Purchasers spend significant manual effort checking incoming emails, assessing the status of each purchase order, replying to and following up with suppliers, and updating systems. The supplier communications agent helps purchasers by providing the following features:

• Follow-up with vendors on purchase orders: The agent can automatically draft ready-to-send emails that, for example, ask a vendor about the status of a delayed order or remind them to confirm a purchase order.

• Speed up purchase order updates based on incoming vendor emails: The agent automatically reads your email inbox to analyze communications from your vendors. It finds messages related to purchase orders and analyzes them together with organizational data to identify both purchase order confirmations and change requests. It then runs automated tasks based on your own, user-defined rules.

Copilot cursor prompts in demand planning help you explore a specific data point or data range in a forecast or time series. They provide a set of predefined questions that you can ask Copilot, which then returns insights into notable shifts (both positive and negative), trends, and anomalies across multiple dimensions. Copilot replies using natural-language summaries and visuals, which make it easy for you to digest the information and use it to make informed decisions.

The following illustrations show examples of Copilot cursor prompts and results.

The conversational help and guidance experience in Microsoft finance and operations apps uses Copilot to make it fast and easy for you to learn how to work with your app. Copilot accepts natural-language queries and returns conversational results. Now, Copilot can also provide a list of likely follow-up questions to help you keep the conversation going. All you need to do is select a question to instantly see more results.

This feature runs in the Copilot sidecar user interface and is expected to support many types of searches that are available in the sidecar. It uses AI to generate the suggested questions, which it displays as a list of clickable items. When you ask a question, Copilot analyzes it and presents its natural-language response, and then adds a list of related questions that other users typically ask after a similar search.

By integrating this feature into the generative help and guidance experience, all users benefit from a more intuitive and efficient way to find information. The feature is automatically enabled and seamlessly incorporated into the Copilot sidecar, requiring no additional setup.

When recalculating for weighted average, you can now choose whether to include transactions that haven't yet been financially updated. This feature:

• Adds an option for item model groups.
• Includes transactions without financial closing.
• Only applies during recalculations and doesn't affect inventory closing.

You can now configure data collection and assign it to specific activity types and codes to store measurements and attributes for tracking and tracing. This configuration allows you to monitor and manage various activities within the supply chain in detail.

The system also enables you to retrieve all measurements and attributes related to each serial, batch, asset, or lot number. This retrieval process ensures that all relevant data is accessible for analysis and decision-making.

Finally, you can perform a where-used search to retrieve impacted products based on specific measurements and attributes. For example, you can retrieve all impacted VIN numbers of Model Y vehicles produced between August 23, 2024, and September 25, 2024, where the painting temperature was below 80 degrees. This capability helps you identify and address potential issues in the production process.

The key capabilities that provide approval and reconciliation flexibility include:

• A new rebate management workflow-resubmission process for vendors.
• Enhanced posting profiles that allow transactions to be reconciled according to the purchased-from vendor rather than using fixed, predefined vendors.
• Improved rebate output for vendor invoices by consolidating multiple ledger lines for the same vendor into a single vendor line with several ledger lines.

The Traceability add-in for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management tracks manufacturing activities against the serial/batch numbers of specific components and the related finished goods. When quality issues occur, Copilot can quickly collect all the relevant details from both the Traceability add-in and Supply Chain Management itself to summarize product status, track custody, and analyze deviations related to the impacted products. Not only can this help companies to solve quality issues quickly, but it can also find correlations between specific component batches and manufacturing delays to help improve overall manufacturing performance efficiency.

With Copilot activity summaries:

• QA managers can quickly identify abnormal activity related to any item so that they can take appropriate steps to mitigate issues.
• Production managers can easily identify delays or bottlenecks in the manufacturing process.
• Field service workers can quickly understand the lifecycle of any item to verify it and make sure it qualifies for repair or replacement.

The activities page in Supply Chain Management includes a Copilot-generated summary of recent activities and a full list of activity details. Copilot provides an activity summary that highlights the related item's status, plus any other information. From there, users can drill down into the activity to find related details. The summary for each activity provides instant access to key information such as location, time, items, workers, vendors, and more.

Advanced quality management integrates throughout the Supply Chain Management solution. Key features include:

• Optimized testing strategies: Flexible sampling plans, skip-lot testing, quality-order creation triggers, sample management, instrument calibration, and acceptable quality limits (AQL) testing.
• Regulatory compliance: Approved customer lists, customer-specific certificates of analysis (COA), and enhancements to electronic signatures.
• Digitized manufacturing for precision and compliance: Electronic batch records, production dispensing.
• Continuous improvement and risk mitigation: Corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) management and enhancements to non-conformance.
• Enhanced user experience: Simplified entry of quality test results and new workspaces for quality management.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management now enables manufacturers to:

• Track serial and batch numbers of components used in production orders and link them to serial and batch numbers of finished goods.
• Generate production orders with quantities exceeding one unit, even when both components and finished products are subject to serial or batch number control.
• Set up the serial number and batch number tracking process to seamlessly integrate with job management.
• Track serial and batch numbers both from within the production floor execution interface and through the standard UI for managing production orders.

To enable these features, Supply Chain Management connects to the supply chain traceability service. Supply Chain Management lets workers work effectively by scanning barcodes with serial and batch numbers and lets supervisors view and edit the tracking details. The supply chain traceability service provides high-performance traceability and can connect to a variety of other data sources as needed.

Capable-to-promise (CTP) calculations in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management now consider both materials and resources when calculating delivery dates. This information is essential for assemble-to-order or make-to-order businesses. CTP calculations explode all the components, purchases, transfers, and capacities needed to manufacture any specific item and can be run for any selected sales order line.

Accurate confirmed ship and receipt dates allow you to:

• Tell customers the exact dates on which they will receive their orders in real time, while they are on the phone.
• Check how any change to a product (such as color, design, or other options) would affect the promised delivery date.
• Check how any change in quantity would affect the promised delivery date.
• Group or separate line quantities to meet delivery deadlines on make-to-order products.

Master planning calculations consume significant computer resources, so companies typically schedule these processes to run overnight when spare computing capacity is available. As a result, a fresh set of optimized plans is available for review at the start of the next business day. Then, throughout the day, supply planners, production planners, and material managers can review and update each master plan as needed to accommodate new issues such as material delays, machine breakdowns, or changing priorities. As the day goes on, each modified plan can become progressively less optimized and harder to work with until the system has time to recalculate them overnight.

Because the planning engine in Supply Chain Management operates in parallel with the rest of the system, it's able to recalculate master plans throughout the day without affecting overall system performance. That means that freshly optimized supply plans are continuously available to all collaborators, thereby ensuring the best use of materials and capacity and minimizing delays in providing products to customers.

Demand planning in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management helps you plan and forecast demand based on various data sources and signals. This release enhances the app by adding the following capabilities:

• Filter data on calculations profiles.
• View and select the best-fit model for each planning unit based on accuracy metrics.
• Incorporate external signals, such as inflation rates or weather conditions, into your forecast calculation and understand how they impact your demand.
• Apply a new forecast model (XGBoost), which can create forecasts using both input and signal data.
• Apply time-fence rules to prevent edits during specific periods that are locked or closed.

Demand planning in Supply Chain Management helps you plan and forecast demand based on various data sources and signals. The app now provides capabilities that enhance the accuracy of the demand forecast to better help you optimize your supply chain and boost your financial outcomes.

All the new capabilities are enabled by default. You can use each of them as needed with your new and existing forecasts to help improve their accuracy. The new capabilities include:

• Assortment planning: Forecast from top to bottom by allocating demand across different dimensions (such as products, customers, or channels) based on an allocation basis that you define.
• Time freeze: Establish periods during which forecast calculations set to run continuously won't update their baseline forecasts.
• Forecast with signals: Now allows you to define multiple input signals and lets you choose to between the Prophet forecast algorithm, XGBoost forecast algorithm, or best-fit forecast model (which automatically calculates both XGBoost and Prophet results for each combination of dimensions and choose the best one for the final forecast).
• Auto detect seasonality: Automatically detect seasonality patterns for all forecast algorithms. The system runs an algorithm to detect distinct seasonality patterns across different dimensions (such as products and locations).

Planning Optimization now provides the features required to support the following business processes:

• Lean manufacturing: A production philosophy aimed at maximizing value for customers while minimizing waste. It originates from the Toyota production system and focuses on continuous improvement and operational efficiency.

• Catch weight: A pricing and measurement system used primarily in the food industry, where products are sold based on their actual weight rather than a predetermined fixed weight. This is particularly important for items that naturally vary in size and weight, such as meat, seafood, and fresh produce.

• Step consumption: Manages material consumption in a way that accommodates non-linear consumption rates based on production quantities.

Users responsible for approving purchase requisitions and purchase orders can now respond to approval workflow tasks from their mobile devices. Procurement approval activities include approvals related to purchase requisitions, requisitions lines, purchase orders, and order lines.

The mobile app starts by presenting an overview of the user's assigned approval tasks and due dates. From there, the user can open details for each purchase requisition and purchase order to be approved, all without switching context. On gaining a full understanding of the context and details of an approval request, the user can then choose between the approval options configured for the workflow by selecting the appropriate response (approve, reject, request change, or delegate to another user).

For information about how to prepare your Supply Chain Management and Dataverse environments to support the Approvals Management mobile app and how to install the app on your mobile devices, go to Onboard the Approvals Management mobile app.

The following screenshots show examples of how the app looks when running on a mobile device.

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) is a key element of the source-to-pay process. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management now provides a platform that makes it easy to integrate it with an external CLM system. The feature supports out-of-the-box rules and integration points for interacting with CLM. The integration supports purchase agreements and non-disclosure agreements and leverages master data from Supply Chain Management.

The new supplier relationship management feature provides a Microsoft Power Apps experience that integrates with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Finance. The app lets you manage both strategic and tactical areas of your supplier relationships, including scheduling appointments, tracking performance, scheduling supplier reviews, and managing prospective suppliers that aren't registered yet.

The experience also provides a supplier-facing portal, which is based on Microsoft Power Pages. The new supplier portal supports many aspects of the supplier relationship, ranging from tactical to more operational, transactional ones. It helps new suppliers to onboard and enables existing suppliers to engage with your company through transactions such as requests for quotation (RFQs), managed bidding, purchase orders, and invoices. The supplier portal works together with the existing vendor-collaboration capabilities of Supply Chain Management.