Dynamics 365 AI - Systems of Intelligence

Microsoft has introduced a suite of AI apps with Dynamics 365. This blog talks about Apps for AI as the new systems of intelligence.

Enterprise journey to intelligence -

The earlier enterprise applications were called Systems of Records - This were the Operations , Accounting / finance and HR applications used to record sales transactions, do accounting and process payroll. This formed the traditional ERP business apps.
As the Customer became recognized as King (or Queen for that matter) new Systems of Engagement were created for acquiring, winning and keeping the customer with the business, the CRM apps of Marketing, Sales and Customer Service.
Now that we have had both the Systems of records and Systems of Engagement the need was to combine the data that was collected and gain intellectual insights. Additionally technology has enabled us to train machines (develop algorithms) to recognize patterns in the data, learn and predict possible future outcomes and take actions from the insights thus evolving into AI.  Now we have what is called the Systems of Intelligence in the form of Machine Learning and AI.

Apps in Dynamics 365 -

There are mainly 3 types of applications (or apps) that you can purchase with Dynamics 365 - Business apps, AI apps & Mixed Reality apps. 
The business apps consists of -
1. Customer Engagement - The traditional CRM - Sales / Customer Service and Marketing suite
2. Finance & Operations - ERP suite
3. Retail - Point of Sale solution
4. Talent - HR solution

Dynamics 365 AI

Now Microsoft has added intelligence & made it more interesting by bringing in the Dynamics 365 AI apps
1. AI for Sales
2. AI for Customer Service insights
3. AI for Marketing Insights
The Apps for AI are built to be integrated with the Sales, Marketing and Customer Service apps. They add intelligence to the data collected, stored and processed within the business apps. Integrate the Apps with other Microsoft solutions - Office 365, Power Apps and Power BI... and the possibilities for transforming your business with intelligence becomes very real.

Design for AI -
Looking back when we were designing and developing the Systems of Records the focus was on management & exception reporting to get a 360 view of business. With Systems of Engagement the focus changed to 360 view of the Customer.
Today as you are building new applications for the future - remember to incorporate and design for AI. The Systems of Intelligence will be those that -
1. provide actionable insights
2. are cognitive and self learning
3. reinforce human intelligence

I am assured that the new Dynamics 365 AI apps are the beginning of the Systems of Intelligence and the road ahead is as exciting as it is challenging.

I will write more as I get my hands dirty with the Dynamics 365 apps for AI. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah
365WithoutCode

Integrating Teams with Dynamics 365 - Part-II

This is the 2nd part of my blog on Teams and Dynamics 365. In Part-1, I discussed about Teams and Office 365 apps. This blog will show how to integrate Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement with Teams.

Teams is integrated with Office 365 Apps. Creating a team also creates a SharePoint team site and also an Office 365 group for the team, which can be accessed from Outlook. As discussed in my earlier blog, Team consists of Channels and all communications and collaboration is done within the Channel. You can add a tab to the channel to show records from other Apps like Dynamics 365 and GitHub.

Teams will be useful for users to form groups to discuss, collaborate, share and do meetings together. It helps the team members to have one go to location for all messaging, documents, notes, design and meetings.

For example I have created a Team called Big Deal Opportunity. Within the team is the Bids and proposal Channel. I want to link my channel with the Dynamics Account - Bob the Builder so I have all the up to date info about the Account and Opportunity in  one place where the team is working together for bidding and proposal development.

1. On the channel select the '+' sign to add a Tab. Search for Dynamics and select Dynamics 365 - preview (Note - The Dynamics 365 integration is in preview and needs to be enabled in Dynamics 365 > Settings > Preview tab)

Add an App to Team

2. Select Org and Entity - If you have multiple environments it will ask you to select the Dynamics Org and also the Unified Interface App.

Select Org and App

Note -
1. Only Dynamics 365 v9 and above will work for Team integration
2. Only Unified Interface Apps will work. Not Web Client.

3. Select Entity and Record - The last step is to select the entity (Account) and the record.

Select entity and record

Once you are done a new tab will be added to the Team channel and it show the record in the Tab itself.

Account Tab in Teams

As you can see now the team can get all the info from the Dynamics 365 Account record (or any other record) on to the Team Tab.

Another good integration for Teams, is with One Note. I added a One Note Tab  on the Channel, which the Team can view and work on as they collaborate.

One Note Tab in Teams

I hope the above help you to integrate Teams with Dynamics 365. Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah
@mihircrm
365WithoutCode