A “Copilot in Dynamics 365: Top 10 Opportunities” Series
Have you moved beyond the hype of AI and turned it into real-world outcomes for your company?
Over the next few weeks, I’ll answer that question by sharing the opportunities of Microsoft Copilot in the context of Dynamics 365. Yes, Copilot is still evolving across the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. As this series progresses, the goal is to help you understand who benefits from the opportunities and what areas provide the opportunities.
In this first post, I’ll share a couple of my favorite Copilot capabilities to benefit salespeople along with areas of consideration or cautionary advice.
The Impact of Microsoft Copilot on Salespeople
I have had the unique experience of working with and assisting many salespeople as part of technology implementation projects. One thing I have noticed is that some salespeople love how technology helps them in their day-to-day work; some are what I consider to be in-between, meaning that they will use part of the technology while they still do things manually; and some are completely opposed to the technology and would rather do things the old-school way.
The reason for sharing this is that before you can see success with ANY technology, you must first prove its value. So, let’s dive into the tangible ways Copilot can enable success for sales.
Automated Meeting Summaries
A tough challenge for salespeople is capturing notes during a meeting so that you don’t miss important details, ideas, suggestions, or action items. I have been on many calls where I have struggled to do this very thing. Copilot can assist with the notetaking and then can prompt you with follow-ups or other action items. What’s great about this is that the manual process of copying and pasting notes into CRM, setting up the tasks, or creating appointments, are all automated.
Caution:
However, as with any newer technology, I would highly recommend reviewing the transcription output from Copilot. I have used a few transcription solutions and there are pros and cons with each one. A couple of areas to watch out for are misspellings and incorrectly captured words as Copilot is using voice-to-text conversion.
Notes:
- You must transcribe the meeting to generate meeting insights.
- The version of the Copilot for Sales app in Microsoft Teams must be 1.0.9 or higher to generate meeting insights. For more information, click here.
References:
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/generate-meeting-summary
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/view-understand-meeting-summary
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/sales-copilot-faq#why-are-meeting-insights-not-getting-generated-even-if-meeting-is-transcribed
Collaboration Spaces
I’ve been in many collaboration meetings where processes and strategies are discussed, ideas are shared, documents are exchanged, and presentations are given. In-person meetings like this are great as they help all stakeholders walk away with action items, new ideas to explore, and a stronger sense of collaboration.
However, in-person meetings are not always an option, but the same outcomes are still needed. With that in mind, I was fascinated to discover that there is a functionality within Microsoft Teams, through Copilot, for Collaboration Spaces. These spaces are essentially dedicated virtual meeting/conference rooms that align with sales opportunities for all the stakeholders involved.
Caution:
Since the collaboration space is configured in Microsoft Teams, you should know that things can get very “noisy” quickly. This is because of the channel structure created when the Collaboration Space and the CRM systems are set up.
Microsoft shared the below example in its documentation to show how the setup would be displayed in Microsoft Teams.
| Annotation | Description |
| 1 | New account team created with two default channels |
| 2 | General channel to collaborate on account-related activities with people in your organization; linked to the CRM account |
| 3 | Shared account team channel to collaborate with people outside your organization |
| 4 | Prepinned apps |
| 5 | New deal room channel created in an existing account team, used to collaborate with people in your organization; linked to the CRM opportunity |
| 6 | Shared deal room channel to collaborate with people outside your organization |
With the above in mind, imagine you have 10 “deals” with one customer. Using Microsoft’s example above, point number five in the chart would now be replicated 10 times – a channel for every deal (which equates to an Opportunity within Dynamics 365 Sales).
Now, expand that further if you have tens or hundreds of customers each with multiple deals (sales opportunities) in various stages. Microsoft Teams could become very unwieldy.
I would highly recommend that the Collaboration Spaces process be fully defined so that cleanup measures are in place to keep Teams a nimble collaboration space – and keep salespeople focused on selling and not trying to find a specific Teams channel.
Notes:
- You must have a Dynamics 365 or Salesforce CRM account.
- You must have a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license. Learn about the license requirements for Copilot for Sales.
- You must have the Copilot for Sales add-in for Outlook installed. If you don’t have it, ask your administrator to install it for you.
- Before you can add customers to shared channels using their federated identity, make sure that your tenant administrator has turned on shared channels in Teams.
References:
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/collaboration-space#prerequisites
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/collaboration-space
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-sales-copilot/collaborate-teams-newly-created-existing-team
Closing Thoughts
In closing, there is a small thing – or big thing, depending on how you view it – in that Copilot can connect to Salesforce CRM. This means that Copilot is not locked into Microsoft only and provides some flexibility.
Further, I like seeing these new capabilities surface for salespeople to streamline the sales process while preserving the need for people – and not replacing them.
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