At Microsoft, we don’t see ourselves as a vendor. When it comes to our customers, we want to be seen as partners—and as trusted advocates. Today, we want to share a story about how Microsoft can help customers take the long view when it comes to transforming their businesses and adapting to the ever-changing needs of their industries and markets. In 2021, facing an uncertain post-pandemic economy, G&J Pepsi embarked on a transformation journey to maximize customer service, revenue, and cost savings by implementing solutions including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, and other Microsoft technologies. Since then, it has continued to adapt and adopt solutions like Microsoft Copilot to position itself for future growth and continued success in a competitive landscape. 

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Adapt and innovate with intelligent CRM and ERP business applications.

Learn more

G&J Pepsi is always striving to innovate and provide better services for its customers. As the largest family-owned and operated independent U.S. Pepsi franchise bottler, it’s a respected leader in its industry. Supplying Pepsi and alliance products such as Starbucks, Gatorade, and Dr. Pepper to thousands of customers in Central and Southern Ohio and Eastern Kentucky, G&J Pepsi covers manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, trucking, digital print, and more. It produces, bottles, markets, sells, and distributes beverages consumed on-premises—restaurants, schools, entertainment complexes—as well as those purchased in retail outlets. 

Breaking down siloes for a better customer view 

In 2021, the company’s sales, field service, and other customer interactions were siloed. This meant that sales had no visibility into when a new customer might have its equipment installed, while field service technicians had no insights into a customer’s hours of operations, key contacts, or equipment needs. Customer information was stored in a mix of Excel spreadsheets, hand-written notes, and batch systems. In addition, employees across the service chain from sales to field service had no common platform for communicating and sharing information.  

G&J Pepsi adopted Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Field Service to create a customer engagement management (CEM) platform, so it could accelerate its end-to-end customer journey by unifying cross-functional support and removing barriers to customer visibility. The CEM was a game-changer, especially because it provided real-time visibility into customers that sales, field service, and leadership never had before.  

For field service operations, G&J Pepsi’s data resides in Microsoft Dataverse and is accessed through Dynamics 365 Field Service. Completing certain actions within Microsoft Dynamics 365 triggers a Microsoft Power Automate flow to kick off another process. For example, a business development representative (BDR) requesting a piece of equipment for a new customer triggers the creation of a new work order, which moves through equipment prep to scheduling a field technician for installation. Using built-in Dynamics 365 capabilities, a scheduler can assign best resources to a work order by looking across service locations instead of only selecting from a smaller subset of available technicians. Field service technicians use the Field Service mobile app’s built-in map and routing features to optimize travel time and status flags to indicate if they are on-site or traveling. Field techs can also access all the pertinent customer information in the mobile app: service tasks, customer details, product needs, and so on. And with minimal development effort using Microsoft Power Apps, G&J Pepsi extended the mobile app so that field technicians can generate service reports at the customer site and instantly email them to other departments as needed. 

Simplifying and enhancing business processes for better employee experiences 

G&J Pepsi has a digital transformation and business process team that selectively built their DevOps skills to simplify their application environment and processes using the Microsoft suite of services. In addition, they included frontline employees like service agents and field technicians through all stages of development, testing, and deployment. For example, the company’s Equipment Move Operation (EMO) process, which it performs about 10,000 times a year, had 17 manual steps—170,000 manual touchpoints annually. With Dynamics 365 and Power Automate, it automated that process, reducing a four-day event with 17 manual tasks down to a process that now takes about a minute. With these new processes, existing field technicians immediately felt more efficient and productive during customer visits, and G&J has found that it’s also attracting new talent because it provides modern tools and information flows that result in a better working environment.  

Accelerating customer response times and improving first-time fix rates 

The CEM platform based on Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Sales has dramatically transformed G&J Pepsi’s operational workflow, cutting down paperwork processing from weeks to mere seconds and significantly boosting efficiency. The unified systems give salespeople, service agents, and field technicians immediate access to critical information, so they spend less time retrieving data and can focus on delivering exceptional customer service. Dynamics 365 Field Service has especially improved efficiency for onsite workers through smart scheduling and automation, and its interoperation with Pepsi’s other backend services helps it provide service agents with real-time updates and better stock management, enabling more effective customer service and streamlining operations. In addition, the interoperability of Field Service with Microsoft Teams has reduced email and simplified collaboration across the service chain, enabling service agents and field technicians to quickly locate information and subject matter experts, leading to faster resolution times. 

Adopting Field Service also helped G&J Pepsi improve mobile operations for field technicians because now they no longer need to return to the office or another physical location with dial-up to sync data with backend systems. Now, dispatchers can adjust service schedules in real time, so technicians can quickly address urgent issues, such as water leaks at major accounts. The Field Service mobile app has also enhanced efficiency by improving communication between field technicians and dispatchers and enabling them to manage tasks, like work order management and inventory control, on the fly. The Field Service mobile app also uses cellular technology to auto-update inventory as technicians use parts, avoiding manual entries and speeding up restocking processes. These changes have profoundly improved the responsiveness of field service technicians, resulting in better customer service. Overall, G&J Pepsi is experiencing better first-time fix rates, reducing the need for return visits, which in turn saves costs related to time, mileage, and fuel. It also helps G&J Pepsi achieve greater operational efficiencies and improve overall customer satisfaction by ensuring technicians have the necessary parts and information to complete jobs effectively on the very first visit. 

Benefitting from streamlined operations—and $30 million ROI over three years 

By giving salespeople, service agents, and field technicians instant access to sales history, equipment details, schedules, parts, and pricing, G&J Pepsi has streamlined operations and enhanced customer service. Before implementing its CEM platform based on Dynamics 365, the company was experiencing a $9 million yearly loss due to siloed information, outdated manual processes, and inefficient communications and collaboration. But over its three-year journey with Dynamics 365, G&J Pepsi has achieved a $30 million ROI, amounting to a total of $57 million in cost savings over the same period. In addition, simplifying processes and using technology for better data access and automation led to a 10 point increase in market share in the on-premises sector, significantly outperforming the norm of 0.5 point annual growth. And with its data residing in the Dataverse, G&J has been able to gain access to real-time insights that have transformed its operations. Overall, using Dynamics 365 and Power Automate, it has streamlined 180,000 manual steps that used to take seven to 10 days each down to 35 seconds. 

Embracing a future powered by AI through Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Azure 

Moving forward, G&J Pepsi is excited to explore the possibilities of using Microsoft Copilot to help frontline employees address real-world challenges, like optimizing scheduling and service flows based on data analysis. It plans to employ technologists and AI experts to help drive awareness and adoption of Copilot capabilities to help transform the customer experience. Microsoft tools like Copilot, Microsoft Azure AI, and Power Automate will also play a big role in helping G&J enhance its enterprise resource planning strategy and growth by creating a digital thread through its daily business operations to help succeed daily. 

“We truly see Microsoft as an organization that is tied to the entire success of G&J Pepsi, not just the entire success of the department, but as a true collaborator, where we’re getting our voice heard on some of the challenges and opportunities that we have with the products. Not just with Copilot, but with all the platforms, from Dynamics 365 to Microsoft 365 to Azure.”

Brian Balzer, Executive Vice President of Digital Technology & Business Transformation, G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers. 

Read more about G&J Pepsi’s transformation here: 

• Microsoft Customer Story-Dynamics 365 quenches G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers’ thirst for innovation, integration, and agility 

• Microsoft Customer Story-G&J Pepsi discovers untapped potential with Dynamics 365, boosts profit by $30 million 

The post G&J Pepsi profit rises by $30 million with Microsoft Dynamics 365 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

[Available for iOS only, Android support coming soon]

If you already have a Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Guides, and/or Dynamics 365 Remote Assist license, you can access the new remote assistance capabilities in your mobile Teams app automatically upon release at no additional cost.

Previously, Remote Assist capabilities required a standalone mobile app or a HoloLens 2 device. Now frontline workers can benefit from using the Spatial Annotations feature inside their Teams mobile app.  

Turn any mobile device into a mixed reality collaboration platform

Today, frontline workers use Teams within the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Guides applications to collaborate with spatial annotations. The Remote Assist mobile app is a popular choice for workers on the go because it’s fast and easy to get anyone on a call, show the task in front of you, and ink your space.

Now, those same workers can quickly access this core functionality directly from the Teams mobile app as long you have Dynamics 365 Field Service license. For workers who are often on the move, having all their core collaboration capabilities in a single app makes the job easier. It eliminates the need to switch apps, while making sure all your collaboration capabilities from Teams are at your fingertips.

No more context switching—stay within the flow of work 

Using this feature is as straightforward as joining a Teams meeting or making a call. With the front-facing camera, users can share their view with remote participants. This allows real-time collaboration relying on 3D annotations overlayed on physical objects to enhance comprehension.

Just like with the Remote Assist app, users can move and change angles without losing track of annotations anchored to their environment. This advanced level of interaction empowers Teams mobile users to share insights and reduce miscommunications that could lead to rework.

Reduce app sprawl by eliminating the need to manage another app

If your company already leverages Teams to facilitate communication and collaboration, why not make it cover more collaborative use cases for frontline workers too? IT administrators don’t need to manage another app to enable remote assistance capabilities for their mobile workforce. 

Bringing Spatial Annotations to the Teams mobile app means fewer apps for IT teams to provision, update, and audit. Companies can benefit from Teams’ ability to support end-to-end encryption, data loss prevention, and compliance certifications, adding additional security measures protecting against unauthorized access to confidential company information. 

How can I access Spatial Annotations on my mobile Teams app? 

The public preview for iOS users is currently rolling out, with public preview for Android users coming later this summer. General availability will come later in 2024.   

Infusing mixed reality capabilities into apps workers are already using, on devices they already have in their pockets, is just one way we’re working to bring mixed reality to frontline workers. We’re excited with this next step democratizing mixed reality and bringing leading-edge mixed reality solutions to more people across industries. 

Copyright © 2024 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 

The post Enable Spatial annotations for your frontline technicians using Dynamics 365 Field Service & Teams appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Leaving the schedule board today can be cumbersome because you have to re-enter your preferred settings every time you come back. You may also find it frustrating that your admin has the power to override your choices and reset the board to the default settings. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could save your personal preferences and have them ready when you need them? The schedule board now boasts improved navigation patterns to help YOU manage your schedules more efficiently!

Remember my board

The schedule board now works with your computer’s local cache to reload with the last accessed parameters as chosen by you, no configuration necessary! That means you can leave the schedule board to check on your resources, update requirements, or even grab a hot cuppa, all while your board stays the way you left it.

 The cache will save and reload the following parameters automatically: 

1. Last accessed tab: Save time by not having to reload the tab its relevant resources and bookings 

2. Map panel open/closed: Map remains in the state that you left it in 

3. Viewtype: Gantt/list view – Schedule board  

4. Viewmode: hourly/daily/weekly 

5. BoardStartDate: Continue with the last accessed date range, resets to today’s date after 15min 

6. Columnwidth: zoom level of the board stays the way you want it 

Many of our users have told us about their struggles trying to return to today’s date when switching between date ranges. We’ve thus added a new “Today” button next to the date range control, that helps you quickly return to today’s date range, wherever you may be. 

Shareable links, as Easy as 1 2 3 

What if you want to share your settings with others or add a bookmark of your settings to your browser? We’ve added a new one-click button that helps you generate a URL link that captures all the following schedule board parameters: 

1. Last accessed tab 

2. Map panel open/closed 

3. Viewtype: Gantt/list view 

4. Viewmode: hourly/daily/weekly 

5. Columnwidth: zoom level of the board

Saving and sharing your favorite board setup has never been easier! 

Step 1: Click on the “…” more button at the top right of the schedule board 

Step 2: Click on “Copy link” button 

Step 3: The generated link has been saved to your clipboard.

The use cases are numerous, for example:

1. Add the copied link to a bookmark in your browser. Whenever you click on this bookmarked link, the browser will launch the board with your preferred parameters 

2. Share the link with your colleagues/team to share a setup that works for you, and teach them optimize their workflow  

You can also configure Schedule Board URLs manually: Open the schedule board from a URL | Microsoft Learn 

More details on schedule board caching and URL addressability can be found here: Learn more about schedule board

The post Your Board, Your Way – Optimize schedule board navigation patterns in Universal Resource Scheduling appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

On July 16, 2024, we published the 2024 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. These plans are a compilation of the new capabilities planned to be released between October 2024 to March 2025. This release introduces a wealth of new features designed to enhance customer understanding and improve overall user experience, showcasing our dedication to driving digital transformation for our customers and partners. 

The upcoming wave is centered around utilizing advanced AI and Microsoft Copilot technologies to enhance user productivity and streamline operations across diverse business applications. These enhancements include intelligent automation, AI-powered insights, and immersive user experiences that are designed to break down barriers between data, insights, and individuals. Watch a summary of the release highlights. 

Discover the latest features that empower organizations to operate more efficiently and adaptively. From AI-driven sales insights and customer service enhancements to predictive analytics in supply chain management and autonomous financial processes, the new capabilities enable businesses to proactively address challenges and capitalize on opportunities. 

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Dynamics 365 release wave

Check out the 2024 release wave 2 Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Copilot for business features

Learn more

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales continues to enhance customer understanding and boost sales through data, intelligence, and user-friendly experiences. In this release, we are focused on including natural language copilot for summarizing information, creating a new full-screen Copilot Home with curated insights and role-specific actions, and using AI-powered insights to find leads. Watch this video to discover the new and enhanced features included in this release wave. 

Microsoft Copilot for Sales continues to deliver and enhance cutting-edge generative AI capabilities for sellers by enriching Copilot in Microsoft 365 capabilities with sales-specific workflows, data, and actions. We will focus on using AI-powered insights to create leads, deepen the integration into Copilot in Microsoft 365, and use natural language capabilities to allow sellers to ask data-related questions of their CRM. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through new copilot capabilities such as proactive prompting, ability to access data from external systems securely with plugins, email enhancements, and AI-infused routing. Watch this video to discover how the latest enhancements to Customer Service can benefit your business. 

Microsoft Copilot for Service is now generally available, bringing new capabilities to enhance user experiences. These features will be integrated across Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365 Chat, and Copilot embedded in third-party CRMs. View this video about the features launching in this wave for Copilot for Service. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center will add new features for voice, messaging, Copilot, AI-infused routing, and contact center operations including out of box support for additional CRMs. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in Dynamics 365 Contact Center this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service enables a shift from reactive to proactive and predictive service, empowering digital transformation and innovative business models. Using Copilot, frontline workers will be able to retrieve critical information and initiate mixed-reality remote assist calls within Teams through Copilot. Managers will be able to create, update, and manage work orders effortlessly across web, Outlook, and Teams interfaces. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance continues its journey of leading in autonomous finance, using AI to transform common end-to-end financial processes. This release focuses on in-app copilot capabilities, immersive persona-based user experiences, expanding country coverage, electronic invoicing enhancements, business performance analytics and planning enhancements, and autonomous reconciliation capabilities. Discover how the latest enhancements to Finance can benefit your business in this video. 

Microsoft Copilot for Finance is expanding data reconciliation capabilities in Excel with assisted data sanitization and preparation routines. Extending variance analysis capabilities with support from additional data sources and enabling collaboration on findings with stakeholders will also be a focus in the upcoming wave. Additionally, the Teams integration will facilitate collections calls with suggested scripts and automated recording of action items in the financial system. Check out this video to see the exciting new features releasing in Microsoft Copilot for Finance.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is advancing along the path of an autonomous supply chain by integrating intelligence, automation, and analytics into every facet of business procedures, thereby improving user productivity and enhancing organizational adaptability. In this update, the spotlight is on improving order-promising capabilities for manufacturers. Demand planning is upgraded to incorporate forecasting with external signals, and the inclusion of Copilot weaves insights and analyses directly into workflows, identifying trends and irregularities, while also allowing for specific data inquiries at the cell level. Additionally, Traceability Copilot keeps track of actual products in production and compiles a comprehensive historical record of related activities. Watch this video to discover the exciting features launching in this release wave. 

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 AI-assisted core functionality improvements in estimation, proposal generation, journals, approvals, and contract management, with added mobile capabilities and scale improvements to handle larger projects and invoices at an increased scale. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in Project Operations this wave. 

Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities will continue to invest in capabilities applying to Finance, Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Project Operations. We are infusing copilot experiences across applications, including natural language chat, embedded AI, and intelligent process automation, and enabling extensibility for copilot scenarios. We will also bring more value and insights to finance and operations apps data and enhancements to ensure continued enterprise-grade security and compliance at scale. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources continues to build intelligence, develop automation and analytics around the hire-to-separate process, increase user productivity, and empower business agility. We are enhancing recruiting with AI-driven assessments and offer management, improving experiences for employees and HR business partners in benefits and performance management, and advancing analytics, insights, and planning through business performance planning and analytics capabilities. View this video to learn more about the features releasing in this wave. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce is using the power of AI to empower retailers to streamline their operations and drive increased customer loyalty and conversions. With Copilot, retail managers, sales associates, and merchandisers will gain new AI-powered insights into customer buying patterns and preferences, recommendations for positioning and selling products, and business intelligence on store performance. Improvements to the self-checkout POS make customer checkouts more efficient, and user experience updates to Store Commerce app streamline daily tasks for faster, more efficient sales and service. Watch this video to see the new features releasing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is focused on maintaining service reliability performance and security standards. We’ll continue enhancing productivity by optimizing core processes with Copilot, expanding to cover more than 170 countries, and offering enhanced reporting with more than 80 Microsoft Power BI reports. Additionally, integration with Field Service will be expanded, along with new financial management features. We will also enhance development tools and governance, along with improved data privacy and compliance management. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist will bring significant improvements to the quality of Mixed Reality (MR) annotations in Teams mobile for both iOS and Android users. The update will enhance the accuracy of MR ink on irregular and complex surfaces, making it easier for remote experts and technicians to collaborate seamlessly. Mixed Reality annotations in Teams mobile will be generally available in the next wave, along with ongoing investments in stability, performance optimization, and usability improvements across HoloLens 2 and iOS and Android applications. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Data empowers every organization to unify and enhance customer data, leveraging it for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. This release enables you to streamline data integration by using Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Fabric, attach your data in OneLake to Customer Insights, accelerate time to insights with data in Data Lake format, increase control when attaching to data in Dataverse, and seamlessly generate insights from marketing. Discover how these latest enhancements can benefit your business in this video. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Journeys brings the power of AI to redefine the workflow for marketers, enabling them to be more productive than ever before. Businesses can optimize every interaction with their customers with end-to-end journeys across departments and channels. With this release, you will have more flexibility and control when it comes to journeys, managing your web forms and tailoring Copilot to your business. Watch this video to learn about the new features releasing in this wave. 

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform

Check out the 2024 release wave 2 Microsoft Power Platform features

Learn more

Watch this video to explore the exciting new features releasing across Microsoft Power Platform. 

Microsoft Power Apps will continue to transform app experiences with infused intelligence, enabling users to be more productive by using Copilot to work with data, get insights, and improve their apps. Makers will continue to benefit from AI-assisted development, enabling rich and complex applications to be built with monitoring, control, and unmatched governance for admins, ensuring organizations can adopt low-code and AI transformation at scale. 

Microsoft Power Pages will expedite site building for a low-code maker or pro developer to build intelligent sites that reimagine the way you interact with your employees, customers, and partners. 

Microsoft Power Automate will continue to make it easier to build flows by using natural language and multi-modal generative AI capabilities across cloud flows and desktop flows, troubleshooting runs, and managing your automation estate with an end-to-end view. This, along with improvements in process mining to jumpstart creation of automation through Microsoft 365 integration and ongoing improvements to scaling, means it’ll be easier than ever for new users to get started and scale. 

Microsoft Copilot Studio is advancing copilot capabilities and IVR support with Customer Service and will expand geographically to the United Arab Emirates and Germany. Additionally, the team is improving software lifecycle management capabilities with topic-level import/export and role-based access control (RBAC), as well as enhancing governance and administration functionalities. 

AI Builder is investing in Prompt Builder for creating and deploying GPT prompts with enterprise data to enhance flows, apps, data tables, and copilots. We are also enhancing Intelligent Document Processing with a new validation station in Power Automate, application lifestyle management (ALM) support, and pre-built AI models for translation, classification, and personally identifiable information (PII) detection. Lastly, we’ll improve AI governance through capacity management, data policies, and including AI Builder capacity in the Power Apps developer plan. 

Microsoft Dataverse is enhancing the maker experience by boosting app building productivity with Copilot, ensuring seamless connectivity to external data and knowledge sources, and integrating AI-powered Enterprise Copilot in Microsoft 365. These investments aim to streamline development and use AI for more efficient and intelligent solutions. 

Governance and administration continues to advance via tools and insights that empower Microsoft Power Platform admin to easily get their job done. This wave focuses on governing Copilot adoption and easily securing low-code assets, helping enterprises boost adoption of Microsoft Power Platform solutions in their organization while keeping their digital environment safe. 

Early access period 

Starting July 29, 2024, customers and partners can validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These updates include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled in production environments by October 2024. Take advantage of the early access period to test these updates and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Explore the 2024 release wave 2 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform or visit the early access FAQ page for more information. 

For a complete list of new capabilities, please refer to the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 2 plan and the Microsoft Power Platform 2024 release wave 2 plan. We also encourage you to share your feedback in the community forums for Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform. 

The post 2024 release wave 2 plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform now available  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficiency and speed are key to staying ahead. That’s why we’re excited to preview* a new feature for Model Driven applications (Canvas application support coming soon) which is designed to improve your mobile applications offline sync performance, saving valuable time and bandwidth.

Offline table column selection brings a significant enhancement to the offline capabilities of your mobile app. Now, Dynamics customers have the power to customize their offline data sync by selecting specific columns within a Dataverse table to download. This granular control means that only the most relevant data is downloaded to the offline device, reducing the overall volume of data that needs to be downloaded.

An example of how this preview feature can be used is shown with the standard Contacts table. This is a standard out of the box Dataverse table which typically includes 240 columns. By leveraging offline table column selection, you can now reduce the number of columns downloaded offline by **greater than half.

User Benefits:

• Reduced Download Time: By downloading only the necessary columns, the time required for offline sync is significantly decreased. 
• Improved User Experience: Faster offline sync times will lead to less waiting for the mobile application to be ready to go offline, and large updates to the device will happen even faster. This will lead to a smoother and more efficient user experience. 
• Optimized Data Usage: This feature helps in managing data consumption, especially in areas with limited connectivity or data plans. 
• Enhanced Performance: With less data to process, the mobile app will use less battery and bandwidth, allowing for quicker access to critical information. 

The offline table column selection feature is a testament to our commitment to providing solutions that not only meet but exceed the needs of our customers. By enabling enterprise users to tailor their offline data access, we’re empowering them to work smarter, not harder. Experience the difference today and take your field service operations to the next level. 

* Offline table column selection is currently in preview only, please refer to the release plan for general availability

** Required columns may be different by organization and unique business scenarios. Be sure to review your custom business logic to ensure all columns required are selected.

Additional resources

• Learn more about this feature and how to enable for your organization
• Field Service Release update: Select table columns to include in mobile offline sync | Microsoft Learn
• Power Apps Release update: Select columns downloaded on mobile devices | Microsoft Learn

The post Improve Mobile Offline performance with Offline Table Column Selection appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Being able to efficiently and effectively manage your resources is key to Dynamics 365 Field Service. Today, we introduce a new Crew Allocation Tool to streamline the process of making single-day membership changes to all your crews.

We’ve heard from users that it can be tedious to manually go into crew records, take a resource out for a day, add a new resource, and reset it all at the end of the day. Now, when a technician is on leave, a piece of equipment is out of service, or you need to add some additional support for a particularly intensive day, making the necessary crew reassignments will be a seamless, intuitive experience.  

Accessing the New Tool 

To find the new Crew Allocation Tool, you’ll first head to the Resources page. There you can either navigate to a view with your desired crews or just select up to fifteen crews you want to work with. You’ll see a new button in the control bar titled Crew Allocation that will open the tool. 

Making Single Day Membership Changes 

When you enter the new tool, you’ll see your selection of crews displayed in a grid along with all the members that are working that day. You’ll also see all the bookings that the crew has for the day listed for easy reference. To move a crew member from one crew to another is as simple as dragging and dropping one or more of these resources from their original crew to the target crew. You can also make your resource selection and use the Assign to crew button to select a new crew.  

Of course, sometimes the resource you want to add to a crew is not already on another. In this case, you can use the Available Resources Panel. This section of the tool, which is based on the views you already have defined from the Resources page, is where you will find any resources working that day who are not already on a crew. From here, you can also select one or more resources, and move them to a crew either by dragging and dropping or the Assign to crew button.  

The last kind of single day membership change is removing a resource from a crew. Let’s say you know a particular resource is booked up with individual training that day and won’t be able to contribute to crew activities. You can simply select that resource (or more than one resource) and click on the Remove button. Additionally, if you want to start from a clean slate, you can click Remove all and start all your crews from scratch.  

Updating Schedules 

Once you save your changes, the crew tool updates your crews and cascades your existing crew bookings. First your membership changes will be saved, with new resources being added to a crew, and removed resources being taken out for a full day in the target crew’s time zone. Then, the impacted resources’ schedules will be updated with appropriate bookings and cancellations. This phase will happen in the background, so you’re free to go on to your other daily tasks while the booking changes cascade.  

Now that all the booking changes are cascaded, your crews’ schedules will be up to date with the latest memberships and bookings.

This also means that if you create a new booking for the crew on the active day, it will populate to your new resource’s schedule like any other crew member.  

We’re excited to roll this new Crew Allocation Tool streamlines process tool out to all Field Service users and look forward to hearing about your experience. 

Explore more on Dynamics 365 Field Service documentation and share your feedback within the Field Service product or via our ideas portal. Your input drives continuous improvement for enhanced operational performance. 

The post Dynamics 365 Field Service announces the new Crew Allocation Tool, which enables the “Morning Shuffle”  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In the dynamic world of service management, every action counts. From frontline workers in the field to back-office functions, the complexity of service delivery impacts the bottom line. Whether it’s a physical product consumed from inventory, or a service provided, both have financial implications, especially when external customers are involved, pricing and profitability come into play.

When a field service organization’s frontline operations run in isolation, consequences can be far-reaching: inaccurate costing, delayed invoicing, dissatisfied customers, and supply chain bottlenecks. To succeed in this complicated environment, organizations must integrate their systems to coordinate their services, finances, and supply chain processes. 

Recognizing this critical need, we recently announced the integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Business Central, and today we’re thrilled to announce the general availability of the integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service and Dynamics 365 Finance as well as Supply Chain Management. This powerful integration ensures that the work of frontline workers, service managers, and dispatchers are seamlessly synced with the financial and supply chain heart of your business. Let’s explore some of the details of this native integration.  

Bridging the gap: Dynamics 365 integration 

The challenges 

Even with robust systems like Dynamics 365 Field Service and a strong ERP system like Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, gaps can emerge when these systems aren’t fully integrated: 

1. Limited financial insight: Without smooth integration, determining job costs and profitability requires switching between windows and consuming or updated data in multiple systems, which obscures their financial status. 
2. Supply-driven delays: Separate fieldwork and supply chain processes lead to inventory shortages and service delays. 
3. Invoicing bottlenecks: Disparate systems and manual processes cause invoicing and payment delays, disrupting cash flow. 
4. Inconsistent data: Discrepancies across systems create confusion, affecting accuracy of inventory, decision-making, pricing, and costing data. 

The solution

Our native integration addresses these challenges head-on: 

1. Operational visibility: Real-time insights into finances and inventory empower informed decision-making across your organization. 
2. Field-informed supply chain: Field Service work orders can drive estimated inventory demand, ensuring seamless supply chain coordination. 
3. Interconnected financial operations: Automated and powerful billing and invoicing capabilities of Finance informed directly by the services provided speed up payment cycles, improve cash flow, minimize errors, boost profitability, and turn every work order into a growth opportunity. 
4. Cost-effective integration: Our pre-built solution reduces implementation expenses and accelerates value realization. 
5. Reduced risk, faster implementation: The native integration minimizes risk while improving implementation timelines. 

Essential features 

Organizations can create new opportunities to improve efficiency, customer satisfaction, and growth by integrating their Dynamics 365 Field Service and finance and operations applications. Key features of this native integration include:  

• Data alignment: Dual-write and virtual entities ensure all applications operate from a cohesive set of primary tables. 
  • Primary tables alignment: Basic concepts such as currency, units of measure, products and their attributes (like styles, configurations, colors) are synced between applications to ensure a consistent source of truth. 
  • Legal entity alignment: The company concept, native to Finance and Supply Chain, is used to filter critical lookups to put guard-rails in the system, helping drive transactions along company lines. 
  • Projects and accounts: Work orders are seamlessly synced with projects and customer accounts from the finance and operations applications, allowing for precise project tracking and customer billing.  
  • Inventory: Virtual tables expose inventory from Supply Chain directly in Field Service while work order inventory transactions align with item journals, directly impacting inventory levels in the system of record. 
  • Resources: Using dual-write, resources can be aligned directly with workers ensuring field service work order transactions are automatically associated with the right workers and recorded in their respective hours journal and expense journal lines. 
• Automated and precise invoicing: The integration automates the syncing of transactions, reducing manual work and mistakes. Organizations can decide when to sync the information and post project journals either as they use them or automatically when they finish the work order. 
• Full insight and management: No financial system can afford to lose transactional data. Our integration gives organizations complete insight and management of data moving between the systems, making sure they can fix issues that stop data from flowing between applications and re-sync the transaction. 

Get started now 

Dynamics 365 Field Service and the Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications work together to unlock efficiencies. Organizations that use these solutions together can boost their productivity, revenue, and customer satisfaction. Grow your business with Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Finance, and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain.  

Be on the lookout for future post in June for more ways to take advantage of this powerful integration that make it work for any organization.

Ready to get started today? Learn more about the integration, set up your organization, and create your first integrated work order.  

The post Unlocking efficiency: Dynamics 365 Field Service integration for seamless operations  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

This post was co-authored by Safiyyah O’Quinn, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting, Visionet

Fast, efficient service, it’s what everybody wants. And today’s field service organizations are answering the call by adopting next-generation AI technologies that can help them be more flexible and responsive to customers while also driving revenue, reducing overtime, and ensuring more predictable arrival and completion times. Service managers, field technicians, and customers all benefit.

Streamlining work order and resource management to improve service metrics is always top of mind for field service managers. Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service brings the power of next-generation AI to field service managers, enabling them to automate work order management and optimize scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on travel time, resource availability, and skill sets. Recently, we announced new capabilities in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service web app that enable field managers to interact with Copilot using natural language to find pertinent information about work orders. Copilot can assist in retrieving work order details, summarizing them, and presenting them in an easily digestible format. Copilot can also go beyond searching work orders to searching other Microsoft Dataverse records including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. In addition, field service managers can now configure data that Copilot uses to generate work order summaries in Dynamics 365 Field Service for more advanced reviews before closing work orders to ensure they’re meeting customer needs.

Resource Scheduling Optimization (RSO) is an add-in to Dynamics 365 Field Service that automatically suggests the technicians, equipment, and facilities (such as warehouses) best equipped to handle a given job. Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting at Visionet, a Microsoft Managed Partner, believes that having the ability to extend Field Service in conjunction with Resource Scheduling Optimization and Microsoft Copilot Studio can help service organizations be more customer-centric, flexible, and efficient.

“Dynamics 365 Field Service has catalyzed a shift towards smarter, more efficient field services management. With the integration of Microsoft Copilot into Dynamics 365 Field Service, service organizations are now more equipped to consistently exceed customer expectations and build long-lasting relationships at every point of interaction.”

Ghazanfar Riaz, Head of Digital Consulting, Visionet

Microsoft’s latest update to Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces enhanced Copilot capabilities, designed to serve as a field service manager’s AI assistant. Using natural language, managers can now converse with Copilot to swiftly extract essential details and summaries from work orders and transform complex data into clear, actionable insights. Field service managers can also use Copilot to adeptly navigate Dataverse records, including accounts, contacts, and opportunities, for a more holistic view of the customer landscape.

Additionally, field service managers can tailor how Copilot generates work order summaries to help ensure the best possible schedules for field technicians and the best possible outcomes for customers. By using Copilot in Dynamics 365, field service management becomes a more intuitive and intelligent experience, ensuring customer needs are not just understood but anticipated and met.

Let’s take a closer look at how Visionet extended Dynamics 365 Field Service and RSO capabilities to achieve a more customized, adaptable system and greater efficiency in resource scheduling scenarios.

Optimizing schedules for field service technicians

With rising customer expectations, many service organizations have opted to supplement their operations by using contractors or other third-party services to address any gaps in service. In these cases where contractors or third parties are involved, knowing what resources to use—especially when automating resource scheduling for efficiency—can be tricky and time consuming. In addition, contractors and third-party resources are often more expensive than in-house technicians, so many service organizations want to ensure they’re using those resources strategically.

Service managers often find themselves manually reallocating contractors or other third-party resources, consuming valuable time. Visionet identified an opportunity to enhance Field Service RSO, which facilitates automated schedule creation, by extending its capabilities to offer improved scheduling insights and enable automation on a larger scale.  Service managers can efficiently assign bookings by setting preferences for factors such as cost (weighing the use of in-house technicians against contractors), skill set, territory, and availability. With these preferences established, service managers and dispatchers can use this enhanced RSO feature to optimize daily or weekly schedules more effectively and generate precise recommendations.

Visionet is collaborating with service organizations to further augment Field Service RSO by integrating Copilot automation capabilities. Using natural language interactions, field service managers can quickly pinpoint specific resources or assets needed for jobs. This helps ensure that work orders are evenly distributed, skill sets are appropriately matched to tasks, and more costly resources are employed judiciously to maintain cost efficiency.

Managing downtime for field service technicians

Downtime for field technicians, particularly when it’s unexpected, can disrupt service and revenue. Service managers often find themselves needing to reorganize schedules due to unforeseen circumstances such as illness, emergency calls, mandatory training, or meetings that prevent technicians from being in the field. Recognizing this challenge, Visionet enhanced the Field Service RSO by incorporating customizations that improve scheduling flexibility.

Now, service managers can specify planned, non-productive events like mandatory training sessions, weekly team meetings, work breaks, and other time off directly within the system and specify whether they are one-time or recurring. The RSO uses this information to automatically adjust schedules accordingly and ensure no service interruptions occur.

Responding in real time to daily schedule changes

For many service organizations, things can change from minute to minute. Customers can experience outages due to weather, utility maintenance, road construction—the possibilities are endless. In addition, field technicians can get held up by traffic or an accident on the freeway, or even by a customer issue that was more complicated than what was initially scoped. And sometimes, customers need to cancel or reschedule service—even when a technician is already on the way. To help with this, Visionet enhanced Field Service RSO so service managers can use the Intra Day feature to help optimize work order schedules on the fly. With this feature, service managers can dynamically adjust a day’s schedule in response to various situations such as cancellations or rescheduling, incoming high-priority trouble tickets, unexpected gaps in technicians’ schedules, delays in ongoing assignments, or fluctuations in resource availability. This level of agility in scheduling ensures that service disruptions are handled with maximum efficiency.

Take, for instance, a scenario where a customer faces an unexpected broadband outage during the day, and the problem can’t be fixed remotely. In that case, a service manager may dispatch a field technician to the location to resolve the issue quickly and limit service interruption. Reviewing the Field Service RSO board, the manager can find an available technician with the expertise that’s best suited to address the customer’s issue promptly. The manager then assigns the new work order and reorganizes the day’s schedule to accommodate this change.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Interact with Copilot using new capabilities in the Field Service web app.

Learn more

Stepping up field service with next-generation AI

We’re excited to be sharing all the ways you can use Copilot Studio with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service to extend AI capabilities that can help make your field service organization more efficient, productive, and responsive to customers.

We invite you to visit the Microsoft booth (216), along with our partners, at Field Service Palm Springs to discover how Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service works alongside frontline teams to streamline work order management and increase technician productivity. Learn more about AI-powered experiences for your frontline on Monday, May 6, by attending:

• Chair Opening Remarks by Héctor Garcia Tellado, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Frontline Applications
• The Customer Journey Panel: Revaluating and Remapping Service Workflows to Optimize Automation Tool Adoption and Enhance CX

The post Enabling fast, flexible, cost-effective service with Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We are excited to announce that summary configuration for work order recap with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service is now available in public preview. It builds on the work order recap feature released last year, which provides an AI-generated summary of the work order for service managers and technicians.

What is summary configuration?

Customers loved our work order recap feature and wanted to configure the summary to reflect their business-critical information. With summary configuration, admins can now specify the data used by Copilot in Field Service, whether in web or mobile. They can select specific columns from the base or related tables based on their organization’s business needs. You can also preview the summary using real data from Dataverse to ensure that it contains the right information.

Enable the summary configuration

To use the summary configuration, you need to be an administrator of the environment, and have the Work Order Summary feature enabled in your Dynamics 365 Field Service settings. Go to Field Service > Settings > Field Service Settings > Features. Find the Copilot in Field Service section, then turn on Copilot for work order.

Then, navigate to Summary Configuration on the site map. In public preview, you can choose between Work Order summary and Bookable Resource Booking summary. After selecting the table, turn on the Configure summary toggle to start configuring the table and columns to include in the summary.

Add columns to the summary

Now we are ready to start adding columns. For example, you want to add Primary Incident to the Work Order summary.

1. Open the Table list.
2. Select the Work Order table.
3. Go to the Column list and select Primary Incident Description.

You can also add a field from a related table. For example, in the Work Order summary, you want to include the Account Name column from the Billing Account associated with the Work Order.

1. Select + Add data to add a new row.
2. Open the Table list. Related tables are marked with chevrons (>).
   • Either type in the search box or scroll down to find the Billing Account table and select it.
   • Once it becomes the current table (first item in the list), select it.
3. Then go to the Column list and select Account Name.

Preview the summary

When you are done configuring, you can test your configuration using any record from Dataverse and preview the summary that Copilot would generate for that record. You can be confident that your service managers and technicians will have the relevant information in the summary to perform their job.

Once you have finished testing, select Save to publish this summary configuration.

Enable this feature today and learn more about it through the feature documentation and FAQ. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

The post Announcing configurable Copilot summaries in Field Service appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We’re excited to announce a new project onboarding feature is now available in the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The portal makes it easier to deploy Dynamics 365 projects successfully by guiding you from the start of your project to the end, giving you valuable insights and recommendations along the way. All you need to do to get started is create your implementation project in the portal, and the new onboarding wizard makes it easy. Here’s how:

User-friendly interface removes technical barriers. The onboarding wizard’s intuitive and user-friendly interface is designed to make the onboarding process accessible whatever your technical background. It acts as a virtual assistant, walking you through each step of project creation with clear instructions and prompts.

Projects are ready to use immediately. On completion of the onboarding process, your Dynamics 365 implementation project is instantly available, streamlining collaboration and ensuring that stakeholders have swift access to project resources.

Data is protected automatically. If the implementation project targets a tenant other than the one you’re signed in to, the onboarding wizard starts an approval flow. Two reviewers for the targeted tenant must both approve the request before information such as the customer name and telemetry insights are made available. This automatic review process ensures compliance with data protection regulations and builds trust with customers.

Successful Dynamics 365 implementations by design

The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal is based on Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployment that was developed by Microsoft. Success by Design provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying your new Dynamics 365 solution. The onboarding wizard represents a pivotal advancement in the journey towards a successful Dynamics 365 implementation. By guiding you through the creation of your implementation projects, facilitating reviews, and offering relevant insights, the Implementation Portal and the onboarding wizard help your business harness the full potential of Dynamics 365 with confidence and efficiency.

Next steps

Sign up for the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal and read the documentation.

Learn more about the onboarding wizard.

Have feedback or questions about the onboarding wizard or the Implementation Portal? Let us know! Email us at ftd365ip-support@microsoft.com.

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Take a tour and get a free trial.

The post Create Dynamics 365 implementation projects easily with the new onboarding wizard appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.