If there was one thing that pulled my attention at the recent MS Inspire, it was this announcement:
Satya’s announcement that D365 data will be accessible within teams at no additional cost to teams users is a welcome and to me – exciting.
I’ve had some time to think about it and wanted to give my two cents on this move.
Does this create enough of a differentiator?
Despite zoom and google meet gaining popularity in the last year or two, the adoption and usage of Microsoft Teams has also sky rocketed with the number of companies using it jumping to over 500,000 in 2020 from 50,000 in 2017. – Microsoft Teams Statistics
Teams is marketed as a great collaboration tool.
“Information workers save around four hours a week on Teams thanks to the information sharing and collaborative features, equating to around $14.3 million” – Forrester study: The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Teams
The collaborative features of Teams means that users can call, chat and work using apps hosted within the teams workspace – enabling users to easily share information easily and remove the need to browse to external apps to complete tasks.
Users have also been able to use the D365 single session applications within teams for some years now. This means all D365 applications excluding Customer Service Workspace and Omni Channel Engagement Hub can be configured for use within Teams.
For back office staff and customer service teams who do not need to engage with multiple customers simultaneously, the app has been an option for them to engage and collaborate on resolving customer issues quickly and efficiently. After all, the information needed and users to interact with are all within the Teams app. This however required users to have a D365 licence which was often an impediment to companies and work arounds would instead be implemented.
As the requirement for a license is no longer an impediment, lets look at some of the new user journeys now possible with this shift.
- Easier collaboration between customer service agents and other users within the company e.g. back office staff who may not have a licence with the new Teams Messaging Extensions. This will allow d365 users to mention or refer to Dynamics 365 records within teams to allow other users without a licence to have basic information about the record along with the ability to make notes associated to the record and update activity records or tasks associated to the record.
- If a meeting is associated to a case record, users within the meeting will be able to see the case record and make modifications, removing the need to have both teams and d365 open.
Another announcement was made at Inspire that I believe helped Microsoft to come to the decision to make D365 data within teams accessible at no additional cost to Teams users. SalesForce and Service Now now have apps available within Teams.
This of course will have an impact when comparing across the different platforms. Where it may have been a clear check box for departments or companies using Microsoft Teams to leverage the rest of the Microsoft platform, there is now a discussion.
This move by Microsoft, in my opinion, answers the question : “How can we differentiate the platform while making ground on the competition?”
What do you think of this move?
Everything D365 