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Today, we’re introducing updates that will help centralize user license management and provide clarity for administrators. Starting April 30th, administrators will have access to license usage reporting that shows seats available and seats assigned. For users that have not yet been assigned a license, they will start to see an in-product notification asking them to contact their administrator to request license assignment. Beginning August 30th, users will require an assigned license to access the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations applications. We are giving customers time to prepare with tools and training to support any action needed. For users that already have licenses assigned, there will be no disruption, and no action needed from their administrator.
Key Dates and Actions for Simplified License Management
Starting April 30, 2025, we will introduce enhanced license reporting in the Power Platform admin center, offering comprehensive insights into license usage across all security roles. Users who do not meet license requirements will receive proactive notifications directly within the Dynamics 365 application, instructing them to request proper licensing through their administrator. This improvement supports your efforts to maintain precise control and ensures compliance while reducing administrative overhead.
Beginning August 30, 2025, all Dynamics 365 customers will be required to assign user licenses directly through the Microsoft 365 admin center for the following applications:
Finance
Finance Premium
Supply Chain Management
Supply Chain Management Premium
Commerce
Project Operations (in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations)
Human Resources
This shift toward centralized license assignment underscores our commitment to simplifying administrative processes, providing greater visibility and governance, and enhancing the overall licensing experience across the Microsoft Cloud.
To maintain continuous access and avoid disruptions in the future, we recommend organizations proactively review and assign licenses in advance. Users without assigned licenses will no longer have access to these applications and will instead receive prompts to request the appropriate licenses from their administrator.
Preparing for a Smooth Transition
As we approach this important milestone, we encourage you to:
Begin assigning your Dynamics 365 licenses in the Microsoft 365 admin center today.
Taking these steps will help ensure a smooth transition before August 30, 2025, and position your organization for success in managing licenses across Microsoft Cloud solutions.
Take control of your license reporting:
Now, administrators can better understand and govern licenses with the improved license reporting capabilities available in both the Power Platform admin center as well as in Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS). We have also introduced in-product reporting to provide further control.
1) In the Power Platform admin center
Within Power Platform admin center (PPAC), administrators will have access to comprehensive license reporting for required seats. This report also reflects the number of assigned seats from the Microsoft 365 admin center and provides recommended actions to help remediate assignment gaps.
2) In Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS)
Similarly, in LCS we will be directly integrating the same reporting information from PPAC as part of our admin unification efforts. This ensures that administrators from both the customer and their system implementation partner will have access to the same reporting details and actions as administrators in PPAC.
3) In-product reporting
User Security Governance is also now in Public Preview with Dynamics 365 version 10.0.43, providing administrators with even greater visibility and control. General availability for these features is targeted for July 2025 with version 10.0.44. Customers can opt into these features through Feature Management and test them in sandbox environments ahead of broad deployment.
Microsoft remains dedicated to empowering your organization with the tools and resources needed to thrive in today’s complex business environment. These license management improvements are just one more way we’re working to simplify your experience and help you focus on what matters most—delivering value to your customers and driving operational excellence.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In today’s fast-evolving customer service landscape, the integration of AI, such as Copilot and autonomous agents, is transforming how businesses interact with their customers. However, this advancement brings about the need for clear and precise terminology to avoid confusion.
Renaming the apps
To ensure our AI experiences align with Microsoft’s AI-first vision, we will differentiate our brand accordingly. This approach provides consistent yet distinct user experience and introduces Copilot-related features with appropriate branding and user onboarding.
As a step toward creating an autonomous contact center, we are renaming Customer Service workspace and Contact Center workspace to Copilot Service workspace. Additionally, we are renaming Customer Service admin center and Contact Center admin center to Copilot Service admin center.
Customer Service workspace is now Copilot Service workspace.
How we use the terms “agents” and “bots”
Currently, the term “agent” refers to both AI bots and human representatives within Dynamics 365 Customer Service products. This leads to confusion and possible friction. Additionally, to align with Microsoft’s technological direction and ensure clarity, it is crucial that our terminology is helpful and consistent.
Moving forward, “AI agent” will exclusively refer to autonomous agents. “Customer service representative” will be adopted for the human consultants across Copilot Service admin center and Copilot Service workspace, marketing materials, release notes, videos, documentation, and customer interactions. Where “customer service representative” is too lengthy, we will shorten this term to “service representative” or simply “representative.” Specific features that have used “agent” have also been renamed to either become more generic or to a version of this change (e.g., Agent Scripts to Scripts, and the Agent Experience Profiles to Experience Profiles) but are still located in the same areas.
The new version of the trial homepage with updated “agent” and “bot” terminology.
How we use the term “customer service representative”
We adopted the term “customer service representative” as a replacement for “agent” in our products. This term broadly applies to various roles within customer service, support, and success, making it the most suitable alternative. While “agent” remains prevalent in the industry, we want to be at the forefront of our mission towards the new age of AI agents. The role of customer service involves direct interaction with customers and includes titles like agent, representative, and technician.
What’s next
We will be rolling these changes out in the next few weeks by April 2025 Wave. Through implementing consistent use of these updated terms across all platforms and materials, we aim to eliminate confusion, enhance clarity, and align with industry standards, ultimately improving our customer service interactions and relationships.
If your app name is already customized, it will not be affected. If you’d like to customize your app name, description, or icon, use app designer.
The product names for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Contact Center will remain the same.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Customer expectations continue to grow, with rising demand for seamless, connected, and personalized experiences across sales, marketing, and service. However, meeting these demands can be a complex and expensive undertaking, and legacy applications accessing siloed data cannot keep up. This is why we are seeing many organizations move from point solutions and fragmented application stacks. To further improve customer experiences and operational efficiency, organizations are also looking for ways to harness the transformative potential of generative AI.
The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management, Q1 2025
To help organizations accomplish these goals and deliver better business outcomes, Microsoft Dynamics 365 brings together a complete customer relationship management (CRM) platform driven by our latest advancements in generative AI. Today, we’re delighted to announce that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management, Q1 2025.
A unified platform for marketing, sales, and service
The industry and our customers recognize that we’re developing an integrated and autonomous CRM platform that reduces the complexity of meeting customer expectations and uses groundbreaking generative AI to transform sales and service experiences—for customers and employees alike.
Investing in next-generation AI with Copilot and agents
We’re helping organizations improve customer experience and support reps to be more productive by infusing generative AI in the places where it will have the greatest impact in sales, marketing, and service journeys.
Copilot is fully integrated into Dynamics 365, allowing marketers to target the right prospects, empowering sellers to close more deals, offering customers engaging self-service interactions, and supporting service reps to accelerate issue resolution.
As part of our continuing investment in helping our customers achieve more with AI, we’ve recently augmented Copilot with AI agents. Copilot acts as the interface for AI, working as a personal AI assistant, with agents functioning like apps, automating common tasks or autonomously completing entire business processes.
Microsoft has announced 10 agents across the Dynamics 365 portfolio of business applications, including agents for sales qualification, deep research in sales, intent determination, knowledge management, and case management. These agents are designed to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and enhance decision-making by providing intelligent insights and recommendations. It’s also fast and easy for organizations to build their own agents using the generative AI and low-code tools in Microsoft Copilot Studio. With these tools, businesses can create custom agents tailored to their specific needs, allowing them to automate unique processes and improve overall efficiency.
A secure CRM platform built on responsible AI principles
Importantly, the AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 are developed with a steadfast commitment to trustworthy AI, guided by our responsible AI principles of fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.
In addition, generative AI features in Dynamics 365 utilize Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, which offers the highest levels of data privacy and security. By developing AI that is responsible and secure by design, we’re furthering our mission to help every person and organization on the planet achieve more.
First West Credit Union accelerates issue resolution
One of the organizations achieving more with Dynamics 365 is First West Credit Union. As one of Canada’s largest credit unions, it aims to forge authentic connections with its members, but this mission was hampered by a patchwork of legacy CRM platform deployments across different parts of the business.
With Dynamics 365, First West Credit Union now has a single platform to help it engage members more effectively while meeting federal regulatory requirements for complaints management. Because Dynamics 365 functionality mapped so closely to the needs of users and the business, First West Credit Union saw 100% adoption within seven weeks of launching the system. What’s more, member complaints are now being resolved well within the federally required timeline, with 87% resolved in 14 days or less, compared to 49% before the implementation.
“One of the key value points of the Dynamics 365 platform is that, need for need, the capabilities are there. We were able to map the functionality to the business needs very well, right out of the box. That really helped us fast-track this initiative.”
Darrell Jaggers, CIO and Chief Transformation Officer, First West Credit Union
Lexmark boosts sales and service efficiency and productivity
Another organization that emphasizes building strong customer relationships is Lexmark, a global leader in printing and imaging products, software, solutions, and services. However, a reliance on disparate legacy solutions meant tracking customer journeys was a complex and inefficient process.
By replacing Salesforce and Siebel solutions with Dynamics 365, Lexmark now has a unified CRM platform for delivering outstanding customer service and operational efficiency. By working more efficiently in Dynamics 365, Lexmark has increased order accuracy by 43% and boosted contact center productivity by 23%.
“We’ve been on the journey with Microsoft after moving from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Sales. We’re excited to be one of the first customers to use Sales Qualification Agent and look forward to the ability to scale our sales team with agents and provide an exceptional experience to our customers.”
Kyle Farmer, Vice President, Global Sales and Strategy, Lexmark
Learn more about Dynamics 365 CRM platforms
We’re excited to be recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ and we will continue to invest in creating a state-of-the-art-CRM platform, allowing our customers to constantly enhance experiences for their own customers and empower their employees to achieve more.
Contact your Microsoft representative to learn more about what you could achieve with Dynamics 365.
Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This week, thousands of manufacturers will gather at Hannover Messe 2025 for insights into solutions to unprecedented challenges, from rising energy costs to supply chain disruptions, workforce shortages to geopolitical conflicts. Top of mind for many attendees is how AI agent-led automation, production, and supply chain processes can help empower a high-performance and sustainable industry.
To help answer these questions, Microsoft leaders and industry partners will showcase the very latest AI innovation for manufacturers designed to help address today’s most critical challenges.
Dynamics 365 ERP solutions
Infuse AI across business processes and workflows.
AI agents will transform manufacturing in 2025 and beyond
Moving forward, four transformative trends will set the pace of growth and success in the evolving manufacturing landscape:
Improving supply chain operations
Driving operational excellence with operational technology data from siloed sources
Delivering great customer experience
Increasing energy efficiency and employee productivity
At the Microsoft expo booth, manufacturers will learn how they can achieve these trends by using agents across critical business processes and workflows with Microsoft Dynamics 365 autonomous ERP solutions.
Improving supply chain operations with AI agents
Manufacturers face increasing supply chain challenges, from fluctuating customer demand to geopolitical uncertainties that can pressure organizations to restructure supply chains or reshore operations to unaffected regions. It’s imperative to have the agility to adapt to rapid demand shifts while operating profitably and keeping costs in check.
AI agents can play a crucial role in manufacturing operations, autonomously monitoring processes for potential disruptions, with the ability to proactively mitigate potential issues before they’re serious issues.
The Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 autonomously manages interactions with vendors and suppliers to help ensure on-time delivery of purchase orders helping to avoid downstream delays to customers. The agent provides visibility into the supplier’s supply chain and allows teams to spend more time improving supplier relationships and negotiating better contracts, rather than firefighting shortages.
Lifetime Products—a global manufacturer of products ranging from basketball hoops to picnic tables, sheds, and kayaks—depends on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to optimize operational capabilities. In addition to handling logistics and supply chain management more effectively, the manufacturer is implementing AI agents to “rebalance” its knowledge workforce to do more with same and be more efficient rather than reduce labor.
“One of our biggest learnings has been to let the autonomous agent run its own calculations. You’ll get a more comprehensive, better result.”
—Sinahi Lopez, Global IT Functional Manager at Lifetime Products
The company is now preparing to deploy the Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365, to autonomously communicate with suppliers to proactively mitigate order delays and supply chain disruptions.
Based on study with IDC, $3.5 million in annual inventory-related cost savings, using Dynamics 365,optimizing working capital.1
Achieving operational excellence with operational technology data from various silos
To stay competitive, manufacturers need to optimize operations by reducing costs, minimizing downtime, improving agility, and ensuring efficient production. This requires data-driven decision making that takes advantage of the industrial Internet of Things (IoT), AI-driven automation, integrated data clouds, and edge-to-cloud architectures to enable real-time insights, predictive maintenance, and quality control. Microsoft Dynamics 365 includes applications to manage finance, supply chain, sales, and customer relationships, designed to unify business data, improve efficiency, and simplify decision-making. The applications work seamlessly with Microsoft 365, which enhances productivity and collaboration with leading applications like Word, Excel, and Microsoft Teams, while Azure provides cloud infrastructure and IoT capabilities.
A key innovation is the AI agent, powered by Microsoft Copilot Studio, that automates tasks and streamlines workflows, securely grounded on data sourced from various systems by using Microsoft Dataverse as a central hub. Microsoft Fabric enhances analytics, helping businesses turn data into insights. For customization, Microsoft Power Platform offers low-code tools to build apps and automate processes, while Microsoft AppSource provides industry-specific solutions from Microsoft partners.
Together, these technologies create a connected ecosystem, reducing data silos and enabling businesses to operate more efficiently. With everything working seamlessly, organizations can focus on growth, innovation, and smarter decision-making.
Enerjisa Üretim, Türkiye’s largest private electricity generation company, replaced its legacy asset management system with Dynamics 365—a modern, user-friendly solution that provides end-to-end lifecycle management of all 312,500 assets across 29 power plants.
The organization is also transforming operations with Dynamics 365 and Azure, achieving efficiency, cost reduction, and workforce empowerment. Integration of asset management, IoT, and Microsoft Azure Digital Twins provides real-time insights for predictive maintenance. Unified systems improve data consistency, streamline workflows, and enhance collaboration, setting new standards for operational excellence in energy.
“Our equipment data is the key to operational efficiency. The Asset Management [capabilities] in Dynamics 365 extends the lifespan of critical infrastructure. By leveraging real-time data and advanced analytics, we can predict equipment failures before they happen.”
—Alper Serçe, Deputy General Manager, Enerjisa Üretim
Dynamics 365 integrates seamlessly with Enerjisa Üretim’s external systems like SAP, streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency. Real-time inventory updates from SAP into Dynamics 365 helps ensures that technicians have the right materials. And integration with HRweb and Yüklenici Entegre Sistemi (YES) optimizes resource allocation, matching skills and qualifications to work orders.
Based on study with IDC, 85% reduction in unplanned asset downtime, using Dynamics 365,ensuring smoother operations.1
Deliver better customer experiences
Manufacturers are facing intense global competition, making customer experience essential to maintain relevance. To differentiate and retain customer trust, they must reconsider traditional business models and explore new revenue streams like product-as-a-service and aftermarket services.
Dynamics 365 assists manufacturers in transitioning to a product-as-a-service (PaaS) model by integrating IoT, AI, automation, and flexible financial frameworks.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Microsoft Azure IoT enable real-time product performance monitoring and predictive maintenance, reducing downtime, helping to ensure timely spare parts delivery and streamlined logistics, which are important for service-based models.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service uses AI and IoT data for a predictive service model, enhancing efficiency and optimizing service contracts to improve customer satisfaction.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance supports flexible pricing, pay-per-use, and subscription models, converting products into ongoing services.
Hobart Corporation, a provider of commercial food equipment, needed to modernize its field operations to better support nearly 400,000 customers across the United States and Canada and solve inefficiencies in service delivery.
By adopting Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Field Service, Hobart standardized processes, improved dispatch accuracy, and provided field technicians with mobile access to real-time inventory and customer data. This transformation enabled quicker response times, improved first-time fix rates, and better parts availability. The solution also facilitated predictive maintenance, ensuring proactive issue resolution before failures occurred.
As a result, Hobart significantly enhanced operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and workforce productivity, reinforcing its reputation for high-quality service.
Organizations facing similar issues can also use the recently announced Scheduling Operations Agent (SOA) for Dynamics 365 Field Service, now in preview. This AI agent creates optimized schedules for technicians, even as conditions change throughout the workday. Whether it’s traffic delays, double bookings, or last-minute cancellations, the SOA helps ensure that schedules remain efficient.
The SOA uses advanced algorithms to address common scheduling challenges. By considering factors such as technician skill sets, territories, and promised time windows, the SOA maximizes technician utilization and prioritizes work orders effectively. This enhances productivity and helps ensure that customer commitments are met accurately.
Based on study with IDC, 40% faster order and product delivery times, using Dynamics 365, increasing customer satisfaction.1
Operating sustainably by driving energy and employee efficiencies
Manufacturers are under increasing pressure to improve energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint while maintaining productivity. By integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP solutions and Sustainability Manager in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, manufacturers can gain real-time visibility, AI-driven insights, and automated tracking to drive sustainability at scale.
Dynamics 365 ERP collects energy consumption data from IoT sensors, smart meters, and production systems, offering a comprehensive view of energy usage across facilities. This data flows into Microsoft Sustainability Manager, where AI-powered analytics identify inefficiencies, benchmark performance, and recommend optimizations. Manufacturers can track carbon emissions in real time, ensuring they meet sustainability targets.
With predictive analytics and AI-driven workload balancing, manufacturers can optimize machine usage, reduce energy waste, and lower costs. Additionally, optimized supply chain operations help minimize environmental impact through smarter logistics and material sourcing.
Camfil, a leading manufacturer of premium clean air filtration solutions, is using Dynamics 365 to enhance sustainability and profitability. By implementing Dynamics 365 with a standardized data model, Camfil has harmonized its processes across more than 30 production facilities and nearly 6,000 employees.
The integration of Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Sales has improved operations such as ordering, manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, and invoicing. This harmonization enabled by Dynamics 365 has led to better resource utilization, improved energy efficiency, a more connected and collaborative culture, and enhanced customer satisfaction through continuous innovation in air filtration systems—all contributing to a more sustainable and cost-effective manufacturing operation.
A well-empowered workforce can better manage inventory, demand planning, and supplier interactions, reducing waste and inefficiencies.
Based on study with IDC, 27% more manufacturing processes automated, 20% improvement of productivity across supply chain, procurement, and inventory management teams by using Dynamics 365 AI-powered ERP solutions.1
Future-proof your manufacturing operations in 2025
AI-powered solutions for ERP and service systems are more than a technological upgrade. They’re a strategic imperative for manufacturers aiming to improve the supply chain, drive operational excellence on the factory floor, deliver great customer experience, and operate sustainably and efficiently.
If you’re registered for Hannover Messe, we invite you to visit the Microsoft booth (#G06, hall 17) and join Sameer Verma, Microsoft’s GM, Dynamics 365 AI ERP, to learn how Dynamics 365 drives manufacturing excellence with AI agents. The session will take place on Monday, March 31, 2025, at 12 PM Central European Time (UTC +1).
Also, continue to visit the Dynamics 365 blog to learn more about how Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform are helping retailers reimagine the road ahead; and feel free to contact us to learn more about the Dynamics 365 AI-powered ERP system solutions.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Contact centers play a crucial role in delivering exceptional customer support and driving business growth. With the rise of digitalization and advanced technologies, AI and automation have become essential for streamlining operations, improving efficiency, and nurturing stronger customer relationships.
Beginning next month, Dynamics 365 Contact Center customers will be able to leverage Teams Phone, along with all telephony options supported by Teams such as Teams Calling Plans, Direct Routing, and Operator Connect, and configure them as a single, integrated solution in Dynamics 365 Contact Center.
Through Teams Phone extensibility for Dynamics 365 Contact Center, we aim to deliver the following value adds:
Simplified telephony management across Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), streamlining deployment, management, and billing of telephony infrastructure.
Availability of advanced AI features in Dynamics 365 Contact Center to enhance contact center operations and deliver more efficient, intelligent customer interactions.
Enhanced calling capabilities from Teams such as Enhanced 911, compliance recording, calling policies, configuration of dial plan, advanced troubleshooting tools are now available in Dynamics 365 Contact Center.
Broader geographic availability of telephony via integration with Teams Calling Plans, Direct Routing, and Operator Connect.
Teams Phone extensibility for Dynamics will be available in public preview starting April 2025, with general availability planned in summer 2025. Please stay tuned for a detailed blog post being released next month.
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