Featured News

Over the past few months, Microsoft has announced incredible AI innovation, from the built-in AI capabilities of Dynamics 365 Copilot, Power Platform Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Microsoft Security Copilot to the Azure AI services enabling organizations to build their own AI-powered apps and experiences.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot provides interactive, AI-powered assistance across business functions—from sales, service, and marketing to supply chain. Help business professionals stay on top of their interactions. Help create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks faster, and get insights and next best actions—just by describing what’s needed.

• Copilot Dynamics 365 Sales and in Viva Sales – Video

• Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service – Video  

• Copilot in D365 Marketing – Video 

• Copilot in D365 Customer Insight – Video 

• Copilot in Supply Chain Center - Video

Power Platform Copilot

Power Platform Copilot will transform how we build and interact with software applications.  With the power of large language models, we are advancing to the next step in the evolution of code abstraction—moving from custom code to low-code, to natural language authoring where human and machine work side by side to build applications together.

• Copilot in Power Apps - Video

• Copilot in Github - Video  

• Copilot in Power Virtual Agents -Video  

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is seamlessly integrated in the apps people use every day, helping them stay in the flow of work and freeing them to focus more on the task at hand and less on the busy work.

Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more—and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. And it does so within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise.

Announcement of Microsoft 365 Copilot with Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote – Watch the 10-minutes Video

• Copilot in Microsoft Word writes, edits, summarizes and creates right alongside people as they work.
  • Check the video  

• Copilot in Excel helps unlock insights, identify trends or create professional-looking data visualizations in a fraction of the time.
  • Check the video

• Copilot in Power Point enables the creation process by turning ideas into a designed presentation through natural language commands.
  • Check the video

• Copilot in Outlook can help synthesize and manage the inbox to allow more time to be spent on communicating.
  • Check the video

• Copilot in Teams makes meetings more productive with real-time summaries and action items directly in the context of the conversation.
  • Check the Teams video  and for Teams meeting video 

• Microsoft Business Chat- rings together data from across documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes, and contacts to help summarize chats, write emails, find key dates, or even write a plan based on other project files.
  • Check the video

Deprecation and Service Retirements

oData v2 service - Removal Date - April 30, 2023

• The original removal date was November 11, 2022, but this was extended to April 30, 2023. We have decided not to remove the service on April 30, 2023.

Learn more>>

Some Customer Service admin apps are deprecated In April 2023

With the release of the Customer Service admin center app that consolidates admin experiences across the Customer Service suite, we announce that some admin experiences will be deprecated and support will end in April 2023.

Learn more>>

More information: Get started with Customer Service admin center

Model-Driven app controls deprecation - April 2023

Effective January 2023, the following controls for model-driven apps are deprecated: auto-complete, input mask, multimedia player, number input, option set, and star rating.  We will be introducing new Fluent controls which have better usability, accessibility and dark mode support.

• Starting April 2023, these controls can no longer be added to forms.
• Existing control instances will work on existing forms until April 2024.

Learn more>>

jQuery 2.1.1 to be removed in Model-Driven apps - Oct 2023

As part of a service update designed to improve security within Microsoft Power Apps, we are removing jQuery version 2.1.1 from model-driven applications. In October 2023 we are removing the library located here: /_static/_common/scripts/jquery-2.1.1.min.js.

Learn more>>

Dynamics 365 Connector is Deprecated

• Dynamics 365 connectors must be replaced with a Microsoft Dataverse connector.
• Customer must assess their Flows and Power Apps using D365 connectors for remediation.
• Recommended actions for Power Automate Flows and Power Apps are mentioned here.

For required actions Learn More>>

Product Updates

2023 Release Wave 1 is rolling out in April 2023

Release Wave schedule

• Release Wave schedule  for visibility on deployment timelines for Power Apps, Dynamics 365 CE Apps, and Industry Clouds. 2 waves per year:
• Wave 1 Period:   April – September
• Wave 2 Period: October to March.
  

2023 Release Wave 1 regional deployment

• April 1^st, 2023, | General availability.
  • General Availability Regional deployments will start on April 1, 2023. Check the schedule HERE
  • North America GA deployment will start on Friday, April 21, 2023, to Sunday, April 23, 2023

How to Better Track Feature updates

• Release Planner
  • Use the Release planner for Dynamics 365 to start and select your specific application.
  • Use the release planner for Power Platform
• Use the Release plan page for details
  • Dynamics 365, for Power Platform and for Industry Cloud

Summary of Features in 2023 Release Wave 1 Enabled by Default

Power Apps

• Look up records easily with modern advanced find
• Power BI quick reports in Power Apps enabled by default
• See which colleagues are viewing the same records as you
• Improved UX for sharing records
• Mobile: View offline sync icon in the navigation bar
• New look and feel for model-driven Power Apps (Not enabled by default- but to be checked out)

Dynamics 365 Sales

• Get improved user experience with new and enhanced opportunity form
• Guide sellers to favorable sales outcomes with next best step
• Manage opportunities more effectively using the new pipeline view
• Prioritize engagement for any sales entity by working in focus mode
• Work efficiently with enhanced Sales accelerator worklist items

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

• Create email templates with new template designer
• Enhancements to simplify case management
• Make workspace app available for omnichannel roles
• Mark knowledge articles as favorite
• Multitask efficiently with enhanced workspace layout

GUIDANCE

Check the EARLY ACCESS features that will impact user experience and enabled by default in April 2023 at GA –

• Test and validate new features and capabilities that will be a part of the 2023 release wave 1, coming in April, before they get enabled automatically for your users.
• Early access features are enabled by default in April 2023 at GA.
• Power Platform Early Access Features
• Dynamics 365 Early Access Features
• POWER PLATFORM ADMINISTRATOR – SEE HOW TO ENABLE EARLY ACCESS FOR ENVIRONMENT HERE

Learning Corner

Events

Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event (on-demand)

Date: April 4, 2023

Digital Audience: IT professionals, power users, IT and business leaders, business analysts, solution architects, and Microsoft partners

• Register to the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event to discover innovations across Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
• Learn how to tackle your top business challenges with solutions that will help you expand visibility, empower employees, connect lines of business, and innovate without limits.

Register now>>

Microsoft Power platform Conference

Date: Oct-3^rd-5^th, 2023 in Las Vegas

• This in-person conference will feature pre-conference workshops, keynotes, sessions, breakouts, and more—all dedicated to Microsoft Power Platform products: Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Pages, and Power Virtual Agents.
• Kicking off on October 1 & 2 with pre-conference workshops, the event runs October 3-5, 2023.
• Come and get inspired by Microsoft's senior thought leaders, software engineers, and community experts who are focused on uniting humanity and technology. You'll also have the chance to hear from users that solve real business problems daily.

Register

Conference Website

Speakers

Customer Stories

VIVA SALES | How is Teleperformance adopting Viva Sales with agility to empower their sales teams

When Microsoft announced its vision to supercharge seller productivity with Viva Sales in June 2022, the Teleperformance Sales strategy team was already trying out Viva Sales private preview and pushing us to bring additional features like Salesforce® CRM connectivity into our next preview release.

Viva Sales is an AI-powered sales productivity application that allows sellers to work faster with greater focus freeing them up to spend more time on what they love to do.

 Read How Viva Sales is empowering sellers to be more productive here

Blog Articles

Power Pages: What Contact Created or Modified This Dataverse Row?

You've spent time carefully crafting your Dataverse Forms and Basic Forms, and then applied them to Web Pages within your Power Pages site. While testing out your forms, you've noticed that the rows stored in Dataverse don't contain the Contact who created or modified these rows. Instead, you notice that the Created By and Modified By columns contain something like "# Your-Site-Name".  What is that? How to we capture the proper Contact? Track Creation – Track Modification- Results

Learn more >>

Power Apps Testing - 01 - Overview of Tools and Getting Started with Power Fx Tests

 Continuous monitoring allows enterprises the opportunity to ensure reliable performance services are immediately available to its users. Platforms need to be able to keep up with demand in such a way that it’s seamless to a user. Systems that become unreliable or unusable are quickly disregarded or abandoned. One sure fire way to ensure users won't use a service is if the service is unavailable.To account for this, enterprises look to service level agreements and business continuity strategies. Part of this strategy includes testing for availability.

Blog 1

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