Microsoft recently announced at Build 2023 , a groundbreaking feature for Windows 11 that promises to revolutionize productivity—Copilot.
This AI-powered tool is designed to assist users in their daily tasks, providing intelligent suggestions, code snippets, and contextual information to enhance efficiency and streamline workflows. Let’s see how Windows 11 Copilot will change the way we work.
Intelligent Code Suggestions: One of the standout features of Windows 11 Copilot is its ability to offer intelligent code suggestions. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or someone exploring coding for the first time, Copilot can provide helpful code snippets, saving time and reducing the need to search for solutions elsewhere. It leverages machine learning to understand coding patterns and context, generating relevant suggestions that align with the user’s intent.
Streamlined Workflows: With Copilot, Windows 11 users can expect more streamlined workflows. By offering contextual information and suggestions based on the current task or application being used, Copilot reduces the need for manual searches or switching between multiple windows. It seamlessly integrates into the user’s workflow, enabling them to stay focused and accomplish tasks efficiently.
Enhanced Content Creation: Content creators will also benefit from Copilot’s assistance. Whether you’re writing emails, reports, or blog posts, Copilot can provide relevant suggestions, sentence completions, and grammar checks. This AI-powered tool helps users refine their writing, improve language fluency, and increase overall productivity.
Natural Language Understanding: Windows 11 Copilot leverages advanced natural language processing (NLP) capabilities to understand user queries and provide accurate suggestions. It can comprehend questions or requests phrased in a conversational manner, making it easier for users to interact with the AI assistant. This natural language understanding makes Copilot accessible to users of all skill levels, regardless of their technical background.
Security and Privacy: Microsoft prioritizes user security and privacy in Copilot. The AI assistant is designed to respect user boundaries, and all suggestions and code snippets are generated locally on the user’s device. Microsoft is committed to maintaining transparency and ensuring that user data is handled securely, empowering users to leverage Copilot with peace of mind.
Windows 11 Copilot represents a significant step forward in AI-powered assistance, offering users an intelligent companion to boost productivity and streamline workflows.
Whether it’s providing code suggestions, enhancing content creation, or offering contextual information, Copilot leverages AI and natural language understanding to deliver valuable assistance.
With its integration into Windows 11, Copilot has the potential to become an invaluable tool for users across various domains, helping them achieve more in less time and unlocking new levels of efficiency.
Windows Copilot will start to become available in preview for Windows 11 in June. Read the announcement at below link and you can register for the preview.
In today’s data-driven world, organizations rely on robust analytics platforms to unlock valuable insights from vast amounts of information. At Build 2023 Microsoft has recently unveiled an exciting addition to their suite of offerings: Microsoft Fabric.
This end-to-end, unified analytics platform aims to streamline and enhance the data analytics process by bringing together all the necessary tools and resources in one comprehensive solution. Let’s explore how Microsoft Fabric is revolutionizing data analytics for organizations.
In this blog we will look at key features offered by this platform:
Seamless Integration of Tools: Microsoft Fabric serves as a centralized hub, seamlessly integrating various data and analytics tools that organizations need. It brings together a wide range of capabilities, including data ingestion, preparation, visualization, advanced analytics, and machine learning. This integration eliminates the need for organizations to juggle multiple disjointed tools and allows for a more cohesive and efficient analytics workflow. Synapse Data Warehousing(preview) provides a converged lake house and data warehouse experience with industry-leading SQL performance on open data formats.
Scalability and Performance: One of the key advantages of Microsoft Fabric is its scalability and performance. The platform is designed to handle large volumes of data, enabling organizations to process, analyze, and derive insights from massive datasets. With built-in scalability, organizations can easily scale up or down their analytics capabilities based on their evolving needs, ensuring optimal performance and efficiency at all times.
Unified Data Governance and Security: Data governance and security are critical considerations in today’s data landscape. Microsoft Fabric prioritizes these aspects by providing a unified approach to data governance, ensuring compliance with regulations and standards. The platform offers robust security measures, including data encryption, access controls, and monitoring, to safeguard sensitive information and maintain data integrity throughout the analytics process.
Collaborative Environment: Microsoft Fabric fosters a collaborative environment by enabling teams to work together seamlessly. It offers features like shared workspaces, collaborative notebooks, and real-time data collaboration, allowing data scientists, analysts, and stakeholders to collaborate effectively and share insights. This collaborative approach accelerates the decision-making process and encourages cross-functional collaboration within organizations. Synapse Data Engineering (preview) enables great authoring experiences for Spark, instant start with live pools, and the ability to collaborate.
AI and Machine Learning Capabilities: With AI and machine learning playing a pivotal role in data analytics, Microsoft Fabric incorporates advanced capabilities in these areas. The platform leverages AI to automate data preparation, feature engineering, and model training, enabling organizations to derive insights faster and with greater accuracy. By democratizing AI, Microsoft Fabric empowers organizations of all sizes to harness the power of machine learning for better decision-making and innovation. Synapse Data Science (preview)provides an end-to-end workflow for data scientists to build sophisticated AI models, collaborate easily, and train, deploy, and manage machine learning models.
Microsoft Fabric is a game-changer in the world of data analytics. By providing an end-to-end, unified analytics platform, it simplifies the analytics workflow, enhances collaboration, and ensures scalability and security.
In this post I will share how we can setup the Monitoring and Telemetry using Application Insights for D365 Finance and Operations. (*This feature is in public preview in service update 10.0.30. The setup/behaviour may slightly change/improve by the time it is generally available.)
First lets cover basics of Application Insights from a very high level. Application insights falls under the category of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools. It collects Metrics and application Telemetry data, which can be used to gain insights on application activities and health.
Below is a view of various azure monitoring tools and extensions available and application insights is one of them
Now coming to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, this feature is a direct, point-to-point integration between an instance of a finance and operations app and the target Application Insights destination. Each application Insight resource has an “Identification Key” which uniquely identifies the resource in Azure portal. This is used in F&O configuration.
Below is step by step process to setup and enable it:
Login to Azure portal and create a new resource
Select resource of type “Application Insights”
Select the resource group and give it a name. It is recommended to have a proper naming convention for ease of use.
Once we select review + create and validation is complete, then it takes few minutes for the deployment to complete
Once the resource is deployed, copy the instrumentation key
Now open the Dynamics 365 F&O feature management workspace and enable the feature named “Monitoring and Telemetery”
Navigate to System Administration >> Setup >> Monitoring and telemetery parameters
This form has 3 tabs: Configure , Environments & Application Insights Registry. On the configure tab, we can select which types of telemetry we want to capture and send to application insights
On the Environments tab, we provide the environment ID and the environment mode . This can be found from LCS environment details page and is unique for each D365 F&O environment.
Copy the environment ID as shown below from LCS
Create a record in the environments tab page. This is a nice way to handle scenarios when databases are restored, this setup is preserved in non production environments.
Environment mode is important as the mode ties the environment with application insights in the next tab page. So if you want multiple environments to send the telemetry data to same application insights resource, then it is possible.
On the third tab we have to define the mode and link it with the instrumentation key which we copied from the azure portal after creating the rescource.
Now it’s time for action. In my case it took some time for the initial telemetry feed to reflect in the portal but it did captured good information form the environment.
Further analysis and custom dashboards, queries can be written in application insights to derive more targeted information. X++ developers can also log exceptions from custom code to feed into the telemetry. It will be interesting to see how microsoft converges the application monitoring capabilities across Dynamics 365 applications.
Below are some good reference article for more information on this topic:
Today our azure hosted build pipelines running against TFVC branches stopped working with the error Process ‘msbuild.exe’ exited with code ‘1’.
Resolution which worked for us : Update the solution path with wildcard to find the build solution path. Previously we had full path defined but somehow it started causing error.
It looks like Microsoft updated something under the hood and if you are stuck with the same issue then this might help you to move forward.
Recently I encountered an error message when trying to test the send email functionality after setting up the email parameters and using SMTP to send out test email “D365 F&O Server smtp.office365.com:587 using SSL/TLS supports the following authentication options: LOGIN, XOAUTH2.“
After some researching, I found the below setup was missing in Microsoft 365 Admin Center for the user. To fix this :
Navigate to Office 365 Admin Center >>Open list of users >> Select the user and click on the name
Click on Mail >> Go to Manage Email Apps
Make sure the check box is Turned ON. By default it is turned OFF.
After this come back to Dynamics 365 F&O and send the test email
I recently faced the below error when trying to import a BAI2 format bank statement file in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance (Service update 10.0.28) version.
Error upon importing bank statement
The bank statement file had correct bank account. The issue was due to another bank setup in a different legal entity with the same account number.
After correcting the bank account the import process worked fine.
If you are facing the same error when worth checking for the duplicate bank account number in another legal entity.
In Dynamics 365 F&O service update 10.0.26, a new personalization feature is released which allows users to choose and select desired tile size for the workspaces. The feature can be enabled from Feature management workspace
ERP’s have evolved over time and the people who are in this domain have witnessed how the usage of ERP system has changed – from being just an in-house system to manage operational activities to being modern and intelligent systems which can talk to external systems, provide access to external parties via portals with rich analytics baked into the product to provide actionable insights to improve operational efficiencies and decision making.
Last few years have taken a big leap in adding Data Analytics, Machine learning and Artificial intelligence capabilities in order to make the systems more smart .
In this post I’ll highlight AI/ML based capabilities available out of the box in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance , Supply chain and commerce applications. There are links to explore more about these features:
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance:
Finance insights combines functionality from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance with Dataverse, Azure, and AI Builder to provide powerful forecasting tools . Announcement of these capabilities were made in Feb 2020 and these features are now generally available.
Budget Proposal : By using Finance Insights, intelligent budget proposals can quickly consolidate and analyze years of historical data to predict your budget forecast. By letting the system perform these budgeting tasks for you, you’ll save time and be able to focus on meaningful discussions about how the budget will support your business. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/finance/finance-insights/budget-proposals
Cash Position : Cash position is the projection of cash flow that is forecast for the near term. It’s based on the projection of cash receipts from customers that pay outstanding invoices and orders, and also on the projection cash disbursements that are paid to vendors for purchase invoices and orders. More details can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/finance/finance-insights/cash-position
Customer payment predictions : The Manage customer credit and collections workspace includes two new tiles: Transaction payment predictions and Customer payment predictions. On the Transaction payment predictions list page, you can view the probability of payment for open transactions in the On time, Late, and Very late buckets
The Customer payment predictions list page shows the total open balance, and the amount that is predicted to be paid in the On time, Late, and Very late buckets.
Expense receipt processing : Expense entry has been enhanced through the introduction of optical character recognition (OCR) processing for receipts. We need to install expense management service add in from LCS and then enable the below features
Expense reports re-imagined
Auto-match and create expense from receipt
This feature uses Azure cognitive services Form Recognizer to extract the field information from the the uploaded expense receipts
Demand Forecasting : Demand forecasting is used to predict independent demand from sales orders and dependent demand at any decoupling point for customer orders. To generate the baseline forecast, a summary of historical transactions is passed to Microsoft Azure Machine Learning hosted on Azure. Basic flow is as below. Wecan use Supply Chain Management to visualize the forecast, adjust the forecast, and view key performance indicators (KPIs) about forecast accuracy.
A great demo on this feature was given by Andrew Lencsak in DynamicsCon 2020. Below is the link
Ratings and Review recommendations : The ratings and reviews solution lets retailers capture product reviews and ratings from customers. Retailers can then show average ratings and review information across their e-Commerce website. Details can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/commerce/ratings-reviews-overview
Below is high level architecture of the service
Commerce analytics (Preview) : This feature is in preview and utilises all modern capabilities of data lake, azure synapse analytics and power BI semantic models to provide the rich analytics from commerce data ganarated from multiple sources. A live demo if this dashboard can be access from https://aka.ms/CommerceAnalyticsDemo
Microsoft clarity in Dynamics 365 commerce : Microsoft Clarity is a user behavior analytics tool that can help site owners understand user interactions with their e-commerce sites. Clarity’s analysis tools enable visibility using session recordings, heatmaps, and machine learning insights to review and study user interactions. Clarity can be integrated into Dynamics 365 commerce sites. More details can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/commerce/set-up-clarity
Fraud Protection :Fraud Protection is a service that offers fraud protection solutions to help retailers prevent fraudulent activity and identify places where fraud might be unnoticed. This has to be purchased in addition to Commerce license altough the integration capabilities exists out of the box . Visit https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/fraud-protection/ to know more about the offering.
Product recommendations : The product recommendations service utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI-ML) technologies in the following way:
Data in the format that the Recommendation service requires is extracted from the Commerce operational database and sent to Azure Data Lake Storage or Entity store.
The recommendations service uses the stored data to train recommendation models for the People also like, Frequently bought together, New, Best selling, and Trending lists.
Personalised product recommendations : In Dynamics 365 Commerce, retailers can make personalized product recommendations (also known as personalization) available. In this way, personalized recommendations can be incorporated into the customer experience online and at the point of sale (POS). When the personalization functionality is turned on, the system can associate a user’s purchase and product information to generate individualized product recommendations.
Shop similar looks recommendations : The “shop similar looks” recommendations feature in Dynamics 365 Commerce uses the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI-ML) to deliver recommendations for visually similar products to customers.
Shop similar description recommendations : The functionality for “shop similar description” recommendations uses the product name and description of seed products to find and recommend similar products in a retailer’s product catalog. “Shop similar description” recommendations are available in both the point of sale (POS) and e-commerce experiences.
Clienteling with customer insights : In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce, retailers can use the client book functionality to help store associates form long-term relationships with key customers. By using the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights application, retailers can aggregate data from the various systems that customers use to interact with the retailer’s brand. They can then use this data to generate a single view of the customer and derive insights. The integration of Customer Insights with Commerce lets retailers select one or more measures that should be shown on the customer card in the client book. For example, retailers can use the data in Customer Insights to calculate the “churn probability” for a customer and define the “next best action.” If these values are defined as measures, they can be shown on the customer card and can provide crucial information to sales associates
The below AI powered capabilities are available in Dynamics 365 ecosystem which can be added to your existing Dynamics 365 applications to enhance the experience:
Dynamics 365 Connected space ( In preview) : With Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces, your organization can harness observational data with ease, use AI-powered models to unlock insights about your environment, and respond in real-time to trends and patterns.
Dynamics 365 customer insights : Bring together transactional, behavioral, and demographic data in real time to create a 360-degree view of your customers. . Optimize the customer journey with out-of-the-box and custom interactive reports.
Understand customer behavior on your website and mobile app for cross-channel journey optimization
Optimize the customer journey with out-of-the-box and custom interactive reports.
Predict customer needs by unlocking powerful insights using prebuilt AI models, or use custom models for deeper insights.
Improve decision making with a digital-supply-chain twin by performing what-if simulations, advanced analytics powered by AI, and enhancing multi-tier supplier visibility.
Seamlessly work with existing planning and execution systems. Invite suppliers and partners to securely receive and share data on one platform.
Improve collaboration with suppliers, partners, and team members to identify risks early and plan for supply and resource constraints.
It does not stops here, power platform provides rich capabilities to build our own AI and ML models and curate your own solutions for Dynamics 365 applications. For more details visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder/model-types
During Microsoft Ignite 2021 held from 3-5 Nov 2021, Microsoft announced about emerging technology trends and innovations happening across the Microsoft Cloud covering Azure, Business Applications, Industry cloud, Microsoft 365 & Windows, Microsoft Edge, Power platform, Security & Identity management.
In this post I’ll highlight 6 key announcements related to Dynamics 365 business applications space and provide references so that you can dive deeper into your area of interest.
Collaborative apps released across Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Office and Teams
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights now in preview
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service voice channel now available
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces coming to preview soon
Microsoft Dynamics 365 adds key capabilities for Supply Chain Management
Microsoft Customer Experience Platform puts organizations in control of customer data
Collaborative apps released across Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Office and Teams
To allow organizations to to operate as one business, everywhere. New capabilities and features in preview have been release released across Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Office 365 and Teams include:
Accessible business data: A. Dynamics 365 and Teams are getting closer to each other to allow Organizations quickly find results from business data across Microsoft Search, unfurl that data into actionable cards (Loops) across Outlook and Teams and search valuable business data inline while writing. This new capability is called a Loop component, an element of Microsoft Loop, introduced today at Microsoft Ignite. Learn more about Microsoft Loop on the Microsoft 365 blog
Increased collaboration: Teams can invite anyone across the company to collaborate on Dynamics 365 sales records within the flow of a Teams chat or channel. Other collaborative updates include the ability to have a “chat now” pop out from anywhere in Dynamics 365 and inbound/outbound digital voice with Teams, featuring conversational intelligence.
Real-time engagement: Organizations can see who is working with them in the flow of work with live co-presence throughout Dynamics 365 apps. In addition, users can have all the information available on people they are collaborating with and how to engage with them via calls, chats or meetings.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Insights now in preview
Supply Chain Insights enables organizations to predict and mitigate disruptions and ensure positive customer experiences through fulfilling demand. With this solution, organizations can:
Collaborate and unify data in near real-time from third-party data providers, logistics partners, customers and multi-tier suppliers.
Enhance visibility by creating a digital twin of the supply chain and then generate actionable insights powered by AI.
Further predict and mitigate risk by enriching supply chain signals with external constraints like environmental disasters or geopolitical events that could affect the supply chain.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service voice channel now available
Organizations can transform their contact center operations with the new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service voice channel, now generally available. This addition to the existing omnichannel capabilities leverages the power of Microsoft Teams to bring traditional Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Customer Engagement Center (CEC) under a single, integrated customer service Software as a Service (SaaS) solution with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Now, the automation, intelligence and data insights that were previously only available for digital channels are available in a voice option. Organizations can get up and running quickly, deliver an all-in-one contact center, improve knowledge authoring and management, and transform contract center routing to deliver improved service experiences for customers in both digital and voice channels.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces coming to preview soon
In today’s environment of both digital and physical spaces, organizations have less visibility into their physical footprint than their digital channels, limiting their potential to optimize operations and improve employee and customer experiences. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces lets organizations harness observational data, use low-code capabilities to control observations and then produce real-time, predictive insights. Connected Spaces, coming to preview next month, is built to be extensible and works with existing hardware.
Connected Spaces lets organizations gain a new perspective in the way people move and interact in nearly any space, from the retail store to the
factory floor. Maximize safety in high-risk areas, observe queue management and seamlessly manage the connected factory, all in the name of understanding spaces in new and intelligent ways.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 adds key capabilities for Supply Chain Management
As manufacturers seek to create an agile and connected factory, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can now help customers predict demand shifts, supply constraints and equipment downtime by eliminating siloed Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to improve visibility of the production floor. Manufacturers can now work seamlessly with any MES system to unify data and generate predictive insights that can improve quality and optimize production processes.
Additionally, a priority-based enhancement to the planning optimization engine in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management helps eliminate zero-stock events. The solution automatically prioritizes replenishment of high-demand items in near real-time based on order priorities, current stock levels and projected inventory, leading to improved supply chain management. These updates are in preview.
Microsoft Customer Experience Platform puts organizations in control of customer data
The Microsoft Customer Experience Platform is a complete marketing solution that puts organizations in control of their customer data to personalize, automate and orchestrate customer journeys. It’s designed to deliver personalized and connected experiences from awareness to purchase. With a deep understanding of customers and rich, out-of-the-box insights, organizations can now understand and predict intent to deliver the right content on the right channel and in the right moment.
Microsoft Customer Experience Platform utilizes assets from across the company to create a cohesive Service as a Solution (SaaS) product while also delivering capabilities from Microsoft Customer Insights and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing. Features in this new solution include:
Consent-enabled Consumer Data Platform (CDP): This feature, in preview, enables the chief data officer (CDO) to use consent data directly in the CDP as an integrated, first-class capability. Organizations can utilize consent enablement to build complete customer profiles, manage known and pseudonymous aliases, ensure consumer data practices are compliant and protect that data with robust privacy and security controls, all in real-time.
Expanded business-to-business (B2B) tools: A business-to-business CDP combines customer data from all sources – CRM, email, websites, point-of-sales, partner systems, social networks and more – and performs identity resolution at the contract and account level to generate unified profiles for individuals and accounts. This feature is now generally available.
Capabilities included as part of customer experience platform are:
Brewing thought 