Tag: Dynamics 365

Today, we published the 2020 release wave 1 plans for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, a compilation of new capabilities that will be released between April and September 2020. The new features and enhancements demonstrate our continued investment to power digital transformation for our customers and partners.

Dynamics 365

The first release wave of the year contains hundreds of new features across Dynamics 365 applications including Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Commerce, and Business Central, our comprehensive business management solution designed for small to medium-sized businesses.

Highlights from Customer Engagement applications include:

• Dynamics 365 Sales continues to focus on user experience and sellers productivity improvements.
• Dynamics 365 Sales Insights expands focus to include inside sales scenarios and enhances conversation intelligence capabilities. New features include deeper conversation analysis with emotion detection to enable sellers with the information they need, when they need it.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service expands agent productivity tooling to help organizations evolve a proactive and predictive service model.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights optimizes the customer service experience through AI with new capabilities including richer integration with Power Virtual Agents and access to the insights data for in-depth analytics.
• Dynamics 365 Field Service improves effectiveness through a new resource scheduling dashboard, integration with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and technician time entries.
• Dynamics 365 Marketing remains focused on enabling marketers by enhancing product usability, personalized marketing capabilities with dynamic content for contacts, and integration scenarios with third-party content management systems and Microsoft Forms Pro.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enhances data profiling enrichment and segmentation capabilities, helping organizations better understand their customer data and derive actionable insights to drive business processes.

Highlights from Dynamics 365 Operations, Finance, Commerce, and HR applications include:

• Dynamics 365 Human Resources expands capabilities for human resources professionals, employees, and managers in leave and absence and benefits management programs.
• Dynamics 365 Commerce strengthens the personalized, omnichannel experience for consumers by adding e-commerce, providing smart product recommendations, and enhancing clienteling.
• Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection helps merchants increase revenue and reduce fraud losses and costs while improving the consumer’s online check-out experience by releasing two new services, account protection and loss prevention.
• Dynamics 365 Finance releases enhancements to country-specific tax, invoicing, payment formats, and regulatory reporting capabilities to help global organizations stay compliant with newly introduced local regulations.
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management helps organizations reduce operational costs by introducing customer self-service experiences, enhancements to asset management, and the new on-hand inventory service for inventory visibility across Dynamics 365 and other legacy systems.

Power Platform

New Power Platform capabilities combine Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and the Common Data Service into an unmatched palette of tools to analyze data, build solutions, and automate processes. This release includes robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities in Power Automate, to automate rule-based tasks with point-and-click simplicity supporting on-premises or cloud-based apps. Power Apps gains significant improvements for developers of all skill levels, improving the sophistication and usability of apps that are created across the web and mobile devices. Microsoft business intelligence simplifies how organizations derive insights from transactional and observational data. It helps organizations create a data culture where employees can make decisions based on facts, not opinions. In this release wave, Power BI invests in four key areas including intuitive experiences, a unified BI platform, big data analytics, and pervasive artificial intelligence (AI).

For a complete list of new capabilities, please checkout the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2020 release wave 1 plans.

Lastly, we continue to enhance our industry accelerators to enable organizations and partners to quickly accelerate application development within a vertical industry.

Early access period for 2020 release wave 1

Starting February 3, 2020, 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 2020. There are many features available for early access across Dynamics 365 applications and the Power Platform. We encourage application administrators to review these changes to understand the impact and determine if change management for new features is required.

Take advantage of the early access period, try out the latest updates in a non-production environment, and get ready to roll out updates to your users with confidence.  For questions, please visit the Early Access FAQ page.

We’ve done this work to help you—our partners, customers, and users—drive the digital transformation of your business on your terms. Get ready and learn more about the latest product updates and plans, and share your feedback in the community forum for Dynamics 365 or Power Platform.

We’ve seen incredible growth of Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform just in the past year. This momentum is driving a massive investment in people and breakthrough technologies that will empower organizations to transform in the next decade.

We have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars in our business cloud that power business transformation across markets and industries and help organizations solve difficult problems.

This fiscal year we are also heavily investing in the people that bring Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform to life — a rapidly growing global network of experts, from engineers and researchers to sales and marketing professionals. Side-by-side with our incredible partner community, the people that power innovation at Microsoft will fuel transformational experiences for our customers into the next decade.

Accelerating innovation across industries

In every industry, I hear about the struggle to transform from a reactive to proactive organization that can respond to changes in the market, customer needs, and even within their own business. When I talk to customers who have rolled out Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, the conversation shifts to the breakthrough outcomes they’ve achieved, often in very short time frames.

Customers talk about our unique ability to connect data holistically across departments and teams — with AI-powered insights to drive better outcomes. Let me share a few examples.

This year we’ve focused on a new vision for retail that unifies back office, in-store and digital experiences. One of Washington state’s founding wineries — Ste. Michelle Wine Estates — is onboarding Dynamics 365 Commerce to bridge physical and digital channels, streamline operations with cloud intelligence and continue building brand loyalty with hyper-personalized customer experiences.

When I talk to manufacturers, we often zero in on ways to bring more efficiency to the factory floor and supply chain. Again, it’s our ability to harness data from physical and digital worlds, reason over it with AI-infused insights, that opens doors to new possibilities. For example, Majans, the Australian-based snackfood company, is creating the factory of the future with the help of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Power BI and Azure IoT Hub — bringing Internet of Things (IoT) intelligence to every step in the supply chain, from quality control on the production floor to key performance indicators to track future investments. When everyone relies on a single source of truth about production, inventory and sales performance, decisions employees make drive the same outcome — all made possible on our connected business cloud.

These connected experiences extend to emerging technologies that bridge digital and physical worlds, such as our investment in mixed reality. We’re working with companies like PACCAR — manufacturer of premium trucks — to improve manufacturing productivity and employee training using Dynamics 365 Guides and HoloLens 2, as well as Siemens to enable technicians to service its eHighway — an electrified freight transport system — by completing service steps with hands-free efficiency using HoloLens and two-way communication and documentation in Dynamics 365 Field Service.

For many of our customers, the journey to Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform started with a need for more personalized customer experiences. Our customer data platform (CDP) featuring Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, is helping Tivoli Gardens — one of the world’s longest-running amusement parks — personalize guest experiences across every touchpoint — on the website, at the hotel and in the park.  Marston’s has onboarded Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Insights to unify guest data and infuse personalized experiences across its 1,500-plus pubs across the U.K.

The value of Dynamics 365 is compounded when coupled with the Power Platform. In late 2019, there are over 3 million monthly active developers on the Power Platform, from non-technical “citizen developers” to Microsoft partners developing world-class, customized apps. In the last year, we’ve seen a 700% growth in Power Apps production apps and a 300% growth in monthly active users. All of those users generate a ton of data, with more than 25 billion Power Automate steps run each day and 25 million data models hosted in the Power BI service.

The impact of the Power Platform is shared in the stories our customers share with us. TruGreen, one of the largest lawn care companies in the U.S., onboarded Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and the Microsoft Power Platform to provide more proactive and predictive services to customers, freeing employees to spend more time on higher value tasks and complex customer issue resolution. And the American Red Cross is leveraging Power Platform integration with Teams to improve disaster response times.

From the Fortune 500 companies below to the thousands of small and medium sized businesses, city and state governments, schools and colleges and nonprofit organizations — Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Cloud are driving transformative success delivering on business outcomes.

Partnering to drive customer success

We can’t talk about growth and momentum of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform without spotlighting our partner community — from ISVs to System Integrators that are the lifeblood of driving scale for our business. We launched new programs, such as the new ISV Connect Program, to help partners get Dynamics 365 and Power Apps solutions to market faster.

Want to empower the next generation of connected cloud business? Join our team!

The incredible momentum of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform means our team is growing, too. In markets around the globe, we’re looking for people who want to make a difference and take their career to the next level by helping global organizations digitally transform on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. If you’re interested in joining our rapidly growing team, we’re hiring across a wealth of disciplines, from engineering to technical sales, in markets across the globe. Visit careers.microsoft.com to explore business applications specialist career opportunities.

Tags: AI, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform

Today, Alysa Taylor, Corporate Vice President of Business Applications and Industry, announced several new AI-driven insights applications for Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Powered by Azure AI, these tightly integrated AI capabilities will empower every employee in an organization to make AI real for their business today. Millions of developers and data scientists around the world are already using Azure AI to build innovative applications and machine learning models for their organizations. Now business users will also be able to directly harness the power of Azure AI in their line of business applications.

What is Azure AI?

Azure AI is a set of AI services built on Microsoft’s breakthrough innovation from decades of world-class research in vision, speech, language processing, and custom machine learning. What I find particularly exciting is that Azure AI provides our customers with access to the same proven AI capabilities that power Xbox, HoloLens, Bing, and Office 365.

Azure AI helps organizations:

• Develop machine learning models that can help with scenarios such as demand forecasting, recommendations, or fraud detection using Azure Machine Learning.
• Incorporate vision, speech, and language understanding capabilities into AI applications and bots, with Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Bot Service.
• Build knowledge-mining solutions to make better use of untapped information in their content and documents using Azure Search.

Bringing the power of AI to Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform

The release of the new Dynamics 365 insights apps, powered by Azure AI, will enable Dynamics 365 users to apply AI in their line of business workflows. Specifically, they benefit from the following built-in Azure AI services:

• Azure Machine Learning which powers personalized customer recommendations in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, analyzes product telemetry in Dynamics 365 Product Insights, and predicts potential failures in business-critical equipment in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
• Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Bot Service that enable natural interactions with customers across multiple touchpoints with Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service.
• Azure Search which allows users to quickly find critical information in records such as accounts, contacts, and even in documents and attachments such as invoices and faxes in all Dynamics 365 insights apps.

Furthermore, since Dynamics 365 insights apps are built on top of Azure AI, business users can now work with their development teams using Azure AI to add custom AI capabilities to their Dynamics 365 apps.

The Power Platform, comprised of three services – Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow, also benefits from Azure AI innovations. While each of these services is best-of-breed individually, their combination as the Power Platform is a game-changer for our customers.

Azure AI enables Power Platform users to uncover insights, develop AI applications, and automate workflows through low-code, point-and-click experiences. Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning empower Power Platform users to:

• Extract key phrases in documents, detect sentiment in content such as customer reviews, and build custom machine learning models in Power BI.
• Build custom AI applications that can predict customer churn, automatically route customer requests, and simplify inventory management through advanced image processing with PowerApps.
• Automate tedious tasks such as invoice processing with Microsoft Flow.

The tight integration between Azure AI, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform will enable business users to collaborate effortlessly with data scientists and developers on a common AI platform that not only has industry leading AI capabilities but is also built on a strong foundation of trust. Microsoft is the only company that is truly democratizing AI for businesses today.

And we’re just getting started. You can expect even deeper integration and more great apps and experiences that are built on Azure AI as we continue this journey.

We’re excited to bring those to market and eager to tell you all about them!

Every year, we bring together thousands of Microsoft partners from around the world to celebrate, connect, and learn about what’s coming in the next year. Just last week, I had the chance to join this year’s Microsoft Inspire with 13,000 of our partners in Las Vegas, and it was an amazing week full of energy and excitement.

I had the opportunity to share how we’re accelerating innovation with Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform in two featured sessions. Hayden Stafford joined me to talk about the business opportunity in FY20 for Business Applications, and Charles Lamanna and Arun Ulagaratchagan showed off the innovation and partner investments across the Power Platform. In both sessions, partners from Hitachi Solutions, VeriPark, WorkSpan, and EY joined me on stage to talk about the opportunities they’re seeing in the market. Check out the session recordings to see more.

We also shared a few major announcements with the partner community throughout the week that will deepen our partnership, align with how our business is growing, and help customers realize the potential of digital transformation. Take a look at a few highlights below.

Launching the new Microsoft Business Applications ISV Connect Program

ISVs that build on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and PowerApps can offer their customers innovative apps they couldn’t build elsewhere using connections to industry-leading cloud services on Azure and developer tools built just for them.

After previewing elements of the program in the spring, we officially launched the Business Applications ISV Connect Program on July 15th. This program brings together platform and program benefits created specifically for ISVs to support their success. We’re laying a path for a stronger partnership with our ISVs through ongoing platform investments, development tooling enhancements, and go-to-market support for mutual success. Read Steven Guggenheimer’s blog for more information about the program’s requirements and benefits.

Expanding our Dynamics 365 Industry Accelerators

We know our partners want to go to market fast. Our industry accelerators help them do just that.

At Inspire, we introduced two new industry accelerators: the Dynamics 365 Automotive Accelerator and Dynamics 365 Banking Accelerator. We also announced significant updates to the Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator.

Each of these accelerators was developed in deep partnership with industry experts to provide pre-built dashboards, sample data, and workflows that align with common industry scenarios. Steven Guggenheimer’s blog has more on this update as well.

Updating our Dynamics 365 packaging model

In October, Microsoft will be moving from “one-size-fits-all” Microsoft Dynamics 365 licensing plans to focus on providing customers with the specific Dynamics 365 applications that meet the unique needs of their organization. Customers need software that aligns to their functional roles and scenarios, and they require the ability to add or remove applications as their company grows and changes over time. The new licensing model will allow customers to purchase the applications they need, when they need them. Each application is extensible and applications can be easily mixed and matched to configure integrated solutions that align to a customer’s unique business requirements.

To learn more about these new options for your customers, check out the Inspire sessions “Customer Engagement Licensing Updates” and “Unified Operations Licensing Updates.”

Introducing new licensing options for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow

Over the past few months, we’ve announced a set of continued investments in the Power Platform and vision for one connected platform that enables everyone, regardless of their skill set or background, to innovate.

In addition to the general availability of innovations like AI Builder and PowerApps Portals, we will be introducing new licensing options in October 2019 shaped by the feedback we’ve received from our customers and the community of makers and creators who have been with us on the Power Platform journey. At Inspire we previewed new licensing options for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow that:

• Make it easier to get started with a single use case before rolling out the full platform for all users.
• Make licensing easier to understand by simplifying the complex feature-level differences between P1 and P2 plans.

To learn more about these new options for your customers, check out the Inspire session Microsoft Power Platform business model and licensing updates or read the PowerApps community blog post with additional details.

Customers realizing the potential of digital transformation

Throughout the event, we heard inspiring stories from customers and partners around the world.

One highlight came in Monday’s Corenote with Judson Althoff. We saw how Unilever is transforming its business with Microsoft technology, including Power BI and PowerApps. With connected data at the core, Unilever is able to increase productivity with more accessible insights and empower individuals to solve problems on their own, without a developer.

On Wednesday, Satya Nadella talked about Crane Worldwide Logistics, a Dynamics 365 customer who grew from a startup to a major player in the global logistics industry over the past 10 years. With Dynamics 365 for Sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Crane can seamlessly combine customer engagement data with data about customer and seller activities from Office 365, as well as from LinkedIn – even when these interactions take place outside their CRM. And with Dynamics 365 Sales Insights, sellers are able to focus on the right customers, thanks to AI-driven insights that flag existing accounts that need extra attention, as well as leads that offer the most potential.

These are just two of the stories we shared at Microsoft Inspire this year. If you missed any part of this year’s event, take some time to check out the content on-demand to learn how you can build success in the coming year.

The full session catalog for the Microsoft Business Applications Summit is now available! Explore more than 150 expert-led sessions and workshops (plus 16 pre-days!) packed into this two-day conference, taking place in Atlanta, Georgia June 10 – 11, 2019. Registration is still open, so secure your spot today.

Microsoft Business Applications Summit is your team’s opportunity to collaborate and learn alongside a vibrant community of power users, analysts, technical architects, developers, and more. Unleash your organization’s potential by learning how to break down data silos to connect customers, products, people, and operations. Meet the engineers, hang out with our inspiring community, and explore the latest innovations.

150+ ways to ramp up business-transforming skills

The session catalog is packed with hints and hacks to ramp up your skills and transform your business. Learn how to innovate at every level with Dynamics 365’s modular, multi-channel applications that work seamlessly with your existing systems. Uncover new capabilities, expand your know-how with the features you already use, and solve common challenges with guidance from the experts and engineers behind the tools you use every day. Plus, learn about the latest trends and product roadmaps before anyone else.

Here’s a sample of what’s in store this year, and be sure to check the session catalog for the full rundown and latest updates:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central roadmap and overview
  Learn how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you connect your business, make smarter decisions, and grow with ease.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service: Built for customer outcomes
  Get a look at the trends, strategies, and vision for how Dynamics 365 for Customer Service leverages all aspects of technology to drive excellent customer service – from channel-less communications to AI, productivity to insights, and more.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service: Success with connected field service
  Learn how to leverage Azure IoT, Dynamics 365, and mixed reality to drive results inside your organization.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations: What’s new in financial management
  Get the tips, tricks, and tools you need to plan what’s next for your organization, from streamlined periodic processes to improved usability features and more.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing: Connect marketing and sales
  Discover new capabilities and pricing offers that can help you cultivate more sales-ready leads than ever before.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales: Get the most out of the Microsoft ecosystem with new capabilities and integrations
  Learn best practices for maximizing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, including AI capabilities, Microsoft Teams integration, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Special guest keynote with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, aka the “Mayor of the Internet.”

Also just announced, Alexis Ohanian will deliver our special guest keynote! Dubbed the “Mayor of the Internet” by Forbes, Ohanian co-founded Reddit in 2005. Since then, the site has grown into one of the Internet’s most powerful community gathering spaces. It’s currently the 6th largest website in the world.

Ohanian has invested in and advised more than 200 tech startups, was a partner at Y Combinator, and co-founded Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital firm, where he now serves as managing partner. He also created and hosted two seasons of Small Empires, a series profiling tech startups and their communities. Named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list two years in a row, Ohanian is the bestselling author of Without Their Permission, a guidebook for harnessing the power of the Internet for good.

You won’t want to miss this visionary keynote, sure to inspire you to take your organization to the next level with innovative new solutions.

All this, plus our vibrant community – register for the Microsoft Business Applications Summit today

We’re bringing together an incredible community of power users, analysts, solution architects, developers, and more – and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to connect and collaborate. Browse the session catalog and start planning your best conference. We hope you’ll join us for 2+ days of total immersion to drive better data, stronger solutions, and bigger transformation.

Today at Microsoft Business Forward in Paris, France we connected with hundreds of global business leaders to share our vision for Microsoft Business Applications. In addition, I had the privilege to unveil new Dynamics 365 AI and mixed reality applications, and new solutions to help businesses unlock deeper insights from data across their organizations.

The new capabilities we introduce biannually in our October and April releases advance our commitment to remove barriers to innovation and operational excellence; a vision reinforced by amazing stories of companies evolving their business as usual.

More organizations than ever before are deploying Microsoft Business Applications to help foster innovation by unlocking siloed data and enabling a holistic, 360-degree view of the business, customers, and employees. Built on a unified data platform, businesses can apply intelligence across workloads, giving people the ability to reason over data wherever it resides, predict trends, and drive action. And with adaptable business applications, business professionals can build and customize solutions, allowing people and processes to stay ahead of trends and market forces.

Moving business forward with AI, mixed reality, and data insight solutions

Today’s announcements accelerate our vision and the impact we can deliver to customers, building on Dynamics 365 AI and mixed reality solutions announced in September 2018. The following new solutions are reflected in the updated April 2019 release notes available starting today.

Dynamics 365 + AI

This spring, we are continuing to invest in new and expanded data and AI services for unprecedented business intelligence, security, and insight-driven innovation and customer experiences.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provide anyone—from non-technical business users to analysts and data scientists—with a deeper understanding of customers, enabling intelligent insights and action that can help you personalize experiences, retain customers, and build loyalty. Tivoli, the Denmark-based operator of the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world, aims to be one of the first organizations to leverage Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. They are working to utilize artificial intelligence and the application to unify guest data siloed across databases, generate actionable insights, engage guests intelligently, and deliver personalized experiences, whether in marketing messages, loyalty offers, or during face-to-face interactions at the park. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is now available for preview and coming to general availability in April. Visit the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights web page to learn more.

Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service empowers business users to easily create and manage AI-powered virtual agents that resolve routine problems and requests. With an initial focus on customer service, future capabilities will extend virtual agent solutions across a range of customer experience scenarios to automate problem solving. This new cloud service, launching in public preview in April, empowers those closest to the customer to create, deploy, and manage virtual agents that automate solutions to problems without the need for data science or coding expertise. This will help reduce the time and costs to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection is a new cloud-based anti-fraud solution for e-commerce merchants designed to drive down fraud loss, increase bank acceptance rates to yield higher revenue, and improve the online shopping experience of its customers. Enterprises will benefit from the same technology deployed within Microsoft to dramatically reduce fraud loss rates and false positive rates while increasing bank acceptance rates, an achievement recognized by The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) as a finalist for the 2019 Franz Edelman Award for achievements in advanced analytics, operations research, and management science. A public preview will be made available in April 2019.

Dynamics 365 + Mixed Reality

The adoption of mixed reality solutions for Microsoft Business Applications in 2018 has been inspiring, with real-world success in sectors ranging from manufacturing, automotive, and energy, particularly with a field service workforce. Toyota’s North America Production Engineering team has been using Dynamics 365 Layout and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on Microsoft HoloLens in their North America manufacturing centers. Dynamics 365 Layout can improve business processes in valuable ways, such as the layout of digital twins of equipment on the manufacturing floor for safety and process verification, and creating innovative AR training practices through the use of holographic equipment instead of physical equipment in space. Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is in the early phases of being used to improve safety and reduce costs through the use of remote experts for equipment verification and incident response.

Today we’re announcing that we’re extending our Dynamics 365 mixed reality applications to mobile devices, so businesses can leverage mixed reality technology on devices they already have. Customers continue to tell us that HoloLens is the best mixed reality device for business, and that it’s a breakthrough for their many areas that require heads up, hands free work. But we also know that many employees carry AR-capable phones and tablets everywhere they go. These two new solutions will further enable employees to adopt mixed reality at work, no matter what device they use.

Dynamics 365 Product Visualize (coming to iOS in preview) empowers sellers to showcase and customize products in their actual environment, helping create a shared understanding between buyer and seller to accelerate complex sales processes. In industries like manufacturing, healthcare, and automotive where products are often complex, and highly configurable or simply too cumbersome to carry around, the need for product visualization is key. It builds a buyer’s confidence early in the sales process so costly change orders are reduced, and customer satisfaction is higher. Using Product Visualize, sellers can show products to customers directly within their Dynamics 365 for Sales workflow and spatial and configuration notes are all saved directly within the associated sales opportunity. Since sales commonly requires more than just one individual, sellers can leverage session content directly in Microsoft Teams to improve internal collaboration to deliver customer-oriented solutions that are critical to accelerating the sales process.

Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for mobile devices (coming to Android in preview) extends the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to Android mobile devices and allows employees to work together from anywhere, empowering technicians to solve problems faster the first time. With Remote Assist, technicians can use either Microsoft HoloLens or an Android mobile device to collaborate with remote experts and troubleshoot issues in context. This latest release of Remote Assist for mobile devices and HoloLens will also include mobile annotations, group calling, deeper integration with Dynamics 365 for Field Service, and improved accessibility features for the HoloLens app.

Empowering people with data insights

One of the reasons Microsoft Business Applications are so powerful is the ability to integrate intelligent tools and generate insights from data sourced from every corner of the organization, including customer transactions, marketing engagement, lead generation activities, and financial and operational data. We continually add new capabilities to bring data insights to life, such as the new Microsoft Forms Pro, that will be available in public preview this spring. This enterprise survey tool makes it easy for organizations to collect feedback across customer touchpoints using surveys, quizzes, and polls, correlate the feedback with business transactions, and derive actionable insights from the combined data. Additional details are available via the Microsoft Forms Pro preview.

The momentum continues with enhancements to the Microsoft Power Platform, combining Power BI, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Common Data Service into an unmatched palette of tools to extend, customize, and integrate Dynamics 365 and Office 365 into your environment. These three applications form a framework that allows users to analyze data to gain insights, act on insights to drive intelligent business processes from the apps they build, and automate tasks to lower costs while reducing errors.

Today at Microsoft Business Forward, we shared how Virgin Atlantic is leveraging the Microsoft Power Platform to speed up application development and empower non-developers to create applications and automate workflows. From customer service and gate agents to maintenance crews and operations, teams across the company can leverage PowerApps and an extensible platform to get insights from data, and share those insights across the highly mobile workforce, enabling secure use of data by employees at airports, on planes, and in offices around the world—all with different roles and information requirements.

Teams have consolidated customer data into a single source of truth, providing service agents with a 360-degree view of customer preferences, enabling a travel experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible. On the operational side, the engineering compliance team is using PowerApps to replace paper-based safety and compliance audits. See today’s post to the PowerApps blog for a detailed look at how Virgin Atlantic is reimaging the passenger experience one PowerApp at a time.

Explore the Microsoft Business Applications April 2019 release

We look forward to sharing more updates and customer stories in the weeks and months ahead, including at the Virtual Launch event on April 2nd. In the meantime, view the April 2019 release notes for details about all features releasing from April 2019 through September 2019 for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Savvy Business Leaders is a five-episode thought leadership podcast series featuring industry-leading influencers and some of the leading brands tackling emerging business challenges facing leadership teams today.

Host Bill Detwiler, Managing Editor of TechRepublic and Tech Pro Research, interviews leading experts to dive into key areas of business transformation, from relationship selling to connected field service, and beyond. He speaks with business leaders that have successfully navigated the business challenges using Microsoft technology, sharing insights uncovered in their digital transformation journey.

How to listen:

You can listen to individual episodes and view the transcripts with related content below. Or, listen on the go by searching for “Savvy Business Leaders” in the podcast category on iTunes, Google Play Music, and Spotify.

Episode #1: All your data through a single pane of glass

Renowned data journalist David McCandless shares simple strategies for leveraging data visualizations to reveal the meaningful insights organizations need to drive their business forward. Stuart Stock, CIO at Veolia UK, will share how the environmental resource management company is using Microsoft Power BI to transform the way their employees and customers analyze data to make data-driven decisions.

	David McCandless Data Journalist, Founder of Information is Beautiful
	Stuart Stock CIO at Veolia UK

Episode #2: Sales expert Jill Konrath on data-driven sales strategies

Sales strategist Jill Konrath orients us to the changing landscape of sales relationships. She explains how access to information empowers salespeople to connect with and provide the greatest value to customers. Next, Jennifer Deutsch, CMO, and Michael Cantor, CIO of global data center maintenance organization Park Place Technologies, share how embracing sales enablement technologies brings new opportunities to advance their business goals.

	Jill Konrath Relationship selling expert, keynote speaker, and author
	Jennifer Deutsch CMO, Park Place Technologies
	Michael Cantor CIO, Park Place Technologies

Episode #3: Data strategies to overcome digital disruption in retail

Sucharita Kodali discusses the digital disruption of the retail industry. She provides valuable insight into building a data strategy to address these emerging challenges, including key considerations and guidance on where to start. Learn about the role of AI in the retail sphere, how connecting and consolidating data can ensure its integrity, and why automating processes improves customer experiences.

Sucharita Kodali Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, retail industry analyst

Episode #4: Futurist Brian Solis on reinventing field service management

Host Bill Detwiler talks field service management with Brian Solis, Principal Analyst and Futurist at Altimeter Group, and Paul Bean, CEO of Mining Worldwide at Sodexo. Brian Solis explains how disruptive technologies are enabling connected field service and unlocking new business models. Then, Paul Bean explains how they are harnessing these technologies to make early, informed, and holistic decisions.

	Brian Solis Author, The End of Business as Usual and X: The Experience When Business Meets Design Principal Analyst and Futurist, Altimeter Group
	Paul Bean CEO of Mining Worldwide, Sodexo

Episode #5: Differentiated value through customer service innovation

Brian Solis discusses how customer experience is guiding digital transformation, with companies using data to be more accessible on mobile platforms and best meet customers’ expectations. Jaclyn Wainwright, CEO of AiR Healthcare Solutions, explains how customer engagement tools enable her healthcare delivery company to anticipate patient needs.

	Brian Solis Author, The End of Business as Usual and X: The Experience When Business Meets Design Principal Analyst and Futurist, Altimeter Group
	Jaclyn Wainwright CEO, AiR Healthcare Solutions

Series host:

Bill Detwiler Managing Editor of TechRepublic and Tech Pro Research

Hey everyone!

I hope this note finds you well. For those who have been following and participating in our mixed reality journey, welcome to our new home in the Dynamics 365 blog! For those new to us, on behalf of everyone who works on mixed reality business applications at Microsoft it is our pleasure to meet you.

My name is Lorraine Bardeen, and I am the general manager of engineering for Mixed Reality Business Applications at Microsoft. I have the pleasure of working for James Phillips in the Business Applications Group and the privilege to lead a world-class team of engineers working to bring mixed reality to people and organizations across the globe.

I have been working on the mixed reality business for over six years and I still show up at work every day excited to work with customers, partners and developers to innovate and solve real problems using mixed reality. With mixed reality, we can understand data in context and simplify workflows to extend human ability. When this happens workers feel more effective, businesses see more progress and everyone has a chance to participate in the modern workplace.

Today marks an important day for all of us on the mixed reality business applications team. Today, we officially mark general availability of our first Dynamics 365 business applications: Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Dynamics 365 Layout.

To celebrate this important milestone I wanted to write this post and share more about why mixed reality and Dynamics 365 have come together, what people can expect from these first mixed reality business applications, and how they are already being used and deployed.

Why mixed reality and Dynamics 365 have come together

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak to press and analysts in San Francisco about mixed reality business applications at Microsoft. As part of that moment in time, Alysa Taylor talked about our vision for business applications and I had the chance to talk specifically about mixed reality. In particular I talked about why mixed reality and Dynamics 365 have come together and I wanted to share some of that with you here as well.

With Dynamics 365, customers are reimagining their business processes by leveraging modern, unified, intelligent and adaptable solutions that bring together the vast amounts of data across their organization to empower their employees with new tools to help them feel more effective at work. Factory and field service worker. Patient and provider. Storefront and supply chain. No silos — just customers, products, employees and data more closely connected than ever before. Mixed reality represents a totally new part of this solution because of the capabilities it provides.

We recognize that these employees need information in context to apply their knowledge and craft. Not only on a 2-D screen — but information and data in context, at the right place, and at the right time, that they can use hands-free so employees can produce even greater impact for their organizations. We’ve focused on integrating these mixed reailty business applications with the common data service that underlies Dynamics 365 so that companies get the full value of high-value data connecting the full workflow.

Introducing the general availability of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist

With today’s release of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist we are taking an important step forward in helping address some of the current, unmet needs of Firstline Workers. Firstline Workers represent more than 2 billion people in roles that make them the first points of contact between a company and the world it serves, between a company and its products. They are often the first to engage, the first to represent a company’s brand, the first on the scene to address a problem.

With Dynamics 365 Remote Assist we can enable technicians and remote experts to solve problems in real time with heads-up, hands-free video calling, annotations, and file sharing. By identifying and addressing issues accurately we can also eliminate the need for costly travel expenses while improving operational efficiency.

Organizations will be able to communicate securely with industry-leading identity and security measures, including Azure Active Directory. In addition, they will be able to leverage work order data from Dynamics 365 Field Service on-site using the common data service.

For business decision-makers looking for new ways to empower their employees and create more collaborative ways of problem-solving, this is pretty exciting stuff! But enough talking about it — here is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist in action.

Introducing the general availability of Dynamics 365 Layout

Lastly, with today’s release of Dynamics 365 Layout we are now providing our customers and partners with a way to visualize room layouts in real-world scale. The ability to walk through proposed layouts in physical space or virtual reality. Review and make changes with stakeholders in real time, saving time and money. Move, resize and rotate 3-D models to edit layouts on the spot.

Here is a peek at Dynamics 365 Layout in action.

Mixed reality business applications being deployed

About four months ago we released the public preview of our two mixed reality business applications. During that time, we had the chance to work with and learn from many great companies, and I wanted to take a moment to spotlight a couple of them here.

ZF Group

A great way to see Remote Assist and Layout in action is through the work of ZF Group, a German car-parts manufacturer headquartered in Friedrichshafen. An early partner on our journey, ZF Group has been working with us over the past few months to help ensure these apps, even in preview, are crafted with insights from those who will be using them daily to get their work done. In developing these apps with customers, we are not only looking to make great software — we’re looking to empower the Firstline Workers using the apps.

Learn more about how ZF Group uses Microsoft mixed reality tools.

Chevron

Chevron is already achieving real, measurable results with its global HoloLens deployment. Previously it was required to fly in an inspector from Houston to a facility in Singapore once a month to inspect equipment. Now it has in-time inspection using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and can identify issues or provide approvals immediately. In addition, remote collaboration and assistance have helped the company operate more safely in a better work environment, serving as a connection point between firstline workers and remote experts, as well as cutting down on travel and eliminating risks associated with employee travel.

Learn how Chevron is deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft HoloLens.

This is just the beginning! We will have a lot more to share in the months ahead, and I am looking forward to sharing more then.

As always, I’m available on Twitter (@lorrainebardeen) and eager to hear about what you’re doing with mixed reality.

Learn more

Today, we welcome more than 3,500 customers and partners to our inaugural Microsoft Business Applications Summit in Seattle. Over the next two days, this community will come together with the engineering teams that build Dynamics 365, Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow to connect, share, learn, and be the first to know where we’re going and what’s coming next across the Business Applications landscape.

This event is all about making the community more successful: enabling our customers to be more agile in their adoption of transformational technology, to help them grow and drive better experiences for their customers and employees, ultimately unlocking insights and actions from their data, to discover new opportunities and stay competitive.

Earlier this year we committed to delivering major product releases twice a year, to offer predictability around new capabilities and a clear roadmap to enable adoption of new technology for our customers and partners. Today we’re making available the October 2018 release notes, which details hundreds of new capabilities and features across all our Dynamics 365 applications and the Power Platform.

Infusing intelligence and AI throughout our applications, enabling new modern experiences with mixed reality and deeper integration across Office 365, LinkedIn, and Azure are key focus areas for the October 2018 release. We’ll be showing these new capabilities throughout the event. Some of the highlights include,

• Dynamics 365 AI for Sales, the first of a new class of AI applications that delivers unique out-of-the-box insights by unifying data and infusing it with advanced intelligence to guide decisions and empower organizations to take informed actions. For Sales, in particular, we’ll show how AI can help salespeople prioritize their time to focus on deals that matter most, provide answers to the most common questions regarding the performance of sales teams, offer a detailed analysis of the sales pipeline, and surface insights that enable smarter coaching of sales teams.
• Enhanced Azure IoT Central integration with Dynamics 365 for Field Service will enable proactive and predictive service. Building on previous integration, we’ll now support bi-directional flows. For example, sending commands from Field Service through IoT central to the device. The power of IoT is also extended to the technician with embedded IoT Central visuals and measurements within the Field Service mobile app.
• New enterprise credit management, revenue recognition and new dual accounting currency capabilities in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations to give businesses a real-time view of global financials. In addition, enhanced process-based integrations across Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations with Dynamics 365 for Field Services, Project Service Automation, and Talent, will give customers end to end visibility across departments.
• Continued integration across Office 365 and LinkedIn, there are dozens of new features coming with the October release. For example,
  • Integration between Microsoft Teams, giving sellers access to Dynamics 365 for Sales within Teams for enhanced collaboration, while also taking advantage of the built-in Teams bot capability to provide new intelligence and self-service capabilities.
  • Deeper LinkedIn integration with Dynamics 365 for Marketing that brings interactions information for smarter segmentation and lead scoring.
  • Integration with Skype and video streaming within the interview process using Dynamics 365 for Talent to keep your hiring team in the know about candidates while also delivering a providing them with the ability to utilize Skype, video streaming, and submit mobile feedback.
• We continue to enhance and add even more new capabilities to Power BI to enable everyone in an organization to work from the same data platform and deliver intuitive tools so teams can leverage vast quantities of data quickly to reach new and compelling insights. New preview features for Power BI will begin appearing in the service this month (July).
• Mixed Reality is another area of investment with promising new scenarios from helping a frontline worker resolve an issue hands-free, to a retail store manager designing the best layout to make their products more appealing to customers. Earlier this year, we demonstrated the mixed reality Remote Assist application that would help our customers collaborate remotely with heads-up, hands-free video calling, image sharing, and mixed-reality annotations. We will show this technology in action at Business Applications Summit and share more details in the coming months.

The impact technology can have on businesses is evident. The connections between customers, products, people with data and intelligence at the center are creating feedback loops that enable businesses to transform. Microsoft is uniquely positioned in the market to enable that feedback loop and help our customers unlock their next opportunity.

I invite you to watch this morning’s keynote and learn more about Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. You’ll see how Microsoft is using Dynamics 365 to modernize our hiring processes as well as hear from some of our customers including Polaris, Macdonald Miller, and Auto Glass/ Belron that are on the cutting edge of technology and will share how they are transforming their businesses.