Microsoft have announced that Teams users will have access to Dynamics 365 data without an additional licence via a collaborative app.
Introduced at Microsoft Inspire, the annual partner community conference, the new Dynamics 365 + Microsoft Teams app will provide a shared workspace, enabling anyone in an organisation to view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records, from within the flow of work with Teams – at no additional cost.
The inclusion of Dynamics 365 access will remove barriers to productivity – now, any employee with a Teams licence can see Dynamics 365 records directly within Teams. Permissions and access rules can be configured to help ensure only the appropriate users can access customer record data. Should users need advanced features or analytics, they can upgrade to Dynamics 365 licences to further interact with the data.
This collaborative app provides a range of possibilities for businesses who had previously ruled out dedicated Dynamics 365 licences due to cost:
- A service engineer can enable an agent to fix a customer’s issue by adding notes with troubleshooting steps to the customer service case record.
- Finance teams can streamline order fulfilment, sharing purchase orders and payment details with their counterparts in sales.
- A field technician can notify sales teams about products nearing end-of-life, so the sales team can proactively reach out with replacement options.
- And a sales team can close deals faster, by understanding signals from the marketing department around demand generation.
This exciting development comes alongside last week’s Wave 2 release overview which included a number of Teams and Dynamics 365 improvements:
- Add a Teams meeting to appointments and capture notes. Dynamics 365 users can now add a Teams meeting when creating an appointment, enabling access to key customer information during a Teams call. Users can also capture notes directly with the Teams call, which is automatically saved in the timeline of the Dynamics 365 record.
- Stay up to date on records with automated notifications. With more employees collaborating on records, automatic notifications keep stakeholders alerted to updates. Users can select specific chats and channels through which notifications are sent, as well as the frequency of notifications.
Summary
Once again, Microsoft have shown their strong focus on Teams as a core business product, taking it far from its roots as a simple communication tool to a powerful all-round business application. If you are an existing Strategy 365 client and want to discuss how your organisation can benefit from this new collaborative app, get in touch with one of our experts today.
