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The power of proactive engagement in Dynamics 365 Contact Center (Transitioning from reactive support to anticipatory service through AI-driven outbound interactions).

Real-time User Journey

This journey illustrates how a utility company uses proactive engagement to manage a service outage:

1. Detection: A power grid sensor triggers an alert in the CRM that a specific neighborhood has lost power.
2. Automated Trigger: Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys identifies all customers in that segment.
3. Proactive Outreach: The system automatically initiates a Copilot Dial campaign.
4. AI Interaction: A conversational AI bot (Copilot) calls the customer, informs them of the outage, and provides an estimated restoration time.
5. Option for Human Support: The customer asks a complex question about a specialized medical device needing power. Copilot recognizes the high-priority intent and performs a Seamless Handoff to a human agent.
6. Agent Context: The human agent receives the call with the full transcript of the bot’s conversation, allowing them to provide immediate specialized assistance without the customer repeating themselves.

Step-by-Step: How to Enable This Feature

Proactive engagement requires the integration of Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Customer Insights, and Copilot Studio:

• Step 1: Admin Center Configuration Go to the Contact Center admin center. Under Channels, navigate to Voice and ensure the outbound calling voice channel is provisioned and active.
• Step 2: Integration with Customer Insights Ensure you have a Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys license. In the settings, link your Contact Center environment to Customer Insights to enable event-driven triggers.
• Step 3: Define Dial Modes In the outbound settings, configure your preferred Dial Modes:
  • Copilot Dial: Fully automated AI-led calls.
  • Progressive Dial: Calls only placed when an agent is available.
  • Preview Dial: Allows agents to review customer data before the system dials.
• Step 4: Create Copilot Studio Topics For AI-led calls, open Copilot Studio and design the conversational flow (e.g., payment reminders or service alerts). Use the Answering Machine Detection topic to handle voicemails.
• Step 5: Design the Journey In Customer Insights – Journeys, use the low-code journey builder to create a new journey. Choose an “Event-based” trigger (like a status change) and set the action to “Place a phone call” via the Contact Center channel.
• Step 6: Test and Launch Use the simulation tools to verify the call pacing and AI responses before activating the journey for live customers.

Infographic: Dial Modes Comparison

Dial Mode	Level of Automation	Best Use Case
Copilot Dial	High (AI-led)	Transactional alerts (Outages, payment reminders).
Preview Dial	Low (Agent-led)	High-value sales or complex follow-ups.
Progressive Dial	Balanced	General service updates where a live agent is preferred.
Predictive Dial	High (Efficiency-led)	High-volume campaigns (requires AI availability forecasting).

References

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365/blog/it-professional/2025/06/10/the-power-of-proactive-engagement-in-dynamics-365-contact-center/

Unlock the power of record routing with real-time analytics (Enhancing supervisor visibility into the lifecycle and assignment of cases and other entity records in Dynamics 365 Customer Service).

Real-time User Journey

This journey illustrates how a supervisor uses the feature to manage team workloads and prevent bottlenecks:

1. Dashboard Monitoring: A supervisor logs into the Copilot Service workspace and opens the Real-time Analytics dashboard.
2. Identifying a Surge: On the Summary Report, the supervisor notices an unusual spike in the “Backlog Work Items,” indicating cases are piling up faster than they are being assigned.
3. Queue Drill-down: Using the Queue Report, the supervisor identifies that the “Technical Support” queue is overloaded, while the “General Billing” queue is nearly empty.
4. Agent State Check: The supervisor switches to the Agent Report to see who is currently active. They notice several agents in the Technical Support queue are “Out of Adherence” (e.g., on an extended break).
5. Seamless Reassignment: To resolve the backlog, the supervisor manually reassigns high-priority cases from the Ongoing Work Items list to available agents. The Lifecycle Tracking ensures the history of the case remains intact even after reassignment.
6. Efficiency Validation: At the end of the shift, the supervisor compares “Automatic” vs. “Manual” routing effectiveness on the Summary page to adjust future routing rules.

Step-by-Step: How to Enable This Feature

Real-time analytics for record routing is part of the Unified Routing suite. Follow these steps to activate it:

• Step 1: Prerequisites Ensure Unified Routing is already provisioned for your Dynamics 365 Customer Service environment. Enabling Unified Routing automatically activates the baseline for these analytics.
• Step 2: Admin Configuration Go to the Copilot Service admin center (or Customer Service admin center). In the site map, select Insights under the Operations section.
• Step 3: Enable Analytics Locate Real-time analytics for record routing and select Manage. Flip the toggle for Enable real-time analytics for record routing to On.
• Step 4: Intent-based Insights (Optional) To get deeper data, toggle on Add real-time analytics for record routing for intent. This tracks how records are being handled based on the AI-detected intent of the customer inquiry.
• Step 5: Assign Permissions Ensure supervisors are assigned the CSR Manager security role or have specific permissions added to their custom roles to view the dashboards in the workspace.
• Step 6: Access the Dashboard Supervisors can now find the reports in the Copilot Service workspace app under the Analytics tab.

Infographic: Record Routing Analytics Portfolio

Report Type	Primary Focus	Key Metric Tracked
Summary Report	Organizational Health	Routing effectiveness (Manual vs. Auto)
Queue Report	Work Distribution	Items waiting vs. items assigned per queue
Agent Report	Workforce Performance	Agent presence states and current capacity
Ongoing Work Items	Active Lifecycle	Records handled in the last 24 hours
Backlog Work Items	Pending Demand	Open records requiring assignment action

References

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-365/blog/it-professional/2025/06/04/unlock-the-power-of-record-routing-with-real-time-analytics/

This update focuses on moving from “Reactive” service to “Proactive” outreach, using AI to trigger personalized conversations across digital channels before a customer even reaches out for help.

Real-time User Journey

This journey highlights how a company like an airline or retailer uses the feature to prevent service issues:

1. Event Trigger: A flight is delayed by two hours. This system event is captured in Dynamics 365.
2. AI Segment Identification: The AI analyzes the impacted passengers and identifies those with tight connecting flights.
3. Proactive Outreach: Instead of waiting for passengers to call the contact center, the system automatically sends a personalized WhatsApp or SMS message via a Conversational Journey.
4. Natural Language Interaction: The customer replies via WhatsApp. An Autonomous Agent handles the conversation, offering rebooking options or meal vouchers.
5. Seamless Handoff: If the customer has a complex request (e.g., special assistance), the AI agent summarizes the chat and transfers it to a human agent, who sees the full context immediately.

Step-by-Step: How to Enable This Feature

Since this feature is in Public Preview, it must be enabled within a sandbox or preview-enabled environment.

• Step 1: Access Power Platform Admin Center

Sign in to the Power Platform Admin Center.

• Step 2: Enable Preview Features

Select your environment > Settings > Product > Features. Under the “AI and Copilot” section, toggle On the “Proactive Engagement (Preview)” setting.

• Step 3: Configure Dataverse Triggers

Go to the Customer Service Admin Center. Under Engagement, select Proactive Triggers. Define which Dataverse events (like a field update or a new record) should initiate a journey.

• Step 4: Design the Conversational Journey

Open the Customer Insights – Journeys (formerly Marketing) or the Contact Center workspace. Use the “Journey Designer” to drag and drop “Proactive Message” blocks into your workflow.

• Step 5: Link Copilot Studio Agents

For the conversational part, link your Microsoft Copilot Studio bot to the journey so it can handle the natural language replies autonomously.

• Step 6: Test and Publish

Use the “Test Send” feature to verify the SMS/WhatsApp output before publishing the journey to live customers.

Infographic: Proactive vs. Reactive Service

Feature	Reactive Service (Old)	Proactive Engagement (New)
Initiation	Customer starts the contact.	System starts the contact based on data.
Channel	Customer chooses (often high-cost phone).	Contextual channel (SMS, WhatsApp, App).
AI Role	Helps agents answer questions.	Autonomous Agents solve problems before they escalate.
Volume Impact	High spike in inbound calls during crises.	Deflects inbound calls by resolving issues early.
Customer Sentiment	Frustrated/Stressed.	Delighted/Empowered by the early warning.

References

AI-powered proactive engagement and conversational journeys with Microsoft Dynamics 365 in public preview

Improve contact center operations with shift-based routing (Optimizing work distribution by aligning Unified Routing with real-time workforce schedules).

Real-time User Journey

This journey illustrates how shift-based routing prevents customer interactions from “getting lost” when agents log off:

1. Incoming Request: A customer starts a live chat at 4:55 PM regarding an urgent billing issue.
2. Shift Check: The Unified Routing engine doesn’t just check if agents are “Available” (green status); it consults the Shift Schedule.
3. Filtered Selection: Agent A is available but their shift ends at 5:00 PM. Agent B is available and their shift runs until 8:00 PM.
4. Intelligent Assignment: The system bypasses Agent A (to prevent a mid-conversation disconnect or a forced transfer) and routes the chat directly to Agent B.
5. Seamless Resolution: Agent B has ample time to resolve the issue within their scheduled hours. Agent A is able to clock out exactly on time without being “trapped” by a late-arriving work item.
6. Off-Hours Handling: If a request comes in when no shifts are active, the system automatically triggers the “Out of Hours” workflow (e.g., routing to a bot or creating a callback) rather than letting the chat ring in an empty queue.

Step-by-Step: How to Enable This Feature

To transition from standard availability routing to shift-based routing, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Admin Center Access

Sign in to the Customer Service admin center or Contact Center admin center.

• Step 2: Enable Workforce Management

Navigate to Operations > Workforce Management. Ensure that Shift Planning is active and that agent shifts have been populated in the system.

• Step 3: Configure Assignment Methods

Navigate to Routing > Queues. Select a queue and go to the Assignment method section.

• Step 4: Create/Edit Assignment Rule

Select a custom assignment method and go to the Rules tab. Under the Prioritization or Assignment logic, look for the “Check agent availability” setting.

• Step 5: Toggle Shift-Based Routing

Enable the toggle for “Assign work only to agents with active shifts.” * Step 6: Define Buffer Time (Optional)

Set a “buffer period” (e.g., 15 minutes). This ensures that if a chat takes 20 minutes on average, no new chats are assigned to an agent within 15 minutes of their shift ending.

• Step 7: Save and Verify

Save the settings. Use Routing Diagnostics to confirm that work items are being correctly ignored by agents who are “Available” but not currently on a scheduled shift.

Infographic: Benefits of Shift-based Routing

Benefit	Impact on Agents	Impact on Customers
Reduced Transfers	Agents aren’t forced to hand off chats at the end of their shift.	Better continuity; no need to repeat information to a second agent.
Punctual Log-offs	Improves work-life balance by preventing “last-minute” assignments.	Faster resolution as agents aren’t rushing to finish a shift.
Optimized Capacity	Work is only given to those with the time to finish it.	Lower abandonment rates during shift changeovers.
Presence Accuracy	Status is ignored if the agent isn’t officially “on the clock.”	Ensures interactions don’t “stuck-ring” to an agent who forgot to log out.

References

Improve contact center operations with shift-based routing