Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management: Use Cases and Real Business Value
AI is a tool that users are increasingly relying on to deliver the greatest amount of value within Dynamics 365 systems. Users within Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management are no exception.
In this blog, we’ll analyze where Copilot stands right now in terms of how it integrates with the D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management modules. We will also show you some real-life use cases and highlight how implementing these tools within your system can drive significant business value.
Copilot in Finance and Supply Chain Management: Where It Is Today
As of right now, there are three key areas where you can use the AI capabilities of Copilot to enhance the user experience and drive value through automation:
Embedded AI Summaries
When prompted, Copilot will provide you with context-area summaries on records, workspaces, and forms. This will reduce clicks, speed up decisions, and surface risk or status across all three modules. Some of the specific summaries available include:
Dynamics 365 Finance
- Collections coordinator summary
- Customer page summary
- Workflow history summary
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
- Project overview summary
- Time entry context summary
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
- Product summary (hover + details)
- Vendor summary
- Purchase order summary
- Sales order summary
- Confirmed PO changes summary
- Demand planning summaries
- Warehouse mobile app (WMA) worker summary
Copilot Summaries Prerequisites and Configuration
To use Copilot summaries, your Finance and Supply Chain Management must be Version 10.0.44 or higher, and you must enable Copilot features within feature management. For Warehouse Mobile App Summaries, ensure that your ERP is on version 10.0.35, that the Warehouse Mobile App version is 2.3.2.0 or later, and that the “Context-aware worker summary screen in WMA is enabled.
Copilot Sidecar: Guidance and Explanation
Copilot can provide conversational assistance directly within Finance and Supply Chain Management:
- Conversational help and explanations based on the page context.
- Used primarily for learning, clarification, and workflow guidance.
The Copilot Sidecar is designed to help users better understand information and processes
Targeted AI Agents with Specific Automation Roles
Several purpose-built agents go beyond simply summarizing data. They can perform actions and automate tasks based on datasets. These agents are focused on high-volume, exception-driven processes and exist within specific workflows.
Two primary agents are in Live Preview right now:
- Account Reconciliation Agent: Assists with subledger and general ledger reconciliation, identifying differences, summarizing issues, and supporting resolutions.
- Supplier Communications Agent: Monitors supplier email responses, identifies confirmations vs change requests, and automates follow-ups and exception handling.
A Deeper Dive: Copilot Agents in Finance and Supply Chain Management
Let’s take a more in-depth look at the two Copilot Agents that are embedded into Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management.
Supplier Communications Agent in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
First, we’ll look at the Supplier Communications Agent, which is in the production-ready preview stage. Before we dig into some of the capabilities, let’s look at what you need to do before enabling this agent and rolling it out to your team.
Pre-Requisites and Configuration
Here’s what you need to know:
- Dynamics 365 Version and Feature Management: To use the agent, you have to be on Dynamics Supply Chain Management version 10.0.44 or later. Then, in feature management, you will enable:
- Immersive Home
- Agent management
- Supplier Communications Agent
- Publish Copilot Agents: In Copilot Studio, you have to publish:
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- Copilot for Finance & Operations apps
- Copilot for D365 Supply Chain Management
- Supplier Communications Agent
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- Agent Identity and Security: Create a dedicated identity and assign it to the agent. You should also assign them a Premium Connector License and required security roles in Dataverse and D365 Supply Chain Management, just like you would for a human user.
- Power Platform Connectors and Flows: An agent is only as effective as the data it can access. That’s why you need to create connections for an agent identity user to Dataverse and Copilot Studio so it can access Supply Chain Management data. You must also:
- Enable Power Automate flows via Portal or PowerShell; or
- Deploy via Agent Deployment Wizard (in preview)
- Add Users and Mailbox Sync: Ensure users are assigned the required roles in Dataverse and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management before they interact with the agent. You also need to configure Server-Side mailbox sync with Dataverse and Vendor Contact Emails.
Once you have these prerequisites and configurations set up, you should be able to start using the Supplier Communications Agent.
See it in Action: Supplier Communications Agent
Now that your system is configured properly, in the side menu under “Procurement and sourcing,” you will see new options for the Supplier Communications Agent, including Follow-up emails and Emails from vendors, which are both in preview.
For our first example, we will click on “Follow-up emails”. Once you are on that screen, click on “Configure agents” in the top navigation bar.
Next, you can either manage the agent if you’re already using it – or you can go to the Library tab and select the agent that you want to set up if you haven’t already. Because our agent is already set up, we’ll go to the Manage tab and then click on the down arrow next to “Speed up updates in purchase orders with Supplier Communications agent.” Then click on “Edit” to see the configuration.
From the next screen, you can use a series of drop-down menus to configure your agent. In this case, we are asking the Supplier Communications Agent:
Draft an email to follow up on delayed purchase orders per purchase order using a formal and non-urgent tone with these fields when purchase orders meet these criteria. Include this signature in the email.
Through simple drop-down menus, you can:
- Choose to simply “Draft” or “Automatically send” emails
- Choose the type of purchase order. For example, Delayed vs Unconfirmed purchase orders
- Group the emails by Purchase order or Vendor
- Customize the tone based on who the email is going to. For example, if it’s your first follow-up with a loyal customer who usually pays on time, you can use a formal or casual tone. But if it’s a customer that is notoriously late for paying or has ignored previous emails, you can use an urgent tone.
- You can also customize the fields and criteria that get displayed in your email
Then you can also add specific email signatures.
One of the biggest perks with this agent is you can save multiple versions. So, if you want one agent that drafts emails for delayed purchase orders and another that drafts emails for specific vendor groups.
Once you click save, make sure your agent is active and you should be good to go!
Head back to the main screen to find your agent. You can either run it manually by clicking on the “Run” button in the top ribbon. Once you do this, the agent will find data records that meet your criteria (Contoso Asia in our example) and automatically draft you an email. You can then edit the email, save it, or send it.
You can repeat this process for other related workflows such as monitoring emails from vendors that contain purchase order updates.
You can configure the agent so that when any vendor sends an email about purchase orders to an email address, you can see a summary of changes.
Note: Ensure that Finance and Supply Chain Management have access to the user’s email inbox, or this won’t work.
You can then navigate back to the Supplier Communications agent, and it will have a list of emails from Vendors prepared for you. You can then view either a summary of the email or the full email itself.
You can view suggestions like “Change detected” or “Rejection detected” to proceed with amending or cancelling purchase orders. Depending on what you want to do, you can “Apply all suggestions” or “Ignore all.”
There might be situations where a Vendor sends an update by the time you have already received or registered products and the system is already capturing those financial transactions. You will need to ensure that you have received the right purchase order and make sure that you are making the necessary changes based on the Vendor’s changes and the system recommendations.
What Happens When You Can’t Find the Purchase Order?
There are some scenarios where an email comes in and you will be unable to identify an item or purchase order. For example, a Vendor emails you with a vague item description as opposed to naming the item, identifying which line is affected, or referencing the purchase order details.
In our example, a vague email comes in and the agent identifies the purchase order but not the line item. If this happens, set the “Show only lines with changes” toggle to “No” and go in to make your manual edits.
Account Reconciliation Agent in Dynamics 365 Finance
As mentioned earlier, the Account Reconciliation Agent is used to find mismatches between your General Ledger and sub-ledgers. It will surface what needs attention (such as exceptions), eliminating the need for you to spend time manually digging through data in hopes of finding issues on time.
Prerequisites and Configuration
Like the Supplier Communication Agent, there is some prework you have to do before using this one.
- Dynamics 365 Version and Feature Management: These prerequisites are the exact same as the Supplier Communications Agent, but in feature management you will enable “Account Reconciliation Agent.”
- Publish Copilot Agents: In Copilot Studio, you have to publish:
- Copilot for Finance & Operations apps
- Copilot in D365 Finance
- Account recon. Agent
- Account recon. Amounts
- Account recon. API
- Agent Identity and Security: Same as Supplier Communications Agent, but you assign the Premium Connector Licenses for D365 Finance instead.
- Power Platform Connectors and Flows: Same as the Supplier Communications Agent setup.
- Enable Agents: Publish the agent bot to Copilot Studio and verify that the agent is enabled and available in the target environment.
See it in Action: Account Reconciliation Agent
Accessing the Account Reconciliation Agent is simple: navigate to the sidebar and then click on “Agents.”
You will see almost the exact same view as the Supplier Communications Agent, with the “Manage” and “Library” tabs. The only difference is that once the Account Reconciliation Agent is configured, it will no longer show up in the Library tab. That is because the Account Reconciliation agent serves a single purpose no matter the workflow.
Select Edit, and you can then go in and set or amend your Account Reconciliation Agent for the date range when you want it to start looking at transactions. You can also click on “Account reconciliation configuration” just above the “Save” button.
Once you do that, you will go to a screen where you will see the four main areas of the Accounts Reconciliation Agent (Payables, Receivable, Bank, and Tax). While the agent will automatically pull in a lot of this information based on your posting profile, you can also customize and configure the accounts and legal entities that you want the agent to analyze as well.
Once that is all configured, you can navigate to the Account Reconciliation workspace from the Finance home screen. Once you get to that workspace, you will see:
- Open execptions
- Addressed exceptions
- Reconciled transactions
- Suggestions offered
- Specific issues in each of the four main areas, also broken up by company
To address the exceptions, click on the tab next to the Area or click the “Mitigate exceptions” button. That will take you to the next screen where you can address the discrepancies.
Copilot will give you visibility into what the issue is and point you to tools that you can use to resolve the issue. You can also go in and look at historical actions, which improves governance, as you can see who is responsible for actions within the Account Reconciliation space.
Ready to Get Started Using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management?
Copilot and AI enhancements are getting better every day, and taking advantage of this innovation not only requires a desire to use AI, but also a strong partner who can help you optimize your use of AI and help push adoption amongst your team. That’s where Stoneridge excels.
Talk to the Stoneridge team of experts today to learn more!
This blog is co-authored by Jon Gutzmann.
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