PLANNED FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY FOR INTEGRATION BETWEEN MICROSOFT TEAMS AND DYNAMICS 365

In 2019, there were roughly 20 million Microsoft Teams users. Currently the number is at 145 million and growing. Microsoft have recognised that for a lot of people, Teams is the “new front end” for their working life and its where they often are when collaborating with their colleagues, and communicating with customers, partners and other stakeholders. It also means that many find themselves constantly switching from Teams to the source of their data, and back, in order to effectively communicate. However, this isn’t efficient as the flow of work is disrupted.

Microsoft have also announced that Teams users who don’t have a Dynamics 365 licence will be able to access Dynamics data within Teams at no extra cost! This can make a insignificant difference for those who do not work with Dynamics data daily, and do not require full functionality.

This focus on building on current Dynamics 365 and Teams integration is reflected in the 2021 Release Wave 2 plans, which cover a roadmap of planned features and functionality to be release between October 2021 and March 2022.

Let’s go through these features and functionality!

Dynamics 365 Sales

Teams Meeting Integration

• Drive seller productivity with Teams Meeting integrations, by allowing sales teams to directly access and update records during Teams meetings, as well as take notes during the meeting which are automatically saved to the timeline in the Dynamics 365 record.

• Users can create Teams meetings when scheduling an appointment in Dynamics, and can then join these meetings with the simple click of a button in Dynamics.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

• Allow Customer Service Agents to engage in contextual collaboration, by using embedded Microsoft Teams in Dynamics 365, and boost their productivity by making it easy to communicate with anyone in the organisation.
  
• Features include being able to chat with contacts within Dynamics 365, accessing AI-driven suggestions for key contacts based on logic such as agents who have previously resolved similar cases, linking and unlinking chats to case records, accessing recent and linked chats, and seeing a user profile picture and availability status within Dynamics.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

• With embedded Microsoft Teams functionality, users will be able to chat with colleagues within a work order record, to save them switching between apps, whether that is viewing existing chats or initiating a new chat.
• Chats can also be linked to work orders. This helps provide a clear picture of the work order to any new team members who get involved as they can see the status and history. When initiating a new linked chat, any previous conversation with the chat participants won’t be visible, to help keep focus on the work order in question. If chats are linked to a case, and that case is converted to a work order, the chat will automatically link to the new work order.

Dynamics 365 Marketing

• Create webinars and branded registration pages in Teams, as well as manage participant registrations before heading over to Dynamics Marketing to design personalised and automated participant journeys. The path they take on the journey can be set using triggers such as registration, attendance and other user behaviour in Teams. New registrations functionality includes being able to approve, decline and waitlist those who have applied.