Catch all the highlights and demos from today’s Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event. In addition to newly-announced features, you’ll learn how companies like Lynk & Co, Lifetime Products, Stoneridge Software, AIS, and Schneider Electric are leveraging these new features to drive transformation.

Copilot and agents are the future of AI for business

2.1 million users engage with Copilot across Microsoft business applications every month, including employees at companies like PayPal, HP, Lumen, and McKinsey & Company. These Copilot experiences can drive new levels of productivity and efficiency while offering high standards of privacy, security, and compliance.

Moving forward, we envision AI-first organizations will comprise people, Copilot, and agents. Copilot is your AI assistant, designed to work for you. With Microsoft Copilot Studio, you can create, manage, and connect agents to Copilot. Organizations will have a network of agents, ranging from simple prompt-and-response systems to fully autonomous entities, that will operate on behalf of individuals, teams, or functions to execute and orchestrate business processes. Copilot serves as the interface for interacting with these agents, which can handle tasks such as accelerating lead generation, processing sales orders, and automating supply chains. At the Business Applications Launch Event, we showcased new features across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform that demonstrate what’s possible with Copilot and agents.

Thrive with customer experience applications

2024 release wave 2 brings exciting new features to Dynamics 365 customer experience apps designed to deliver connected and personalized experiences for both customers and employees. These innovations focus on optimizing customer interactions and streamlining sales processes across your organization.

New capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales include a multilingual bot (supported languages), Copilot-generated prompts, in-line email functionality, and more. These features are set to transform how businesses engage with customers and manage internal processes.

During the launch event, we showcased how Lynk & Co, an innovative car company, is leveraging the multilingual Copilot Studio bot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service. By using AI-powered voice recognition and Copilot-generated prompts, they’ve been able to optimize customer wait times and improve case resolution speed. These tools have enabled Lynk & Co to significantly reduce case review times while keeping their sales team in the loop, thanks to seamless data sharing between service and sales teams.

With Copilot’s intelligent automation, sales managers at Lynk & Co can now focus on building customer relationships rather than manually sorting through documents. By streamlining workflows and providing actionable insights, Copilot empowers sales professionals to work more efficiently and drive business growth. These new capabilities—combined with tools like real-time prompts, the Sales Qualification Agent, and account summaries generated by Copilot—offer businesses a modern, intuitive way to stay connected with customers and make smarter decisions faster.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Contact Center, and Dynamics 365 Sales.

Defining autonomous enterprise resource planning (ERP) with innovative agents

Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP solutions introduce significant enhancements aimed at improving both core functionalities and autonomous capabilities. These updates include the introduction of five autonomous agents for Dynamics 365 designed to streamline processes and boost organizational efficiency. By automating routine tasks, businesses can focus more on strategic decision-making and adapt to the dynamic market landscape.

For Lifetime Products, a leading global producer of outdoor consumer goods, these improvements have substantially enhanced the productivity of their finance team. The Account Reconciliation Agent for Dynamics 365 Finance autonomously identifies discrepancies between subledgers and ledgers, offering actionable recommendations and reducing manual effort. Additionally, automated bank reconciliation now matches transactions and summarizes histories, saving time and improving accuracy. These features have streamlined their month-end close process across multiple legal entities, enhancing both efficiency and compliance.

In parallel, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central updates have improved operations for more than 40,000 customers. The Sales Order Agent enables businesses like Stoneridge Software’s clients to manage sales orders without needing additional staffing, speeding up order processing while maintaining service quality. Interoperability between Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service has streamlined service order management, reducing manual data entry and errors. This automation allows technicians to work more efficiently, improving the overall customer experience and ensuring timely service delivery.

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resources, and Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Unlock value everywhere with Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio

Microsoft Power Platform offers new capabilities that enhance automation and app development using AI-powered tools. Copilot simplifies workflows, generates apps, and assists with complex processes, enabling businesses to manage tasks more effectively. With new AI-driven features across Microsoft Power Platform you can create solutions across your organization in record time.

At the launch event, we highlighted how Applied Information Sciences (AIS) is improving workforce efficiency in vendor invoice management using AI-enabled features in Microsoft Power Automate. With Copilot, automating processes such as routing and approvals based on predefined rules, AIS can handle a large volume of invoices daily, reducing manual input and increasing productivity. Users can easily update workflows with a few clicks, and the new summary functionality ensures clear tracking and sharing of updates.

AIS’s onboarding process for new consultants supports ongoing training with Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps. “Search with Copilot” allows users to retrieve records using natural language queries, while the AI-enabled paste feature efficiently fills out onboarding forms, reducing manual data entry. Copilot Studio improves IT Helpdesk automation with task assignment and grounding third-party data sources through knowledge management.  This provides analytics for monitoring agent performance and improves accuracy while also enabling a continuous improvement process.

Explore the release plans for Power Apps, Microsoft Power Pages,  Power Automate, and Copilot Studio.  

Bring automation to your business with Copilot

The latest improvements in Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Finance focus on enhancing user experience by automating routine tasks and providing actionable insights through autonomous agents. These advanced functionalities allow sales teams, customer service representatives, and finance professionals to offload repetitive activities, enabling them to concentrate on strategic initiatives. As a result, organizations can optimize efficiency and improve overall productivity.

For instance, companies like Lumen and Genpact have experienced significant time savings with Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales and Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance capabilities. Lumen reported a 94% reduction in research time for sales data, while Genpact achieved over a 50% decrease in payroll processing time through automated reconciliation. These enhancements demonstrate how Copilot agents are not only improving workflows but also positively impacting the workforce’s efficiency.

Schneider Electric is another example of a company benefiting from these advancements. Its sales team can now effectively prioritize leads with the help of the Lead Intelligence Agent, which analyzes customer interactions and external data to deliver enriched insights. This streamlined approach allows sales representatives to engage with prospects more strategically, ultimately supporting their goal of enhancing efficiency and driving revenue growth.

Explore the release plans for Microsoft Copilot for Finance, Microsoft Copilot for Service, and Microsoft Copilot for Sales.

Business Applications Launch Event

Dive deeper into the new and enhanced AI capabilities included in the 2024 release wave 2.

Learn more

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Join us for the on-demand Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to discover the latest enhancements in Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft Copilot apps. The event features in-depth demos of new autonomous agents and other capabilities designed to optimize your workflows and streamline operations.

Don’t forget to review the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. Stay updated on the latest features and upcoming enhancements, and create your personalized release plan using the release planner to ensure you’re equipped with the knowledge needed to maximize these new capabilities.

The post 2024 release wave 2 launches with hundreds of Copilot capabilities appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

In this new era, the true visionaries are those taking advantage of low-code and AI tools to build the solutions that directly affect people’s jobs and lives. The Microsoft Power Platform community keeps showing us the next frontiers of innovation and creativity. These stories from our community below showcase some of the most innovative and inspiring work we’ve seen.

• Minding mining trucks’ massive tires: Donia innovates with low-code at Kal Tire.
• A chatbot for business travel: Daniel builds an AI chatbot for his travel agency.
• From the mailroom to Microsoft MVP: Dian transforms her career with low-code.
• Supporting parents and children with autism: Raghav builds an app with low-code and AI for his son with autism.
• Modeling fashion and new technologies: Yumu goes from the runway to building with low-code.

At the third annual Power Platform Community Conference, we are excited to showcase some of the groundbreaking work emerging from our global community.

Minding mining trucks’ massive tires

Donia Strand is a Senior Business Systems Analyst at Kal Tire in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada. As the company’s Microsoft Power Platform manager, her work spans the experience of building her own solutions as a non-technical maker, to working with professional developers to build solutions.

To assess the viability of entry roads at mine sites around the world, the company’s Mining Tire Group performs “site severity” surveys. These surveys helped understand the mine site conditions and extend the lifespan of the costly mining haul truck tires. Donia explains that previously, “Supervisors used to spend up to an hour and a half entering data into Excel, taking photos, and then building out reports.”

Kal Tire operations managers in Canada brought this business issue to Donia and together they saw the opportunity to use Microsoft Power Apps to build an app that manages the surveys. Now, Kal Tire’s Site Severity App, developed in conjunction with MNP Digital, runs on mobile devices and automates the mining site data collection process. The app safely caches data while offline—a common necessity in remote mining sites. Microsoft Power Automate then generates polished PDF reports complete with visual graphs, ready to be shared with stakeholders.

“By integrating the app’s data into Power BI, the Mining Tire Group gained a comprehensive view of mine conditions across all regions,” Donia says. “This leads to better decision-making and reduces wear and tear on mining truck tires.” It also saved substantial time and resources, allowing supervisors to concentrate on their most critical tasks.

Looking forward, Donia is particularly excited about using Microsoft Copilot Studio to create new types of custom copilots for Kal Tire. Her advice to others who are just beginning with Microsoft Power Platform is: “Start simple, experiment, and you’ll be amazed at what can be created. The [Microsoft] Power Platform and AI are game changers: Saving time and opening new possibilities.”

A chatbot for business travel

Daniel Schaurich de Oliveira is the founder and owner of A1, a business travel agency based in Florianopolis, Brazil. For nearly 30 years, Daniel has focused on providing international and domestic travel services for corporate clients.

The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic presented an unexpected opportunity for Daniel to explore new ways to improve his company. With travel restrictions severely impacting the industry, Daniel used the downtime to explore how Microsoft Power Platform and AI could transform his daily operations. He started by automating alerts and generating reports, but soon embarked on more ambitious projects to reimagine daily business.

“I have no IT background and never studied coding,” he says. “But I used Copilot Studio to develop a chatbot to assist my team with various company and industry inquiries.” Daniel was concerned that employees would be slow to adopt a new AI-powered chatbot, so he named it “Fifi” (whose name is akin to “a gossiper” in Brazilian Portuguese) and gave it a personality to make her a humorous, yet knowledgeable, addition to A1.  

Fifi has streamlined internal operations, reducing the time Daniel and his team spend on routine inquiries and allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks. “Nowadays, Fifi is not just a chatbot or digital tool. She is a teammate,” Daniel says. “She’s our essential colleague. And whenever Fifi’s offline, we joke that ‘Fifi’s out sick today’.”

Daniel concludes, “The [Microsoft] Power Platform is amazing. It allows me to build my ideas and improve my business in ways that I never imagined were possible.”

From the mailroom to Microsoft MVP

As a young woman moving from the Netherlands to the US, Dian Taylor worked in a clothing store and the mailroom of a large American office supplies retailer. Later, she transferred to human resources at a bank. Eventually, she learned about Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

Now, working in presales at RSM US LLP in Boca Raton, Florida, Dian is tasked with creating a large volume of engaging and effective demonstrations. Even without a formal technical background, Dian uses Microsoft Power Platform to build copilots and apps that can be seamlessly integrated into her demo presentations.

“I use Copilot Studio a lot; not just to create custom chatbots to utilize on websites and Power Pages but also to connect to Dynamics 365 Customer Service,” she says. “It’s great for demos and helps take the pressure off our live agents.”

Dian also credits Microsoft Power Platform with making her job more fulfilling. “The advice that I would give somebody starting out in tech is to keep going and don’t feel overwhelmed,” she explains. “It’s okay not to know everything all the time. Take a step back, learn to use the right tools, and you’ll get there.”

Dian should know as she is now a four-time Microsoft Business Applications most valuable professional (MVP).

Supporting parents and children with autism

Raghav Mishra is a Product Architect at the Sprint365 consultancy in Copenhagen, Denmark. He discovered Microsoft Power Platform’s potential while developing new business solutions for a hackathon and realized that the same tools could be applied to address personal challenges at home. He was inspired by his wife who dedicated several hours each week creating visual instruction sheets for their son with autism. Raghav explains, “She made one-page instruction sheets with hand-drawn images and written directions to guide our son through daily activities like brushing his teeth or removing his shoes.”

Raghav developed the Make Life Easy app using Microsoft Power Platform to automate the creation of these daily instructions. Raghav leveraged Power Apps, AI services, and the DALL-E API to generate both text and images, which are then saved in Microsoft Dataverse and compiled into a one-page, colorful PDF. This document serves as an engaging visual guide for their son.

“I’d never worked with canvas apps,” he said. “The platform’s predefined structure allowed me, as a citizen developer, to build the app from scratch within just five days.”

The app streamlined their family’s routines, cutting down the time spent on creating instructions and making the process clearer and more enjoyable for their son. What once took hours now only requires a few minutes, allowing the family to spend more quality time together. “This app has improved our daily lives,” Raghav says. “I really hope it can also help other families with similar needs.”

Modeling fashion and new technologies

Yumu Hatakeyama, a Microsoft Power Platform Evangelist at Akkodis in Tokyo, Japan, began his career as a fashion model. However, over time, it became increasingly difficult to make a living in the modeling industry. Yumu went back to school to study hardware engineering.

When COVID-19 struck, he was working in automotive parts manufacturing, creating circuit boards. As his company started to push for digital transformation, Yumu took the initiative to learn about Microsoft Power Platform and play a pivotal role in the transition. 

He had never created an app before. Drawing on his experience in the fast-paced fashion industry, he understood the importance of managing schedules. He learned how to use Power Apps and quickly put it to use by creating an attendance management app for remote workers during the pandemic. It visualized attendance data in an accessible dashboard format.

The app had an immediate impact, streamlining attendance across their team of 50 employees. Building on this success, he began incorporating Microsoft AI Builder into his work. Instead of manually inputting data from PDF invoices and receipts, the team trained custom AI models to automate this process, significantly reducing errors and saving time.

Now, he works full-time as a Microsoft Power Platform Evangelist. Yumu says, “Originally, I was in the business of promoting and selling fashion. I transitioned from evangelizing fashion to evangelizing technology. It seems like quite a shift, but the goal remains the same: to deliver better products to everyone.”

When speaking to new Microsoft Power Platform users, Yumu jokes, “If a former fashion model can achieve digital transformation with the Power Platform, you can definitely do it too.” His dream is to spread the use of Microsoft Power Platform across Japan, from large corporations to small and medium-sized businesses, helping everyone to imagine and build their own solutions.

The Future of Microsoft Power Platform is innovation and empowerment

It’s clear that the future of innovation is in the hands of those who do the work and turn their ideas into reality. The incredible advances created by the global Microsoft Power Platform community exemplify the power of low-code and AI tools to transform businesses and careers.

We can’t wait to see many of you at the Power Platform Community Conference in Las Vegas and to witness what we’ll achieve together in the coming years. With the recent advances in Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Power Platform development will only get easier and more powerful.

Join the Power Platform Community

Connect with peers and experts

Learn more

The post How the Microsoft Power Platform community is using low-code and AI to transform work and lives appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

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 

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 

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 Power Platform Blog.

If your organization is already using Microsoft Power Platform and you’re interested in sharing your insights and experiences, we’d love to hear your story.

Cineplex benefits from Microsoft Power Platform automated solutions

Customer  

Cineplex  

Country  

Canada  

Industry  

Media 

Cineplex is one of Canada’s leading media and entertainment companies. To streamline business processes, over 100 employees are using Microsoft Power Platform to develop innovative automation solutions for finance, guest services, and other departments. Watch the video to learn how Cineplex saves over 30,000 hours a year in manual processing time.

See full story.

Leroy Seafood Group drives digitization with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer

Leroy Seafood Group

Country

Norway

Industry

Forestry and Fishing

The Leroy Seafood Group, a leading global producer of salmon and trout, has leveraged Microsoft Power Platform products to drive its digitization strategy, significantly enhancing data sharing and operational efficiency. By purchasing more than 4,000 Premium Microsoft Power Apps licenses and implementing an automated Center of Excellence, Leroy has empowered its employees to develop innovative enterprise applications. One such mobile app, for example, has standardized and centralized data reporting from offshore crews, improving reporting accuracy by 11.6%, equating to an USD 8 million saving. Leroy’s structured development approach, supported by the Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit, ensures robust governance and quality. Managed Environments have further strengthened development controls, enabling seamless innovation and the potential for additional applications, such as health and safety training tools. Overall, Microsoft Power Platform has been pivotal in enhancing Leroy’s data-driven decision-making and operational excellence, aligning with its vision of becoming a leader in sustainable seafood.

“When we started with [Microsoft] Power Platform, we made the decision to jump directly into [Microsoft] Dataverse as was saw it as the most secure and reliable way to store and manage our data—especially our mission critical data. It was a natural choice for us and it has worked amazingly well.”

Andreas Fauske: Team Lead Power Platform, Leroy

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Peppermint Technology boosts law firm efficiency with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer 

Peppermint 

Country 

United States  

Industry 

Professional Services 

Peppermint Technology redefines legal business processes with their innovative Copilot, integrating seamlessly with Microsoft Power Platform to boost law firm efficiency. By using enterprise data in Dataverse and SharePoint, Peppermint’s solutions empower lawyers to streamline client services, enhancing productivity and client engagement with minimal effort. Learn more by watching the video. 

See full blog.  

Majesco expands it’s copilot capabilities with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Customer

Majesco

Country

United States

Industry

Professional Services

Majesco, an insurance industry leader, used Copilot Studio, to build a comprehensive copilot that is embedded in all twelve of its insurance software products, a task that previously took nine months for a basic version. This shift reduced reliance on a small data science team, allowing 400 developers to handle 95% of the copilot’s functionalities independently. Integrated with Microsoft Power Automate, the copilot can perform diverse actions like data summarization and task management, significantly improving efficiency. The new copilot processes inquiries and actions in less than 30 seconds, saving substantial time and costs. This advancement addresses industry challenges such as underwriter shortages and easing the learning curve for new hires, providing real-time support and reducing administrative burdens. Copilot Studio has accelerated Majesco’s market delivery, giving it a strong first-mover advantage and progressing toward a fully AI-driven user interface.

“Using Microsoft Copilot Studio has accelerated our speed to market and given us a strong, first-mover advantage.”

Manish Shah: Chief Product Officer, Majesco

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Call2Recycle optimizes its operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform

Customer

Call2Recycle

Country

United States

Industry

Other

Call2Recycle, operator of the largest battery recycling program in the U.S. and Canada, streamlined its operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, saving approximately USD 25,000 annually. By integrating Dynamics 365 for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), the nonprofit automates processes across operations, finance, services, and sales, reducing manual work and increasing efficiency. This setup saves hours on tasks like invoicing and vendor payments, allowing the organization to focus on its sustainability mission. Additionally, Call2Recycle launched an e-bike battery recycling program using Microsoft Power Pages, seamlessly integrated with Dynamics 365. This system supports more than 2,000 retailers, enabling efficient enrollment, training, and management of battery collection. Automation through Power Automate and real-time monitoring with Microsoft Power BI ensure streamlined operations. The flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Power Platform are crucial for adapting to the rapidly changing battery market, driving growth, and enhancing environmental impact.

“By automating processes in Business Central, we save 10 hours per month on invoicing, 8 hours on banking activities like vendor payment uploads, and 12 hours on processing vendor invoice approvals.”

David Ainsley: Director of IT, Call2Recycle

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Laris Hotels Group improves booking data access using Microsoft Power Platform

Customer

Laris Hotels Group

Country

Poland

Industry

Other

Laris Hotels Group, one of the largest hotel chains in Krakow, Poland, improved its access to booking data using Microsoft Power Platform products. Previously reliant on a cumbersome weekly manual process, Laris implemented desktop robotic process automation (RPA) in Power Automate to pull daily data from a legacy property management system (PMS). This data is now seamlessly integrated into Power BI for customized reporting. With faster, daily updates, Laris enjoys a clearer view of booking data, increasing average hotel occupancy by approximately 15%. The new system allows for detailed analysis, including commission and tax breakdowns, and aligns booking data with budget targets. Reports are automatically distributed via Microsoft Teams, ensuring timely information for decision-making. Developed by Atteli, a Microsoft partner, the low-code solution was created in just two weeks, offering cost-efficiency and easy maintenance. Beyond improving internal operations, Laris plans to extend this system to support other hotels through its Hotel Sales Link initiative. The scalable solution, ready to handle various PMS systems, positions Laris for further innovation and enhanced data-driven decision-making, with potential expansions into Microsoft Fabric for deeper insights.

“Our [Microsoft] Power Platform system provides us with greater availability of booking data, with average hotel occupancy increasing by approximately 15% as a result.”

Chris Barker: International Sales Director, Laris Hotels Group

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Nsure streamlines customer processes with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer 

Nsure 

Country 

United States 

Industry 

Insurance 

Nsure.com enables consumers to compare quotes from over 50 home and auto insurers and to buy online in minutes. For over five years, the company has been using Microsoft Power Platform to automate business processes. Watch the video to see how Nsure used the generative AI capabilities in Microsoft Power Automate, including text recognition and sentiment analysis, to reduce manual processing time by 60% while also reducing associated costs by 50%. 

See full story. 

Zurich empowers developers with Microsoft Power Platform

Customer  

Zurich 

Country  

Switzerland

Industry  

Insurance 

To help enable fusion development, drive innovation, and streamline operations across the global enterprise, citizen and pro developers at Zurich Insurance Group are using Microsoft Power Platform for low-code and pro-code business app development, process automation, and more. Check out the video to learn more.  

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This morning’s Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, available to view on-demand, includes highlights and demonstrations of features from the release wave, as well as a firsthand look at how organizations like Lenovo, Sonepar, Ford, Omnicom Group, and G&J Pepsi are using these capabilities in transformative ways.  

Extend Microsoft 365 with role-specific Copilot capabilities

The central theme across this release wave is how, across the business and productivity applications organizations depend on, Copilot is helping to better empower employees, improve business processes, and engage customers. In fact, 68% of surveyed Copilot users told us that it helps them jumpstart their creative process, and 70% said Copilot made them more productive so that they could do their job faster and easier.¹

Since each role is unique, we have extended Copilot for Microsoft 365 even further to tailor Copilot experiences for specific business functions. This includes Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Service and the recently announced Microsoft Copilot for Finance—all integrated with the apps and data you use every day so that you can spend less time searching for data and more time engaging with customers and driving a strategic agenda for your organization.

Underpinning these Copilot extensions is Microsoft Copilot Studio, which makes it easy to customize and build your own customer and internal-facing copilots using your data and workflows. We are excited to dive deeper into Copilot this release wave and help you use it to transform your business.

Business Applications Launch Event

Tune into demos of new capabilities, on demand.

Watch here

Transforming customer and field service with generative AI 

Release wave 1 introduces new Copilot capabilities to help customer service agents and frontline workers boost efficiency, reduce training costs, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. 

New Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Microsoft Copilot for Service—which infuses generative AI into your existing contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions—include Copilot-drafted knowledge articles to streamline the knowledge creation process, as well as proactive Copilot responses for conversations with customers. 

At the launch event, we shared how Lenovo is integrating Dynamics 365 Customer Service, third-party solutions, and custom bots to scale its innovative service delivery solution, Premier Support Suite for PC devices. Thousands of agents can now provide omnichannel support to customers in 200 regions and in more than 40 languages globally.   

We also spotlight how G&J Pepsi, the largest family-owned and operated Pepsi franchise bottler in the U.S., has reduced operating costs by 6.6% and increased revenue by 8% with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Sales, and Microsoft Power Platform. They expect Copilot to further streamline work order management and enhance their best-in-class service by giving the field service teams access to a complete picture of their accounts in real time.   

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Copilot for Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service.  

The future of enterprise resource planning (ERP)

ERP is going through a once-in-a-generation transformation. For decades, employees across the globe have manually completed a significant amount of ERP processes daily to keep their companies running. Microsoft is pioneering a new vision for ERP—a world where ERP solutions powered by AI operate more independently, continually adjusting to evolving circumstances, involving users when necessary, and opening new possibilities for businesses.  

At the launch event, we spotlighted how Omnicom Group, a global leader in marketing communications, envisions leveraging Dynamics 365 for a new, autonomous ERP model that will help it to accelerate growth, become more efficient, and power its ability to innovate. They can use the new Copilot to optimize their strategic decision-making and transform their operational processes, such as prompting Copilot to identify opportunities for growth expansion and gauge the performance of initiatives.  

We also introduced new Copilot capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that help small and medium businesses to automate processes and complete tasks faster. A new Copilot chat pane allows users to quickly find and go to data, reveal insights, and get help with tasks. Users can prompt Copilot to create sales lines, match e-invoices with purchase orders, answer questions about data analyses, help with repetitive tasks, and more.  

Other updates include sustainability tracking, the ability to connect Business Central with Shopify B2B (business-to-business), and developer tools for Copilot.  

Explore the release plans for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Microsoft Copilot for Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Business Central.  

Accelerate development with Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform is the rapid modernization platform of choice of hundreds of thousands of organizations, providing AI-first, low-code tools to build enterprise-wide solutions and automations. Copilot is seamlessly integrated across Microsoft Power Platform, empowering you to create applications, automations, and analytics through simple, natural language and conversational interactions.  

At the launch event, we demonstrate how Ford is leveraging Copilot to produce connected services to enhance the driving experience. Like Ford, organizations can take advantage of new Copilot capabilities in this release wave to transform workflows. Microsoft Power Automate introduces new ways to create cloud flows, desktop flows and process mining using natural language prompts. Microsoft Power Apps accelerates app development with enhanced user reasoning and data insights in custom apps. Microsoft Copilot Studio enables organizations to build custom copilots, with new ways to build custom prompts and generative actions, along with access to OpenAI’s custom GPTs and AI Builder models for extended scenarios.   

Explore the release plans for Power Apps, Microsoft Power Pages, Power Automate, Microsoft Power BI, and Copilot Studio.  

Deliver more personalized customer experiences  

Buyers expect businesses to cater to their unique set of needs. To do so, marketing and sales teams need a unified understanding of the customer and the ability to orchestrate experiences across marketing, sales, and service.  

Sonepar is leveraging Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to become the first global B2B electrical distributor to provide a fully digitized and synchronized omnichannel experience to every customer. With Copilot alongside sellers, Sonepar can personalize marketing content, improve the quality of leads, and enhance every engagement with customers.  

New Copilot capabilities in release wave 1 provide recommendations, summarize data, retrieve information, and perform actions in context and within the flow of work—so they can stay productive and focus time on engaging customers.  

Explore the release plans for Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Sales, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. 

Watch the virtual Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event  

We invite you to tune into the launch event on-demand for more details and demos of new capabilities across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. In addition, you can explore several special topic presentations covering the evolution of generative AI, including small language models and AI experiences to help transform strategic, cross-domain business problems.  

Be sure to read the detailed release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform and keep track of what’s new and upcoming, as well as create a personalized release plan in the release planner.  

Sources:

¹ Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report: What Can Copilot’s Earliest Users Teach Us About Generative AI at Work? (microsoft.com) 

The post 2024 release wave 1 kicks off with hundreds of AI-powered capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Redefine what’s possible with AI 

Join Microsoft product leaders and engineers on April 10, 2024, for an in-depth look at the latest AI features and capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. You’ll learn how advances in AI and Microsoft Copilot can help you connect teams, processes, and data, and respond to changing business needs with greater agility—and see how organizations across several industries already take advantage of the newest AI features to streamline business processes and accelerate low-code development. 

Register now to see key presentations from Microsoft leaders, including:

• Business Applications Launch Event – 2024 release wave 1. Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, will provide opening remarks and shed light on the strategy and vision behind the new Copilot and core platform capabilities in 2024 release wave 1. 
• Leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development with Microsoft Power Platform. Sangya Singh, Vice President, Microsoft Power Automate, will talk about the way Microsoft Power Platform is reinventing software development with AI-powered no-code development and how Copilot is making development more accessible by enabling people to create innovative solutions through natural language.
• Redefine how business is done in the new era of generative AI. Hear Julie Strauss, Vice President, Generative AI Experiences – Business Applications,discusshow next-generation business application experiences powered by generative AI will help businesses solve strategic, cross-domain business problems by bringing together business domain insights and business process data. See how new capabilities combine with existing task-based Copilot experiences to allow any business user to explore business optimizations powered by a completely new way to discover, visualize, and interact with business data.  

And that’s just a small sample of what we’ve got planned. You’ll also hear directly from other Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI and low-code solutions and get timely tips on how to use these new technologies to take on your business’s toughest challenges. If you have questions about new AI features, how Copilot experiences work, or what’s new in low-code tools, take advantage of the live Q&A chat with Microsoft experts throughout the event. 

Explore new AI features and capabilities for Microsoft Power Platform

The 2024 release wave 1 contains hundreds of new features across Microsoft Power Platform applications—here are just a few of them:   

• Microsoft Power Apps now includes Copilot features to accelerate app development with AI and natural language, allowing customers to create enterprise grade apps and use their data and systems of record faster. Microsoft Power Pages now includes Copilot experiences that support building intelligent websites, including design, page layouts, content editing, data binding, learning, chatbot, accessibility checking, and securing the site faster.
• Power Automate will now have Copilot capabilities across cloud flows, desktop flows, and process mining. Customers can use natural language to discover optimization opportunities, build automations, and quickly troubleshoot issues.
• Microsoft Copilot Studio is introducing rich capabilities to integrate with OpenAI GPTs, along with new channels such as WhatsApp and software lifecycle capabilities, such as topic level import/export and role-based access control.

See what AI can do for you

Microsoft customers are already doing amazing things with the new AI features in Microsoft Power Platform, and we can’t wait to inspire you with key customer stories. Register now and join us to see what’s new in the 2024 release wave 1.  

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event  

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 

9:00–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)  

Business Applications Launch Event

See key presentations from Microsoft leaders.

Register now

The post Join us to see what’s new with AI in Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

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

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

Highlights from Dynamics 365 

Dynamics 365 release wave

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

Learn more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform

Check out the 2024 release wave 1 early access features.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early access period 

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

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

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

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

Some of the themes at the event include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transforming ERP with AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enhancing customer experience through AI-driven transformation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform release planner for more details.

Tune in to the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event 

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

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

Watch now

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

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

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

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

That’s why industry leaders are turning to AI-powered, low-code and no-code solutions as a way to help their people do their jobs more efficiently and help their business stand out among competitors. The potential for AI at work is practically endless. Understanding how your teams can accomplish more with AI is key for any business in the digital space.

Business Applications Launch Event

Experience the new era of AI-powered business

Register for the event

Explore the future of AI

Join us for a first look at the latest innovations for Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 at the tenth Microsoft Business Applications Launch event on October 25. Hundreds of new features, plus tons of AI updates—it all adds up to one great opportunity to find out more about AI and what it can do for your organization.

Register now to hear from thought leaders and Microsoft Power Platform experts about the future of AI, and be first to catch a glimpse of the latest AI capabilities helping businesses work more effectively, including:

• New copilot features in Power Apps that boost developer productivity, give every user access to natural language assistants, and generate admin insights.
• Improved copilot experience in Power Pages that makes building websites, connecting to your data, and managing it all easy.
• The latest AI in Power Automate that makes automating and authoring faster by helping you build new cloud and desktop flows with improved process mining.
• New AI features in Power Virtual Agents like multilingual bots, generative answers and actions, and interactive voice response (IVR) integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

You’ll also get updates on Power BI, Microsoft Dataverse, governance and administration, solution extensibility, and ISV experiences to help you analyze, act on, and automate the data that fuels your business.

Hear from Charles Lamanna, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Platforms, about how our customers are innovating every day with Microsoft Power Platform, then catch the latest AI capabilities in action, with real-world demos and guidance on how to:

• Develop stronger insights, reduce costs, and enhance creativity with intuitive, AI-powered solutions.
• Help employees and teams focus on revenue-generating work by creating automation solutions that let them avoid repetitive tasks.
• Elevate collaboration by connecting people, data, and processes across your organization with the newest AI-powered tools.

Insights on how AI can empower your employees

To understand what’s ahead in AI-assisted low-code and no-code solutions—and what your employees can do with them—you’ll hear directly from Microsoft leaders about their vision for AI, customer service, and operations. Get timely tips on how to use these brand-new technologies to take on your business’ toughest challenges, and if you have questions about new AI features, how Copilot experiences work, or what’s new in low-code, stay for the live Q&A chat to get them answered by experts.

10 events’ worth of innovation

It’s hard to believe this will already be our tenth Business Applications Launch Event—a perfect moment to look ahead and reaffirm our commitment to business app innovation. But the best is yet to come. I’m looking forward to celebrating this milestone with our customers and partners, along with all the new features our team has been cooking up. I can’t wait to see what your business does with them next.

Register now. And join us to experience the new era of AI-powered business.

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 

9:00 AM–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

The post See new AI for Microsoft Power Platform at our tenth launch event appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This release wave builds on our commitment to create applications and experiences that add value to every role by breaking down silos between data, insights, and people. New capabilities empower new ways to make informed decisions with AI-guided insights and suggested actions, easier ways to automate tasks and processes, and collaboration seamlessly integrated into the flow of work, plus, new low-code ways for anyone to build solutions.

Discover a whole new level of convenience in reviewing release plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform with the release planner. Experience unparalleled flexibility as you personalize, filter, sort, and effortlessly share plans according to your preferences. Stay organized, stay informed, and stay in control as you effortlessly navigate through multiple active waves of plans. For more information, visit releaseplans.microsoft.com.

Highlights from Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Marketing will bring enhancements to Copilot features empowering marketers to quickly create new experiences and will bring unprecedented levels of personalization to email content, images, and layouts. Additionally, business-to-business (B2B) dashboards and directly assigning leads to the right sales rep will align marketers and sellers, enabling them to act as a unified team across the buying journey.

Dynamics 365 Sales will focus on enabling sales organizations to prioritize and manage digital sales processes through enhanced sequence capabilities. We will allow users to assign and monitor lead assignment status with enhanced lead assignment capabilities by providing recommendations, summarizing data, retrieving information, and performing actions in context and within flow of work.

Viva Sales is reimagining how sellers work by delivering advanced AI capabilities like email summarization, CRM recommendations, sales email composition, meeting summarization, and real-time sales tips. Additionally, we are making further investments to collaboration spaces in Microsoft Teams and will deliver new sales Copilot experiences that accelerate deal progression and close sales faster.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service will continue to empower agents to work more efficiently through Copilot capabilities, Join me On Teams, and visual enhancements to the agent workspace, ability to see live chats and voice calls in Inbox and personalizing size of conversational control. Additionally, we are making enhancements to the voice channel, call dialer improvements, and routing calls to agents with longest idle time.

Dynamics 365 Field Service updates will include new capabilities for frontline workers, service managers, and dispatchers. We are delivering several top requests such as converting quotes to work orders, enhancing inspections, and evolving our resource scheduling capabilities.

Dynamics 365 Finance is focused on enhancing organizations’ visibility into their data, continued enhancements for accounts payable and bank statement automation, and expanding out-of-the-box country coverage in Latin America. Additionally, the team will deliver further automation of complex tax scenarios and e-invoicing requirements for new countries and provide organizations ability for business model expansion and agility.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management continues to improve and optimize business processes to deliver the agility and resilience needed for businesses to thrive in an increasingly complex business environment. The sales and procurement processes will be further enhanced, manufacturers will enjoy greater flexibility, and warehouse processes related to counting, customer returns, and product receipts will be improved.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations is investing in enhancements to services procurement scenarios and project contracting and new functionalities and scenarios in pricing models will support the evolving patterns in the service-centric economy. Additionally, improvements to intelligent resource recommendations will provide suggestions based on experience, cost, and utilization across employees and subcontractors.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources will be improving recruiting experiences with functionally rich and intuitive experiences that target recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers. We will expand the human capital management ecosystem to include learning management system integration through public APIs using Microsoft Dataverse along with expanding our payroll partner network.

Dynamics 365 Guides is bringing several new capabilities and enhancements including Object Anchors, Azure Remote Rendering, and availability on Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High. Additionally, we are focusing on features allowing seamless integration with systems of record allowing customers to build mixed reality workflows that are integrated with their business data.

Dynamics 365 Commerce is using the power of AI to enable the effortless creation of engaging product content for digital commerce sites. New B2B investments allow distributors to view, accept, and reject orders from a centralized dashboard that enables B2B sellers, distributors, and buyers to all work in the same place.

Dynamics 365 Business Central will focus on core functionality to help companies manage their intercompany and consolidations across environments. We will continue to enhance our Copilot capabilities and will further improve our warehouse capabilities, create more Power Automate templates, and provide developers with more capabilities for automating testing of dependent apps.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is enhancing our Copilot features to allow you to ask questions in simple words, to quickly receive insights, and action these immediately. New capabilities in real-time data management will provide the latest view of your customers and easy access to insights within Dynamics 365 apps will allow your team to deliver seamless, personalized experiences across the customer’s lifecycle.

Microsoft Supply Chain Center is enabling resilient supply chain with enhancements in key areas such as Intelligent Order Management for purchase order orchestration, seamless collaboration with external partners via Supplier portal, and Copilot. Additionally, the team will be bringing Advanced Data Analytics to enable Insights to Action as well as new Network Inventory Optimization capabilities.

Dynamics 365 release planner

Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform

Power BI is improving the creation experience for individuals by improving and aligning our experiences with Microsoft 365, bringing more parity on the web, and bringing the Power Query diagram view into Power BI Desktop. For teams, we are bringing enhancements to meetings and multitasking. For organizations, we are enabling Git and source control integration to help developers maintain and collaborate on their business intelligence solutions.

Power Apps is expanding the use of Copilot to bring AI-assisted experiences to increase developer productivity, bring natural language to all users, and give insights to admins. We will bring modern controls and rich collaborative experiences to users, as well as improved deployment and governance support to ensure low-code can be enabled organization wide.

Power Pages continues to make strides in the Copilot maker experience to enable building a site. Managed environments will include Power Pages capabilities for maker usage and onboarding. For data, you can connect easily to data where it exists today. Low-code makers can collaborate and detect co-presence.

Power Automate will continue to make it easier to get started building new flows by using natural language across cloud flows and desktop flows, and by improving process mining to jumpstart creation of automation and authoring experiences. Additionally, we’re making it easier to manage work at scale by introducing unified activity view and deeper notifications on capabilities across the product. 

Power Virtual Agents will bring general availability for capabilities including Multi-Lingual bot support, Generative Answers and Actions, Standalone interactive voice response (IVR) and IVR integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and our integration with the Conversational Language Understanding service. Additionally, we will continue to enhance our offering for customers by delivering on new Enterprise Trust capabilities.

AI Builder will allow makers to easily process structured and unstructured documents. Using the power of GPT, responses to customer requests can be pre-generated according to enterprise guidelines and will be available in a human validation station allowing makers to easily review and enhance content that is automatically generated from intelligent copilots.

Microsoft Power Platform release planner

2023 release wave 2 early access period

Starting July 31, 2023, customers and partners will be able to validate the latest features in a non-production environment. These features include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled for users in production environments during October 2023. To take advantage of the early access period, try out the latest updates in a non-production environment, and effectively plan for your customer rollout. Check out the 2023 release wave 2 early access features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, or visit the early access FAQ page. 

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