Delivering exceptional service is key for building customer preference and loyalty. But timely resolution can get challenging when fragmented tools make it hard to find the right information and service delivery gets delayed with lengthy data-entry processes. Today, we’re introducing Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service, bringing the power of next-generation AI to service professionals on the frontline to speed time to resolution. From creating work orders with the right information and assigning them to the right technicians, to equipping the technicians with sufficient support to successfully complete jobs—Copilot will help streamline critical frontline tasks.
New data from Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index Annual Report1 reveals 63 percent of frontline workers struggle with having to do repetitive or menial tasks that take time away from more meaningful work, and 66 percent feel that they don’t have enough time to complete work tasks. The number one thing that frontline leaders value from AI is helping employees with necessary but repetitive/mundane tasks. Whether it’s for a facility inspection, equipment installation, or a maintenance request, frontline service managers want to spend their time figuring out how to improve their team’s efficiency rather than on repetitive tasks such as copying and pasting information from one system to another to create work orders and dispatch technicians. And frontline technicians want the right information at the right time to complete the job, the first time.
Accelerating service delivery
With the preview of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service today, frontline managers who receive service requests or questions via emails can use next-generation AI to streamline work order creation directly within Outlook. Copilot prepopulates relevant data including summaries of customer escalations into draft work orders for managers to review in their flow of work. Once saved, these work orders automatically sync to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service. Additionally, with updates coming this fall, Copilot will streamline technician scheduling by offering data-driven recommendations based on travel time, availability, skill set, and other factors as well as accelerate responses to customer messages by summarizing key details and next steps in email drafts. Copilot will also become available to assist frontline managers in their flow of work within Microsoft Teams.
“I am really excited about working with Copilot capabilities as I believe it will completely change the way our employees at G&J Pepsi interact with Dynamics 365 Field Service. It will be a game changer for our field service and frontline teams, allowing them to enhance their best-in-class service by getting access to the information they need faster than ever before.”
Eric McKinney, Director of Enterprise Infrastructure at G&J Pepsi
Boosting technician productivity
Today, we’re also introducing the preview of a new Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile experience for frontline technicians to swiftly access all the information they need on the go. This modern user experience supports familiar mobile navigation, gestures, and controls to streamline managing work order Tasks, Services, and Products. From changing the status of a booking with a quick swipe to accessing driving directions to a customer site with one tap, the redesign saves valuable technician time for daily work—cutting down the number of taps for key tasks in half. Technicians can not only easily pick, change, or complete work order details, but also add notes with multiple inline images. Technicians who need additional support can now also use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides embedded in Field Service mobile. Embedded Dynamics 365 Guides in Field Service provides technicians with step-by-step guided instructions, pictures, and videos explaining the immediate task.
Additionally, with the preview of the Dynamics 365 Field Service app in Teams starting today, frontline technicians can now see upcoming work orders at-a-glance as Tasks in their Microsoft Viva Connections home experience and can easily drill into details such as location or issue type. Frontline technicians can also now share full work order details through cards in Teams and access the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist app in one click via their home experience in Teams mobile to problem solve with remote experts in real time using 3D spatial annotations that lock to the physical world.
“Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service will support a faster way of working for our organization by simplifying our transactional work order management process. The ease with which an email can be translated into a work order and planned will increase the speed of our customer responses and improve our customer journey. We are also excited to improve the experience for our customer-facing colleagues with the Microsoft 365 integrations. Microsoft Teams is our main internal communication method, and the integration of Field Service into Teams will greatly simplify the communication about a specific work order, account, or other customer case and improve the case lead time.”
Sven van Veldhuizen, CIO/CDO at Joulz
Streamlining work order management
A redesigned Dynamics 365 Field Service work order management experience is now available for early access, featuring a simplified web experience that brings important information front and center—reducing the number of clicks for key tasks by more than a third. The experience not only offers concise information about the work order but also provides relevant next steps based on booking statuses, and supports making quick updates inline or in a side panel to not lose context. Copilot will provide intelligent recaps within this experience to help frontline managers stay up-to-date without having to navigate through all the information in a work order.
Partnering with our ecosystem
Partners have played a key role in helping us refine Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service ahead of its public preview and we are excited to share some of their observations as early adopters.
“We are excited to bring Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service and Microsoft 365 integrations to augment our sustainable energy customers’ field service workforce—enabling them to stay ahead of the game with increased productivity. Just imagine the productivity gain your service department can realize by having a service-related email translated by AI into a field service work order with the right information, and what field service technicians can accomplish when they get a clear and simple view of all the information they need to focus on in whatever Microsoft 365 tool supports their daily tasks the best.”
Filip Bossuyt, Founder & CEO at 9altitudes Group
“Hitachi Solutions has been working with Microsoft to preview Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service and is already seeing how field service organizations will greatly benefit from AI. Our field service customers want solutions fast. With Copilot work order capabilities in Outlook, our customer’s field service managers can stay in the flow of work and immediately assign resources to solve problems, leading to quicker response times and enhanced service delivery.”
Michael Mendoza, Director of Service Transformation at Hitachi Solutions
“Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service is like a window into the future, nothing like what I’ve seen before. It’s literally taking steps out of my work stream by summarizing emails and coming up with the work order description—saving me seconds each time which add up to minutes each day. This matters a lot when you think about the volume of emails with service requests in today’s world.”
Greg Somogyi, Field Service Senior Consultant at Ludia Consulting
“We are excited to introduce Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service to our facilities clients because we see the power in simplicity. For our clients raising responsive repairs to get the right person with the right skill to the right properties at the right time, Copilot enables frontline teams to go from issue to resolution in just a few clicks.”
Matt Hedges, Products Director at TechLabs London
Lastly, we are excited to announce the interoperation of asset performance solutions from ICONICS and Willow with Dynamics 365 Field Service, making it seamless to share critical insights like equipment health and faults in order to proactively detect and resolve asset issues. The IoT-based solutions elevate asset monitoring and service management to new levels of sophistication, empowering frontline workers to make better-informed decisions based on data when providing service and repairs. The new Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Field Service can also help efficiently summarize and update work orders generated based on these IoT-based solutions. This streamlines service workflows, improves response times, and enhances overall service quality for customers. Read about further details on the solutions here.
Learn more about Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service, Microsoft 365 integrations, and more
To try the new Copilot capabilities and Microsoft 365 integrations for Dynamics 365 Field Service, request for your administrator to set up Dynamics 365 Field Service for Outlook (Preview) and Dynamics 365 Field Service (Preview) app in Teams. Administrators can also opt into the new Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile experience available now in preview. To try the new Dynamics 365 Field Service web experience available now in early access, switch to Work Order (Preview) in your system.
Today’s announcement builds on recent AI momentum across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform. Learn more about the latest AI breakthroughs with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot on the Dynamics 365 AI webpage. With Copilot, you’re in control as it is grounded in your business data and automatically inherits your valuable security, compliance and privacy policies, regulations, and processes. Learn about our AI principles that empower impactful responsible AI practices at Microsoft, as well as provide a framework for implementing responsible AI practices at our customers’ organizations.
Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service
Next-generation AI helps your frontline deliver exceptional service.
End notes:
1 The Work Trend Index survey was conducted by an independent research firm, Edelman Data x Intelligence, among 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets, 6,019 of which are frontline workers, between February 1, 2023, and March 14, 2023. This survey was 20 minutes in length and conducted online, in either the English language or translated into a local language across markets. One thousand full-time workers were surveyed in each market, and global results have been aggregated across all responses to provide an average. Each market is evenly weighted within the global average. Each market was sampled to be representative of the full-time workforce across age, gender, and region; each sample included a mix of work environments (in-person, remote vs. non-remote, office settings vs. non-office settings, etc.), industries, company sizes, tenures, and job levels. Markets surveyed include: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.
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