitting the mark and what’s missing it.

Leveraging the heatmap results you can strategically optimize your emails marketing. By identifying the hot spots in your emails that attract the most attention, you can optimize your design and layout to ensure your content is highly visible.

Furthermore, based on those insights you can boost user engagement by:

• Adjusting the length of your emails to align with reader engagement
• Improving the hierarchy of your sections
• Strategically positioning your Call-To-Action (CTA) elements for enhanced visibility

For example, Contoso used the click maps to understand which areas of their emails were the most engaging. They discovered that their call-to-action buttons were not getting enough attention. By repositioning these buttons higher in the email and making them more prominent, they increased their conversion rates.

Inform your content strategy by evaluating the performance of each link in your emails

In email marketing, links and buttons serve as essential navigational tools, guiding recipients towards intended actions. As marketers, our goal is to entice readers to engage with the links embedded within our emails. This engagement is a steppingstone towards increased website traffic, heightened brand awareness, and ultimately, higher conversion rates. Consequently, understanding the performance of these links within your email will help you reach your campaigns goals.

Link insights assist you in making data-driven decisions based on the URL’s engagement in your emails. You can easily evaluate the performance of each link within your emails and identify top performing links. This information can guide the strategic placement and promotion of these links in future emails. Furthermore, the insights derived from link performance can inform your content strategy.

If certain types of links consistently perform well, it may indicate that your audience is particularly interested in that content, suggesting a need to feature similar content more prominently. It can also be used to personalize your emails, understanding which links resonate with your audience can help tailor emails to their interests.

For instance, Contoso used link insights to identify which product links were most popular among their customers. They then featured these products more prominently in future emails, leading to a sales increase for those items.

Optimize your email design and layout based on customer behavior across devices 

Customers interact with emails using a range of technologies and devices.
Understanding the devices and user agents your customers use to interact with your emails is crucial, as it can help you optimize your email design, content, and delivery to align with your audience’s preferences.

In real-time journeys under email insights, you can now get info into the type of applications and platforms your customers use to engage with your emails. You can get data about: device type, email client, operating system, and browser type. By leveraging device data you can optimize your email strategy.

For instance, if most of your customers use mobile devices to read your emails, ensuring your email design is responsive and mobile-friendly becomes essential.

Moreover, knowing the most popular email clients among your customers can guide your testing efforts. By focusing your testing on these platforms, you can ensure that your emails display correctly for most of your audience, improving the overall user experience.

Consequently, by tailoring your email design and content to align with the technologies most used by your audience, you ensure seamless readability for your messages and ultimately increase customer interaction and loyalty.

For example, Contoso used email by device type, and they noticed that a significant portion of their customers were using mobile devices to interact with emails and opened emails on Gmail. By ensuring their email designs are responsive, mobile-friendly, and testing how it renders on Gmail, they increase click-through rates and reduce their bounce rates.

Identify your audience preferences to personalize your email content

Each audience has unique preferences and specific interests. By gaining insights into what content resonates with your customers you can increase open rates and reduce unsubscribes.
Variation Insights serve as a powerful tool in this regard, offering an in-depth analysis of the performance of each email variation you’ve sent. It equips you with a comprehensive understanding of essential interaction metrics, including unique opens, unique clicks, the number of messages delivered, open rate, click rate, spam messages, and unsubscriptions for each variant of your email campaign.

By harnessing these insights, you can easily identify which links and content engage each audience, as well as understanding which audience is the most engaged, enabling you to refine your content strategy effectively. This data-driven approach ensures your messaging remains relevant and impactful for each audience.

For instance, Contoso used variation insights to understand which types of products were most appealing to different segments of their audience. Subsequently after tailoring their new email content to match these preferences, they saw an increase in engagement and an increase in product sales.

Understanding your audience is crucial in email marketing. It is the base upon which successful campaigns are built. Thanks to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys advanced analytics features, you get invaluable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns. Whether it’s optimizing email design based on device usage, visualizing engagement patterns to refine content, evaluating link performance to inform strategy, or identifying audience preferences for personalized content, these analytics tools are designed to optimize your email marketing effectiveness.

Ultimately, these advanced analytics features not only demystify customer engagement but also offer a roadmap to continuously optimize your email marketing campaigns. Ensuring your messaging hits the mark every time, fostering stronger customer relationships, and driving business growth.

The post Optimize your email marketing campaigns with advanced analytics features appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sellers often need to manage numerous long documents to understand customers’ unique requirements and deliver the personalized attention advancing deals. These documents require sellers to invest significant time reviewing and understanding them, leaving sales team less time for their customers. With the summarization capabilities provided by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can now obtain pertinent details from sales documents in minutes. Sellers quickly gain insights into customer requirements, budget details, timelines, and main decision makers, enabling them to prepare for prospect meetings more effectively and engage in more informed and meaningful conversations. 

Close deals faster with seller-specific document summary

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales can create summaries of sales documents that include insights specific to your sales team’s needs. For example, sellers can quickly get details about the issuing organization, items to be procured, deadlines and timelines for submitting a proposal, contact information and meetings with stakeholders mentioned in the document, and other important information needed to move a deal forward, such as compliance and legal considerations. 

Sellers can ask Copilot to summarize sales documents stored in SharePoint or associated with any lead, contact, opportunity, and account in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

Next steps 

• Learn more about summarizing documents linked to records in Dynamics 365 Sales. 

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

The post Boost seller productivity with document summary by Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In email marketing, tracking metrics has been the key to understanding and improving campaign effectiveness. For years, one of the most reliable metrics has been the open rate, but as the digital landscape evolves, so do the challenges of accurately measuring this essential statistic. In this article, we’ll explore why open rates are becoming less reliable and how you can adapt. 

The open rate and the challenges of modern email clients

Traditionally, the open rate—the percentage of recipients who open an email—has been a fundamental metric in email marketing. This metric has been invaluable for marketers, helping them gauge the success of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions. 

Email opens are tracked using tracking pixels, tiny 1×1-pixel images embedded in the email content. When the recipient opens the email, the pixel loads from a remote server, sending data back to the sender. However, the reliability of open rates is increasingly under threat due to privacy concerns and changes in how email clients handle images. Here’s why open rates are becoming less dependable: 

• Image blocking: Many email clients now block image loading by default. Recipients can open the email and consume its content without loading images. Such opens aren’t counted, resulting in a lower-than-actual open rate being reported. Image blocking is even more prevalent now because of mobile devices that automatically block image loading for privacy, speed, and conserving data usage. This means that a significant portion of your audience might be missed in the open rate calculation. 

• Preview panes: Some email clients allow users to preview an email without actually opening it. In these cases, the open rate may register false positives, counting emails as opened when they were merely previewed. 

• Privacy concerns: To protect user privacy, email clients and webmail services are increasingly blocking tracking pixels, making it harder to track open rates accurately. 

• Apple privacy changes: Apple devices that run iOS 15 automatically open all emails, which can result in an inflated open rate.  

The future of email metrics is a dual approach

So, what’s the way forward for email marketers like you who rely on open rates to measure engagement and success? It’s essential to employ a dual approach: improving how to measure engagement and applying strategies to improve engagement itself. Here’s how you can adapt.

Measure engagement more effectively

1. Diversify engagement metrics: Instead of relying solely on open rates, evaluate other indicators such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI. These metrics offer a more comprehensive view of your email marketing performance.

2. Implement email authentication: Email authentication protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM improve email deliverability and enhance your sender reputation, indirectly affecting engagement rates. 

3. Use alternative metrics: Consider using alternative metrics like measuring conversion attribution through unique coupon codes or UTM parameters. These tools can help track the direct impact of your emails beyond the open rate. 

Strategies for improving engagement

1. Personalization and segmentation: Tailoring your email content to individual recipients’ preferences and behaviors can drive higher engagement. By segmenting your audience and sending personalized content, you can increase the chances of your emails being opened and acted on. 

2. Expand your messaging channels: SMS has a 98% open rate. Start taking advantage of the SMS channel today!  

3. Test your content: Testing and refining content allows you to continuously improve email performance by identifying what resonates best with your audience using real data. Evaluating device data analytics, such as OS, browser, and device type, along with click heatmap analytics provides deeper insights into how recipients interact with your emails. Using this information, you can optimize design and content for the best user experience across all devices, boosting overall effectiveness and engagement. 

4. Use your own data: Rely on first-party data such as transactions and in-store visits that can be collected using a customer data platform like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data. 

While email opens as a metric is not going away, it’s certainly less reliable. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights already provides an entire suite of capabilities for you to easily tackle challenges like this, and continues to invest in finding solutions that align with the evolving privacy landscape. Together, we’ll navigate these changes and continue to deliver successful email marketing campaigns, maintaining your connection with your audience while respecting their privacy in this new era of digital marketing. 

Next steps

Not yet a Dynamics 365 Customer Insights customer? Start your free trial today.

The post Beyond open rate: Rethinking email marketing metrics appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The world is getting noisier, which makes it harder to earn customer attention. We’ve previously described the importance of hyper-personalization to break through the noise and enable customers to explore brands and products on their own terms. Regardless of whether they are consumers or business-to-business (B2B) buyers.

At Ignite 2023, we announced a unique Copilot-powered real-time web personalization solution in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights in partnership with Optimizely*. Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of this solution in preview to customers worldwide. Current Customer Insights customers can sign up now to access the public preview.

_{*To use Optimizely with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights you need to acquire a license for Optimizely Web Experimentation}

The state of web personalization today 

According to recent research from Econsultancy, 93% of businesses see an uplift in conversion rates because of personalization. Yet only 6% of businesses believe they are doing it well. They face three main challenges.

First, traditional tools for personalization have limited data about your customers. It’s no longer sufficient to show content based on a customer’s browsing history, location, and other derived signals alone. The shift away from 3^rd party cookies further exacerbates this problem.

Second, even the companies that have collected a wealth of data through their Customer Data Platform (CDP) often struggle to synchronize the customer identity and data between their CDP and personalization tools. This synchronization is essential for real-time personalization. It enables companies to use comprehensive customer understanding from all data sources unified in CDP to tailor experiences based on both current behavior and predicted actions.

Third, personalization is disconnected across channels due to the fragmentation of marketing and web technologies and the data silos within each tool. A customer might see one offer option on the web but get a different message in an email or through an ad on social media. With companies expanding the channels through which they engage with users, it becomes increasingly challenging to connect the dots of a customer’s journey.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to the rescue

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Optimizely* enable organizations to deliver hyper-personalized omni-channel experiences across web, social, email and offline channels without writing custom code. Marketers and web admins can seamlessly collaborate to create personalized campaigns using unified data from Customer Insights. This enables companies to:

1. Go beyond browsing history by using comprehensive data from Customer Insights to personalize experiences. For example, leverage the predicted lifetime value of a customer to create targeted experiences.
2. No-Code Personalization using segments from Customer Insights in Optimizely. For instance, create a segment for high-churn customers in Customer Insights and use it in Optimizely to increase engagement when they visit the website next.
3. Ensure uniform personalization across all channels with bi-directional integration between Customer Insights and Optimizely. For example, an audience in Optimizely can be created using the predicted lifetime value from Customer Insights and repeat browsing history from Optimizely. This audience can then receive targeted monetary offers. Marketers can also show the same offer in messages sent via a customer journey in Customer Insights, using Optimizely’s signal (activity) on which treatment they received earlier. This can be done through segments refined based on customer activities or real-time triggers based on specific customer actions.

4. Activate audience across channels in journeys to further target the original visitors with the same offer if the prior web and message touchpoints failed to convert them and export the segments into advertising and social platforms for re-targeting.

There are even more possibilities for customer experience teams. They can, for example, use defined audiences to create ‘lookalike’ segments on social media platforms. This strategy helps them identify and engage new potential customers who share characteristics with their existing audience, expanding their reach and intensifying customer engagement efforts.

“Copilot in Customer Insights and Optimizely not only enable hyper-personalization but democratize it-any marketing or Customer experience team can now deliver such a campaign quickly and without requiring specialized skills – creating segments, journeys and content with the help of Copilot and then setting up the experiments with Optimizely’s market-leading capabilities.”

Kevin Li, VP of Product Strategy at Optimizely.

Leveraging website personalization to accelerate B2B sales

Web personalization can boost B2B sales by showing the right product to the right customer at the right time. CommScope, a leading telecommunication and wireless network company, uses web personalization to increase purchase intent for web visitors and then routes them to a seller based on their cross-channel engagement. This way, CommScope can generate higher quality leads and revenue from its website.

“Customer Insights and Optimizely enable us to personalize each customer’s experience in real-time with consistency across website and email marketing, enabling self-exploration and demand generation, while also accelerating our sales pipeline by empowering our reps to identify the highest intent leads at the right moment.“

Bob Vonderheide, Director of Customer Experience Technologies at CommScope.

What’s next 

This is just the beginning, and there’s much more to come. Working with early adopters, we know that our customers often rely on their marketers and developers collaborating to add scripts to their websites and mobile apps. We will facilitate this collaboration with a developer portal that gives developers tools to test and verify that the script has successfully been added and functioning as the marketer intended. To enable bespoke scenarios such as personalized e-commerce product pages, we will enable collection of custom events including data such as product details, category, and price. Finally, we will reduce noise from unwanted events through filtering based on pages, location, and other attributes. You can follow the release plans to stay updated on when these features become available.

Meanwhile, we will continue to work with customers as part of the preview to measure and optimize real-world latency and performance. We estimate general availability beyond 2024 wave 2 with the enhancements outlined above.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

• To learn more about Dynamics 365 Customer Insights explore Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
• Watch the video to discover how Optimizely enable web personalization with our Contoso scenario.
• Leverage all our new AI innovations for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys by transitioning to real-time marketing.
• Get a full view of what is coming in 2024 release wave 1 release plan for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.
• Get Optimizely Optimizely is a third-party app which requires a subscription.

The post Omni-channel real-time personalization with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Optimizely appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce unlimited application installs when starting with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, an improvement to our license definition and installation management experience. As of June 30, 2024 we’ve removed application installation limits for Customer Insights–Journeys (real-time journeys only) and Customer Insights–Data. Previous application installations had restrictions of four per base license of the new Dynamics 365 Customer Insights license launched September 2023, and one if using the older, standalone Marketing license.  

Unlimited application installations: What it means for you

 After June 30, 2024, as an admin, you have unlimited application installs with Customer Insights – Journeys (real-time only) and Customer Insights – Data on as many production and sandbox environments in the Power Platform Admin Center as you’d like. Admins with a paid Dynamics 365 Customer Insights license on their tenant (i.e. production or sandbox environments) will no longer see the application installation counter and limits. See details on how to install Customer Insights. Customer Insights –Journeys, application install limits still apply to additional installations of legacy outbound marketing solutions. (This accommodates the high cost of the background services.) For customers using only real-time Journeys, there is no installation limit.

• Access the installation management page by going to admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com -> Resources -> Dynamics 365 apps -> Dynamics 365 Customer Insights or Marketing -> … -> Manage. Because it’s no longer restricted, the meter doesn’t display the count of paid application installations you’re entitled to or have used. However, trials are still limited to one per license.
• If your tenant has used outbound marketing solutions, you see a meter monitoring your entitled and installed instances of outbound marketing. We count outbound marketing instances based on the previous application logic. For Dynamics 365 Marketing standalone licenses and application add-on licenses you get one install per license. For the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights combined license launched September 2023, you get four outbound marketing installs per base license. Learn more about who can enable outbound marketing.

Enhancing your applications installation experience

While making this change, we took the opportunity to simplify the user experience further with the following small changes:

• We removed the little gray “i” icon with the environment URL. Find the environment URL in the green checkmark.

• If your tenant does not have any Dynamics 365 Customer Insights or Marketing licenses, you see a view which offers you links to learn how to buy.

We hope these license definition and user experience improvements simplify your experience installing Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

The post Announcing unlimited application installs in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Editor: Denis Conway

Introduction:

Dynamics 365 Commerce is a comprehensive omnichannel solution that empowers retailers to deliver personalized, seamless, and differentiated shopping experiences across physical and digital channels. In the 2024 release Wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce continues to innovate and enhance its capabilities to improve store associate productivity and meet the evolving needs of customers and businesses. Here are some of the highlights of the new features coming soon:

Copilot in Site builder is going global and multi-lingual:

Copilot in Site builder is a generative AI assistant that helps users create engaging and relevant content for their e-commerce sites. Copilot uses the product information and the user’s input to generate product enrichment content that is crafted using brand tone and tailored for targeted customer segments.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Copilot in Site builder is expanding its language support to include support for 23 additional locales including German, French, Spanish, and more. This feature demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to making Copilot accessible globally and empowering users to create multilingual content with ease and efficiency.

Strengthening our dedication to creating a comprehensive B2B solution for Digital Commerce by supporting B2B indirect commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce supports both B2C and B2B commerce scenarios, enabling retailers to sell directly to consumers and businesses. In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce fortifies its B2B investments by introducing support for B2B indirect commerce, which enables manufacturers selling through a network of distributors to get complete visibility into their sales and inventory.

New distributor capabilities enable manufacturers to provide a self-service platform that simplifies distributor operations and builds meaningful, long-lasting business relationships through efficient and transparent transactions. Distributors can access product catalogs and pricing specific to their partner agreements, manufacturers can place orders on behalf of their customers with specific distributor, and outlets can track order status and history.

Dynamics 365 Commerce also streamlines multi-outlet ordering, enabling business buyers that are associated with more than one outlet organization to buy for all of them. Commerce provides the ability to seamlessly buy for multiple organizations using the same email account, enabling buyers to be more efficient.

Additionally, Dynamics 365 Commerce supports advance ordering, which is a common practice in some businesses to order products in advance to ensure they have adequate stock when needed. This feature enables customers to specify the desired delivery date and include additional order notes.

Also, introducing support for a promotions page on an e-commerce site that serves as a hub to showcase various deals and promotions that shoppers can take advantage of. The promotions page can display active and upcoming promotions.

Adyen Tap to Pay is coming to Store Commerce app on iOS

The Store Commerce app is a mobile point of sale (POS) solution that enables store associates to complete transactions through a mobile device on the sales floor, pop-up store, or remote location. The Store Commerce app supports various payment methods, such as cash, card, gift card, and loyalty points.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce is introducing Adyen Tap to Pay capabilities into the Store Commerce app for iOS, so that retailers everywhere can accept payments directly on Apple iPhones. Adyen Tap to Pay enhances the utility and versatility of the Store Commerce app, as it eliminates the need for additional hardware or peripherals to process payments. It also enables retailers to offer a more customer-centric and engaging in-store retail experience, as store associates can interact with customers anywhere in the store and complete transactions on the spot.

Speed up your checkout process with simplified and consistent payment workflows for different payment methods on Store Commerce app

Efficiency and predictability are key to the smooth operation of a point of sale (POS) system, especially when it comes to payment processing. When store associates can process customer payments across a variety of payment types with minimal friction, customers spend less time waiting and more time shopping.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce is improving the POS payment processing user experience to create more consistent workflows across payment types. The new user experience simplifies the payment selection and confirmation process, reduces the number of clicks and screens, and provides clear feedback and guidance to the store associate. The new user experience also supports split tendering, which allows customers to pay with multiple payment methods in a single transaction.

The improved POS payment processing user experience will contribute to efficiencies in the checkout process and more satisfied customers. It will also reduce the training time and effort for store associates, as they can easily learn and master the payment workflows.

Enabling retailers to effectively monitor and track inventory of Batch-controlled products via Store Commerce app

Batch-controlled products are products that are manufactured in batches and associated with unique identifiers for quality control and traceability. Batch-controlled products are commonly used in food, chemical, and electronics industries, where the quality and safety of the products are critical.

In the 2024 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Commerce enhances the Store Commerce app to support batch-controlled products. This feature enables store associates to scan or enter the batch number of the products during the sales or return transactions and validate the batch information against the inventory records. This feature also enables store associates to view the batch details of the products, such as the expiration date, manufacture date, and lot number.

With these new features, Dynamics 365 Commerce aims to provide you with the best tools and solutions to grow your business and delight your customers. Whether you want to create engaging and relevant content for your e-commerce site, automate and integrate your order management workflows, expand your B2B commerce opportunities, or improve your payment processing and inventory management, Dynamics 365 Commerce has something new for you.

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce:

Learn more about additional investments and timeline for these investments here in release plans.

Visit our website on commerce today.

The post Empowering Business innovation for modernizing Retailers and manufacturers with Copilot: Unleashing Dynamics 365 Commerce investments for 2024 Wave 1 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Introduction

The recent unveiling of the D365 Warehouse Mobile App’s latest release, version 2.1.23, represents a significant stride forward in warehouse management technology. This update brings forth a plethora of enhanced features geared towards elevating user experience and streamlining processes. Notably, version 2.1.23 places a strong emphasis on authentication, stability, and user-friendliness, catering to the complex demands encountered by businesses striving to optimize their warehouse management practices. Here’s a closer look at the key enhancements introduced in this release cycle:

Enhanced Authentication

One of the key highlights of this version is the implementation of several authentication improvements. By adding support for username/password authentication and single sign-on (SSO), the app now offers more flexibility and security options for users. This not only simplifies the login process but also ensures that access to sensitive warehouse data is securely managed.

Improved Stability

With increased stability, users can rely on the app to perform consistently even in demanding warehouse environments. This means fewer interruptions and smoother operations, ultimately leading to higher productivity and efficiency.

Automatic Sign-In

The introduction of default mobile device user assignment enables automatic sign-in for workers, streamlining the authentication process further. This feature reduces the time spent on logging in, allowing employees to focus more on their tasks at hand.

Enhanced Support for Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)

By improving support for AD FS, the app now offers better compatibility with Dynamics 365 Finance + Operations (on-premises) environments. This enables seamless authentication using device code flow, username/password, and SSO methods, ensuring compatibility with various IT infrastructures.

Usability Improvements

The update also brings several usability enhancements, including better support for scaling text and improved accessibility features. With text scaling, users can fit more information on the screen, enhancing readability and usability. Additionally, the app now supports the new “back” gesture in Android 13, providing a more intuitive navigation experience.

Business Benefits

Increased Efficiency

With smoother authentication processes and enhanced stability, employees can spend less time dealing with technical issues and more time on productive tasks. This leads to increased efficiency and throughput in warehouse operations.

Improved Security

The addition of authentication methods such as username/password and SSO enhances security, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access sensitive warehouse data. This helps mitigate the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access, safeguarding valuable business assets.

Enhanced User Experience

Usability improvements, such as text scaling and accessibility enhancements, contribute to a better overall user experience. Employees can navigate the app more easily and access information more quickly, leading to higher satisfaction and productivity.

Seamless Integration

With improved support for AD FS and Dynamics 365 Finance + Operations environments, the app seamlessly integrates with existing IT infrastructure. This ensures smooth deployment and compatibility, minimizing disruptions and facilitating adoption.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the release of D365 Warehouse Mobile App version 2.1.23 signifies a monumental leap forward in warehouse management technology. By prioritizing enhancements across authentication, stability, usability, and compatibility, this update revolutionizes the way businesses operate their warehouses. With streamlined authentication processes, bolstered stability, and intuitive usability features, users can expect a seamless experience that translates into heightened efficiency and productivity. Moreover, the fortified security measures instil confidence in data integrity, safeguarding valuable assets against potential threats. As businesses embrace these advancements, they pave the way for a future where warehouse operations are not only optimized but also poised for sustained growth and success.

Link to the new release notes What’s new or changed in the Warehouse Management mobile app – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn

Learn more

Supply Chain at Microsoft

Take a tour – Supply Chain Management | Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn more about the latest AI breakthroughs with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot:

Dynamics 365 AI webpage

The post Optimizing Warehouse Management: Unveiling the Power of D365 Warehouse Mobile App Version 2.1.23 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Introduction:

You’re in for a treat! The world of e-commerce has undergone a massive transformation over the past few years, and it’s all thanks to the revolutionary concept of composable commerce. This approach has taken the industry by storm, and it’s not hard to see why. Composable commerce is versatile, scalable, and innovative approach, allowing businesses of all sizes to provide exceptional customer experiences across various platforms and devices.

In this article, we’ll look closer at the intricacies of composable commerce, exploring its core benefits and examining how it’s changing the game for the e-commerce industry. Get ready to be blown away by the possibilities of composable commerce!

Many organizations have started adopting Dynamics 365 Commerce, a composable commerce engine to enable customers to unify back office, in-store and e-commerce channels. While also serving as the single integration point for third-party channel solutions. This gives customers the key advantage of using a variety of best of breed commerce solutions to engage and deliver goods and services to their customers.

Composable commerce is a contemporary approach to e-commerce that separates the front-end (presentation layer) and back-end (commerce logic) of an e-commerce platform. Unlike traditional e-commerce systems, where changes to one component can affect the other, composable commerce decouples these two layers, enabling independent development and greater flexibility. This separation allows for greater agility, faster innovation, and the ability to adapt quickly to changing market demands.

In contrast, traditional e-commerce systems often have monolithic front and back ends, leading to certain limitations. Modifying the underlying codebase to change the front-end design or user experience can be complex and time-consuming. Additionally, traditional systems are not easily scalable across different devices or channels. Composable commerce addresses these challenges by allowing businesses to easily update their website’s design or incorporate new features without disrupting the core e-commerce functionality.

What options do companies have:

Businesses have two powerful options to customize their e-commerce experiences: headless commerce and composable commerce. Headless commerce allows companies to develop and update front-end and back-end components independently, enabling quick adaptation to market changes and experimentation with innovative features. Composable commerce takes flexibility and customization to the next level by enabling businesses to select modular components from different vendors, providing the ultimate flexibility to create an e-commerce ecosystem that is tailored to their unique needs.

Benefits of Composable Commerce:

To start with, the flexibility and agility of a digital environment is continuously evolving, thus using a decouple architecture business can quickly adapt to customers changing preferences. Separating the front-end from the back end ensures that branding, user experience, and functionality stay consistent across various channels. By having cohesive experience across web, mobile, social, media, voice assistant and other Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Voice Commerce, based emerging technologies lead to higher customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty.

In addition, scalability and performance are also greatly enhanced because businesses can independently scale each layer resulting in better resource allocation. Websites can now handle increased traffic, sales volume, and complex operations leading to faster page upload time and better user experience.

End-user Benefits:

Whether customers interact with your brand through a website, mobile app, voice assistant, marketplace, or social media platform, composable commerce ensures a seamless and tailored experience. In addition, faster loading times and improved website performance reduce the long wait time for the entire page to load, resulting in a smoother and more responsive user interface. More importantly customers are browsing via desktop, smartphone, tablet, or using voice assistants to access your products and services seamlessly. This omni-channel capability enhances convenience and accessibility for customers, meeting their expectations for a seamless cross-channel experience. Dynamics 365 Commerce enables businesses to build this experience.

Customer Image: Front page ABBY Site  Easy, online contact lens ordering | Doctor Trusted | Patient Approved | Free Shipping | HelloAbby

Customer Story:

Empowering Vision: ABB Optical Group’s Intelligent Contact Lens Ordering Platform with Microsoft Dynamics 365″

Embarking on a technological evolution, ABB Optical Group introduces its Intelligent Contact Lens Ordering Platform, a game-changer crafted in collaboration with Visionet Systems Inc. and Microsoft. This innovation involved the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Azure Cloud, and Data Lake, providing a solid technological foundation. ABB Optical aimed to transcend its legacy Patient Ordering Platform, yourlens.com, seeking a modern, intelligent, and scalable user experience. This vision materialized through the development of a robust Minimum Viable Product(MVP), introducing a microservices headless experience and harnessing the capabilities of Microsoft D365 Retail and HQ APIs, alongside Proof of Concepts.

The outcome was nothing short of transformative. The MVP’s successful pilot garnered positive feedback, propelling the rapid development of additional customer-demanded features. In just six months, Visionet spearheaded the launch of phase two of the Abby Platform, seamlessly integrating a data analytics component through Data Lake with Dynamics 365 F&O and Power BI. ABB Optical Group now stands at the forefront of innovation, offering eyecare providers and patients an intelligent, forward-thinking ordering system.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the emergence of composable commerce signifies a pivotal shift in the digital marketplace. This approach, distinguished by its modular structure, cloud-native integration, and technology-independent capabilities, provides businesses with unparalleled flexibility and adaptability. It enables businesses to customize their digital experiences, integrate seamlessly with best of breed solution providers for individual capabilities, and respond swiftly to market changes and complexities.

Learn more

Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a comprehensive, yet composable, set of capabilities for both consumer and business-facing organizations seeking to expand beyond traditional digital commerce limitations and improve customer engagement, build brand awareness, streamline purchasing, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

To learn more about Dynamics 365 Commerce:

Visit our website on commerce today.

The post The Composable Commerce Revolution, the Future of E-Commerce, Dynamics 365 Commerce has arrived! appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In September 2023, we announced that Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing are coming together as one offering named Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, an AI driven solution which revolutionizes your customers’ experiences.

Within this solution are two apps:

• Customer Insights – Data (previously known as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights) that empowers you to know your customers through 360-degree profile.
• Customer Insights – Journeys (previously known as Dynamics 365 Marketing) allows you to engage your customers with personalized experiences based on the profile.

In the same timeframe, we also announced the transition from outbound marketing to real-time. The transition to real-time is independent from product name or licensing changes.

New customer environments only include real-time journeys and event management. Existing customers, if necessary, can add outbound marketing through a self-serve interface. We will continue to support outbound marketing but will not be adding new enhancements.  We encourage all customers to transition to and use the exciting new capabilities available in real-time journeys. In this blog we cover how to plan for the transition to real-time and the resources that are available to you to help make this seamless. 

How do the changes impact me? 

If you are a new customer of the Customer Insights – Journeys app, you get real-time journeys only (including Event planning). So you start with the most current and advanced technology and avoid the time & expense of transitioning from outbound later.  

Existing customer environments using outbound marketing, show the new product name but otherwise remained unchanged.  When provisioning new, copying an existing, or upgrading a solutions-only environment to paid, outbound marketing is not installed by default.

If the system detects there is an existing environment with outbound marketing (in the same geo), then Settings > Version page shows Enable outbound link to install outbound. If you do not see the link or have issues enabling outbound, reach out to us directly as explained in the Transition overview page (see links in the resources section later).

When should I transition to Real-time? 

Though we haven’t announced a date for ending outbound support the time to transition is now! Rest assured, we will use our product telemetry data and customer feedback to provide an adequate time window to ensure all customers can plan and complete their transition before support for outbound is ended.  

But why wait? Real-time journeys offers most of the capabilities that outbound marketing has and a lot more that outbound doesn’t (and will not) such as the ability to respond and react in near-real time, high scale of 100M contacts/300M interactions in public preview (even more on the roadmap), and new & exciting capabilities with generative AI/Copilot, etc.   

How to transition? 

You can transition all at once or gradually depending on your business needs, capabilities you use in outbound marketing, and resources availability. 

In a one-shot transition, you will recreate all your journeys, segments, and other assets in real-time journeys and then switch over to them over a short period (a few days).

The other approach is to transition gradually over time. You can create all your new campaigns in real-time journeys and leave your current campaigns running in outbound marketing until they complete. This way you build confidence and train your team gradually over time. We’ve prepared guidance on how to manage consent in hybrid/transition situations. With custom reporting capability (see release plan below), single analytics across both outbound and real-time can be created for the hybrid situation.

We know that most of your effort is usually spent in creating and finalizing emails, so we have built a tool in real-time journeys to let you Import outbound emails, templates, and content blocks so you can preserve and reuse them. You will also have a tool to help you quickly migrate consent records.

We have assembled real-time journeys transition resources to cover transition planning and tools for each major product area.  

Real-time transition capabilities

With either approach, you will want to take a stock of what capabilities of outbound marketing you currently use, how they are supported in real-time journeys, and if there is a need to transfer any data or assets from outbound marketing to real-time journeys. In the transition resources section of our product documentation area, you will find a page for each functional area that has guidance, workarounds, and roadmap for specific capabilities. If you find there are some specific capabilities in outbound marketing that you need but are not yet available in real-time journeys, be assured that we are working to add them as fast as we can. For example, we already have a published release plan for these commonly asked for features: 

• Scheduling – Quiet hours 
• Email – View email in browser, Select from multiple email addresses 
• Journey – Split 
• Tracking – Web tracking 
• Forms – Forms capture 
• Event planning – Session level registration 
• Analytics – Custom dashboards 

We are actively working on prioritizing additional features that have been requested. These are being scheduled to be part of the next release wave: 

• Consent – Double opt-in 
• Segmentation – Export, Template, Email delivery status 
• Scheduling – Send scheduling 
• Email – Content A/B testing 
• Journey – Branch on email deliverability status, Templates
• Tracking – Redirection URL 
• Analytics – Click/Geo maps, combined analytics across outbound and real-time 
• Event planning – event portal, session capacity, reoccurring events 
• Forms – unmapped custom fields, form prefill, update none/multiple entities on submission, leads with parent contact 

Please note that the above is not an exhaustive list. We release new updates every month. We use your feedback to revise our roadmap continuously to ensure you can transition with confidence.  

Conclusion 

A large number of customers are already using and benefiting from ease of use and scale offered by real-time. Over the next few months, we are prioritizing work to ensure transitioning to real-time journeys is easy and quick for every customer. While outbound marketing continues to be available and supported for existing customers, we strongly recommend everyone still using outbound marketing transition to real-time journeys to propel your business into the future of marketing and customer experience.

Resources

The post Transition to real time journeys – the time is now  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.