TIDBITS on the Microsoft Power Platform

Understanding some of the challenges of Microsoft "Marketing Vocabulary"

Oh the Challenges of Marketing ................................ 

• Customer Service Professional
• Customer Service Enterprise
• Customer Service Premium <- Includes Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center

but you can also just start with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center ....General Contact Center Pricing | Microsoft Dynamics 365

So, in general, make sure you work with your Microsoft Partner and Microsoft Sales Team to ensure that your alignment of licensing and products is correct and the best fit for your company.

We Do AI 2024

AGENDA

• OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Copilot(s)
• The Power Platform
• Microsoft Power Platform Model Driven Apps built by Microsoft
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Journeys/Marketing
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center
• Microsoft Copilot Studio
• An Agent versus A Copilot

 

 

 

 

 

Copilot in the world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM/CE)

As a first thought keep in mind that OpenAI and Azure OpenAI are slightly different. Azure OpenAI brings and wraps role-based entitlement, more controls and more options (such as private cloud) to the table.

The 100s of Copilots use Azure OpenAI to enrich and empower applications within the Microsoft Stack of offerings. This includes everything from Azure DevOps and developer tools to the Microsoft Business Applications. 

In the Microsoft Business Applications Copilot add an entirely new layer of awesome. It cuts through the noise, adds executive summaries, can be configured to find the right knowledge article from YOUR sources of knowledge and can bring filtered and controlled automation into areas that make sense to automate.

 

 

 

Are you working for your Business Applications?

OR are your business applications working for you? 

Once upon a time, when I was in Enterprise Sales, I had to manage hundreds of different companies and thousands of different contacts. At the ring of a phone call, I needed to know not only who was calling with more context than their "name", but also who they knew, who they respected, who influenced their decision making, who they didn't like. I needed to know when their budget renewed and how the current climate impacted that budget. I needed to know what frustrated them and what was available that they might not know about or who was available that could create a win/win.

I was also finding out new tidbits of information on an ongoing basis that was easy to forget. 

The world is small.

I would go to a conference or local user group meeting, and I would meet someone who knew someone who I knew.  They were at the same company, on the same baseball team or had recently published an article that everyone was talking about. 

I could keep track of the hundreds of companies (or a few hundred), but when I started adding in the hundreds of contacts associated with those companies. I just couldn't do it.

As such I focused my career on technologies that could make my job easier, and I selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Power Platform.

Here we are a few (okay more than a few) years later and I continue to still see that technology need at many companies. People using Outlook and Excel to try to remember the tiny details and to meet the goals that they need to meet. At one point you could go to a conference twice a year and get a good refresh. Yes, LinkedIn offers the alerts on who has changed jobs, but do you really have a great system that can show you your world and how it intermixes with the companies you work with? 

All of that great organic data that drips in here and there from just living your passion or from just making a living. (hopefully they are the same for you) Do you really know? 

PS: The above drawing took me less than 2 minutes to create. Waffle on that one ;) 

 

But I don't like the way it looks .. "Did you know you can change that?"

One of the biggest challenges of working with Microsoft is that for each product you are given a large number of choices. The idea of an MVP product is to get the basics out of the way and to train users on the platform, so that, you as a customer, are empowered with enough knowledge to be able to help make great choices.

Take for instance working with the generic out of the box product. This product is built to be both globally flexible, BUT also compliant with a list of regulations related to making sure the product is accessible for all people no matter how they access technology.

The "Design" options expand significantly when you start applying "PCF" to parts of the product such as forms and views. If you have not checked out the https://pcf.gallery for ideas then now is a good time to do it.

Randomly picking on the last page of the http://pcf.gallery provides you an idea on some of the possibilities. The Microsoft Power Platform team provides a few PCF options out of the box, the community provides others, and you can also have your partner of choice create one for you. 

Copilot in Dynamics 365 for Business Applications: a whole new way to work

Copilot: A Whole New Way to Work (office.com)

I want to encourage everyone to take advantage of these two-custom created virtual events at the end of June hosted by Microsoft + Avanade. The focus is copilot in the world of the Microsoft Business Applications.

A demonstration

June 26th (10:00 PST) - Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement & Copilot
“Enhance productivity and end user experience.”
Copilot for Sales - Sales enriched experience.
Copilot for Service - Enhance customer experience.
Copilot for Field Service - Create and route work orders seamlessly.

June 27th (10:00 PST) - Dynamics 365 ERP & Copilot
“Enhance Productivity of a Business user across Finance, Procurement and inventory functions."
Copilot for Finance - Enhance AI based collections and increase productivity on financial reconciliations, and AP Invoice automation.
Copilot for Supply Chain - Improve Forecast Accuracy and inventory visibility.

Please register using the following URL:
https://lnkd.in/gYB-XJmW

Microsoft Technologies leveraged on projects

One of the reasons I persist with the Microsoft Technology stack is that having a huge box of legos to build business applications with is just hard to beat. 

Microsoft tends to change names, debate branding and overall try to communicate what a consultant can bring to the table, but in most of my projects now we tap into numerous different offerings.

Take for instance my last project. In my last project we delivered an integrated model that included 

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Model Driven Power App + Microsoft Canvas App)
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (Supply Chain Management focused)
• Power Automate (Flow) (Approvals and Standard)
• Power Portal (now called Power Pages)
• Microsoft Dual Write (connecting DYN365FO + DYN365CE)
• Microsoft Azure Synapse
• Microsoft Azure Function Apps
• Microsoft Azure Logic Apps
• Microsoft Azure Service Bus 
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
• and Microsoft Office 365 

We also coordinated the team and the application lifecycle management using Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Azure CLI, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft RSAT (Regression Suite Automation Tool) and Microsoft Teams. 

Now you would think that you would need a HUGE team to deliver the above, but we actually delivered using a very reasonably sized team with a mix of resources. 

One of the beauties of the Microsoft stack of applications and offerings is that there is so much that you can do! The ability to use a platform that grows organically (SaaS) and through phased projects aligned to key business needs, keeps companies current with the latest and greatest technology offerings. 

The world moves so fast. It is great to have structures in place that allow teams to move at the same speed. 

 

Knowledge Sharing Power Platform Vocabularly

One of my favorite ways to learn is to share knowledge. I find that all of the other perspectives I get from this exercise really help me shift and refine what I have learned. 

In the last two years I have been under the fire house learning. It is both exciting, amazing and daunting when we consider how much more there is always to learn. It is also a twist for those of us who have years of experience. The experience makes a huge difference, but it also always has to be continually refined.

One of the first major learning tips is to get your head around the vocabulary quickly. It has served me well to think about the following.

The Power Platform, this is really an evolution to getting closer and closer to using the entire Microsoft Stack of awesome. The long loved deep integration to Office is now 100 times better AND there is also the deep integration to Azure and many of the new Azure functions. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 "Apps" are all Model Driven Power Apps on the Power Platform. 

Power Automate (Flow) The ability to automate, respond and receive responses and an alignment/replacement or stepping stone to both work flows and logic apps and you can learn more here.

Power BI Much loved and amazing reporting and business intelligence and analytics and you can learn more here

 

Power Virtual Bots, Not only bots, but Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and you can learn more here and here.

D365: Multi-Channel vs. Omni-Channel

• "Multi-channel: A multi-channel solution offers two or more channel experiences to customers. Data isn't necessarily shared across channels, and the experience isn't consistent.

  • For example, a customer starts a support request via chat but is then transferred to an agent. The customer then has to provide all his or her information again.

• Omni-channel: An omni-channel solution offers two or more channel experiences to customers, and the customer experience is consistent across channels. The context of the case and customer is used to streamline the experience across apps.

  • For example, a customer starts on a self-service portal but then starts a chat conversation. All the pages that the customer has opened are available to the agent." Reference 

Products, 3D 360 Degree Mixed Reality and Product Visualize

At the Microsoft Business Applications Summit this week I had a chance to take a look at and discuss Microsoft Product Visualize. I loved seeing how it worked, but more importantly I had dug into the details of where data is stored and how is it created. 

So first What is Microsoft Visualize? 

Consider the Microsoft Dynamics Product Catalog. You have a list of products associated with an opportunity and each item has a description. This doesn't really offer the most efficient way to quickly grasp all that you want to know. We then consider the flat, 2D ability to add a picture. Great! Wonderful, but can we do more? This is where Product Visualize for Dynamics 365 comes into plan. 

I have my Tablet (Surface/iPad/etc), I am at a client site and I am discussing an opportunity that includes a number of products. I might even have two similar products, because my prospect or client has not decided on what they want.  Product Visualize offers not only a 3D Image of the product, but it offers the ability to show a full 360 Degree 3D View of the product depending on how the "user" (myself, the prospect or customer) moves the tablet. 

So how does Product Visualize technically do this? 

Product Visualize uses a product .glb file stored in an integrated SharePoint library. The library that can be configured when Dynamics 365 is setup and configured. The file contains the 3D model saved in GL Transmission Format (glTF).  gITF offers the ability to store such information such as node hierarchy, cameras, materials, and animations and a GLB file is the binary version of .GLTF files.  

Note: For those of you who are old hands at gITF and glb, please feel free to expand on this.. 

BUT how do we actually get the images and the data for the GLB file? 

I have my product and I have Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, but I don't have a glb file. This is where the growing momentum in partnerships between the new worlds within the graphical industries and the ever evolving world of customer engagement becomes a huge win/win.