Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list September 2024

 2024 Release Wave 2

Release plans for 2024 release wave 2 are now publicly available - Release plans for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry - Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn - from July 29th, early access will be available for activation - other key dates for 2024 release wave 2 are also available . Also check out the videos like Dynamics 365 Service 2024 Release Wave 2 or Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2024 Release Wave 2 - these might also contain features/functionality which are not listed in the release plans.

• 2024 Wave 2: Dynamics 365 Customer Service (YouTube) by @d365goddess
• 2924
• Use the Power Platform Environment Settings App 
• Change history 2024 release wave 1 and change history 2024 release wave 2 -  there are frequent changes on features which are part of a release wave - follow up using the change history
• 2024 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Contact Center
• Managed identity support for Dataverse plugins

Copilots, AI and machine learning

• Document classification with Power Automate and Azure AI by @mattbdevaney
• Understanding Copilots at Microsoft (YouTube)
• Microsoft Copilot Studio implementation guide
• So you want to build your own copilot
• Use Dataverse timeline highlights powered by generative AI
• Microsoft Copilot for Finance (YouTube)
• Simplify IT management with Microsoft Copilot for Azure - save time and get answers fast
• Microsoft Copilot for Service on ServiceNow
• Building a multi-channel notification system with Azure Functions and Azure Communication Services - Part 1 #60daysofIA
• Azure AI Translator GitHub repo

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Unlocking the full potential of Dynamics Digital Contact Center Platform with Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC)
• How Microsoft does Quality Assurance (QA)
• Why use managed solutions by @BergmannBene
• Filtering embedded Power BI reports
• Outbound dialer enhancements in Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Setting up Postman environment to test the Dataverse APIs - quick tip
• Application Insights integration with model-driven Power Apps explored
• Power Platform Well Architected
• User Experience in model-driven apps - the good, the bad and the ugly (YouTube)
• Customer Service: Setup Copilot (YouTube)
• Power Platform Community Tools series - Bulk Data Updater (YouTube)
• Build your own agent using Microsoft Copilot Studio (GitHub Repo)
• The scarce resource of Dataverse storage capacity
• Demo: Build intelligent and scalable solutions with Power Apps and Power Platform (YouTube)
• Manage application users in the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC)
• Dataverse: Azure Synapse Link vs Fabric Link (YouTube) 
• Adjust other Dynamics 365 copilots in Copilot Studio
• What is a Power Platform Solutions Architect? Action packed explanation! (YouTube)
• Building smarter bots with copilot studio (YouTube)
• Announcing General Availability of Block unmanaged customizations
• 6 stages of solution deployment by  @LinkeD365
• Everything you didn't know you needed to know about Power Platform Solutions
• Dynamics 365 Finance is gradually moving onto the same base platform as Dynamics 365 CE - useful shortcuts
• https://aka.ms/ERPTrialLicense
• https://aka.ms/ERPDevDeploy 
• https://aka.ms/ERPDevConfig 

Topics for Dynamics 365 Business Applications Platform consultants, project managers and power users

• Three ways AI is transforming service from the field to the contact center (Microsoft white paper)
• Capture and communicate value with the business value toolkit (Power Platform CoE toolkit)
• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center(YouTube)
• Eneco Mobility supercharges its customer car with generative AI by introducing Dynamics 365 Contact Center (Case study - Capgemini) - follow  Peter Ruiter (@pajruiter)  to learn more about copilots and Dynamics 365 Contact Center

How to improve your blog posts with Microsoft Copilot

 Here is a little trick that I found on how you can improve your blogposts with Microsoft Copilot. Use this two prompts:

1. Prompt 1: Read the blog post below and suggest 3 questions that a reader will have that are not answered in the article: (Add URL)
2. Prompt 2: Now answer the questions. Avoid bullet-points.

It is however to always review the answers before you just copy/paste them into your blog - the generated content might not be correct - this is referred to as Generative AI hallucinations 

The ABC of AI: Retrieval-Augmented-Generation (RAG) and grounding

This is the first in a series of blog posts about more advanced generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) concepts which I use as notes to myself (check out Why I blog and you might want to consider it as well)

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is an AI framework that enhances the quality of responses generated by large language models (LLMs). LLMs are trained on a massive amount of data and understand statistical relationships between words but lack true comprehension of their meanings. So when faced with specific questions in a dynamic context so that is where RAG comes in.

RAG integrates information retrieval into LLM answers by using these steps:

1. User inputs prompt: when you ask a question, RAG uses your input prompt
2. RAG retrieves relevant information from an external knowledge base based on the user prompt
3. RAG combines this external content with your original promt creating a richer input for the LLM

RAG and grounding are related concepts in the context of enhancing LLMs. Grounding is the process of providing LLMs with information about a specific use-case. RAG is one of the techniques which is used for grounding (another technique is dense retrieval - see Dense X Retrieval: What retrieval granularity should we use  for more details). 

Microsoft Copilot offers a good example of grounding and RAG in use. The reason why Copilot is able to give more targetted responses, is because it uses grounding to improve the specificity of the prompt. 

Copilot uses Microsoft Graph, which can retrieve information about relationships between users, activities and organizational data (like info in Power Platform/Dataverse and/or Dynamics 365, info from e-mails, chats, documents and meetings) as part of the prompt grounding process. Microsoft Copilot will use the user prompt and additional info retrieved through Microsoft and then sends it to the LLM. For more details see Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 overview

The most common systems to provide external data for RAG LLMs are vector databases and feature stores.

References:

• Implement Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with Azure OpenAI Service (Microsoft Learn)
• RAGAs- How to evaluate RAG pipelines chatbot
• Intro to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with Generative AI and OpenAI on Azure
• Azure Cosmos DB - Vector Database
• How vector search and semantic ranking improve your  GPT prompts (Microsoft Mechanics)
• The 5 types of LLM apps (YouTube)
• RAG application with Azure open AI & Azure Cognitive Search (French legal use case - Python notebook)
• Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 overview
• Grounding language model with chunking-free in-context retrieval
• Grounding LLMs
• Langchain - use cases - Q&A with RAG
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAGs) for LLMs

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list November 2023

 2023 Release Wave 2

• Dynamics 365 Customer Service: new dialer experience (preview) by @D365Goddess
• New sales capabilities in 2023 release wave 2 - helping sellers work smarter
• Dynamics 365 CRM Wave 2 Release: enhance categorization of knowledge search articles
• Configure sales Copilot for Dynamics 365 Sales (Preview) by @DianaBirkelbach

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• Dataverse - use bulk operation messages (MS Learn) -  CreateMultiple and UpdateMultiple are now GA!  Read the small print to see when to use it
• Dataverse let's try elastic tables (preview) - by @temmy_raharjo
• Ways to deal with missing Power Platform environments  by @inogic
• Edit subgrids side by side with Power Apps Grid or editable grid by @DianaBirkelbach
• Announcing monthly channel for model-driven apps
• Announcing general availability of custom connectors in solutions as well as environment variable secrets
• Announcing SharePoint Embedded Public Preview at ESPC23 - will be interesting to explore whether it is possible to combine this with Dynamics 365 data as an alternative for Power Pages. Head over to http://aka.ms/start-spe/ to start building your first SharePoint Embedded app. 
• Dataverse + Azure Service Bus queue + Azure function for processing long operations
• Workflow automation in Dynamics 365 CRM: triggering actions on email send and receive events by @inogic
• August 2023 updates for modernization and theming in Power Apps
• Connecting to Dataverse from Function App using Managed Identity - using azd
• Power BI - Mastering sales calculations: a comprehensive guide to departmental analysis 
• How to enable the enhanced email template editor in model-driven apps (Dynamics 365/Dataverse)

Copilots, AI and machine learning

• Write an email with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service by @nishantranacrm
• Getting your enterprise ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot (Ignite 2023 recording)
• Learn live: prepare, implement and secure Microsoft 365 Copilot (Ignite 2023 recording)
• New study validates the business value and opportunity of AI
• Architecture and deployment diagrams for Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Analyse the impact of AI-enhanced customer service with Copilot analytics
• What is prompt engineering? (McKinsey)
• Anti-hype LLM reading list
• Microsoft Chat Copilot vs Azure ChatGPT - which generative AI capability to choose for the enterprise
• Measuring the productivity impact of Generative AI (NBER digest)
• The power of prompting (Microsoft Research)
• Get started with Microsoft Copilot Studio: how to create your first Copilot by @lisacrosbie
• Use Copilot to summarize cases - Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Topics for Dynamics 365 Business Applications Platform consultants, project managers and power users

• Microsoft to make Dynamics 365 Marketing a part of D365 Customer Insights
• Customer Service in the age of AI
• Refresh the sales experience with Dynamics 365 Sales modern update

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform monthly reading list July 2023

2023 Release Wave 2

• Dynamics 365, Viva Sales (aka Microsoft Sales Copilot) and supply chain platform: 2023 release wave 2 plan - early access will be available on July 31th
• Microsoft Power Platform: 2023 release wave 2 plan
• Power Platform 2023 Release Wave 2 Highlights (YouTube)
• Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2023 Release Wave 2 highlights (YouTube)
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2023 Release Wave 2 highlights (YouTube)

Technical topics (Configuration, customization and extensibility)

• ALM for Power Platform (March 2023 Washington user group recording)
• Analyse your solution dependencies in  Dataverse with VSCode "PowerApps Helper" extension built by @MMe2K (Michael Megel)
• Power Apps Copilot (preview) feature ... Friend or Foe? (YouTube) by @dchristian19
• Azure Cost Management Power BI report (Github)
• Codename Project Bose: Calculate Azure Cost of an enterprise by cost centers, divisions and projects
• KQL Visualizations (YouTube)
• How to use invitation id of Customer Voice Survey invitation in Power Automate Flow by @inogic
• Use the Customer 360 component in Dynamics 365 Customer Service by @D365Goddess
• Additional capabilities in timeline view with Dynamics CRM
• Optimize performance for Create and Update operations (Microsoft Docs) - interesting update for data migration scenario using CreateMultiple and UpdateMultiple operations
• Dataverse long term data retention is finally available in preview - no info available yet on whether retained Dataverse records (offloaded to Data Lake) will still be billed at the same price as Dataverse storage.
• The Dataverse Accelerator is live on AppSource: https://aka.ms/dvaccelerator
• Discover the biggest Power Platform Announcements from Microsoft Build 2023 (YouTube) by @LisaCrosbie
• Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse : exporting to Delta Lake
• Kusto Detective Agency - learn KQL by playing a detective game
• Power Apps Data Sources Ranked! Which is best? YouTube video by Shane Young (@ShanesCows)
• New card visual in Power BI and Create a sparkline in the new card visual
• Take Customer Service to new heights with cross-geo support for Copilot
• Announcing monthly (release) channel for model-driven apps - release channels provide more choice for adopting new features. It seems that Dynamics 365 and Power Platform will allow to get features activated on a monthly basis
• Announcing public preview of IP firewall in Dataverse - only available for managed environments
• Microsoft Copilot readiness hub
• The importance of Orderby when retrieving more than 50K records from Dataverse
• Start using Azure Cost Management

Topics for Dynamics 365 Business Applications Platform consultants, project managers and power users

• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 copilot
• Copilot in Viva Sales
• Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal now available
• A report on Global State of Customer Service sophistication
• Reshaping the future of business with Microsoft Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and a new cloud migration program
• Introducing AIM from Microsoft: Future-proof your business in the cloud