10 Things to consider when Managing Enterprise Apps - Microsoft Dynamics 365 on Microsoft Cloud

 Once an enterprise application like Microsoft Dynamics 365 goes live within an organization there is lot of excitement. The project team is happy with the results of the efforts over the year/s. It is the day after going live that the operations team is faced with the post go-live challenges. There are lots of questions on how to support, operate, manage, adopt and scale the new Dynamics 365 application. Microsoft Dynamics 365 in an enterprise cloud environment can be very challenging. There could be multiple integrations with other systems within and outside the organization, compliance and security requirements, business enhancements needs and performance management. This requires planning and coordination with multiple teams. This blog series is about how to prepare and plan for managing of an enterprise Dynamics 365 app. Here are the top 10 things to consider - 

1. Governance (decision making) - There needs to be a governance team in place. There could be multiple operations support teams working on the system for example the application support and maintenance team, the infrastructure and security management team and the application enhancement team. There has to be a defined governance team that may consists of representatives from business, IT, Project and executive management. This helps the operations team to report any blockers, get the guidance and support for the system management. The governance teams meets on a monthly cadence and reviews the teams progress and challenges. They will discuss how to resolve the blockers, improve the operational performance and opportunities for enhancing the Dynamics 365 application.

2. Security and Access control - As the Dynamics 365 application usage increase so does the need to add new users and give them proper access. There could also be challenges with the existing users who may need to modify their security roles, teams and business unit. It is an ongoing challenge to manage the users access and application security which needs to be considered and managed. Assigning a role based user security template will make the access streamlined. 

The tasks for the security team is to regularly review and update user security roles, active directory teams and business units as user responsibilities change. Also remember to remove users and reassign licenses when the users are no longer required to access the app. Finally regularly audit user access logs on a monthly or quarterly basis to identify any unauthorized or suspicious activities. 

3. Data security and integrity - Having a reliable quality data is important for the adoption and success of the Dynamics 365 app. Users should be confident that the data that they rely on to make business decisions is safe and trustworthy. Implement a data governance practice to maintain data integrity and quality. Regularly set reviews, cleanse and maintain data for accuracy, completeness and consistency. Users should be provided training in proper data entry and maintenance standards. 

The data loss prevention rules should be in place to prevent the leakage of data. Sensitive data in the Dynamics 365 app should be protected and secured using field level security. Duplicate detection should be in place and active where needed. It is essential to set-up data validation and duplicate detection rules to prevent erroneous and unreliable duplicate data. Data lifecycle, archival and storage needs to be planned as the data size grows with complexity.

4. Application Performance Monitoring - The Dynamics 365 application and related infrastructure should be continuously monitored for any issues, bottlenecks or maintenance requirements. A mechanism should be in place to trigger alerts and auto create incident support tickets for any identified issues. The error logs, system logs and performance metrics should be reviewed for measuring the performance of the application. Users should be trained in identifying and reporting issues with proper documentation. 

Microsoft provides many options to monitor and manage Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. The Power Platform Admin Center has OOTB performance metrics that can be reviewed. Additionally Azure Monitor and Application Insights can be set-up to track and monitor the performance. Additionally you can even use Power Automate to trigger alerts and create incident support tickets.

5. Support Team  - Plan to have a dedicated multi-level support team. The teams can be set-up on a Tiered support level based on the incident complexity, severity and priority. Tier 1 and 2 support can be provided by the organization support helpdesk. Tier 3 support can be provided by the Application Manage Services Partner and Tier 4 support can be from Microsoft product support team. It is important to have the team trained on the business application and on supporting Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

6. Product updates and upgrades - Microsoft provides 2 major updates annually for Microsoft Dynamics 365. Plan in advance to have the Dynamics 365 updates tested and implemented. 

Safe deployment of updates for Dynamics 365 by region

The business and IT needs will require regular enhancements of the Dynamics 365 application and supporting infrastructure. Ensure proper training of the support team as part of the enhancement of the Dynamics 365 application and infrastructure.

I hope this helps your organization in planning for the post go-live operations and management of the Dynamics 365 enterprise application on Microsoft cloud. Please stay tuned for my next blog where I will discuss the remaining 4 items to consider when managing Microsoft Dynamics 365 enterprise applications. Let me know your thoughts and thanks for reading.

@MihirCRM

365WithoutCode

 

 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service – Part-1 – Unified Routing

I have worked on many enterprise projects that requires an engine to intelligently route work related records to their destination. This is especially true for Customer Service where in the incoming work must be routed to Agents. The understanding and design of Work routing is crucial for the ability of the organization to scale as the workload increases due to addition of new work items / customers and service transactions. 

 Now in the world of Omnichannel the work item can be part of any channel – for example SMS Text, Voice, Whatsapp, Chat or Email. There are more complex rules for Routing the right work item to the right Agent without delays. Workers need to be skilled to perform the work and they could be specialized in only certain type of work. Additionally, the Customer Service systems has to support multiple languages too. 

Thankfully we have the Unified Routing engine in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service that can help us in configuring most of the business rules. This blog introduces some of the benefits of implementing Unified Routing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service. 

What is Unified Routing? 

 As per Microsoft – “Unified routing is an intelligent, scalable, and enterprise-grade routing and assignment capability. It can direct the incoming work item to the best-suited queue and agent by adhering to work item requirements and matching them with the agent's capabilities.” Unified Routing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service works as shown in the following figure.

Unified Routing - Omnichannel for Customer Service

The following is a brief overview of the Unified Routing process in Dynamics 365.

Work Creation – Work item can be originated and ingested from Customers via any channel. This can be Voice, SMS Text, Social like Facebook or Twitter, Chat or Email. This work item gets created as a record in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is part of the Channel Workstream in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service. The following is a list of Channels that can be created.

Channels in Omnichannel for Customer Service

Work classification – The first step that Unified Routing does is to classify the work item. The classification can be based on the Customer category (Silver, Gold), Urgency (SLA), Skills required, Language etc. Machine Learning models can be created and applied to classify the work item (I will be writing about this in a future blog). Classification is an important task to be able to better understand the work item characteristics and assign to the specific queue that match the same.

Work Assignment – Once the work is classified the next step is to assign the work to the right Queue and Agent within the Queue. During the assignment stage, the work items are assigned to the appropriate queue. You may have separate queue based on the Customer category (Silver/ Gold) or the type of work (Request for information, transaction issue, returns) etc.

Once the items is assigned to a Queue the item is prioritized. This makes sure that the Agents are assigned the high priority item first. Then the work item is assigned to the agents based on the work characteristics, agent skills and capability, and the current state of the agent workforce in terms of availability and workload.

The benefits of using Unified Routing are

1. Matching Customers with the right Agents for first time resolution

2. Classification of work items using Machine learning models

3. Work item prioritization within a queue

4. Work item assignments based on Agent capacity, presence and skills

The Unified Routing process helps in managing Customer Service workload for the organization. There are many set-up and configuration requirements to ensure that the Unified Routing works and is configured for the business process as applicable for the organization.

I will write more about configuring and enabling Unified Routing for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel for Customer Service in my future blogs. Thank you for reading.

Mihir Shah I @mihircrm I 365WithoutCode

Send Survey from Dynamics 365 apps using Customer Voice

Feedback is a gift and managing feedback from customers / vendors / employees is crucial for every organization. I have written earlier about measuring customer experience. This blog is about the new enhancement to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice. Now you can send a Survey directly from Dynamics 365 apps like Sales or Customer Service.

About Customer Voice - Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is an Enterprise Feedback Management app. The app enables you to create, distribute and gather real time survey feedback from your customers and generate insights with metrics. The insights from your customers can help you to transform your products, service and business processes.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

D365 Customer Voice app is used to design and distribute the survey. You can send the survey in multiple ways as shown below. The limitation was you could not send the survey from within D365 apps earlier.

Multiple ways to distribute survey

Now you can send a survey directly from within Dynamics 365 Apps like Customer Service, Sales or Marketing. As shown below you can send a survey to a lead from Sales Hub.

Send survey from D365 Sales app

Below are the steps you can take to send a survey from D365 model driven apps.

1. Enable and set-up D365 Customer Voice in your D365 Tenant. 

2. Create the Project and link it to your D365 Dataverse environment. 

3. Create your Survey using Customer Voice

If you want more details for the above 3 steps please refer my earlier blogs here - Set-up Customer Voice. I will write in details about the further steps below.

4. Install the Send Survey solution 

Microsoft has provided a free app on Microsoft appsource that you can install in your D365 dataverse environment. 

Send Survey app

You will have to accept the terms of the app.

Check that the solution is installed at make.powerapps.com > solutions

Publish all customization.

5. Now you should see the Send Survey button on a lead or a case form. You can also see it on a Contact record.

6. Once you click on the Send Survey button you will get to choose the Survey you want to send. This is based on the Survey you created or someone shared it with you in Customer Voice.

7. Once you choose the Survey and click next, you will get to select the email template and locale

8. The survey invite link email will be received by the recipient. The survey invite will also be shown on the Contact timeline.

Note - The Sender is the 'user name' who sent the email and Microsoft default email address. You can change the sender email if needed. That will require some work on the org settings in Microsoft 365. (more details here)

Change the sender's email address

9. Once the recipient completes the Survey the survey response will be shown in the Contact timeline.

I hope this helps you to get started using the Send Survey option from Dynamics 365. Please let me know how you like the new functionality and your experience with Customer Voice.

Thanks for reading.

Mihir Shah | @mihircrm | 365WithoutCode

 

Intelligent Automation using Power Automate as a Platform - Introduction

Globally as demand for products and services increases there is a need for automation. Intelligent Automation is the combination of multiple automation technologies infused with AI. Intelligent automation, also known as Cognitive automation can help organization to achieve gains in operations productivity and efficiency, enhance business outcomes and gain insights for making better business decisions. This blog introduces Intelligent Automation (IA) and how Microsoft Power Automate can be utilized as a platform for Intelligent Automation.

Enterprises today have challenges with the ability to provide service across multiple digital platforms. The customer expects better standard of services with faster turn around times. Some of the use cases of Intelligent Automation are described below -

1. Finance - AP process - In an organization the finance Accounts Payable specialist may need to automate the daily task of receive an email from Vendor with a attachment of invoice, printing and manually enter the invoice in ERP system. In addition to entering the invoice the IA can also review the invoice, compare against the Vendor PO and detect any anomaly to provide insights to the business.

2. Customer Service - Receive a customer request for warranty service repair. Search and find the customer agreement on warranty repair, confirm it is a valid request. Prepare and send an RMA and Shipping instructions email to the Customer. In addition the IA can also do analysis on the Items being returned to notify the business of any issues found with returns of the same item from multiple customers. 

3. HR - New Hire onboarding process - The enterprise HR department can automate the various steps in new hire on-boarding. They can also help in guiding the new hires in the process and getting them the needed IT authorizations and assets like laptops etc. IA can help in streamlining the onboarding so it is a great experience for the new hires.

There are many such business scenario where intelligent automation can be applied to automate the process and reduce the effort.  The main benefits of applying Intelligent Automation (IA) for enterprise organization are -

1. Improve productivity and reduce operational costs - IA when applied to automate manual tasks at scale the organization gets benefitted due to improved process efficiencies and / or productivity. This also reduces the operations costs. 

2. Consistent processes - Another benefit is the consistency of processes across business units and improved accuracy and less manual errors due to automation. 

Lead to Opportunity Sales process with Cloud workflow

2. Enhance Customer experience- Intelligent Automation can provide faster turnaround and consistent delivery improving the quality of products and services which ultimately leads to a better customer experience.

3. Compliance and Regulations - Intelligent Automation can help organizations in complying with Industry procedures and provide reporting for Government regulations. 

Intelligent Automation platform with Power Automate can use the Microsoft Low code Power Platform automation and AI technologies when applied to improve business operations -

1. Digital Process Automation (DPA) - This is using cloud workflows to automate and integrate business processes. Power Automate provides cloud based workflow automation capabilities with 400+ connectors to many SaaS applications including Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. 

2. Robotic Process Automation  (RPA) -  Also known as UI automation which helps organizations improve their manual processes by automating the back office tasks. For example this can be done by capturing the clicks on the desktop and automating the manual processing of data. Power Automate Desktop is the RPA tool that can help in automating legacy business processes. 

3. Business Process Automation (BPA) - This can be used for automating business workflows like a Lead to Opportunity to Sales process. This helps in managing a consistent business process throughout the organization. The steps in the process can be automated that helps in improving the process efficiency. The standardized process can also help in interactions and engagement within the Sales team.

4. AI - AI when added can become the decision engine for automation. AI can be in the form of machine learning or cognitive algorithms that can recognize process patterns and make inferences for business. They can also detect anomalies or provide prediction based on the process data. In Microsoft Power Automate we can use AI builder to automatically process forms and documents, detect and identify images, text analysis and much more. 

AI builder in Power Automate

5. Process Mining - Process Mining can help in understanding and identifying the business process bottlenecks and select processes that can benefit from automation. Microsoft Power Automate includes Process Advisor that can help organizations in gaining deeper insights and optimizing business processes.

The combination of the above Intelligent Automation technologies can help Enterprise organizations in accelerating their digital business transformation goals and improve business outcomes. Let me know if you have implemented Power Automate for Intelligent Automation. Thanks for reading.

@mihircrm

365WithoutCode 

Managing Risks with Microsoft Dataverse Power Platform and Dynamics 365 - Part-1 - Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Risks management is critical for every organization.  There was a time when the severity, definition and type of risks that a business may encounter were considered to be different. The risk was dependent on the size, nature of business and geographic location. Now that the core business apps and data are running in the cloud, the risks are the very much the same for every organization. 

Why risk management for the Cloud?

Cloud has leveled the playing field when it comes to risk management. Every organization big or small will face the same level of risk. The impact of the risk in $ value may be different. It is imperative for organizations to have a risk management plan to understand, analyze, mitigate and protect themselves from running their business in the cloud. This blog series is focused on understanding risk management with Microsoft Dataverse - Power Platform and Dynamics 365. (disclaimer - I am NOT a business risk management professional. This is my attempt to help you understand how risks can be managed when using Microsoft Dataverse)

#1 - Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR)

When you purchase Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Power Platform licenses you will be provisioning 1 or more environments. Consider environment as a container for your business apps and data. You may have multiple development sandbox, testing, staging and production environments. Each environment has an instance of Microsoft Dataverse. Your business users are provisioned in the different environment. You may have your environments in 1 Geo region (lets say East Coast - US) which is nearest to your group of app users. You may even have users globally and have multiple environments in different Geo regions. How do you protect your environments from a unforeseen disaster in a geo region? How do you ensure that your mission critical business apps will be up and running asap and your data protected? 

Every cloud services provider has a well defined plan to protect their customers apps and data in the cloud. Microsoft has defined a Business Continuity and Disaster recovery plan for the Dataverse environments. 

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps - for the production environments a replica or copy is made in a second geo region (Geo secondary replica), of the different storage services like Azure SQL and file storage and compute infrastructure. The copy is done at the time of the deployment and on an ongoing basis they are kept synchronized (with some lag in minutes) through continuous data replication. 

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement - Geo Secondary Replica

Dynamics 365 Finance and SCM apps - The geo secondary replica is also done for this apps. 

Dynamics 365 - Finance and SCM apps

The replica environments are in a Azure region pair and have a dedicated low latency network. They also are within the data residency and compliance boundaries 

Azure region pairs

Failover types and service continuity - 

Unplanned failover - In case of an unplanned failover in an Azure geo region, Microsoft will notify customers and route traffic to the secondary geo replica region. There could be a possible data loss for about 15 minutes during the transition.

Planned failover - If there is a risk to the availability of the primary geo region (like an upcoming hurricane) Microsoft will notify the customers and transition to the secondary geo replica region. The users who are connected to Microsoft Dataverse apps may experience some disruption. There will be no data loss.

Failback - Once the primary geo region is back up and running Microsoft will notify customers and move to the primary region. Connected users may experience disruptions but there will be no data loss. 

Things to note - 

1. Dataverse for Team environments do not support the Geo Secondary replicas. So if you are using Dataverse for Teams environments please make sure to have a backup on a regular basis. 

2. The geo secondary replica is only available for production instances of Dataverse. All other instances will face service degradations till the primary regions is back up and running.

3. Dynamics 365 Finance and SCM apps will have limited functionality when working in the geo secondary replica region. The Financial Reporting and Power BI reporting services will not be available. Customers can open a support ticket with Microsoft to get the Financial Reporting setup running in the secondary region.

I hope this helps in understanding the business continuity and disaster recovery risk management for Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Dataverse platform. In my next blog I will write about Security and Data loss - Risks.

Thanks for reading.

@mihircrm

#365withoutcode

Industry accelerators - Dynamics 365 - Introduction - 1

   Microsoft has introduced Industry accelerators which provide specific industry vertical solutions. This blog series is to discuss and learn about the latest in the Industry accelerator updates including the Oct. Wave-2 release.

What are Industry Accelerators ? - 

• They are Industry specific vertical solutions as envisioned by Microsoft. 
• They are built upon the foundational components within Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365
• Microsoft has made them freely available on the AppSource an Github. 

There are currently 7 Industry Accelerators - 

1. Automotive
2. Education
3. Financial Services
4. HealthCare
5. Manufacturing
6. Media and Communications
7. Non Profit

The above accelerators is also an opportunity for ISVs and developers who can build upon and extend them to create their own industry specific vertical solutions 

As a Dynamics 365 - solution architect / business consultant, this helps to understand specific industry business scenario. It also can help to guide you on how best to design a solution for the industry specific requirements. 

In my future blogs I will write more about each of the industry accelerators, the latest updates and I hope it helps to provide more insights in the specific industry verticals.

Thanks for reading. 

Mihir 

365WithoutCode

Collaborating with Power BI

Power BI helps you to enhance the value of your data. This value is multiplied when you are able to collaborate with others - by publishing, sharing and embedding or integrating your reports on website, portals and in mobile apps. Here are some of the ways to collaborate with Power BI.

Before we discuss collaboration I want to get the licensing clear. In most cases you will need a Power BI pro or premium license to share with others and for others to view your shared report. (There really is no free lunch with Microsoft). The only time you can get users to see the Power BI report without requiring a license is by publishing your report to a public website

1. Embedding of Power BI report - You can embed in the following applications and collaborating with other users -

a. Embed in SharePoint online
b. Embed in Microsoft teams
c. Embed in Portals
d. Embed in a website
e. Embed in Power App

Embed in Power BI

2. Sharing in PowerBI service - You can share your reports and dashboards in Power BI in a workspace or by creating an App. Workspace is preferred for a small group of team members with whom you want to interact to build the report / dashboard. Once you are ready you can create and publish an App to share with the larger audience or for the whole organization. The users can than interact with the report and dashboard.
You can also share the data set with other users who you trust and they can build copies of the report based on the data. 

Publish app from a workspace

3. Publish to a website - You can use the Publish to a (public) website option to share your report with anyone on the internet. Anyone who get to the public website can interact with the PowerBI report and be able to view / share it on social media etc without needing a license. The data refresh can happen approx every 2 hours or more.  Obviously if your data is sensitive you may not want to share on the public web.


4. Integration - You can also integrate Power BI with Power Automate so you can trigger a flow based on the data triggered in Power BI. Isn't that amazing.

Limitations of the above -
I think it is important to know the limitations of embedding Power BI specifically in Website / Portal and I am mentioning some here.

1. Azure B2B is not supported - So if you have external guest users who login to the Portal / Website they may not see the Power BI report.
2. Users will need Power BI license or you will need a Power BI premium license (mentioned earlier)
3. Power BI supports the following browsers and performance may vary
4. Users may have to login to access Power BI report



I will write more about the Power BI and Power Apps integration. Let me know your thoughts on above and if you are using any of the above features in your apps.
Thanks for reading.

@MihirCRM
365WithoutCode

Covid19 - Corona Virus Info Bot - Power Virtual Agent

The Covid19 / Corona Virus pandemic has created major concerns for people all over the world. I hope everyone is safe and taking precaution by staying at home. This blog is to about how to create a Covid19 Safety Info Bot using Microsoft Power Virtual Agent.

The problem - Currently governments at National / State / County / City / Town and Health Care organizations are all trying to provide the information to their citizens. There is a ton of critical information that needs to be provided. People are given a phone # to call which is managed by Call Centers. The Call Centers personnel are having a crisis where the staff have to take risks, travel and be in the call center offices to respond to the callers. Also the volume of call is causing delays and chaos to the people.

Solution -
There are many ways to provide the information to the people. One powerful and simple solution option is to create a Power Virtual Agent Bot and add the same to the Government or Commercial organization Website portal.

The link for the sample bot I have created is here - https://tinyurl.com/rld8gsd (available upto April 19th, 2020)

Corona Virus Info Bot - Sample

Solution details - Here are the steps I took to create the Power Virtual Agent Sample Corona Virus Bot -

1. Create a Power Apps environment - You will need an environment in Power Apps. You may already have a Power Apps account or need to create a new account. You can also create a trial for Power apps at https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/# or trials.dynamics.com

New Power Apps environment 

Once the environment is created with a database you are ready to go with Power Virtual Agents.

2. Set-up a Power Virtual Agent bot - Go to https://powerva.microsoft.com/ You can log in with the same above Power Apps account. Create a new Bot and attach the Bot to the Power Apps environment.

3. Once the Bot is created you need to create the Topics. Adding Topics allows you Bot to answer specific questions based on trigger phrases and provide correct messages.

Topics 

Refer the below topic details and trigger phrases to protect from Corona Virus

Protect from Corona Virus - Topic and Trigger phrases

You can also see the Topic and message on the authoring canvas

Authoring Canvas

4. You can also customize your greeting - the info that the Bot will provide to the customer

Customized Greeting

5. Once you have the Bot configured you can test the Corona Virus Bot and than publish it.

Test and Publish Bot

You can embed the Bot in your website or portal. Here is the sample website for the above Covid19 - Corona Virus Bot which will be available online upto April 19th 2020 for testing.

https://tinyurl.com/rld8gsd

Hope this info helps you to create your own Bot and add it to the organization website. Please let me know if you need any help in creating and configuring the Bot. Thanks for reading. Stay at home and be safe for now.

@mihircrm
365withoutcode

Digital Transformation in Manufacturing using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

Technology has enabled digital transformation for many industries. The transformation impact has been more evident in services and service related firms. We have seen the evolution of new business models (example - Uber, Bitcoin) or new delivery and consumption channels (example - Netflix). Manufacturing firms have been typically lagging in the innovation, adoption and execution of digital transformation.

Microsoft provides cloud business apps like Dynamics 365, and Azure services to enable digital transformation like, Azure messaging service along with the Power Platform apps (Microsoft Flow, Power Apps and Power BI). They have largely been implemented and coupled with Dynamics 365 customer engagement - for Sales, Service and Marketing business applications. With the upcoming release wave 2, Fall 2019, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations will now be enabled to connect with Microsoft Flow, Power Apps and Power BI (the Power Platform) and Azure services. This will be the enabler and driving force in leading digital transformation in manufacturing firms using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

1. Integrations - In a multi-cloud and multi-app world it is essential for business apps to be able to talk and share information with each other. This requires a cloud based integration services capability like Azure messaging service. It also requires the ability to collect and store vast amount of data from multiple applications - a cloud data warehouse like Azure Data lake. The new release with data feeds feature will enable near real time export of data from Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations to both Azure messaging service and Azure Data lake.
2. Business events & Microsoft Flow - Business events is a great new feature that enables external systems to receive notifications from Dynamics 365 F&O. The business event can send data to Azure service bus or be a trigger for Microsoft flow. This opens new opportunities to drive an outside processes based on events happening within D365 F&O. Some of the use cases for business events are -

• Customer or Vendor on boarding - On boarding a new customer or vendor has been a manual business process - which may require getting the necessary business qualification details, evaluation and manager approval. When a customer or vendor is created a business event can be triggered that will enable the necessary flow actions for sending a questionnaire, verifying business information and triggering approvals.
• Sales Order or Purchase Order confirmation - When a Sales order is entered or a PO confirmed by vendor a business event is triggered. Various external processes needs to be enabled based on the Sales Order or Purchase Order entry and confirmations. This can be the picking and shipping process at an external warehouse to order planning and preparation for transportation, arrival and production. This can be enabled using Microsoft flow.
• Financial period end closing process automation - Every finance team follows a certain process for their quarterly or year end closing. The business events can be triggered on completion of a particular task and the team can be informed to start the next task using Microsoft flow. Also once the new period is opened the AP / AR team can be alerted to enable them to start entering data for the new period.

3. Power Apps and Common Data Service with F&O - The wave 2 release will enable dual write capability for Finance and Operations data to be in Common Data Service near real time. "This will allow businesses to exchange near real-time data seamlessly in a synchronous bidirectional fashion, beyond application boundaries" thus provide users a "One Dynamics 365" experience. This is to be released in phases with Phase-1 for Customers, Vendors and Products data and Phase-2 for the inventory and financial transactional data.

I can imagine the possibilities of creating power apps for F&O users and sharing the data with customer engagement. Add to it the ability to use PowerApps Control Framework (PCF) with F&O data would be amazingly useful for businesses.

4. AI insights- The above integration features now enabled to design and implement new AI capabilities. This now enables the Finance and Operations data to be integrated with data from other business apps in Azure Data lake and be able to get actionable AI insights to drive business transformation. Power BI data flows can now be enabled with the data in Azure data lake to generate insights using AI models. It will be possible to bring in the PowerBI custom visuals directly into Dynamics 365 F&O. In addition Azure IOT data can be coupled with Dynamics 365 F&O data to get more insights.

This all may still feel like a dream but it is becoming a reality and coming to your F&O apps very soon. The future of digital transformation for manufacturing and distribution firms using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is now turning bright and glamorous. It is great to be part of an exciting future. 

In my next D365 F&O blog I will write more about the new Supply Chain management capabilities in Wave 2 release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. Till then do let me know how you plan to transform your manufacturing operations using the upcoming new features.

Mihir Shah @mihircrm

reference - Upcoming release wave 2 Finance and Operations features - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-finance-operations/

Smart City - powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 - Part-1

This is part-1 of my blog about Smart City - powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 and describes the need for making our cities smarter. (for the purpose of this blog a citizen is anyone who lives, visits or needs services in the city)

Why Smart City?

Population growth  - I grew up in Mumbai (Bombay, India) and saw first hand the rapid growth in population, transportation, pollution and social-economic development challenges faced by a city for providing sustainable living for its citizens.   As the global urbanization movement continues it is projected that 68% of the world population (1) will be in living in urban areas by 2050 - an estimated increase by 2.5 billion or @80+ million people will be moving to cities and urban areas every year worldwide. The city senior population is also increasing and this requires more attention to provide elder care and support services.  Increasing population puts a strain on the City resources and the implicit demand for citizen services cannot be met with the existing governance and maintenance services model.  

Need to make cities smarter

Competition - As cities look for tax revenue gains they are competing with other cities to attract large corporations (think Amazon HQ2) to set-up HQ offices and thus improve the quality of life for the current and future citizens. A city which does not have plans to modernize its systems and services may not be attractive to the corporate firms to invest their money. 

Aging infrastructure and systems - Most of the cities have old infrastructure. The transportation trains, roads, bridges and tunnels needs to be upgraded. They were not planned to manage the current growth and will fail to sustain the future growing demands.  Many of the city systems are also old and in need of upgrade or replacement. 

City challenges

Citizen expectations - Lets now think from the citizens point of view. The citizen today is more educated, knowledgeable  and aware of their rights.  They expect the same or better services from the City government which they are used to get from the commercial or private sector. They also want more engagement and involvement in the city government activities. They are demanding for transparency and accountability in the entire process of how their tax dollars are being utilized. The citizens wants to live in a well protected and safe environment. A self aware citizenry is expecting the city government to provide a better future for its citizens.

Higher expectations

City governments currently operate a silo'ed business model. They are made up of multiple agency's and departments. Each may have its own systems of records and they do not share their information by default design. The city governments have to comply to various federal and state laws such as - HIPAA, CJIS, PCI, GDPR, IRS and many others. Additionally city governments have to provide services to its citizens who speak multiple languages and may be visiting the city. This demand provides opportunities as well as challenges and needs to be managed. 

With increasing population, growing demands and aging infrastructure & systems it is imperative for City governments to look for long term sustainable solution. Smart City can provide the optimal solution for city governments to provide a better quality of life for its citizens. 

In my next blog I will write about how Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Azure IOT can power a Smart City solution. Please let me know what challenges are faced by your city and the solutions that are planned or implemented.  

Mihir Shah

@mihircrm

365WithoutCode

ref - (1) UN Dept. of economic and social affairs - https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html

   

Increase Sales with Dynamics 365 AI for Sales - Part-1

This is part-1 of my blog series on AI with Dynamics 365. In my earlier blog I discussed about the need for systems of intelligence and how Microsoft has introduced a suite of AI apps with Dynamics 365. This blog is on Dynamics 365 AI for Sales.

Enterprise clients want a healthy sales pipeline with motivated sales force. It is vital to provide all necessary tools for the sales person, to be able to focus on the right leads and opportunities and close sales faster to deliver on sales targets. Dynamics 365 AI for Sales aims to do just that –

·       Help increase Sales – Business management

·       Analyze sales team performance – Team management

·       Get insights on Customer interaction – Call Intelligence

Dynamics 365 AI for Sales

Why use Dynamics 365 AI for Sales? – Large enterprises gets 1000’s of leads and opportunities from different channels and sources. They are all collected, cleansed and fed into a sales management system like Dynamics 365. The plethora of leads and opportunities can become overwhelming for a sales person, and it becomes difficult for the Sales team to focus their efforts on the important lead or opportunity and build the right customer relationship. 

Predictive Modelling - using Azure ML

Dynamics AI for Sales removes the manual guess work out of the Sales persons hand. It analyses the data within Dynamics 365 and Office 365 (exchange). It than uses Azure machine learning to creates a predictive model that scores and categorizes the leads and opportunities and identifies trends on a real time basis.
This provides indicators for the Sales team to identify the right lead and opportunity to meet their Sales goals.

Identifying trends

With the right information on the Opportunity or Lead such as the score, grade & trend is improving or declining – the Sales person and team can than work on it and get it to close faster. This will help increase the Lead qualification and Opportunity close rate and improving the overall business.

Initial observations –

1.       Dynamics 365 AI for Sales only works with data from Dynamics 365. So if you need to integrate data from multiple systems outside Dynamics 365 it may not be feasible.
2.        Requires a separate license and it is a different app. Users may not want to log into to multiple App. Though the data is also shown in Dynamics 365 – like the Lead / Opportunity scoring, grading and trends. But the AI app has some cool visualizations for management.
3.       It currently only collects data from the OOTB Sales entities – Leads, Opportunities, Goals etc. If you are using custom entities than they will not be used for the predictive modelling. Also if you are not using OOTB entities like Goals the app may not be that useful.
4.       The models cannot be customized as provided by AML. 

      Considering this is still in preview & version 1.0, I would expect it to only improve over time. My thoughts are, this is a good way of proving how you can integrate Dynamics 365, Office 365 & Azure ML and make an AI app to help the organization do more.

To achieve the above is not an easy task and needs understanding of the organization sales business process and Dynamics 365 Sales integration. Systems of intelligence cannot be built overnight and needs the underlying data from systems of engagement and systems of records. 

I hope this gives you a brief idea of the upcoming capabilities of Dynamics 365 AI for Sales. In my next blog I will write more about the implementation of Dynamics 365 AI for Sales. Keep reading.

Mihir Shah

365WithoutCode

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

Delivering Dynamics 365 - Agile in Enterprise

This is part-2 of my multi series blog about Delivering Dynamics 365 online (Customer Engagement) in the Enterprise. In my earlier blog (Part-1) I have written about Enterprise Design Thinking. This blog focuses on using Agile to deliver Dynamics 365 in the enterprise. The thoughts below are from my experience in design and delivery of Microsoft Dynamics solutions for Enterprise clients using Agile and my learning from IBM Agile academy.

Continuing from my earlier blog, Enterprise design thinking helps in selecting the right project based on user outcomes, Agile helps in delivering the project right for the user outcomes.

1. What is NOT Agile ? - I think there are many books and research out there to talk about what is Agile so I would like to start by discussing "What is NOT agile ?" 
Many years ago when I started with agile delivery I had the feeling that Agile was more like the "6 blind men and elephant story". 

What is NOT Agile ?

If anyone has felt like this on an Agile project than you know what i am talking about and this is NOT Agile. Especially on an Enterprise project where there are multiple teams, with unique expertise like - business, BA, design, Dev, QA, Performance, UAT.., working in different parts of the world brought together to deliver, doing Agile becomes a challenge. And yet, it is possible to be successful - as Agile is a team mindset when working together. It requires certain process and simple rules to be adhered to (I will discuss some below). In an Agile project everyone has a mutual understanding of the desired user outcome. 

Another important concept is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - delivering value to the user in an iterative process. This is the prototype approach to delivering. Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a ready to deliver platform (with Power Apps, Power BI, Flow etc.) which can help in creating an MVP prototype in days. The team can than using, Agile methodology, iteratively build on the prototype to meet and exceed user outcomes.

MVP using Dynamics 365

2. Flavors of Agile - All enterprise clients I worked with, have a unique understanding and would like to implement Agile in their specific way.   I call it the different flavors of Agile. No matter what flavor it is, there should be a common understanding of the reason why Agile is selected as a methodology.
Sometimes it is just a name which is given to the existing mashup process and there is no intention for being agile. If the top management has a clear directive to all employees to use agile and the team members are trained on Agile, it is well understood and accepted. Agile is a mindset that needs to be embraced by the enterprise.

3. The soft(er) values of Agile - As per IBM Agile academy, the values in Agile guide how we, as a team relate to each other, the values are – Trust, Respect, Openness, Courage and Empathy. The values are to be taken seriously and applied in every action of the project. The team (consisting of Client and Consultants) should have mutual respect and trust each other. If a team does not have the right values,  the project implementation becomes a challenge and instead of getting together the team gets divided and may disrupt the project.

4. Agile principles - IBM Agile academy also provides certain principles to guide the team. The 3 principles of Agile are

• Clarity of outcome
• Iteration over perfection
• Self directed teams

I will discuss each of the principles below and add my project experience. It is important that each team member understand & adhere to the principles in the Project.

5. Clarity of outcome – This is to be clearly defined for the project team and this may be documented in the project charter / SOW. The SOW is used by implementation team as the bible / guide for the project. If there is an ambiguity in the SOW it can lead to confusion and difference in expectations. If the project team is not following the SOW, it needs to be highlighted and understood. Many Dynamics 365 project have not succeeded because of the lack of clarity due to not involving users in the entire process.

6. Iteration over perfection – In agile the goal is continuous improvement. After each iteration the team improves working together, the process is better understood and the velocity increases over time. So do not expect the team to be perfect from day 1. In one of my Microsoft Dynamics 365 agile project, our team velocity increased from 100 points in the initial Sprint to 300 points in the end of the Project phase. The first software delivered is an MVP and also every delivery is a prototype that will be improved upon in the next Sprint iteration. 

7. Self directed teams – Teams need to be empowered to take decisions. Once the team members know that they have the power to contribute and make group decisions, the team is motivated and does the necessary actions to complete the work. 

If you see something, say something

Team empowerment is a very powerful principle of Agile. This requires the team members to actively participate and have the courage and be allowed to speak up during agile meetings. It is vital to call out and fix an issue in the earlier stages of development than when it is found in Production.

I hope the above gives you a taste of Agile and would love to hear about your experiences in delivering Dynamics 365 using Agile.

Mihir Shah
Twitter - @mihircrm
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihircrm/