Contact centers are where customer loyalty is won or lost, and they’re changing fast. Contact center leaders want to stop managing a collection of point solutions and run one connected operation. Frontier Firms are rebuilding the contact center for agentic service, where AI agents and people work side by side on every channel to resolve issues faster and deliver more personal experiences.

That’s the vision behind Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center. Just three years into our journey, we’ve reached an important milestone: Microsoft has been named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), in our first year in the evaluation.

Recognition grounded in customer results

Our progress is grounded in what customers are accomplishing as they modernize their contact centers, bringing together people, AI, channels, and customer context to deliver better service. We believe this recognition reflects the tangible results and impact customers are already seeing with Dynamics 365 Contact Center:

• Kotsovolos cut average handle time by 30% and raised CSAT by 6 points.
• Engineers Australia cut average hold time by 18% and reached 70% first-contact resolution, supported by unified member records and Copilot summaries.
• UWV saw productivity gains of more than 30% while cutting the number of systems its agents need by 50%.
• CZ Zorgverzekeringen unified voice and chat for 500 service reps, lowering handle time and making service more personal.
• VCAT resolves 70% of matters earlier through self-service portals and embedded voice.

Microsoft is named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Contact Center as a Service

Read the report

Built for the era of agentic customer service

We believe our placement as a Visionary reflects an approach built for where contact centers are going: AI agents and people working together across the entire customer journey. Dynamics 365 Contact Center brings together the breadth of the Microsoft ecosystem, enabling organizations to build and govern agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio, connect voice through Microsoft Teams, and bring customer and business data with Work IQ into the flow of service.

• For customers: agentic self-service across the channels they choose, with context carried forward when they need a human representative.
• For representatives: real-time assistance with suggested responses, guided resolution, and knowledge across voice and digital channels.
• For supervisors: real-time quality and performance insights that help them identify issues and act sooner.
• For operations teams: intelligent routing, orchestration, and insights to continually improve contact center performance.

The result is a more connected contact center where AI can increasingly take on work, people can focus on the moments that need them most, and organizations can adapt service as customer needs and their business evolve.

Looking ahead

This milestone reflects the trust and partnership of the customers and partners who have helped shape Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and the work of the teams building it every day. We’re proud of the progress so far and excited about the opportunity to transform customer service.

• Read the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Contact Center as a Service report.
• Learn more about Dynamics 365 Contact Center.
• Join us at Microsoft Ignite 2026 to see the latest innovations in action.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, Drew Kraus, Jason Bridge, Megan Fernandez, Pri Rathnayake, 19 October 2026.

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

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Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP Finance.¹ We believe this recognition reflects something finance leaders are seeing as AI moves into their work: the financial system of record matters more than ever.

Gartner evaluates vendors on their Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Learn more in the Gartner Magic Quadrant report.

Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Finance

There’s been no shortage of predictions that agents will make traditional business applications less important. In ERP, we’re seeing the opposite. The answers Microsoft Copilot gives a CFO and the tasks it helps complete for a controller are only as good as the financial data, processes, accounting rules, and controls underneath them. A reconciliation isn’t complete just because two totals match. The underlying transactions must be valid, any discrepancies explained, and the result able to stand up when an auditor asks how it was reached.

Handling financial complexity at the core

That dependency becomes especially important for multinational organizations, where financial complexity is built into the operating model. A single transaction may cross legal entities, currencies, tax jurisdictions, and reporting standards before it reaches consolidated results. Finance must protect the integrity of that path while the business acquires companies, enters markets, and changes how it sells. That work depends on deterministic systems that apply defined rules consistently every time. Agents are most useful when they build on that foundation, helping people understand, prepare, and act, while the ERP continues to govern how transactions are recorded.

That is why we continue to invest in the financial core of Dynamics 365 Finance. The financial journals experience is being re-engineered to support higher transaction volumes and cross-legal-entity complexity, with capabilities designed to help teams view intercompany transactions, create accruals, and preview allocations before posting. We are also investing in capabilities to help organizations address evolving regulatory requirements country by country, including electronic invoicing and e-reporting in France and the next phase of Brazil’s tax reform. For finance leaders considering an ERP modernization, the financial foundation they choose will determine how much work agents can reliably take on.

The Adecco Group illustrates what it takes to manage that complexity at scale. The world’s largest talent advisory company operates 450 legal entities across 60 countries and territories, and it is standardizing its financial processes on Dynamics 365 Finance. In Japan, the company shortened its financial close by two days, and it expects to save $540,000 over three years by decommissioning older systems. “With Dynamics 365, we have been able to significantly improve our control environment,” said Mark Hookey, Head of Finance Transformation Project Office.

Bringing the ledger to where finance works

A trusted financial core is essential, but finance work rarely stays inside the ERP. Analysis is built in Excel, questions about transactions arrive in Outlook, and decisions are made with colleagues in Teams, usually with numbers copied out of the ledger. With Copilot serving as the interface for that work, finance teams can work with ERP data in the flow of their work.

As Dynamics 365 ERP applications connect to Work IQ, Copilot can draw on financial records, business rules, and organizational context within the user’s security permissions. This means a finance leader can ask a question about the ledger during a business review and receive an answer grounded in relevant data. Copilot responses include citations and deep links to underlying records, helping reviewers trace answers to their source. With Copilot Cowork and the Dynamics 365 ERP plugin, an analyst can hand off multi-step work, such as reviewing the status of close tasks across legal entities, while remaining in control of the result. Access to financial data remains governed by the identity, permissions, and compliance controls across the Microsoft Cloud.

Using agents where they help most

Not every finance task needs an agent. Rules-based processes, such as posting and allocations, belong in the ERP, where they are executed consistently according to defined business rules. Agents add the most value where finance teams need to interpret information, such as matching transactions that do not quite line up, processing supplier invoices in different formats, and investigating exceptions.

In Dynamics 365 Finance, the Account Reconciliation Agent can help identify exceptions between subledgers and the general ledger and suggest how to resolve them, with finance teams able to define which legal entities and modules it covers, how much it processes, and when they are notified. Teams can review a simulation of the effect of a resolution before it is applied. In accounts payable, intelligent invoice recognition and suggestions to complete finance entries help more invoices move through processing without manual handling.

Pamarco Technologies, a manufacturer of anilox rolls and printing technology with seven legal entities and customers in almost 70 countries, provides an example of this approach in practice. Working with Copilot Cowork, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and the Dynamics 365 ERP MCP server on top of Dynamics 365 Finance, Pamarco applied AI to several finance workflows: progressing tasks in its financial period close workspace, coding non-purchase-order freight invoices with about 95 percent success, and preparing reporting such as its monthly board sales presentation. “We’ve been able to automate roughly 40% of financial close tasks with autonomous AI agents,” said Glyn Wilson, Chief Information Officer. Throughout, the close workspace, permissions, and records in Dynamics 365 Finance remain the system of record the finance team relies on.

Let’s get started

Agents will take on more of finance’s work, but only as much as the foundation underneath them allows. That’s why we’re investing in three things in Dynamics 365 Finance. The first is a financial core built for multinational complexity. The second is Copilot, bringing that data into the tools finance teams already use. The third is agents, applied where interpretation and judgment are needed rather than where rules already do the job. We’re proud of this recognition from Gartner, and we’ll keep investing so finance leaders can take on more without giving up the control and confidence their organizations depend on.

• Read the report: 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP Finance.
• Explore Dynamics 365 Finance or request a demo.
• See Dynamics 365 at Microsoft Ignite, November 17–20, 2026.

Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP Finance

Read the report

¹ Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP Finance, Mike Helsel, Irmina Melarkode, October 13, 2026

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

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Consumer expectations are rising, but so are the expectations placed on the contact center. Consumers want faster, more personalized service, while contact center leaders are being asked to manage efficiency and increase loyalty, retention, and growth. The contact center is no longer just where issues are handled. It’s increasingly where some of the most important moments between an organization and its customers take place.

Agentic innovations like conversational intelligence creates an opportunity to rethink those moments. For decades, contact centers have been optimized around operational metrics like handle time, deflection, and cost per contact, rather than the customer and business outcomes that matter most. Conversational intelligence can help shift that focus, but contact centers weren’t built to change at the pace technology is moving. Simply bolting on existing solutions or deploying it in isolation risks creating another silo without the broader context needed to understand the customer, take the right action, and improve the experience. We think there’s a better way.

Today, we’re excited to announce Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence (CCI). Now in public preview, Microsoft CCI adds purpose-built agents, quality, and analytics to existing contact centers. We’ve taken the agentic capabilities built into Dynamics 365 Contact Center and extended them to work with any other contact center through an open connector.

For organizations that can’t wait for a multi-year rip-and-replace to access modern conversational intelligence, Microsoft CCI brings enterprise security, governance, and extensibility to the contact center they already have. Unlike other standalone solutions, Microsoft CCI is powered by Microsoft IQ, which combines your organization’s customer relationship management (CRM), contact center insights, and organizational intelligence into the real-time context that AI needs to reason, act, and resolve.

Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence is organized around three agents and outcomes that matter most to the business: a Customer Assist Agent that resolves autonomously or empowers human representatives in real time to improve resolution; a Quality Assurance Agent that continuously evaluates interactions against quality, compliance, and brand standards; and a Service Operations Agent (coming soon) that helps configure, monitor, and optimize the contact center while managing costs.

Features in Microsoft CCI include:

• Agentic self-service: Create multimodal self-service experiences at scale more easily using a new designer and customer conversation harness. Design your interactions in the Customer Assist Agent to resolve customer needs across voice and digital channels, providing customers with fast, natural, and personalized support.
• Quality, analytics, and performance: Evaluate both agentic and human-led interactions, identifying opportunities for service improvements with the Quality Assurance Agent. Create your own customized guardrails across areas like greetings, brand compliance, or sentiment to help improve quality and consistency at scale.
• Easy integration to your existing contact center: Integrate Microsoft CCI with your existing contact center. An open connector easily integrates Microsoft CCI with third-party contact centers, enabling organizations to add AI without major migrations.
• Data and integrations: Ground agents in data from Microsoft IQ, knowledge sources, and more than 1,700 connectors.
• Biometric authentication: Authenticate customers in the moment using voice biometrics, helping establish identity within the natural flow of the interaction while reducing unnecessary authentication steps.
• Manage and govern agents at scale with Microsoft Agent 365: Deploy, monitor, and manage agents across the contact center through a centralized experience. Agent 365 gives organizations visibility into agent performance and business outcomes, with governance to help manage agents responsibly at scale.

Organizations can bring context, judgment, and natural conversation to interactions, whether they are handled by an agent, a contact center representative, or the two working together.

When a customer has a question or issue about any of our system/solution or administrative support, they need our support for resolution, fast, accurate, in compliant with safety as their need for their patient.

Our goal is to bring the same precision of our support experience that we bring via our engineering knowledge and capabilities of being able to troubleshoot and resolve customer issues. With Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence layered onto the Genesys and ServiceNow platforms that we have enabled, we’re building toward a future where both routine and complex remote support can be resolved immediately through agents, without a queue and long wait time and at times while our teams can focus on the moments that need human intervention. By extending conversational intelligence into the support ecosystems, we expect to deliver faster resolution, greater customer confidence, and a support operation that scales with our business for our customers.

Bishan Dass, Digital Development Lead – Americas, Siemens Healthineers

Modernize your existing contact center

Connectors make it easy to integrate Microsoft CCI with contact center vendors like Five9, Cisco WebEx Contact Center, and Avaya.

Once connected, you can start creating self-service agents across voice and digital channels with a new customer conversation harness. In Microsoft CCI, you can build, test, evaluate, and deploy an agent that is configured for your business needs and grounded in your data. Customers can also start configuring Microsoft CCI from the customer conversation harness in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Powered by a choice of models, your Microsoft CCI agent can handle a variety of interactions, helping resolve the questions that clog contact center queues today.

You can shape self-service behavior by supporting deterministic flows when a call must follow a set path, generative interactions when the caller’s question is open-ended, or a hybrid of the two. And when an interaction meets your organization’s criteria for engaging human assistance, there is a built-in handoff in Customer Assist Agent to a human customer service rep through the contact center or even Microsoft Teams.

This provides a clear, reliable way to navigate questions about enrollment, eligibility, coverage, billing, and more as we bring specialized AI agents into our existing HR Service Desk workflow on our timeline. We began the preview in September, and just six weeks later, we are preparing to go live. That speed gives us a faster path to measurable value.

Luis Taveras, EVP, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Thomas Jefferson University

Quality, compliance, and brand at scale

Quality assurance is also available in Microsoft CCI, giving organizations a more systematic way to measure service quality, compliance, and brand adherence. Microsoft CCI evaluates historical self-service conversations today against out-of-the-box and custom metrics you define, with real-time evaluation coming soon. Measure up to 100% of conversations instead of relying on period sampling.

Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence is held to the same Multimodal Agent Score (MAS) quality bar used for Dynamics 365 Contact Center, helping us consistently evaluate experiences across both human and AI agents. Learn more about MAS.

Trust in the flow of work

Microsoft CCI provides native biometric authentication support. With voice biometric enrollment and authentication, end customers can choose to use their voiceprint to verify their identity during a live call, bringing authentication into the natural flow of the conversation. Building identity into the interaction can create a smoother authentication experience by reducing the need to take customers out of the conversation for separate verification. This can reduce the time to authenticate and increase trust in the process.

When an organization’s guardrails determine that a conversation needs human assistance, the interaction can transition to a human contact center representative while preserving the authentication.

Manage and govern contact center intelligence at scale

Agent 365 provides a centralized control plane for managing, governing, and optimizing agents across the enterprise, including the contact center. Agent 365 had nearly 40 million registered agents across tens of thousands of companies as of July 2026. With Agent 365, available standalone or as part of Microsoft 365 E7, your agents don’t operate in a silo.

Customers don’t wake up wishing they could replace their contact center platform. They want better customer experiences, more productive agents, and the business outcomes AI can deliver. The challenge is that a full platform migration is often expensive, disruptive, and difficult to justify.

Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence gives organizations another option. It allows them to bring Microsoft’s AI capabilities into their existing contact center environment, helping them modernize customer and agent experiences without a rip-and-replace project. That means faster time to value, lower risk, and the flexibility to adopt AI on their terms.

Karl Phenix Vice President, Microsoft GTM & Solution, TTEC

Getting started with Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence

Getting started with Microsoft CCI is simple. Unlike most contact center solutions, agentic capabilities in Microsoft CCI are usage-based through Copilot Credits, which scales cost with adoption.¹

Sign in to the Microsoft CCI portal, connect to your existing contact center, and configure your first agent against a single self-service scenario, such as a high-volume call type that fills your queue today.

Microsoft CCI is available now in global public preview, with the exception of Austria. Innovations available soon will include real-time evaluations and coaching, contact center agent assist, and more. Try Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence today!

Explore Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence resources:

• Get started with Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence.
• Explore Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence documentation.
• Read about the new customer conversation harness.

¹Please note: some contact center vendors charge for API access or licenses to access their voice channel. Those costs are not included in Microsoft CCI.

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The traditional boundaries of business applications are disappearing. For decades, people went to their customer relationship management (CRM) to find customer context, take action, and move work forward. AI is inverting that model.

This shift creates two complementary opportunities: greater individual productivity and organization-wide process transformation. Customer context, expertise, and actions can now come directly into Copilot and Microsoft Teams, helping sales and service reps get work done where they already work. At the same time, autonomous agents can move defined processes across teams and systems, bringing people in when judgment, approval, or specialized input is needed.

Today, we’re announcing agentic innovations that advance both—helping sales and service teams work more effectively and enabling organizations to reimagine the processes that shape customer experiences.

Bringing CRM into the flow of work
Sales and service reps need customer context and the ability to act in the moment—whether preparing for a customer conversation, advancing a deal, or resolving an issue. With new Copilot skills and Dynamics 365 CRM in Teams, we’re delivering on the promise of agentic, headless CRM: keeping CRM as the trusted foundation for customer data and business processes while bringing expertise, insights, and actions into the places people already work.

Building on the new Copilot experience introduced on September 25, we’re extending Cowork, Autopilot, and Code with 30 new pre-built skills across Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Now sellers can surface at-risk deals, develop account engagement plans, and propose CRM record updates for review. Service reps can understand a customer’s case history, research an answer to a customer question, and draft a response—all within the Copilot experience. And marketers can use customer insights to tailor outreach, draft and review on-brand emails, and launch customer journeys with consent and readiness checks built in.

These skills are generally available in Cowork, with Autopilot in private preview and Code available through the Frontier Program. Custom agents can also use these skills to support enterprise-built workflows. Powered by Dynamics 365 model context protocol (MCP) servers and Microsoft’s trusted data foundation, they bring customer context and actions directly into the AI experiences where work happens.

With the new Dynamics 365 CRM in the flow of Teams experience, organizations can bring customer context spanning both sales and service directly into Teams conversations. Once a Teams channel is connected to a customer account, agents can deliver real-time updates such as pre-meeting briefs, case notifications, and account developments before engaging with a customer.

Whether resolving a service issue, collaborating on a customer account, or sharing updates across teams, employees can work from a shared view of the customer. The result is that CRM becomes a natural part of the workflow rather than a separate destination.

Dynamics 365 CRM in the flow of Teams experience is now available in public preview.

Also, Work IQ in Teams combines business intelligence from Dynamics 365 with workplace intelligence from Microsoft 365 in the collaboration hub where organizations around the world meet, connect, and make decisions. The result is simple: when employees are working in Teams, the customer context, insights, and actions they need from CRM can show up there too.

At BNY, our commercial teams live in Microsoft Teams. Integrating Microsoft Copilot, Dynamics 365, and our internal Eliza AI platform into Teams gives us a unified view of customer relationships across sales and service, directly where collaboration happens. By surfacing account insights, service updates, and important client developments in real-time, our teams can stay aligned, make informed decisions, and take action without switching applications. This connected experience helps our organization work from shared customer context, improve productivity, and stay focused on delivering greater value to clients.

Christian Lewis, Managing Director, Commercial Hub Co-Lead, BNY

Reimagining business processes with agents
Beyond improving individual productivity, autonomous agents can transform how work gets done across an organization by carrying defined business processes forward across teams and systems, bringing people in when judgment, approval, or expertise is needed. Service Agent and Sales Development Agent demonstrate this shift, taking on work autonomously while organizations manage and govern them through Agent 365.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Service Agent has new autonomous capabilities that extend customer service beyond the traditional support team. As customer care becomes a shared responsibility across the organization, Service Agent in Microsoft 365 now equips customer success managers, account teams, subject matter experts, and other employees with the context, knowledge, and actions they need to help customers directly in Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

For example, a customer emails an account manager about an unresolved billing issue. Service Agent understands the request, retrieves the relevant organizational knowledge, and drafts a response for review and approval. If the issue requires formal tracking, then it automatically creates a case in your CRM, including Dynamics 365, and shares the case link. Outside business hours, it resolves what it can and escalates to a specialist when needed, while managers retain visibility into actions and outcomes.

We are extending the early experience of Service Agent in Microsoft 365 to a select group of Frontier customers in private preview.

“At Grupo Águia Branca, Service Agent in Microsoft 365 is helping us reduce collaboration friction by creating shared context across teams, handling follow-ups, and routing questions to the right experts. We’re already receiving requests to extend it to other customer-facing teams, reinforcing its broad applicability across the organization.”

Thiago do Couto, Head of Data and Artificial Intelligence, Grupo Águia Branca

Following our announcement in 2025, Sales Development Agent brings autonomous AI to one of the most important challenges in sales: driving revenue by building and qualifying pipeline at scale.

Acting as a teammate, Sales Development Agent can help scale your team by researching prospects, personalizing outreach, managing follow-up conversations, and advancing qualified opportunities before handing them to sellers at the right moment. Sales Development Agent is managed in Teams, sends emails with its own Exchange account, and connects to leading CRM platforms. This flexibility helps teams to quickly scale pipeline generation and qualification and can expand their selling capacity without increasing headcount.

For a seller, that means starting the day with qualified opportunities already prioritized and the research and engagement history needed to take the next best action. Sales Development Agent continues nurturing earlier-stage prospects in the background, then hands them off when buying signals indicate they are ready for a human conversation. The result is less time spent on manual prospecting and follow-up, more selling capacity, and a stronger pipeline for sellers to convert.

Sales Development Agent is available in public preview and will start consuming Copilot credits on November 16, 2026.

In just three weeks from a limited-scale launch, Sales Development Agent has already unlocked new opportunities, driving meetings with 10+ customers we wouldn’t have otherwise reached. We’re excited to broaden its application across products and customer segments as we continue to scale its potential.

Prabhath Yeluri, Senior Manager, Sales Strategy, Adobe

Accelerate the move from legacy CRM to agentic CRM
Since entering public preview last month, Dynamics 365 Activate (public preview) has generated strong interest from customers and partners. At its core, Dynamics 365 Activate tackles one of the biggest barriers to moving from legacy systems to agentic business applications: the time and complexity of migration. Using AI, it conducts customer-authorized analysis of their current CRM environment and recommends a clearer, lower-risk path to Dynamics 365, helping organizations plan faster and modernize their workflows with confidence.

Dynamics 365 Activate’s discovery capabilities helped accelerate our migration assessment by providing greater visibility into our Salesforce landscape and key migration considerations. The insights enabled our teams to make more informed planning decisions and establish a stronger foundation for the Dynamics 365 transformation journey.

Sathish Arumugam, Manager, Software Development and Engineering, Comcast
Let’s get started
With Dynamics 365, organizations can bring trusted customer context and action into the experiences where people and agents already work, extend proven sales and service expertise through autonomous agents and reusable skills, and accelerate the move to an agentic CRM foundation. Explore the following resources to get started:

Explore Dynamics 365: Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Get started with Dynamics 365 Activate: Join the public preview of Dynamics 365 Activate or explore the documentation.
Learn more: Sales Development Agent, Channel Agent for Microsoft Teams, and how to use it in Dynamics 365 CRM.
Get early access to the latest Frontier AI releases: Enroll in the Frontier program to explore the newest AI innovations.

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Customer work spans applications, but the intelligence that powers it should move with the business—not remain locked inside customer relationship management (CRM).

Today, we’re advancing that vision with 30 new pre-built CRM skills for Copilot Cowork, now generally available. Autopilot is in private preview, and Code is available through the Frontier program. Across supported experiences, the skills work with more than 180 generally available tools across Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to bring customer context and actions into AI experiences.

Together, these capabilities help AI carry out CRM workflows so teams can deliver better customer experiences faster. Organizations can also extend the skills into custom agents and AI harnesses that support the workflows their teams already use.

This extends Dynamics 365 beyond CRM applications by bringing sales, service, and marketing expertise into Cowork, Code, and Autopilot. Cowork helps teams address immediate customer needs and prepare complete deliverables; Code supports reusable solutions; and Autopilot delegates recurring work. Dynamics 365 remains the system of action for customer data and business processes, while teams gain ready-to-use expertise where they work.

Bring CRM context and expertise into everyday work

Instead of returning to CRM for every task, sellers, service representatives, and marketers can use Dynamics 365 context within supported AI experiences.

Sellers can use skills to build competitive strategies, investigate deal risks, prepare for reviews with leadership or customers, and turn meeting outcomes into proposed CRM records and next actions. Service representatives can review account-specific case history, turn correspondence into structured case proposals, research relevant answers, and prepare customer responses. Marketers can prepare consent-aware outreach or create brand-compliant content directly in the flow of work.

For IT organizations, the opportunity is to make existing CRM capabilities available where teams work, reducing the need to build each sales, service, and marketing workflows from scratch.

Extend Dynamics 365 intelligence across AI experiences

Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Insights remain the systems of action for customer data and AI-enriched business processes. Model context protocol (MCP) server tools and skills make that context and those capabilities available in supported AI experiences, while Dynamics 365 remains the system of action. This is a core principle of Agentic CRM from Dynamics 365: bring CRM intelligence into the flow of work while preserving the underlying data, processes, and controls.

Here’s how they work together:

• Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Insights provide the customer data and business logic that ground agentic workflows.
• MCP tools make that context and business actions available to AI experiences.
• Skills provide reusable, task-specific guidance for using those tools to complete sales, service and marketing tasks.

Together, these layers create a reusable approach for extending Dynamics 365 capabilities into supported AI experiences and custom agents, rather than rebuilding them for each new interface.

Turn CRM tools into job-specific expertise

MCP tools give AI applications a standardized way to access CRM context and approved business actions. They package existing business logic into reusable building blocks that AI experiences can combine to support sales, service, and marketing workflows.

Skills add task-specific guidance to MCP tools: which evidence to consider, how to handle uncertainty, and what a useful output should contain. Retrieving an opportunity record, for example, is a tool action; assessing why a deal has stalled requires a skill that interprets the available context and structures a supported recommendation.

This distinction matters when organizations bring CRM-specific capabilities into their AI experiences or extend the capabilities into custom agents. Organizations can reuse the sales and service foundation rather than designing every procedure from scratch.

Combine skills to support complete customer workflows

Skills can support related steps in a business process, each contributing to a distinct analysis, recommendation, or proposed action. Teams can combine skills into complete workflows.

Help sellers analyze and respond to at-risk deals with Sales skills:

• Pipeline prioritizer flags opportunities that warrant attention.
• Deal rescue helps sellers investigate a stalled or at-risk opportunity.
• Customer engagement strategy recommends a 30-day account plan.

Resolve customer issues more efficiently with service skills:

• Case triage surfaces urgent issues.
• Answer research finds solutions from verified knowledge and similar cases.
• Draft customer reply prepares a response grounded in customer data.
• Customer brief and value metrics brings unified customer context and KPIs into either motion.

Skills provide focused sales, service, and marketing expertise; Cowork, Code, and Autopilot determine how teams put that expertise to work. With Dynamics 365 Customer Experience MCP tools and skills available across these experiences, teams can address an immediate CRM need, build a reusable solution, or delegate recurring work.

• Cowork: move customer work toward a decision. For a competitive deal, a seller can combine competitive strategy to address customer requirements and objections, business case composer to develop the investment case, and deal desk to prepare product and pricing configurations. In service, answer research and draft customer reply can help investigate applicable guidance and prepare a grounded response for review.
• Code: build reusable solutions around customer decisions. Teams can use skills to shape interactive applications around the questions and evidence that matter to the business. For example, the Sales Research Agent skill can guide pipeline and forecast analysis, while case triage and case preparation brief can inform a service workspace showing which cases need attention and why.
• Autopilot: explore recurring workflows in private preview. Sellers, service representatives, and marketers can use Dynamics 365 skills in Autopilot to support tasks such as reviewing deal changes, assessing documented case interactions, and identifying reusable guidance from verified resolutions. Recurring automation and background notifications remain subject to private-preview limitations for Autopilot.

Keep people in control of business actions

People remain in control of business actions. These examples do not imply automatic handoffs between experiences, identical functionality in every experience, or permission to send communications or change CRM records without applicable authorization. Across all experiences, teams should be able to distinguish clearly between what AI recommends, what a user approves, and what it actually changes.

The skill definitions distinguish between analysis, recommendations, proposed changes, and completed actions. For example, reconcile my opportunity can identify differences between customer interactions and the opportunity record and propose field-level updates. Draft customer reply prepares a response for review. Stage advance readiness assesses evidence against the organization’s criteria; a readiness assessment is not itself a stage change.

For IT teams, these distinctions create a practical validation test: users should understand the proposed action; execution should follow applicable authorization and review requirements; and the reported result should reflect what actually happened. A proposed update should not appear as a saved change, and a draft should not appear as a sent message. For solutions built in Code and recurring work delegated to Autopilot, IT teams should also confirm which actions are authorized, when review is required, and how unsuccessful or unconfirmed actions are reported.

Get started with skills using your existing access and controls

Organizations can enable Sales, Customer Service, or Customer Insights skills from the customization area of the desired Copilot experience, connect the appropriate accounts, and select a Dynamics 365 environment when prompted. These ready-to-use skills and CRM tools support common sales and service tasks without requiring teams to build every workflow from scratch.

The plugins respect applicable Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 permissions. Availability and use remain subject to administrator configuration, user or tenant consent, licensing, and organizational policies. Users can turn plugins off in Customize, and each plugin’s shared package makes its capabilities available across supported Copilot experiences.

Explore the broader agentic CRM vision

Read Jeff Teper’s new blog “Bringing CRM into the flow of work and agents into business processes,” for the full view of how Dynamics 365 brings customer context, expertise, and actions into Copilot and Microsoft Teams—and how autonomous agents move sales and service processes forward.

The post Bring Microsoft Dynamics 365 into the flow of work with 30 new CRM skills appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Work IQ now grounds Microsoft Copilot and agents in your core business data from Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Work IQ reasons across the productivity and business data that matters to your business. It’s available in preview starting September 30, 2026, with rollout continuing throughout October 2026.

By connecting and modeling your business once, you create a shared foundation for Copilot and agents: what your data means, how records relate, and which business rules guide the next step. You can then reuse that understanding and governed actions across Copilot and agent experiences without rebuilding context for every agent.

Business applications data and workflows in Work IQ shift the starting point from navigating apps to expressing what you need to accomplish. Your business applications remain the systems of record, but their data and processes are modelled into valuable, reusable business understanding and context made available through Copilot and agents.

Consider a sales lead preparing for a customer renewal. The opportunity looks healthy in the sales system, but Work IQ can bring additional business context to the picture. An unresolved service issue and recent customer email communications reveal that resolving the issue is critical to the renewal. Instead of simply retrieving records, Copilot can use that shared business understanding to help the sales lead determine what needs attention and what to do next.

The same pattern extends far beyond sales. Work IQ can bring business understanding and action to scenarios that span sales, service, finance, operations, and supply chain.

Users can ask about the business in Copilot and agents

The sales lead starts in Copilot Home, where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, the company’s contract management apps, and Microsoft 365 context are all available. Instead of choosing an app or assembling reports, they begin with a simple business question: “Which upcoming renewals need my attention, and what should I do next?”

Copilot Home connects the opportunity across three separate systems of record and returns a clear, actionable response.

• Copilot identifies a renewal that appears healthy in Dynamics 365 Sales but needs attention when viewed across the business.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service shows an unresolved equipment issue, and the custom equipment app links that issue to a site covered by the renewing contract.
• Recent customer emails and a Microsoft Teams meeting indicate that resolving the issue is a condition of renewal. The conversation continues but there’s no clear action plan.

The response brings data together and links to the underlying sources. Although the opportunity remains open, the customer’s commitment depends on a service improvement plan. The business understanding connects the account, equipment, and contract definitions rather than simply matching words across records.

How does this work?

The semantic model brings business context together by combining a focused data scope and semantic indexing with knowledge from your existing business applications. and organization-specific terminology. That means:

• Faster responses: Give agents a focused starting point with scenario-based table and column scope, combined with semantic indexing, helping them find relevant information faster.
• More accurate answers: Help agents understand what users mean—not just what the schema says—by drawing on business logic in views, forms, and relationships, plus a business glossary.
• Faster time to value: Build on the knowledge already captured in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Apps. The model automatically derives context from existing configuration, reducing the need to write instructions from scratch for each agent.
• Consistent answers across experiences: Every agent using the same semantic model shares a common understanding of your business, so users get the more consistent answers across channel and experience.

You stay in control: You can refine what agents learn by enabling or disabling signals, excluding outdated views or relationships, and adding business vocabulary the system cannot infer. The result is a reusable foundation grounded in your business definitions and data.

Apply the business’s playbook as a business skill

Finding the right information is only the first step. To carry out a business task, an agent also needs to understand how your organization works: which criteria matter, what evidence to consider, and when approval is required. Today, that knowledge is spread across experts, documents, and applications—or copied into individual agents as instructions that become harder to maintain over time (shown below is the “recommend supplier skill”).

Let’s go back to our sales lead preparing for the customer renewal. His organization has created a reusable business skill that comes with the company’s step-by-step instructions for successful account renewal:

1. Check unresolved critical cases.
2. Confirm a service improvement plan owner.
3. Document customer commitment.
4. Obtain approval before offering a concession.

The sales lead simply asks “Use our renewal readiness process to recommend the next steps” and the skill is invoked. The sales lead didn’t have to call a separate agent because business skills are an inherent part of the Work IQ across your Copilot experiences, so it’s already there and available for you to use. Copilot applies that guidance to the account and recommends a full-length, joint sales and service improvement plan.

Business skills turn that know-how into a reusable asset. A business skill combines instructions for a business task with the context and supporting resources an agent needs to follow them. Instead of recreating the process for each agent, teams can define it once and reuse it across all agents connected to Work IQ model context protocol (MCP) including agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

This results in business expertise that teams can maintain and reuse across agents, rather than another set of prompts to keep in sync.

Turn the recommendation into a governed action

Through governed actions built into Work IQ, the Copilot and agents present the proposed changes, follow any required approval, and update the source records within the user’s permissions. For example, the sales lead asks “add the service improvement plan to the renewal opportunity and create a follow-up task for the account owner.” Our sales lead can use a set of business apps domain of tools (integrated as part of Work IQ APIs) to accomplish a wide range of task across any Dynamics 365 or Power Platform application.

Here are just a few other governed actions:

• Reassign ownership: “Create a follow-up task for the account owner and assign the equipment issue to the regional service manager.”
• Escalate the service issue: “Escalate the unresolved equipment case, set its priority to Critical, and link it to the renewing contract and affected equipment.”
• Update the contract record: “Record resolution of the equipment issue as a renewal condition and add the agreed service commitments to the contract.”

Earlier, the sales lead was able to invoke a skill directly in their Copilot experience. The same is true for governed actions which are new business apps tools that we’re adding to the Work IQ APIs. For the sales lead, he can stay in the flow of work while making updates to the sources systems of record.

Make the approach reusable anywhere

The sales lead can continue to extend the same scenario.

• In Agent Builder, they create a focused renewal assistant grounded in selected business apps.
• In Copilot Studio, they add a guided service improvement process with actions and approvals. With custom code, developers bring the experience into their existing account workspace.
• In any custom agent or third-party agent building platform, you can create teams of agents that oversee end-to-end processes and recommend process improvement.

Each extension builds on shared business understanding and, where supported, reusable business skills—rather than creating another disconnected interpretation of the customer. This is all backed by Microsoft Dataverse, the trusted data storage layer for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Copilot Studio. Dataverse acts as the secure business store for semantic models and skills in Work IQ and enables the new Dataverse Ask API.

The Work IQ MCP Server, Work IQ command line interface (CLI), and Work IQ plugin for coding agents now also bring approved business context directly into the coding environment. You begin with the intended business outcome. The coding agent determines which skills, tools, and sequence to use, while the developer remains responsible for architecture, validation, testing, and user experience. You can build governed agent experiences faster because connected experiences use the same approved business context and reusable process definitions.

See it in action

Business apps in Work IQ can rationalize across an expanding range of data: Dynamics 365 CRM apps (Sales and Service), Dynamics 365 ERP apps (Finance and Operations*), Power Apps, and third-party line of business (LoB) apps.

Business applications in Work IQ connects business understanding across sales, service, finance and operations, and supply chain—unlocking scenarios that no single app can deliver alone. This shared customer view brings account activity, orders, and financial context together newly enabling cross-platform insights. For business users, the result is less time spent piecing together information across disparate systems and more coordinated action across the business.

See how PowerApps911 prioritizes account engagement by connecting customer signals using Work IQ

IT governance: Secure, governable, observable

Work IQ enables your organizations to create intelligent, observable agents under the purview of Microsoft Agent 365. Observable means understanding how AI uses that data and evaluating the value it creates. As an IT admin, you choose the business context those agents use and control which users, agents, and applications can access business data. Governable means that the IT admin is in full control deciding what business data becomes available to AI experiences.

But a single coordinated control plane does not mean one new portal—it means connected decisions across familiar experiences.

• The AI admin manages who can use AI and the organization’s AI policies in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• The Power Platform admin governs which business environments participate and who has access.
• Makers and developers shape how specific business data is exposed, within those admin boundaries.

Get started with business applications in Work IQ

For years the promise has been AI that understands your work. It now understands your business too—the records, the processes, and the way your organization actually gets things done. Try the public preview and see what you can build.

• Explore learn docs for business applications in Work IQ
• Learn more about Usage Based Billing for Work IQ
• Watch the business apps in Work IQ Podcast
• Watch James Oleinik walk through a business apps in Work IQ sales scenario

Read more Copilot announcements on the Official Microsoft Blog.

*Rolling out in late October 2026.

The post Work IQ: Business and workplace intelligence in the flow of work appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

AI is transforming not only what ERP can do, but how work gets done. In Dynamics 365, we’re advancing the financial and operational capabilities organizations depend on today while building the next generation of agentic ERP, where people and AI collaborate to accelerate decisions, orchestrate work, and drive outcomes across the business.

Our vision for agentic ERP helps organizations work across traditional application boundaries so organizational leaders can redesign how work gets done. This week, with our Dynamics 365 partners at the inaugural Directions for Enterprise in Copenhagen, the city where our ERP portfolio’s roots began over 30 years ago, we’re sharing our latest innovations across the Dynamics 365 ERP portfolio.

We are also moving beyond release waves with the AI at Work roadmap, giving customers and partners a more current view of innovation with an always-on roadmap. Complementing the AI at Work roadmap, this update shares a snapshot of highlights that are new and coming soon through March of 2027, helping organizations make faster decisions, prepare for change, and capture value from new Dynamics 365 ERP capabilities sooner.

Dynamics 365 Finance

Finance teams need to close the books accurately, plan with current information, and keep pace with regulatory changes. Our investments in Dynamics 365 Finance strengthen those core processes while expanding what AI can do across them.

The financial journals experience is being re-engineered to support higher transaction volumes and to manage cross-legal-entity complexity. Teams will be able to view intercompany transactions, create accruals, and preview allocations before posting. The Account Reconciliation Agent is also evolving to resolve exceptions in bulk, enabled by legal entity and module, addition of limits and notifications, and expanded agent suggestion summaries. Accounts payable (AP) automation is also improving, with AI recognition to capture invoices and AI suggestions to complete the finance entries, resulting in more touchless automation.

Finance Agent is bringing skills for reconciliation, data preparation, variance analysis, collections, and business intelligence across Microsoft 365 surfaces, such as Copilot, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, with native Dynamics 365 Finance connectivity and connectors to other systems to support more end-to-end business processes.

We’re also investing in planning, globalization, and compliance. The Business Performance Planning demo data and starter kit is generally available, bringing revenue, workforce, operating expense (OPEX), capital expenditure (CAPEX), and allocation scenarios together to make getting started easily. France e-invoicing and e-reporting support is also generally available, with support for the next phase of Brazil’s tax reform on the roadmap.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Supply chain teams need to anticipate and understand how change will impact operations and respond quickly. New capabilities in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management expand visibility and decision support across procurement, planning, supplier engagement, and warehouse operations.

Procurement agent impact analysis, now in public preview, traces supplier-proposed purchase order changes to affected sales, production, transfer orders, and projected inventory. In demand planning, generative insights for seasonality, trends, and signal correlations have been generally available since August, along with external signals such as inflation, pricing, and weather. AI-generated explanations of forecast drivers will follow.

Supplier Engagement is now in public preview, bringing onboarding, requests for quotation, purchase orders, and invoicing into a workspace and supplier portal across legal entities. We continue to invest in strengthening warehouse management system (WMS) capabilities to support complex warehouse operations and large-scale warehouse automations. For warehouse operations, dynamic item placement is coming next, adding more control over where inventory is stored and how storage policies apply.

Rental business models are becoming increasingly more important for asset-driven organizations, requiring availability, reservations, contracts, billing, and maintenance to work as a more connected process. Rental management capabilities are coming to public preview, designed to connect the rental lifecycle from quote and contract through inspection, return, and billing.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Project-based businesses need to manage changing scope and commercial terms while keeping project financials, billing, and resources aligned. New capabilities in Dynamics 365 Project Operations expand how organizations manage these areas as projects evolve.

Change order management, coming to public preview, provides a structured, auditable process for incorporating contract changes into billing schedules. Also up next, subscription billing will add recurring billing schedules, invoice generation, and flexible and tiered pricing.

For project financials, organizations can recognize project revenue against the original cost estimate rather than a changing estimate at completion when that accounting approach is appropriate. A new time-phased staffing view brings task assignments, project bookings, and available capacity into one timeline to support project staffing and utilization decisions.

Dynamics 365 Commerce

B2B buyers purchase for multiple locations, work across legal entities and fulfillment channels, and buy on organizational credit. Our investments in this release will reflect that. B2B self-service buyers will get one sign-in to shop, order, and track purchases across multiple outlets, with on-account and credit validation.

We are bringing B2B into the store enabling Trade POS. For wholesalers and distributors, the counter is where the business gets done, and the orders written there are deep, bulky, and rarely sourced from one place. We’re shipping order capture optimized for bulk ordering; contacts on orders and quotations in point of sale (POS), which matters when the buyer at the counter isn’t the account; order release from POS straight to the warehouse; and streamlined pickup workflows. In addition, we continue to enhance our retail store footprint with Tap To Pay on Android, label printing, and faster checkout.

Commerce is also extending into agentic experiences with Dynamics 365 Commerce Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in public preview. As our MCP server evolves, we plan to expand the set of tools and extensibility support to help customers and partners develop their own scenarios alongside ours. Through March 2027, the roadmap will include continued enhancements to core experiences with AI.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Scheduling field service means continuously balancing technicians, skills, locations, priorities, and time windows. The Scheduling Operations Agent, in public preview, helps dispatchers optimize multiple resources against defined objectives and review proposed changes before applying them. Recurring scheduled optimizations will be coming, allowing optimizations to run on a defined schedule.

Organizations often manage field execution, project planning, and financials across different systems, which can require manual reconciliation and make visibility more difficult. Connected workflows across Field Service, Project Operations, and Finance are helping complex service organizations plan, execute, cost, and bill work. Now generally available, you can create work orders directly from or link directly to project tasks, connecting field execution with project scope and task-based billing. Also, mobile-first notes experience, generally available, allows technicians to capture text, images, and video directly in the work order.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources

Dynamics 365 Human Resources is evolving across hire to retire, strengthening foundational HR while introducing new agentic capabilities for workforce operations. HR teams need to attract and hire talent, onboard people effectively, develop and retain critical skills, and deliver responsive employee services while managing increasing process and compliance complexity. Our investments strengthen the HR capabilities organizations rely on today while expanding how AI and agents can support work across the employee lifecycle.

Starting with how organizations attract and bring people into the workforce, we will have new capabilities for talent pools and referrals that help teams identify candidates, while digital offers and preboarding will support the transition from candidate to employee. Once people are in the organization, investments in learning, succession, and performance will help teams develop and retain talent. New capabilities for benefits, leave, HR-aware time entry, and HR reporting will support the ongoing work of managing and supporting the workforce.

As these core processes evolve, agentic capabilities create new ways for HR teams to get work done. Candidate assessment and onboarding bring agentic experiences into the hiring journey, while new HR business skills make more hire to retire workflows available to Microsoft Copilot, Copilot Cowork, and agents. An HR professional could, for example, initiate a workforce process directly from Copilot Cowork using natural language, with business skills carrying out the underlying actions in Dynamics 365 Human Resources. Together, our roadmap connects HR processes, workforce knowledge, and agents to help streamline HR workflows and better coordinate workforce activities, giving HR teams and managers more time to focus on the employee experience.

Dynamics 365 Sustainability

Accurate sustainability reporting requires strong governance, traceability, and auditability across the reporting lifecycle. The next release strengthens this foundation with capabilities that help organizations govern reported data, support audit and assurance processes, and improve confidence in sustainability disclosures. Snapshot-based data trails capture the source activity data, emission factors, global warming potential versions, filters, and calculation logic used to derive reported results, with an Excel-based output that supports audit review and validation. Reporting period controls allow organizations to lock data at the reporting year and entity level, helping maintain consistency while preparing disclosures and after reports are finalized. Governed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data collection further brings structured requests, due dates, reminders, supporting evidence, reviews, and approvals into the reporting process, improving accountability, data quality, and audit readiness.

Building the foundation for agentic ERP

With agentic ERP, business processes are less constrained by the boundaries between applications and tools. Copilot, Copilot Cowork, and agents can work across Dynamics 365, email, documents, and collaboration tools to reason over business context, coordinate work, and help complete business processes from start to finish. Dynamics 365 provides the business process foundation, grounding these experiences in enterprise data, business logic, skills, and security controls.

The Dynamics 365 ERP plugin for Copilot Cowork and the Dynamics 365 ERP MCP server, both generally available, allow agents to reason over and work with ERP data, actions, and attachments. Citations and deep links from Copilot responses connect users back to the underlying ERP records.

This agentic foundation will further expand to include business skills giving organizations a more centralized and governed way to define how work gets done. Organizations can define processes and procedures as reusable context and instructions for ERP agents, with access managed through Dynamics 365 security roles. Microsoft will also provide business skills for agentic business processes such as procure-to-pay, helping organizations adopt agent-driven experiences using reusable business context and actions.

Security and trust are fundamental to agent deployment. New capabilities in role-based access controls will allow organizations to define additional restrictions when a user is operating through Copilot Cowork or agents, enabling tighter control on what agents are allowed to do. Together, these capabilities connect the experience layer of Copilot and agents with the business process foundation in Dynamics 365—connecting how people work with how the business operates.

Adopt agentic ERP at the pace of your business

Every organization will take a different path to agentic ERP based on its priorities, existing processes, and business needs. Continuous roadmap publishing gives customers visibility into the Dynamics 365 capabilities available today and what is coming next, so they can adopt new capabilities when they are right for their business. As ERP becomes increasingly agentic, that visibility can help organizations plan with more confidence, take advantage of innovation as it becomes available, and evolve at a pace that aligns with their business priorities.

Explore the AI at Work roadmap to see the latest capabilities across Dynamics 365 ERP and share your feedback in the community forums via Dynamics 365.

The post Build the future of agentic ERP with new Microsoft Dynamics 365 capabilities appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Don’t let legacy applications hold back your adoption of innovation

Organizations around the world are exploring how AI and agents could redesign and transform their critical business processes. But for many, that ambition is constrained by the time, cost or complexity of moving from the business applications they rely on today to the agentic applications they need for the future.

Often, we hear from leaders that they feel locked into systems customized over years, surrounded by point solutions and connected through complex integrations. What began as an initiative to simplify and modernize the technology stack has, over time, accumulated layers of customization, integration, and business decisions, creating the very complexity it was intended to overcome.

Today, we are introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Activate, a comprehensive, AI-powered tool that can help partners and customers move to Dynamics 365 faster, with less manual effort and lower migration risk. It is informed by hundreds of successful, recent, Dynamics 365 migrations, to analyze requirements, generate configurations, and migrate data from applications like Salesforce. Our goal is to help partners and customers migrate to Dynamics 365, a leader in the customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) categories, with greater speed and confidence.

We are starting with a public preview for organizations moving from Salesforce to Dynamics 365, with additional Dynamics 365 implementation scenarios to planned for ERP and other business application providers.

Move beyond CRM lock-in. Activate what’s next

Now in public preview, the Salesforce migration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Activate combine CRM environment analysis, actionable migration recommendations, and automated migration execution with built-in guardrails in a Microsoft-hosted experience. It will analyze an existing Salesforce CRM environment and build a detailed understanding of its data, business processes, customizations, and dependencies. This context helps implementation teams determine what needs to move, identify potential issues earlier, and prepare for the transition to Dynamics 365.

But the goal is not simply to recreate an organization’s existing CRM in a new system. With Dynamics 365 Activate, partners and customers can quickly decide what to preserve, simplify, or redesign with Dynamics 365 and AI—spending less time reconstructing the past and more time building what’s next. ERP capabilities will be coming later this year.

Turn years of complexity into a blueprint for the future

Understanding an existing business application environment is difficult because it reflects years of decisions and customization. Data models reflect how the business has evolved, customizations capture unique requirements and exceptions, and integrations connect processes across the organization. While some of the complexity remains essential, others can be simplified and left behind.

Dynamics 365 Activate profiles data and entities, identify relationships and dependencies, and surface customizations that require attention. This gives implementation teams a clearer blueprint for what should move, what should change, and what should be redesigned before migration begins. In early customer engagements, Dynamics 365 Activate has processed over six billion data records, enabling teams to quickly profile large-scale environments and focus migration efforts where they will have the greatest impact.

The impact becomes more tangible when applied to a customer’s environment. For example, Comcast was looking for ways to accelerate its migration assessment and gain a clearer view of its Salesforce landscape. The CRM discovery capabilities in Dynamics 365 Activate provided greater visibility into the company’s existing environment and the key considerations that could inform its migration planning.

Dynamics 365 Activate’s discovery capabilities helped accelerate our migration assessment by providing greater visibility into our Salesforce landscape and key migration considerations. The insights enabled our teams to make more informed planning decisions and establish a stronger foundation for the Dynamics 365 transformation journey.

Sathish Arumugam, Manager – Software Dev and Engineering, Comcast​

Dynamics 365 Activate can also provide greater visibility and validation throughout implementation, helping organizations identify migration risks earlier and approach deployment with greater confidence.

Dynamics 365 Activate brings together the right combination of technology, expertise and partnership to help accelerate our transformation journey. The approach provides greater visibility and validation throughout delivery, helping reduce risk while improving confidence in business outcomes. For Ziwi Pets, the opportunity to achieve faster time-to-value and deliver a solution that closely reflects our operational needs was a compelling factor in moving forward.

Benjamin Boase, CEO - Ziwi Pets​

The value of this understanding grows as it carries forward. Context established during discovery can inform business-process decisions, solution design, configuration, migration, testing, and deployment rather than being repeatedly rediscovered, documented, and translated as work moves across teams.

For implementation partners, this means spending less time on resource-intensive workstreams like discovery and analysis, and more time to applying their methodology, industry expertise, solution architecture, and change management they bring to an implementation.

Human-led, AI-accelerated is core to how we operate at congruentX. As an AI-native company, we combine Microsoft’s AI migration tooling with cX IP and delivery accelerators to compress discovery and migration complexity, accelerate the path from legacy CRM to measurable, sustainable business outcomes, and keep our team focused on the high-value work that drives those outcomes. At cX, we do not just target outcomes, we guarantee them.

Marty Priest, Managing Partner & CEO, congruentX

Dynamics 365 Activate represents a significant step forward in how Dynamics 365 solutions can be delivered. By combining Microsoft’s innovation with a collaborative delivery approach, we’re able to accelerate the journey from concept to value while reducing implementation risk and improving solution quality. What excites us most is the true partnership between Microsoft, Fusion5 and our customers, working together in rapid cycles to validate outcomes earlier, make better decisions faster, and ultimately deliver business transformation, with greater confidence.

Kristy Brown, Chief Executive -New Zealand, Fusion5​

One implementation experience for your business changes

While we are beginning with CRM migrations, moving from one business application to another is only one reason organizations implement Dynamics 365. Some are starting fresh to support a new business model, process, or part of their organization. Others are moving from an existing CRM or ERP platform. And existing Dynamics 365 customers need to continually evolve as they enter new markets, add applications, or transform business processes.

Our vision for Dynamics 365 Activate is to bring one agentic implementation experience to all three journeys, helping organizations start, move, and grow with greater speed and confidence.

• Start new. When an organization implements Dynamics 365 to support a new business model, process, or part of the business, Dynamics 365 Activate can help teams move from requirements to a solution designed for how they want to operate.

• Move from a known source. Dynamics 365 Activate can begin with what already exists, using AI to understand the data, processes, customizations, and dependencies within the current environment. Salesforce is our first migration scenario, with additional CRM and ERP migration scenarios to follow. The goal is not simply to move what exists, but to give customer and partner teams the context they need to decide what should move, what should change, and what should be left behind.

• Grow what exists. For customers already using Dynamics 365, the next implementation might involve a new application, business process, geography, legal entity, or business unit. Dynamics 365 Activate can build on the environment and business context already in place, helping teams extend what they have instead of beginning each new project with another lengthy discovery effort.

The broader opportunity for Dynamics 365 Activate is to make implementation intelligent, continuous, and reduce time to value while reinforcing Microsoft’s ability to unify customer data, productivity, and business processes. We will continue investing across CRM and ERP workloads, with planned capabilities including agentic mapping and test sampling, natural-language migration guidance, and executive assessment summaries.

Whether an organization is starting, moving, or growing, changing the applications beneath the business should not require years of work before the next idea can become real.

Ready to get started? Join the public preview of Salesforce migration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Activate, or explore the documentation to learn more.

If you have any questions about how Dynamics 365 Activate will support your organization, we encourage you to reach out to our Microsoft representative or implementation partner.

The post Accelerate your move to agentic business applications with Dynamics 365 Activate appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Starting in September 2026, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft Dataverse roadmap content is joining the AI at Work roadmap, giving customers a single destination to discover upcoming capabilities, track rollout progress, and plan adoption across Microsoft’s business applications, productivity, and AI portfolio.

We’re making this change because of how our customers actually work. Few organizations run a single Microsoft product in isolation. Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Copilot, and custom agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio increasingly operate together to power business processes, employee productivity, and AI transformation. Bringing this content together means you can see what is coming across all of these products in one view, filter it to your own environment, and plan across products.

Moving from release waves to always-on disclosure

Alongside this move, we’re also changing when roadmap information appears. We’re retiring the twice-yearly release wave 1 and release wave 2 model in favor of continuous publishing. We’ll publish new capabilities as soon as plans are committed and ready to share, rather than holding them until the next scheduled wave.

Once published, each roadmap item remains current as it progresses through In Development, Rolling Out, and Launched, with status and rollout information updated as plans evolve. In practice this means most capabilities will appear on the roadmap sooner than they would have under the wave calendar, and you follow them all the way through delivery rather than losing sight of them after publication.

Working with AI at Work roadmap data

We have designed the AI at Work roadmap to support planning, not just browsing. You can:

• Filter roadmap views to the products that matter most to your organization.
• Export complete or filtered roadmap views to a CSV file.
• Subscribe to updates through RSS.
• Share roadmap links directly with stakeholders.
• Search and organize roadmap content using feature IDs and advanced filters.

Download the AI at Work roadmap guide to learn how to read and use the roadmap.

For teams that would rather query the roadmap than browse it, the Release Communications MCP Server pulls roadmap information directly into your own AI tools and workflows. Organizations can use it to generate customized roadmap views and planning materials, or to integrate roadmap data into existing tooling and business processes.

What’s not changing

This transition changes how Microsoft communicates upcoming innovation. It doesn’t change how our products are built, released, or deployed.

• Products with established release schedules will continue to follow those schedules.
• Message Center remains the source for tenant-relevant change notifications.
• Microsoft Learn remains the home for product documentation and implementation guidance.

Transition milestones at a glance

How to prepare for the transition

The transition will take place over the coming months, and there are a few simple steps you can take now.

Explore the AI at Work roadmap. Spend a few minutes reviewing the AI at Work roadmap and setting filters for the products and cloud environments your organization uses.

Subscribe to updates. See the AI at Work roadmap guide to learn how to use RSS to follow filtered roadmap views and continue using Message Center for changes specific to your tenant.

Update planning references. If your teams rely on release plan links, bookmarks, or internal roadmap documentation, begin updating those references to point to the AI at Work roadmap. Transition guidance will be available throughout the migration period.

Set your own review rhythm. Release wave 1 and release wave 2 gave organizations a fixed moment twice a year to gather stakeholders and plan the period ahead. We recommend establishing a recurring review, monthly or quarterly, depending on how quickly your organization adopts new capabilities, built on a saved filter and an RSS subscription.

AI at Work roadmap transition FAQ

Q. Will there be a September 2026 release wave 2 announcement or release wave 2 release plan?

A. No. New capabilities will be disclosed on the AI at Work roadmap as they become committed, rather than grouped into a twice-yearly release wave announcement.

Q. Will all existing Dynamics 365 and Power Platform roadmap content move to the AI at Work roadmap?

A. Roadmap content with a public preview or general availability date of June 1, 2026 or later will transition to the AI at Work roadmap. Earlier content remains available in existing release plans on Microsoft Learn for historical reference.

Q. What happens to release plans on Microsoft Learn?

A. Beginning in September 2026, new release plans will no longer be published to Release Plans on Learn. Existing release plans will remain available for historical reference, and Microsoft Learn will continue to serve as Microsoft’s documentation platform.

Q. Can I still export roadmap information?

A. Yes. See the AI at Work roadmap guide to learn how to export complete or filtered roadmap views to CSV. Organizations can also use the Release Communications MCP Server to integrate roadmap data into your own AI tools and workflows.

Q. Will my saved views in My Release Plans carry over?

A. Personalized saved views will no longer be available after Release Planner retirement. Personalized saved views are not available on the AI at Work roadmap.

Q. How will I see what has changed since I last looked?

A. The roadmap highlights new and updated capabilities, and both RSS and Message Center can notify you as changes occur.

Start planning ahead

Move beyond release wave announcements with a single destination to discover, track, and plan for upcoming innovations.

Explore the AI at Work roadmap

The post One always-on roadmap: Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Dataverse join the AI at Work roadmap appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Sales teams have access to more information in the flow of work than ever before. Customer conversations, customer relationship management (CRM) data, meetings, emails, service interactions, and market signals can all provide valuable context—but only if sellers can quickly turn that information into meaningful next steps.

For many organizations, that is becoming the real challenge. The issue isn’t a lack of data or activity. It’s helping sellers understand what matters most, prioritize effectively, and confidently take the next step with customers.

That’s why the sales force automation market is evolving. Organizations are increasingly looking beyond traditional CRM capabilities and evaluating how AI can help transform research, decision-making, and execution across the sales process. They’re looking for a system of action, not just a system of record.

We’re excited to share that Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CRM Sales Platforms, marking the sixteenth consecutive year in the Leaders quadrant.

Microsoft is named a Leader in 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CRM Sales Platforms

Read the report

Dynamics 365 Sales continues to evolve with AI-powered capabilities designed to help sellers work more efficiently and focus on customer engagement. Organizations can use these capabilities to streamline everyday sales activities, surface relevant information, reduce manual work, and support more informed customer interactions while maintaining control over how AI is applied within their sales processes.

Why this matters for sales teams

Sales organizations are under growing pressure to do more with less.

Buyers expect more personalized engagement, faster responses, and better experiences across every interaction. At the same time, sellers must navigate increasing amounts of information spread across multiple systems and touchpoints.

As a result, many teams are spending valuable time researching accounts, gathering context, updating records, and coordinating next steps rather than focusing on customer engagement.

This is where AI is beginning to play a meaningful role.

Rather than simply surfacing information, AI can help sellers synthesize insights from multiple sources, identify possible priorities, recommend actions, and support decision-making throughout the sales cycle. The goal is not to replace sellers; it is to help them move faster with better context and greater confidence—through a system of action that helps guide the next best step.

For sales leaders, these same capabilities can provide improved visibility into pipeline health, potential risks, and areas that require attention, helping organizations make more informed decisions and improve execution across teams.

How Microsoft is helping modernize sales execution with AI

Dynamics 365 Sales is designed to help organizations bring together CRM data, productivity tools, collaboration experiences, and AI-powered assistance into a unified sales experience. Gartner notes that Microsoft helps sales teams improve pipeline visibility and seller productivity through AI-driven research, analytics, and workflow automation. By combining CRM, productivity, and collaboration data with extensible AI agents, organizations can make more informed sales decisions while reducing manual effort.

For example, capabilities such as Sales Research Agent, Data Enrichment Agent, and Sales Agent help keep customer and opportunity data current, while Sales Qualification Agent can help sellers research, engage, and qualify leads more efficiently. Together, these tools help shift CRM from a system for recording sales activity to one that can actively support sellers throughout the sales process.

Microsoft also brings AI directly into the flow of work through Sales Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling context-aware meeting preparation, record summaries, follow-up assistance, and sales insights across Dynamics 365, Outlook, and Teams.

For organizations with unique business requirements, Copilot Studio and Microsoft Power Platform enable the creation of customized AI agents that connect systems, automate workflows, and support specialized sales processes subject to customer configuration, governance, and applicable product capabilities.

Together, these capabilities create a more connected selling experience—helping teams turn insights into action, collaborate more effectively, and execute with greater consistency across the sales cycle.

Hear from our customers

Sales Research Agent helps our sales leaders get from idea to business insight and action much faster. They can ask complex business questions in natural language and get clear, decision-ready insights in minutes. It simplifies disparate data sources into a centralized experience where we can make better planning and performance decisions with far less manual effort.

Karl Phenix VP, Global Microsoft Strategy & GTM at TTEC Digital

Sellers want more control and less manual work. Sales Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts them to update records, assign tasks, and keep data current—without ever opening the CRM.

Keith Mescha, Executive Director, Tech Consulting, EY

AI‑driven data enrichment will improve the quality, consistency, and completeness of customer data in Dynamics, reducing administration for every person on the sales teams while improving our ability to action, analyst, and improve customer outcomes.

Nick Segger, Head of Sales & Agency Transformation, NFU Mutual

As selling continues to evolve, Microsoft remains focused on helping organizations apply AI in practical ways that drive business outcomes while empowering sellers to focus on building customer relationships and moving opportunities forward.

1 Gartner, Magic Quadrant for CRM Sales Platforms, Adnan Zijadic, Guy Wood, Wendy Butler-Mafuz, August 6, 2026

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*This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft. 

**Microsoft Dynamic CRM has been recognized as a Leader since 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CMR Online has been recognized in the report since 2011. In 2017, Gartner combined all feedback for both products into a single Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales evaluation.

The post Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CRM Sales Platforms for the sixteenth consecutive year appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.