You can now connect bots to phone call interactions with Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Microsoft has recently released this feature which offers a fantastic potential for customer service and voice-based bot interactions. You can now expand the scope of support by allowing customers to interact with bots using their voice. Integrate those chats with Dynamics 365 Customer Service for escalation to a human agent.

With Power Virtual Agents, you can contextually hand off escalated Power
Virtual Agents sessions to live (human) agents using the Chat Add-in for Dynamics 365 Customer Service. You can also connect both voice-based and text-based bot conversations by installing extension solutions that link your bot with Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

The Power Virtual Agents telephone extension adds a number of additional actions and
variables that can be used by Power Virtual Agents chatbots to understand, reply to, and
transfer voice calls to the bot.

This is a great feature and offers excellent extensibility for many of our customers’ Support Operations.

New Microsoft Power Platform ISV Experiences for Independent Software Vendors

Microsoft is adding a number of new planned features for the ISV community (Independent Software Vendors). Our TechLabs London business, is a Microsoft ISV where we have delivered the iProperty Cloud platform and family of products built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Power Platform. Hence, these new features are very welcomed by our team and the wider ISV community.

There are many features that either have already been released or due to be released soon. This post is a summary of some the key features that we liked as a team and have been looking out for:

  1. Application usage by Tenant in ISV Studio.
  2. Auto Update for ISV applications.
  3. ISV App Licence Management.
  4. Maintenance Window Management.
  5. Install AppSource Apps using API, GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps Tasks.

Each one of these features deserves a whole post on its own but the App Licence management is a fantastic new feature that allows us to manage the iProperty Cloud licence and the ability to have different packages and modules for iProperty Cloud.

The Application usage by Tenant in ISV Studio is also very useful as we can see who is using our application, how many users, how frequently and much more insights that we cannot currently do.

We are continuing to be waiting for more ISV capabilities with open arms to allow us to better serve our customers and grow iProperty Cloud coverage globally.

New Microsoft AI Builder Features list and their release dates including AI Builder Features General Availability dates

Microsoft is releasing a number of new features within AI Builder with various Public Preview and General Availability dates starting from November 2021 to March 2022. Because some of these features may not have released yet, Microsoft may change delivery timelines and some of the projected functionality may not be released.

AI Scenario Improvement Dates:

FeatureEnabled forPublic PreviewGeneral Availability
Bring your own model into AI BuilderAdmins, makers, marketers,
or analysts, automatically
1 November 2021
AI Builder Credit Inclusion in Power AppsUsers, automatically15 December 202116 December 2021
Explore new AI Builder home pageAdmins, makers, marketers,
or analysts, automatically
1 November 202111 February 2022
Power Fx support for AI modelsAdmins, makers, marketers,
or analysts, automatically
4 December 2021March 2022
AI BYOM – Improvements to bring your own modelAdmins, makers, marketers,
or analysts, automatically
Mar 2022To be announced
Entity Extraction – Advanced training dataset.Admins, makers, marketers,
or analysts, automatically
Mar 2022To be announced

Microsoft AI Builder new capabilities as part of Power Platform Fall 2021 Wave 2 Release

As part of Microsoft Power Platform Release Wave 2 (Fall 2021), Microsoft is adding new functionality to Microsoft AI Builder, part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Features include intelligent document processing with the ability to extract new content types such as checkboxes, signatures and typed fields (date and currency). There will also be support for more prebuilt models in the document automation solution.

AI Builder aims to give makers the ability to build AI scenarios with easy-to-use and modern user interfaces. It is already integrated into Power Apps and Power Automate, giving` makers the ability to create AI models and embed them into their apps and flows. Microsoft Product team is focusing on improving the ability to integrate AI models into Power Automate and Microsoft Teams with new templates and easy-to-leverage authoring examples for makers.

Some of the key document processing new capabilities include:

  • Checkbox detection in documents
  • General availability of the supervised tables feature that allows users to customize an AI
    model to detect complex tables in documents
  • Support for multipage tables
  • The ability to process a page range of documents
  • Extraction of typed fields (for example, dates and currency)
  • Signature detection in document
  • Accuracy score
  • Increased collection size, which allows users to train a model to detect up to 200
    collections of documents in the same model
  • Support for more than 73 languages detected in forms processing custom model

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Voice channel added to D365 Omnichannel

Microsoft announces native Voice channel for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. This is to complement Dynamics 365 Omni Channel which now has Voice, Chat, SMS, Whats App and more.

This is a significant move forward by Microsoft as competitors are way behind when it comes to native voice channel in their Customer Services solution offerings. The new Voice channel is built on Microsoft Azure Communication Services and I expect this to be a fantastic feature for all Dynamics 365 customers.

Microsoft said native voice support, which plugs into the same calling platform used by Microsoft Teams, will better connect contact centre agents to customers and also more easily integrate natural language processing and transcription with existing Microsoft AI tools that already can handle channels such as chat, SMS texting and social media messaging.

You can watch this video which is introducing it here

The Rise of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform in the Real Estate, Property and Housing Market

I have recently published an article on MS Dynamics World discussion the rise of Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform in the Real Estate, Property and Housing Market. I also discuss the reasons for this and why other old-time established vendors are unable to compete. Keen to hear everyone views on this (no swearing!).

The post is inspired by our own firm’s experience (TechLabs London) in the Dynamics 365 platform and in the Property and Housing Industry through our solution (iProperty Cloud)

Here is a link to the article – feel free to comment below or on the article itself:

https://msdynamicsworld.com/story/rise-dynamics-365-real-estate-property-and-housing-market

 

 

Collection of PowerApps Component Framework PCF Resources

If you read my previous post, Introduction to PCF: The Future is NOW! you will know that I am extremely passionate about PCF. However, this passion is not just because this is the direction Microsoft Power Platform, PowerApps and all Dynamics 365 1st Apps are going. It is a passion because I do believe it has filled a gap we always felt when building Dynamics 365 CRM solutions for many years. This gap was the lack of ability of building native components within a Dynamics 365 Form, View and Dashboard. Many years ago, we did IFrames (yeah – sounds bad but was normal then) and then we used Web Resources all the way. Now, it is PCF!

So, you want to learn more about PCF, here are some really interesting resources to get you going (updated regularly):

Microsoft PCF Resources:

The Infamous PCF Gallery: https://pcf.gallery/

Official Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/component-framework/overview

PCF Tooling: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/component-framework/create-custom-controls-using-pcf

Introduction to PCF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNDbZcgVMi0

PCF Forum: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/PowerApps-Component-Framework/bd-p/pa_component_framework

 

Happy PCFing!

Introduction to PowerApps Component Framework PCF: The future is now!

Introduction:

Microsoft PowerApps Component Framework, widely known as PCF, is framework that allows PowerApps Makers and Dynamics 365 Developers build code components for model-driven and for canvas apps (currently public preview) to provide enhanced user experience for users to work with data on forms, views, and dashboards.

In other words, PCF is framework that can allow you to build any control to embed natively on any Model-driven form (and now canvas apps).

For example, a field that displays an integer value, can be replaced with a custom PCF control in the form of a colourful slider or a dial or a knob or whatever your imagination take you.

Many are asking how different is Dynamics 365 and PowerApps PCF from Web Resources that we have spent years using to build custom embedded screens. PCF is different. HTML Web Resources are rendered separate to the form, while PCF is rendered as part of the same context and loads at the same time as any other native component on any Dynamics 365 / PowerApps form. Most of Microsoft’s modern components and 1st Apps are built based on PCF. For example: Most of Dynamics 365 Marketing custom controls are build as PCF components and re-used throughout the Marketing solution.

You can read more about PCF in Microsoft’s official documentaiton:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/component-framework/overview

 

The Future is Now!

When you think about PCF, don’t think of it as this future way of building components. While you can still build HTML Web Resources, PCF is the new norm and you better get used to it! Here at TechLabs London, we have re-built all of our custom components as PCF for both our IP add-ons and throughout our iProperty Cloud solution modules.

So, if there is anything you can take away from this Post, please make sure it is:

Starting building your custom components in PCF now and don’t wait until it becomes more widely used. It is the future, but we have it now!

Video: Building a Microsoft ISV partner: Lessons learned from a successful ISV start-up who quadrupled in 12 months by innovating using Microsoft Cloud

I have recently travelled to Microsoft Ignite event at Orlando, Florida where I presented a number of sessions. Below is my first session titled:

Building a Microsoft ISV partner: Lessons learned from a successful ISV start-up who quadrupled in 12 months by innovating using Microsoft Cloud

Microsoft focus on ISV partners cannot be missed. There has never been a better time to be an Independent Software Vendor who builds business solutions on Microsoft cloud. However, in a crowded technology market, a good idea is not enough, and innovation that delivers no tangible benefits doesn’t help your customers.

Below is the video (audio with slides) of my whole session.

You can also watch the content on Microsoft Ignite 2019 website:

https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/80303?source=SessionDeck

Do NOT confuse Common Data Service Entitlement limits (licence related) with Service Protection limits (performance related)

Many people are confusing the newly announced Common Data Service API limits effective October 2019. There is a difference between Common Data Service Entitlement Limits and Service Protection limits.

Entitlement limits are limits on number of requests a user with a specific licence can make. If this user exceeds the limit, they will need to have a different licence or additional API capacity.

Service Protection limits on the other hand, are performance protection boundaries enabled across the platform to stop abuse of API calls. This is NOT related to licensing, cannot be exceeded by adding a capacity pack or a new licence, unlike Entitlement limits which can be increased by adding a capacity pack or a licence.

Please DO NOT Confuse these two.

——-

Service Protection API Limits are (at the time of posting):

Measure Description Limit per web server
Number of requests The actual number of requests made per connection. 6000
Execution time The combined duration for all connections using the same user account 20 minutes (1200 seconds)
Number of connections The number of connections using the same user account 52

——–

On the other hand, Entitlement Limits are (at the time of posting):

User licenses Number of API requests / 24 hours
Dynamics 365 Enterprise applications1 20,000
Dynamics 365 Professional 2 10,000
Dynamics 365 Team Member 5,000
Power Apps per user plan 5,000
Power Automate per user plan 5,000
Office licenses (that include Power Apps/Power Automate)3 2,000
Application user / Non-interactive users 0 – Non-licensed user

You can allocate capacity packs (or licences) to increase the API request entitlement as follows:

**Non User Licenses ** Number of API requests / 24 hours
Power Apps per app plan 1,000 per user pass
Power Automate per flow plan 15,000 per flow

————-

Additional Sources from official Microsoft Documentation: