Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service is an exciting new offering that empowers customer support teams to create powerful bots using a guided, no-code graphical interfacewithout the need for data scientists or developers.

Virtual Agent for Customer Service is built on the Microsoft Bot Framework and addresses many of the major issues with bot building in the industry today. It eliminates the gap between subject matter experts and the development teams building the bots, and the long latency between customer support teams recognizing an issue and updating a bot to address the issue. It removes the complexity of exposing teams to the nuances of conversational AI and the need to write complex code. And, it minimizes the IT effort required to deploy and maintain a custom conversational solution.

Using Virtual Agent for Customer Service, you can:

• Empower customer service teams by allowing them to easily build bots themselves, without having to go through intermediaries, or requiring coding or AI expertise.

• Reduce costs by easily automating common support inquiries and freeing human agent time to deal with more complex issues.

• Improve customer satisfaction by allowing customers to self-help and resolve issues quickly 24/7 using rich, personalized bot conversations.

Highlights

• Get started in seconds. Virtual Agent for Customer Service is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. It allows you to easily sign up, create your bot and embed it into your website with just a few clicks. Theres no infrastructure to maintain or complex systems to deploy.

• Empower your subject matter experts. Using Virtual Agent for Customer Service, your customer service teams are in the driver’s seat. Your SMEs can create bots quickly and easily using an intuitive, code-free graphical interface, eliminating the need for AI expertise or teams of developers. If your customer service agents realize something has changed – e.g a product has launched and they’re getting calls about an issue – they can easily log into the system, change the bot’s answers themselves and have their changes go live in minutes.

• Enable rich, natural conversations. Microsofts powerful conversational AI capabilities enable your end users to have rich multi-turn conversations which quickly guide them to the right solution. And, unlike most products on the market, theres no need to re-train AI models. Simply provide a few short examples of the topic you want the bot to handle, build the conversation using our graphical editor and your bot is ready to handle customer requests about it. You can even try out your changes in real-time in the test pane!

• Enable bots to take action. Bots that can chat with your users are great, but bots that can act on their behalf are even better. With Virtual Agent for Customer Service, you can easily integrate with services and back end systems out-of-the-box or through hundreds of easy-to-add custom connectors using Microsoft Flow. This makes it simple to create a bot that not only responds to the user, but also takes action to resolve their issues. Want to automatically send an email for a return? Trigger a workflow? Lookup inventory or call a custom API? It’s easy with the power of Microsoft Flow.

• Monitor and improve bot performance. Virtual Agent for Customer Service lets you keep an eye on how your bots are performing using powerful metrics and AI-driven dashboards. Easily see which topics are doing well, where the bot can improve, and quickly make adjustments to improve performance. For example, you can easily identify topics where the bot is struggling or ends up passing conversations to human agents, and can modify the conversation – all with a few clicks.

• Better together. Virtual Agent for Customer Service works hand-in-hand with Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Insights to provide a holistic view of your customer service operations. You can use Customer Service Insights and Virtual Agent together to determine which topics are trending or consuming support resources, and then easily automate them.

Resources

To give you a deeper insight into how powerful the system is and how easy it is use, watch a brief overview video of the product in action, from getting started to building a simple bot. Or, check out the documentation to learn more about Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service.

We’re always interested in hearing from you. Please visit our community and let us know your feedback.

Happy bot building!

Omar Aftab

The post The benefit of bots: Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service overview appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

April 2019 marked a significant milestone for Dynamics 365. Our customers are now on the latest in-market version of Dynamics 365 and weve modernized how updates are delivered to our users. Today, I want to follow-up with an update on the April 19 release, as well as reveal the timeline for the 2019 release wave 2, starting in October 2019.

April 19 release update deployed seamlessly

We are pleased to announce the automated delivery of the April 2019 update to our Dynamics 365 customers world-wide! This release was rolled out seamlessly just like the October 2018 release, confirming that the era of disruptive, expensive, and effort-entailing updates is behind us. This update will serve as a model for our future updates for Dynamics 365.

One version update

With the April 19 release, we reached an important milestone in our One version journey! 100 percent of our commercial cloud customers for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications are now on the latest version. For Finance & Operations, 87 percent of customers are on the latest version, and the rest have a plan in place to upgrade to the latest version.

Our customers have experienced significant improvements in reliability and performance and are taking advantage of the latest capabilities and features. Here is what one of our customers said about the April 19 update experience:

The words upgrade and easy arent typically used in the same sentence for ERP, that is until the One version service updates from Microsoft made it so. As a regulated industry, it is important for us to have the right processes to be ready for continuous updates and we have developed processes and are investing in the RSAT tool to experience an evergreen ERP world.

– Jeff Ketelhut, Vice President and Head of IT, Atara Biotherapeutics

Key dates for the upcoming release wave

Today, were announcing the key dates for this years second release wave of updates, starting October 2019. These will help you plan and prepare to receive these with confidence.

• June 10, 2019: Release plan available
  Learn about the new upcoming capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

• August 2, 2019: Early access available
  Try the new features and capabilities before they get enabled automatically.

• October 1, 2019:General availability
  This is when the production deployment for the 2019 release wave 2 begins. Specific deployment dates for each region/instance will be communicated in advance.

Early visibility through release plans

On June 10^th, 2019, we plan to publish the release plan (formerly known as the release notes) for the 2019 release wave 2 with the initial list of features for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform being delivered to market. The release plan provides you with early visibility to get ready for the updates planned from October 2019 to March 2020.

Early access to mandatory end-user impacting features

Customers and partners can validate the upcoming features and capabilities months in advance before theyre enabled automatically twice per year, during the April and October updates. Early access enables you to try and validate these new features in a non-production environment and get ready to roll out the changes with confidence to users. Early access for the 2019 release wave 2 October update will start on August 2^nd, 2019.

If you have any questions or feedback, please join the discussion in the Release Readiness forum in the Dynamics community.

The post Dynamics 365 & Power Platform timeline for the 2019 release wave 2 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS May 2019 (Release 2) release.

Update tiles improvement

The LCS update tile now enables environments that are one version behind the current service update to be able to take hotfixes without having to update to the newer version.

For example, if you’re on Application 10.0.0 while Microsoft is applying service update of Application 10.0.1, you can still take the hotfixes for Application 10.0.0 from the LCS update tile without being updated to version 10.0.1. If you want to take the new version, you can get it from the LCS project Action center or the Shared Asset Library.

This change does not impact existing update tile behavior or One Version service update policy, and the LCS update tile continues to provide the cumulative updates.

If you are on the same version as current service updates or if you are a First release customer, you can continue taking cumulative hotfixes from the LCS update tile for your version.

If your environment is older than 3 months or 2 service updates, taking updates from the LCS update tile will bring you to the latest version.

If your environment is on an earlier version such as 8.0, or 7.x, there is no change with your LCS update tile experience.

The post Lifecycle Services – May 2019 (Release 2) Release Notes appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

There are advanced settings in the filter control that allow you to change the behavior of the Schedule Assistant.

Options include:

• Real Time Mode

• Allow Overlapping

• (Ignore Proposed Bookings) (Multiday)

• Ignore Travel Time

• Ignore Duration

By default, these are all deselected, except for Ignore Proposed Bookings, which is selected by default.

What if you want to change the default for any of the advanced options?

All you have to do is modify the Default Retrieve Constraints query leveraging Universal Resource Scheduling extensibility.

(Here is a previous blog post where this was discussed in the context of changing the default value for ignoring proposed bookings.)

To change the default value for any of the options above:

• Open up the Schedule Board. Any tab will do.

• Select any Schedule Board tab, and then select Open Default Settings, which will open the Schedule Board that serves as the default for all the other Schedule Boards. Any settings that are Schedule Assistant focused are changed on the default Schedule Board. (For more information about Schedule Board settings, click here.)

• Scroll down to the Schedule Types section. If you want to change the default for a specific Schedulable Entity, select that entity (for example, Work Order or Project). If you want to change the default, select None under Schedulable Types. Then modify the “Default Retrieve Constraints” query by selecting the edit button next to the query.You can now modify your retrieve constraints query. You can see below the section that sets the default values for the advanced settings. Using “IgnoreTravelTime” as an example, just change the default from “false” to “true”, and save the record query. (Notice that you cannot actually override the default query we ship, but you can “save as,” which clones the default and lets you modify the query.) query we ship, but you can “save as,” which clones the default and lets you modify the query.)

• You can even get fancy and add conditions for the default value! Just fetch the attributes you need in your condition, add a UFX key to the attribute, and reference the key in your condition:
  <IgnoreTravelTime ufx:if=$input/@ufx-id ufx-type=bool>true</IgnoreTravelTime><IgnoreTravelTime ufx:if=not($input/@ufx-id) ufx-type=bool>false</IgnoreTravelTime>

• Once you save the query, make sure it now shows as the selected default query, and then apply your changes:

• Next time you search for availability, the default will be to ignore travel time!

Check out these blog posts to learn more about the functionality of Ignore Travel Time or Ignore Proposed Bookings.

Happy Scheduling!

Dan Gittler, Principal PM Manager, Dynamics 365 Engineering

The post How to change advanced settings for the Schedule Assistant appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Schedule Assistant in Universal Resource Scheduling has an option to “Ignore Travel Time” when searching for availability.

This option allows you to search for a resource within a certain radius, but it does not require the resource to be free for both the entire duration of the requirement AND the time it takes to travel to the requirement. The resource needs to be available only for the duration of the requirement.

For example, below you can see that a booking already exists for Edgar between 11 and the end of the day. This booking is location-agnostic, meaning there is no travel to this booking because it can take place anywhere, such as a phone call. There is an open space available on Edgar’s calendar between 9 and 11. When the scheduler searches for availability using the Schedule Assistant, it does not recommend 9 to 11 as a viable time for the requirement being booked.

Below you will see that the user chose to “Ignore Travel Time”. As a result, the Schedule Assistant DOES recommend that same block of time. That is because Edgar has two hours free, which is the amount of time the requirement takes. Because the scheduler chose to ignore travel time, the Schedule Assistant does not need to leave time to travel to that requirement.

The Schedule Assistant still ensures that the resource travel does not exceed the radius set in the filter panel, and it shows the travel time to the user, but it ignores whether there is enough time to travel.

Additionally, when the user books the requirement and ignores travel time, the Schedule Assistant will only book the two hours, and it will not include the additional travel time in the booking.

Although Ignore Travel Time ignores travel TO the requirement being booked, it still makes sure that there is enough travel time to get to the subsequent location.

Continuing the same scenario from above, the booking at 11 AM is location-agnostic, so the resource does not need to travel TO this booking. However, the Schedule Assistant ensures that the resource can travel to their home location by the end of working hours.

Below you will see that Ignore Travel Time is selected, and that there is a two-hour block at the beginning of the day that is recommended, which is because there is a 30 minute open block at the end of the day. That 30 minute block at the end of the day leaves the resource time to travel home.

Below is a screenshot showing the same scenario, except that there is no 30-minute opening at the end of the day. Because there is no time for the resource to travel to the next location, in this case, the home location, the Schedule Assistant does NOT recommend the two-hour block at the beginning of the day, even though Ignore Travel Time is selected.

To summarize, when you “Ignore Travel Time”, the Schedule Assistant recommends a slot in which:

• The requirement can fit.

• The travel distance is within the radius.

• The resource can still travel to the next scheduled location, which can be a booking or an end location.

It does not:

• Leave enough time to travel to the requirement being scheduled.

• Add travel time into the duration of the booking.

Check out this blog post to learn how you can change the default value for “Ignore Travel Time”.

Happy scheduling!

Dan Gittler,

Principal PM Manager, Dynamics 365 Engineering

The post How to ignore travel time when searching for resource availability appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In May, Dynamics 365 Business Central partners published 33 new apps on AppSource. The following apps were added in May 2019:

• Clever Handheld for Warehousing by Clever Dynamics
  Oozes simplicity and features that streamline your warehouse operations

• Payroll NOW by Integrity Data, Inc.
  Fully integrated, complete and trusted US Payroll App

• Alna Document Import by Alna Business
  Automate XML and CSV document import

• AMC Banking 365 Business by AMC Banking
  Secure and efficient integration between your bank and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

• OPplus 365 Check Deposit / Petty Cash by gbedv GmbH & Co. KG
  Perform petty cash and check deposit handling in an easy way

• External Manufacturing for Naviceram by Aitana Management S.L.
  Control and management of external manufacturing assembly items

• Advanced-Forms Lite – FREE version by Quadira
  Easy document creation/distribution

• Advanced Customer Vendor Statements for Italy by EOS Solutions
  Display and print customers & vendors aging reports

• Clever EDI by Clever Dynamics
  Replacing complexity with simplicity, Clever EDI provides a managed service from a single source

• GDPR Toolset by EOS Solutions
  Process and hold personal data in compliance with the main rules of GDPR regulation

• 365Performance Essentials by Business Systemhaus AG
  Integrate comments factboxes and description to wherever needed for documents and master data

• WMS Data Collection by Sikich, LLP.
  Extends WMS and MFG capabilities by providing quick entry/scanning of data to optimize operations

• Clever PrintNode Integration by Clever Dynamics
  Cloud printing done right

• Clever Landed Costs by Clever Dynamics
  Stop inaccurate landed cost calculations eating into your profit margin

• BSS Ost Automatic Dimension Management by BBS Business Solutions for Services – Ost GmbH
  This Automatic Dimension System extension adds the possibility to create dimensions automatically

• Greenshades Payroll and HCM by GREENSHADES SOFTWARE INC
  Perform all payroll functions confidently through the Greenshades Payroll HCM Platform

• ODT Rentals 365 RoW by Open Door Technology
  Manages rental units, quotes, contracts, and recurring invoices

• Connector for CETAS FOS365 by CETAS Information Technology
  Are you looking for omni-channel solution for your restaurant? CETAS FOS365 is your answer.

• Shop Floor Data Collection by Amerdian LLC
  Real-time production job tracking on the shop floor for improved visibility and scheduling

• Marketing Materials for Naviceram (US) by Aitana Management S.L.
  Manages all your marketing materials, including promotional items and tile displays

• Import from Acomba by Groupe Conseil ERA
  Migrate accounts, customers, vendors, and items from Acomba

• BatchFlow4 by MDC Nordic
  Integrate BatchFlow 4 to Dynamics 365 Business Central

• Marketing Materials for Naviceram (ES) by Aitana Management S.L.
  Manages all your marketing materials, including promotional items and tile displays

• Remittance Advice Email by ASQiT Ltd.
  Simple and effective remittance advice emailing, to make sure emails are sent to correct recipients

• NC365 SharePoint Connect by NAS Conception GmbH
  Connect your Microsoft SharePoint Online directly to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

• ERP Link for SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk, Siemens, PTC by Elmo Solutions Inc.
  Bidirectional, real-time, and trouble-free exchange of engineering and manufacturing data

• Rental Process Management by Suite Engine, LLC
  RPM gives you actionable insight into every aspect of your equipment rental business

• eShopConnect for Magento by Dynamics eShop Inc.
  Seamless integration between Magento & Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

• Prodware – Advanced Sales Discount Management by Prodware Group
  Advanced sales discount accelerator allows additional and multiple discount policies

• Folio3 Magento Integration Connector by Folio3 Dynamics AX Services
  Integrate your Magento store with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central – automate and sync data

• Roasting 365 by TSO-DATA Nrnberg GmbH
  The complete business management solution cloud for coffee roasters

• Bank Files for Italy by EOS Solutions
  Import and export Italian bank files (SEPA, CBI)

• iDynamics Working Hours by iDynamics Business Solutions
  Configure schedules for your different work centers and track your employees’ daily working hours

Go here to learn how to develop and publish your own app for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

The post New Business Central apps in May 2019 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Welcome to the world of One Version, where we’ve modernized the service updates for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. With One Version, all customers benefit from being on the same version with access to the latest capabilities available, and no one is stuck on less capable older versions. Customers also experience continuous updatesno more expensive upgrades.

I am happy to report that since last October when we formally began this journey, weve automatically applied an estimated 5,000 automatic updates to our customers, both in production and sandbox environments with a success rate of over 99 percent. From our telemetry, we also see that over 70 percent of our customers have opted to stay current with monthly continuous updates, an additional 20 percent have requested a pause due to general implementation timelines, and about 10 percent are opting for two consecutive pauses. Over the same period, weve also released and improved our Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT) with the goal to significantly reduce the time and cost of user acceptable testing. This tool enables functional power users to record business tasks using a task recorder and convert them into a suite of automated tests without the need to write source code.

Choice and flexibility for service updates

During this period, weve studied the impact of providing one version for all customers, including those who operate in regulated industries and have seasonality needs. Today, customers can choose to update between 4 and 10 times a year. Based on feedback and an independent study, were providing more flexibility by adding an extra pause option. With these new options, customers who want to stay continuously updated can still do so and don’t have to change anything. However, customers such as those operating in regulated industries have the option to pause up to three continuous updates. This, along with a change in when we will ship updates, effectively allows our customers to get into a predictable minimum 2x a year cycle of staying current. To stay committed to this predictability, we will deliver eight new service updates per year and provide an additional cycle of servicing support for the prior version:

New additional cycle of servicing

Quality will always be at the forefront for what were delivering, and we will continue to offer programs for early validation during the development cycled Release Validation Program. We will continue to make a preview available for each service update through the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations insider program. As we move through each phase of our quality processes, we will continue to examine telemetry to determine if hidden regressions in capability or performance are not present. We will now offer an additional cycle of servicing to allow us to provide critical fixes to customers. Please review the Service update availability documentation to learn more about the programs and find the release schedule.

Supporting all customers with a single, up-to-date software version delivers on a key promise of cloud software as a service. Microsoft is innovating and investing in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations to ensure that this can be achieved with the right attention to quality and stability demanded by enterprise business applications. As Dynamics 365 customers shift to this model, they will experience improved uptime and a reduction in the volume of service tickets. At the same time, those customers are seamlessly gaining access to a continuous stream of innovation. Microsoft, our partner ecosystem, and our customers are spending less time and resources on upgrading software and focusing more on delivering business value. The One Version journey is here join us.

Learn more about the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations cloud application lifecycle

Read our new whitepaper to learn more about the enterprise application lifecycle in the cloud era, and how the One Version initiative delivers on the vision of a modern cloud application lifecycle for mission critical enterprise solutions.

The post New flexible service updates for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to: Dynamics 365 Guides (build 103.1905.31001.0)

This month, were pleased to release an improved anchoring (alignment) experience in Dynamics 365 Guides.

Whats new in this release

The PC app doesnt require you to choose an anchoring method before creating a guide, so you can start creating content right away. You can also switch between anchoring methods after creating a guide.

The PC app also provides better step-by-step guidance on choosing the appropriate method for anchoring mixed-reality instructions to your workspace.

If you choose to create a guide using a digital anchor, you can now use a preset 3D model, so you dont have to choose a 3D model before proceeding.

Note: To take advantage of the new anchoring improvements, you must update the Dynamics 365 Guides (Preview) solution in the Dynamics 365 admin center. For more information, see Upgrade your Dynamics 365 Guides solution, or contact your Dynamics 365 administrator.

For more information on authoring a guide with the PC application, see Use the PC authoring application to create a guide.

The post May release of Dynamics 365 Guides improves anchoring (alignment) process appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Cant make it to Microsoft Business Applications Summit this year? Dont worry, weve got you covered you can livestream the opening keynote live from Atlanta, Georgia June 10 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

Watch as James Phillips, Corporate Vice President of Microsofts Business Applications Group, kicks off the conference with a special keynote celebrating the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform communities. Plus, hell also give you a sneak peek into the newest innovations from Microsoft Business Applications.

• See the latest technologies. From AI to mixed reality and more, get a first look at the new features and capabilities coming next for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform (Power BI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow). Learn how you can use game-changing technology to do more every day.

• Hear from visionary leaders. Business leaders from across industries will join James onstage to share how theyre reimagining their organizations and using Microsoft applications to power their business transformations.

• Get inspired to drive your next innovation. James and his guests are sure to inspire you to innovate at your organization and move your business forward.

Mark your calendar you wont want to miss this livestream event. Join us June 10 at 8:30 a.m. EDT on the Microsoft Business Applications Summit website for the broadcast.

And theres even more to explore after the conference is over our post-event, on-demand content will give you hours of breakout sessions, workshops, and keynotes to boost your skills. You can learn from the experts and engineers behind your favorite tools, download presentations to review at your own pace, ask questions in forums, collaborate with the broader community, and more. Well keep you posted on when our on-demand content is available in the Power Platform Community, so stay tuned!

The post Watch live: Microsoft Business Applications Summit opening keynote appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The need to revolutionize the delivery of patient care has never been greater than it is right now. To remain profitable and relevant, healthcare providers have no choice but to rapidly evolve.

The urgency to evolve is in large part due to growing populations with increasing needs and a greater expense to care for them. The World Health Organization estimates there will be 2 billion people aged 60 and over by 2050, while a report by Transparency Market Research projects the global home healthcare market will reach over $303 billion in revenue by 2020.

At the same time, patient expectations and behaviors are changing.

We all know that todays consumers have become accustomed to the data-driven, personalized experiences they get from retail brands. And now, theyve come to expect similar experiences with all the brands they interact with, including their healthcare providers.

Most healthcare leaders are already looking for new ways to deliver more patient-centric care. But the clock is ticking.

Several big consumer technology companiesthe ones that have done the most to transform customer expectations by delivering amazing experienceshave set their sights on the healthcare industry. Providers are under intense pressure to improve the patient experience.

Lessons learned from customer service disruptors

Providers looking for ways to deliver more patient-centric care can learn a lot from how the consumer market handles customer service. In particular, providers should look at how these big technology disruptors improve experiences through continuous engagement that strengthens relationships and improves outcomes.

Here are three examples of how providers might apply these lessons in the healthcare setting:

1. Empower customers with easy access to their informationand personalize their experiences with that information. For instance, when a patient logs into a self-serve platform, they can get customized recommendations based on their medical history and other shared information.

• Proactively reach out to patients in the channels they prefer (like cell phones and tablets) to increase plan adherence and prevent readmissions. Imagine automatically contacting a patient via a mobile app to remind them of an upcoming appointment or share an important health alert.

• Provide patients with access to your services on their terms to improve outcomes. Through self-serve portals, mobile apps, personalized emails, and website experiences, providers can give patients the right information wherever they are to support their health.

Putting the lessons into action

At Microsoft, weve put tools in place to help healthcare providers deliver the relevant, personalized experiences todays patients demand. Here are some things you can do:

• Give patients self-service access with health data and personalized plans that are available anytime, anywhere, through secure portals that provide a 360-degree view of patient wellness.

• Deliver precision health by collecting granular data on each patient and analyzing for individualized, predictive insights. These insights then enable personalized communication at scale.

• Reach out to patients with preventative care and healthcare updates at their convenience to prevent readmissions and improve the management of chronic conditions.

• Enable holistic, pervasive relationships where patients can contact caregivers and receive personalized advice whenever and wherever they need it.

The best part? Our new Healthcare Accelerator solution lets you do all those things competently. It is the linchpin that lets you use the full suite of tools in the Microsoft Cloud more efficientlyfor even faster, easier transformation.

Using patient data to transform the patient experience

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator unifies your EHR data while enabling a suite of systems and applications to help you more easily manage and understand patient outcomes.

When all your patient data is easily accessible, you can:

• Gain a 360 view of patients and their individual experiences

• Better communicate and educate your patients

• Make better patient care plans

• Reduce churn

• Decrease return visits

• Increase adherence to care plans

• Ensure patients are in the appropriate care setting

To remain relevant and profitable in todays changing healthcare climate, providers must act fast to improve the way they deliver care. Patient experience teams are under heightened pressure to do their jobsand do them well. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator solution makes that job a whole lot easier, providing the tools and insights required to deliver the personalized experiences patients expect and deserve.

Learn more about Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Healthcare Accelerator enables the interoperability of your systems and applications that can help you better understand the patient journey, enhance your brand image, and prove your marketing ROI.

Download our new eBook to learn more about the Healthcare Accelerator and how to unlock interoperability to help reduce costs, increase revenue, and manage risk to improve patient outcomes dramatically.

The post Create amazing patient experiences by leveraging the retail playbook appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Dynamics 365 Customer Insights team is happy to announce the availability of our June release.

NEW FEATURES

• Power BI connector gets a data experience

• Improvements to the Dynamics Customer Card

• Segmentation from Customers page

• Segment draft mode

• Measures: New operators

• Provide feedback directly in the app

Power BI connector gets a data experience

Using Customer Insights’s Power BI connector is now easier than ever! When you install our updated connector, you can now simply sign-in with the same credentials you use to access the Customer Insights app, and you will be presented with a full list of the environments and entities you can import, without needing to type a thing! You do need to install the new connector, but it will work with any existing environments or accounts, including Microsoft ones.

Improvements to the Dynamics Customer Card

You can now gain even more insights through the Dynamics Customer Card.

Visual Shortcuts for Measures

In addition to having measures appear in the customer card, you can add visual shortcuts for them, such as when a customer’s churn score becomes dangerously high. This will allow you to turn insights from Dynamics 365 Customer Insights into action even faster than before.

Clickable URLs in the Card

If fields used by Customer Insights related to another webpage, you can turn a piece of text into a clickable URL directly in the customer card. Say you have a customer’s homepage in your application that you used to unify customer data. Now you can go directly from your Dynamics application to that customer page in your browser, allowing you to check on your customer even faster than before.

Reordering Made Easy

You can now reorder fields in the customer card directly from the edit screen.

Improved Timeline View

The timeline control now has collapsible headings, allowing you to more easily navigate the timeline.

Segmentation from Customers page is now available

Overview

Until now, you could only create segments on the segment builder page. Today, we are pleased to announce a second way of segmenting your customers of interest: Segmentation from the Customers page. This segmentation feature is highly contextual. When we designed this feature, the user we had in mind is someone who applied some filters on the Customers page, but then couldnt quickly segment by those filters. In the past, such a user needed to create the segment from scratch using the segment builder.

Applying filters on the Customers page

While visiting the Customers page (and assuming your administrator has indexed some fields as filterable) you can start filtering and searching for specific customer profiles. Click here to learn more on these capabilities as well as the administrator requirement. Note that segmentation from this page is available only around filters and not around search-each of the filters you select on the filters panel will be used to segment your customers in the next step.

Save your results as a segment

Once some filters are selected, click the Save results as a segment button (shown beneath the members count) to quickly produce a segment:

The following dialog box will appear. Here, you need to give your segment a name and select whether it will be static or dynamic. You might also give your segment a more friendly name via the Display Name field (another new capability). Your segment will have this name on both the Segments and Home pages.

Viewing and editing your segment

Upon clicking Save, you will be prompted to either activate the segment now or later.

• You can revisit the segment definitions and expand them via the segment builder (accessible via the Edit button)

• An inactive segment will not be processed until you make it active (for dynamic segment) or click Run (for static segment)

Draft Mode for Segments is now available

Overview

In Customer Insights, segmentation encapsulates diverse filters and operators to accommodate for a large range of business needs. At the same time, due to its sophistication, our segment builder requires you to make more than a few mandatory selections in order to generate a segment. Through the new Draft Mode capability, you can start saving incomplete segment definitions and revisit them later whenever you wish.

Moreover, our team utilized this opportunity and took a first step towards the simplification of the segment builder experience as a whole. The following pain points were addressed:

Saving your segment draft

In order for a segment to be processed you were required to complete certain selections (click here to learn more). However, saving your segment is now also possible with an incomplete definition. Simply click Save:

If your segment is a static segment, it will carry a Draft status on the segments page:

If its a dynamic segment, it will be inactive as long as its in draft mode:

Activating or Running your segment draft

Once all mandatory selections are made, you can process your segment. For static segments, that can be done via the Run button within the segment tile menu:

For dynamic segments you should select the Make active button from the segment tile menu:

Editing your segment draft

At any point you can also edit your segment draft. Clicking Edit will take you to the segment builder screen where you can continue defining your segment or reconfigure any prior selection. Clicking the Rename button will enable you to rename your segment as well as changing its description:

New operators are now supported in Measures

Overview

We are happy to announce the support of two new types of operators for values (aggregates): First and Last. This is our first step in turning the measures capability into a more comprehensive one and in the next few months we aim to bring various additional variables, values, and dimension types into fruition. You can also start utilizing the Max operator on Date fields.

Example use cases

Here are some examples for what you can achieve using these new operators:

• First operator: Pulling the last quote given to each of your customers for a product or service

• Last operator: Tracking the first user action taken on your website by each of your customers

• Max operator on a Date field: Getting the latest date for each of your customer engagements (in other words, when was the last time your business engaged with each of your customers?)

How to use First and Last operators

How do these operators work?

• With the First operator, the first record will be taken for each dimension value.

• With the Last operator, the last record that was added to each dimension value will be taken. For example, if the dimension is CustomerID and the Last operator is applied on a Sales attribute, the result will be the last sales record for each CustomerID.

Both operators can be applied as part of the definitions of all three measure types: Customer measure, Customer attribute, and Business measure.

As mentioned before, those operators were added to the Value (aggregate) list of operators:

How to use the Max operator on Date fields

If its a value field, the operator will take the largest value for each dimension.

If its a Date field, the operator will take the latest date for each dimension value. For example, If the dimension is ActivityID and the operator was applied on the field ActivityDate then it will return the latest date for each ActivtyID.

This operator exists in the Value (aggregate) list of operators as well:

Provide feedback directly in the app

You can now provide feedback directly within Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. You can provide either a quick smiling- or frowning-face and also provide more detailed information to tell us about your experience.

The post Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – June 2019 release notes appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

We know that applications and services can sometimes change at a fast rate, and that it can be hard for consumers to keep abreast of all the latest changes. To help you stay current, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail product team conducts a monthly webinar on the first Thursday of every month, providing information about recently released features and upcoming features that are planned in the next few months. These webinars also provide a forum for our partners, customers, and support colleagues to ask questions and provide feedback.

We understand that everyone has a different schedule and demands, and a lot of us are in different time zones. To accommodate anyone who cant attend a live webinar, we record all the webinars and post them for on-demand viewing.

The webinar that we presented in May was attended by over a hundred participants. We started with a demo of extensibility enhancements where the new application programming interface (API) triggers that were made available in the April monthly release were used with the point of sale (POS). After that, we discussed details of the POS independent packaging featurethis was received with great excitement from the attendees. We then switched gears from extensibility to the recently released auto-charges capability and pricing and promotion enhancements. The last part of the webinar provided insights into the upcoming demo data changes, and we showcased visuals for the POS clienteling capabilities that are planned for an upcoming Retail release. Attendees posted their questions in the Teams chat window, and product group members were there to respond.

You can find recordings and presentation materials from the last webinar, and also information about the next upcoming webinar, on the Retail Interest Group Yammer group. This Yammer group is quite activeused by implementation partners, support, customers, and product group members to post questions and commentsallowing members to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the Retail community. To join this group, send a request at http://aka.ms/retailinterestgroup.

The next webinar is June 6, 2019. Were looking forward to seeing you all there!

The post Dynamics 365 for Retail webinars appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

When using the Schedule Assistant to look for available resources to schedule a work order or fulfill a requirement, you can sort the resources displayed to find the best matching resource. Out of the box, the sorting can be done on one of these fields:

• Name

• Rating Value

• Total Available Time

On the Schedule Assistant, this sorting can be applied in two ways:

1. Use Sort on the header of the Schedule Assistant; -OR-

• Use Sort Result byfilter on the available filters

The sort order is applied whether you select from the Sort dropdown list or the Sort result by filter.

What if you want to default a specific sorting on Schedule Assistant? For example, let’s say you’re sorting your resource recommendations on the Schedule Assistant in descending order of Total Available Time on all your searches. It would save time to set the default to sort by descending order of Total Available Time of the resources.

Here is how to set the default the sort order on the Schedule Assistant.

• Open the Schedule Board, any tab would do, click on the Schedule Board Settings (gears icon) as shown below

• On the Tab Settings pop-up, click on Open Default Settings, which will open the Schedule Board that serves as the default for all the other Schedule Boards. Any settings that are Schedule Assistant focused are changed on the default Schedule Board. (For more information, read this article about Schedule Board settings, click here.)

• Scroll down to the Schedule Types section. If you want to change the default for a specific schedulable entity, select that entity (for example, Work Order or Project). If you want to change the default, select None under Schedulable Types. Then modify the Default Retrieve Constraints query by selecting the edit button next to the query.You can now modify your retrieve constraints query.

• Add the below UFX query snippet to the Default Retrieve Constraints query, and save the record query. (Notice that you cannot actually override the default query we ship, but you can save as, which clones the default and lets you modify the query.)

<!– order by descending total available time –>
<Orders ufx-type=”list”>
<bag>
<name ufx-type=”string” ufx-formatvalue=”totalavailabletime”>totalavailabletime</name>
<descending ufx-type=”bool” ufx-formatvalue=”true”>true</descending>
</bag>
</Orders>

• Once you save the query, make sure it now shows as the selected default query, and then apply your changes:

• Next time you search for availability, the Resources are sorted in the descending order of their Total Available Time

Check out these blog posts to find more details about Total Available Time and UFX

Vinay Nalam

Program Manager, Dynamics 365 Engineering

The post How to sort results by total available time when searching for resource availability appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Are you attending Microsoft Business Applications Summit in Atlanta next week? Check our sessions to get a deep dive on Customer Insights and see demos of upcoming new experiences.

Dynamics 365 AI: Making Artificial Intelligence real for your organization with Sales and Customer Insights

Be the AI expert for your company! In this session, we’ll cover the new Dynamics 365 Sales Insights and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights applications: join us to configure Sales Insights and build your first unified customer profile! Connect siloed data sources and gain a 360-degree view of your customer to derive insights that power your everyday business processes.

Pre-Day workshop

Sun 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

PRE12

Building C – Level 3 – Room C301

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights: Technical deep dive

Are you looking at ways to unify disparate data to gain a 360-degree view of customers across marketing, sales and service? During the technical deep dive, we showcase technologies and applications that can be used to BYOD, derive insights, and take action. Our Microsoft technical experts show you how to: o Import and unify data from various data sources internal and third party o Enrich these unified profiles with proprietary Microsoft signals and AI models o Generate customer segments, insights, and KPIs that power business processes o Leverage extensibility of the Microsoft Power Platform to drive actions directly from your business applications.

Mon 10:40 AM – 11:00 AM

THR3013

Building C – Level 1 – Exhibit Hall C3 (Theater 5)

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights: Unify your customer data to power personalized experiences

Customer-centricity is a business imperative and improving the overall customer experience a top priority, but delivering connected experiences can be challenging given the systems and data are often siloed in ways that mirror organizational structures. The ability to effectively personalize at scale requires a complete, unified view of customers across marketing, sales, and service. Realize the full potential of your customer data with a self-service solution that intelligently transforms fragmented data into a complete view of customers. Learn how to unlock insights to power your business processes and deliver personalized experiences that help you retain and grow your customers.

Mon 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

BRK2030

Building C – Level 3 – Room C302

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights in action: Turn your customer data into intelligent insights and actions

Join this session to see real-world examples of how companies can usher in dynamic new customer insights by bringing together marketing, sales, and service in entirely new ways. We go in-depth on how you can create a 360-degree view of your customers by eliminating data silos, connecting and mapping customer records, reconciling customer identity across systems and enabling seamless experiences, all from within a self-serve, click-based user interface.

Tue 12:30 PM – 12:50 PM

THR3010

Building C – Level 1 – Exhibit Hall C3 (Theater 4)

The post Dynamics 365 Customer Insights at Microsoft Business Applications Summit appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to: Project Service Automation for Dynamics 365

Were pleased to announce the latest update for the Project Service Automation application for Dynamics 365. This release includes some important improvements to quality, performance, and usability.

This release is compatible with Dynamics 365 9.x. To update to this release, visit the Admin Center for Dynamics 365 online, solutions page to install the update. For details, refer How to Install, Update a Preferred Solution.

Project Service Automation (V3.8.0.57)

• Bug fixes
  • Fixed: Applying 24 hour templates pushed the duration of tasks to the next day.
• Fixed: Permissions errors created when project create plugins invoked.

• Fixed: Unable to create time entries for vacations and absences in the calendar.

• Fixed: Persistence of pinned personal views were not maintained.

• Fixed: Performance issues during project task assignment recalculations when upgrading from pre-assignment versions of the PSA(2.x) to PSA 3.6+.

• Fixed: Default value of the quote line detail type is not respected.

Project Service Automation Team

The post Release Notes for Project Service Automation Update Release 8 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to: Project Service Automation for Dynamics 365

Were pleased to announce the latest update for the Project Service Automation application for Dynamics 365. This release includes bug fixes.

This release is compatible with Dynamics 365 9.x. To update to this release, visit the Admin Center for Dynamics 365 online, solutions page to install the update. For details, refer How to Install, Update a Preferred Solution

Project Service Automation (V2.4.13.19)

• Bug Fixes

• • New task validations:
    • Project tasks cannot start before the year 2000
  • Project task durations cannot be more than 17years
• Project tasks cannot start more than 17 years in the future

• Updated legal terms: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx

Project Service Automation Team

The post Release Notes for Project Service Automation Update Release 16 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

2019 release wave 2 plan, AI Builder, updated AI capabilities, and a new look for Power BI, PowerApps Portals, and enhancements for Microsoft Flow all coming this year.

Today, I had the opportunity to join more than 4,500 members of our community at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit (MBAS) in Atlanta. MBAS is a special event for us because its our chance to connect in person with the makers, thinkers, and developers that make up our community.

This is also a moment when we get to showcase some of the amazing work our customers are doing. Were thrilled to have so many customers join us in Atlanta this year, including G&J Pepsi and Grant Thornton, who joined me onstage during the opening keynote.

Were also sharing some important news this week.

Firsta first look at the 2019 release wave 2 plans! For those who want to see whats coming, you can dive into the Dynamics 365 2019 release wave 2 plan and Power Platform 2019 release wave 2 plan. We look forward to telling you more about the 2019 release wave 2 in the coming months before these features go live starting October 1st.

Secondwere announcing important Power Platform advancements.

Earlier this year I outlined our vision for the Power Platform. Along with Satya and the rest of the leadership team, I am bullish and enthusiastic for all things Power Platform. But what I appreciate most is the work of our community and what they DO with the Power Platform.

Today, we are giving our community more tools so they can take full advantage of what the Power Platform has to offer. On behalf of the entire team, I am incredibly proud to announce the following:

• AI Builder and PowerApps Portalstwo brand new capabilities

• Accelerating intelligent automation in Microsoft Flow with built-in AI

• Updated AI capabilities and an exciting new look for Power BI

This is a great time to be innovating with Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, and I love being on this journey with you all. Please find more information below about todays news along with details for how customers and partners like G&J Pepsi are already taking advantage of this work.

Introducing AI Builder

Today, were excited to announce AI Builder, the no-code AI capability on the Power Platform supporting PowerApps and Flow.

AI Builder enables everyone to leverage AI and machine learning to make their apps and automations more intelligent. It takes common AI scenarios and provides point-and-click solutions for app makers to solve everyday tasks like forms processing, object detection, and text and binary classification.

PowerApps already enables employees to easily create applications for your business. AI Builder now provides a way for app makersprofessional and citizen developers aliketo add AI capabilities to those apps.

The potential uses for AI Builder span industries and scenarios for banking, hospitality, manufacturing, and more. For example, an organization may want to improve customer service so they can use AI to analyze customer feedback responses, map them into categories, and generate an AI model to classify and respond to customer feedback as its received.

G&J Pepsi, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, has more than 1,600 employees focused on manufacturing, distributing, and marketing the full line of Pepsi-Cola products. The G&J Pepsi IT team used AI Builder and PowerApps to create the next generation of their Store Audit App, enabling better mobility and efficiency for field personnel whose job is to assess product needs on the shelves in stores.

With AI Builder, we were able to easily build an AI model to help automatically identify and track our products using the object detection model. For our field worker, its now as simple as taking a photo and letting AI builder do the rest. – Eric McKinney, Enterprise Business Systems Manager at G&J Pepsi.

Delivering intelligence in Microsoft Flow

The no-code AI Builder capability is also coming to Microsoft Flow. Flow provides a powerful visual experience for a range of users to build everything from personal automation to business-critical enterprise-wide processes. With AI Builder, we are now making it easier for users and organizations to optimize these processes with intelligence without having advanced knowledge of how AI works.

For example, Flow makers can now extract meaningful data from images and text that can drive logic in their processes. Today, many processes involve paper forms such as a rental or job application. Historically, the first step in processing these forms would be to have someone look at the paper and manually type in each of the fields on their PC.

Now with AI Builder and Microsoft Flow, flows can automatically pick up scanned documents from an incoming email or a file server and recognize all the content. Based on the values in the form, different steps can runfrom sending out simple notifications to performing a credit check.

Beyond parsing content in documents, AI Builder can also learn based on historical performance. For example, it can predict the risk of an application and, depending on how high that risk is, add additional approval actions to a business process. All of this is possible for Flow makers without having any expertise or experience with AI by leveraging guided, point-and-click experiences.

Leveraging blockchain in PowerApps andMicrosoftFlow

Blockchain can bring trust and transparency to business processes that span multiple business partners. Using blockchain is easier than ever with the ability to write low-code applications using the Power Platform and Azure Blockchain Service.

Applications built on blockchain using PowerApps and MicrosoftFlowcan easily create attestable workflows that bring together data from every point in the business process across the value chain. For mobile clients, PowerApps enables developers to effortlessly capture all of the information from the phones sensors (barcodes, photos, GPS coordinates, etc.) and send it to a smart contract on a blockchain. Using connectors for popular enterprise blockchains in Microsoft Flow, you can easily integrate blockchain with popular SaaS, legacyenterprise systems, web and messaging services, and different types of data technologies.

Some industry examples that leverage the power of blockchain and the Power Platform include:

• Multi-party supply chain: Building applications and workflows that provide irrefutable proof of delivery of shipments to manage shrinkage risk between point-of-manufacturing and point-of-sales.

• Food safety: Users can get real time insights when goods that can be impacted by temperature and humidity are in transit. Blockchain can provide real time insight with trustworthy data that can help avoid costly public health issues, streamline return processes, and dispute resolution.

• Attest genuine media: Many industries have a need to ensure that documents have not been tampered with. Build applications that can attest and/or validate that media is genuine with PowerApps and Flow.

Announcing PowerApps Portals

PowerApps can now reach users external to an organization with PowerApps Portals, coming soon to public preview.

PowerApps customers can now create websites that can be accessed by external users with a wide variety of identities including personal accounts, LinkedIn, and other Azure Active Directory organizations, and enable anonymous access to content. Portals works exclusively over data in the Common Data Service and customers benefit from its robust security and advanced capabilities for modelling business processes, which now includes low-code AI with the release of AI Builder.

PowerApps Portals also comes with a reimagined maker experience, embracing the core PowerApps principle of low-code productivity for everyone. With these new capabilities, app makers can create a website from scratch using pre-built templates, and then customize the layout and content using components like forms, views, and dashboards.

Portals capability was previously only available as an add-on to Dynamics 365 and is used extensively by customers including the University ofCanterbury,Internet Initiative Japan,andWineshipping to serve millions of users for scenarios like partner management, customer support, community feedback, employee benefits, and more. With this release, were enabling the creation of a custom portal directly from PowerApps.com using the Common Data Service, which will open new categories of use cases.

New AI capabilities in Power BI

Power BI is a popular tool that millions of users trust for exploring data. More than 25 million models are hosted in the Power BI service, more than 12 million queries are processed each hour, and more than 20 petabytes of data are ingested into the Power BI service each month.

Today, were excited to announce new Power BI AI capabilities, and more.

Power BI has been a pioneer in applying AI to business intelligence and making AI accessible to everyone. We recently previewed several new AI capabilities that enable users to detect objects in images, analyze free-form text, build new machine learning models, and automatically understand what drives outcomes, all with point-and-click simplicity.

We have important updates to Power BI AI capabilities:

• Text and image analytics in Power BI powered by Azure Cognitive Services, and the ability to invoke Azure ML models are both now generally available.

• Were announcing two new AI visuals: Distribution Changes analyzes what makes a distribution look different, and the Decomposition Tree enables users to drill into any dimension to understand what is driving a key metric.

• We are expanding Power BIs vision and text analytics capabilities and adding entity detection and text and handwriting recognition, enabling one-click transformations for insights on unstructured data.

• For enterprises that need custom lifecycle management or further tuning, models created in Power BI can be exported to Azure ML.

And finally, we are extending Power BIs natural language capabilities. The new updates include the ability to train Q&A so it understands and adapts to company-specific language like synonyms, phrasings, or specific domains, and the ability for report authors to see every natural-language question asked so they can make adjustments to how Power BI responds.

Kinepolis is a cinema group operating 53 complexes throughout Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Poland, as well as 44 cinemas in Canada. The company uses Power BI AI capabilities to understand how they can improve their visitor experience by analyzing the sentiment of customer reviews and tweets.

Kinepolis serves visitors in and from many countries, who vocalize their opinion through various channels. With text analytics in Power BI, we are able to structure and analyze all this feedback. It allows us to score the sentiment of our visitor reviews without investing in the data science behind it. – Carlo Wambeke, technical lead BI at Kinepolis.

Welcoming a new look for Power BI

In addition to the updates above, were also releasing a new look for Power BI, so its more closely aligned to the experiences in Office 365 already familiar to users around the world. The new user interface makes it easier than ever to create reports, explore data, get answers, and make decisions without having to learn specialized skills.

Were also making users more productive through new features like report commenting which allows people to collaborate on their data, and Siri shortcuts for our iOS mobile app, simplifying how users find data.

New capabilities for a unified enterprise business intelligence platform

Organizations can now move to one modern, compliant platform as the single destination for business analytics with key enterprise-facing updates on enterprise-grade semantic models and reporting at worldwide scale. Paginated reports, available for over a decade in SQL Server and a staple of corporate reporting solutions, are generally available in Power BI this month, enabling pixel-perfect formatting and advanced export options. Additionally, organizations can encourage reuse and create a single source of truth with certified datasets, now available in preview. With future capabilities for data lineage, administrators can understand usage and plan changes.

For more information on todays news, please refer to the following blogs:

AI Builder: Introducing AI Builder for the Power Platform

Microsoft Flow Updates: May Updates for Microsoft Flow

PowerApps Portals: Announcing PowerApps Portals to create websites for external users

Power BI Updates: Announcing New AI and Enterprise features for Power BI

The post Announcing new features, growing demand for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS June 2019 (Release 1) release.

Update applied as part of Microsoft managed service updates will not be available in project asset library

There was an issue where the package that was applied as part of the One Version or Microsoft managed service updates was not being saved to the projects’ asset library. As a result, if customers wanted to apply the same update to other environments within the project they would have to save the update from the tiles or get it from the shared asset library and then apply it. To add to that, if the customer wanted to do a self-update on their production environment after the sandbox environment was updated by Microsoft, they would have to re-apply the update on their sandbox so they could mark the package as a Release Candidate. With this release of LCS, we have fixed this issue and going forward the same package that is applied to your environments will be saved to your projects’ asset library so you can take this update and apply it to your other environments.

Production servicing support for environments deployed using self-service deployment

With this release of LCS, we have added support for updating production environments without any lead time or without any manual intervention. This is supported only for environments deployed using self-service deployments. The behavior for the production servicing flow is different than the current servicing behavior. To update your production environment, you need to apply the update to a sandbox environment and mark a specific update as a release candidate. An update includes both the base product and the customization, so if the update that is being promoted has resulted in the base product to change, then that change will also be reflected in the production environment when that update is applied. For details about how to use this new feature, see Update an environment.

Business Process Modeler (BPM) test case synchronization for Talent project

LCS Business Process Modeler (BPM) now supports Azure DevOps synchronization for test cases for the Talent project.

The post Lifecycle Services – June 2019 (Release 1) release notes appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today we presented a few updates for ISVs at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, an event focused on diving deep into Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, including a roadmap and preview of whats coming next. Here is a quick overview of the updates to our Industry Accelerators, the ISV Development Center program, recertification, and ISV relevant sessions.

Industry Accelerators

Data is at the core of business applications, yet many organizations face challenges in how to get the full benefits from it. Data is stored in silos that exist both within and outside of an organization, making it difficult to determine what is currently available for use. Even when the data is available, a lot of time is spent normalizing the data so that it can be used together before any insights are even made. However, some of this could be avoided by developing business applications using Dynamics 365 Industry Accelerators.

Industry Accelerators are built in collaboration with industry participants using an open data model that provides consistency on entities and attributes for specific industries, making it easier to work with data across boundaries. Previously we released Industry Accelerators for healthcare, nonprofits, and higher education. During my session at the Microsoft Business Application Summit in Atlanta, we will go in-depth on two accelerators that are now in preview, Automotive and Financial Services, which covers commercial and retail banking.

Financial Services Accelerator

Customer expectations of the services they get from their bank continue to increase, and the ability for a bank to look at a customers profile end-to-end is becoming more critical. Working with Veripark, Wealth Dynamix, Fiserv, and others we extended the Common Data Model (CDM) to banking. Partners can build financial services solutions that can interoperate, and banks are able to view their customer journeys. This Industry Accelerator also includes sample code and is freely available in AppSource and GitHub.

Automotive Accelerator

Like financial services, automotive also has a customer journey that involves several parties and the resulting data silos. Automotive has an additional complexity in that vehicles are always moving around. With the preview of the auto accelerator, our focus is to extend the Common Data Model (CDM) to customer experience management (e.g., marketing, lifetime engagement, etc.) and managing consumer experiences in franchised dealer networks. We partnered with Annata, Oxlo, and others to create the Automotive Industry Accelerator, which is open sourced on GitHub so you can extend it and submit pull requests.

Microsoft ISV Development Centers program

For partners new to building on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, the Microsoft ISV Development Centers program can help get started quickly. Development centers in the program are closely vetted and reviewed, serving as the partners partner by providing a range of services from technical consulting to development of repeatable IP. In order to provide services as part of this program, a partner must have a Microsoft Partner Network agreement, at least 25 developers with proven Microsoft development experience, at least 50 customer referenceable ISV projects, high customer scores, and more.

Once a partner is part of the program, they work closely with Microsoft to make sure that they continue to keep their skills current to better serve partners that rely on them. Services provided across Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform include:

• Envisioning, designing, proofs of concept, building, and testing new products

• As Dynamics 365 is updated, support for updating, integrating, and reengineering for the new release

• Implementation resources for repeatable IP

• Product support

• Launch activities including preparation for AppSource and the marketplace, as well as international go-to-market activities

To help you get started, I am including a table of the different partners in the program and their geographic focus.

Application certification

With the new Business Applications ISV program launching in mid-July, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and PowerApps teams will launch an initiative to ensure that all published customer engagement and finance & operations apps are consistently updated to remain compatible with the platform. The upcoming recertification period starts on July 15^th and ends October 15^th, 2019. We encourage you to prepare for program enrollment with the resources below.

• Review the program guide and recertification and update policy.

• Learn how to update your Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement apps versions 9.x and Finance & Operations apps versions 10.x.

• Sign up to receive updates on the Business Applications partner program and join the weekly Dynamics ISV community call.

For those of you in Atlanta for the Business Applications Summit, Julie Strauss and Omar Choudhry discussed the certification process as part of their session on Monday.

Sessions at the Business Applications Summit

For ISVs at the Business Applications Summit, there are a few sessions for you to learn more about CDM, the Industry Accelerators, and building on PowerApps. These sessions will be available to watch on-demand after the live session.

I hope that you enjoy your time at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, and I am looking forward to connecting with ISVs both here and again at Microsoft Ignite in July.

The post ISV updates at Microsoft Business Applications Summit appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Applies to Universal Resource Scheduling solution (version 2.4.12.xx), Field Service application (version 7.5.10.xx), and Project Service Automation application (version 2.4.13.xx) on Dynamics 365 version 9.1.x (web client)

Were pleased to announce the latest update to Universal Resource Scheduling, powering the Field Service and Project Service Automation applications for Dynamics 365. This update includes improvements to quality, performance, and usability and is based on your feedback and requests. To update, visit the Dynamics 365 admin center online solutions page. See how to update a preferred solution. The following bug fixes are included:

• Fixed: Drag a resource route on the map to a requirement pin to create a booking for the resource.
• Fixed: When an Entity is enabled for scheduling, the book button will appear on both the web client and unified interface forms of the Entity.
• Fixed: You can now open and make changes to default settings for the schedule board from the booking setup metadata record.

Vinay Nalam
Program Manager, Dynamics 365 Engineering

The post Enhancements and bug fixes in Universal Resource Scheduling (URS) version 2.4.12.92 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.