Copilot: Your AI Assistant for Enhanced Retail Experience
Let’s dive into Copilot for Dynamics 365 Commerce. Copilot helps deliver personalized customer experiences, optimizes product management, and streamlines retail operations, supporting store associates, managers, and back-office staff with powerful AI-driven insights.
Copilot’s features in the Store Commerce app are designed to improve retail efficiency and customer satisfaction. Let’s look at its key capabilities:
- Product Insights
Whether you’re introducing a new product or training new team members, keeping everyone informed and prepared is crucial. Copilot provides detailed product insights, including concise descriptions, key benefits, inventory levels (showing exactly how much stock is available), and discount details. With this information, your team can confidently offer accurate and relevant details to customers, enhancing their shopping experience. - Customer Insights
Understanding your customers is at the core of personalized service. Copilot aggregates data from Dynamics 365 Commerce, giving you a comprehensive view of each customer’s preferences. These insights include favorite categories, preferred price ranges, and key purchasing behaviors based on metrics like recency, frequency, and spend value. Additionally, Copilot offers a snapshot of previous customer interactions, allowing associates to engage in meaningful, informed conversations and build stronger, more personalized relationships. - Reporting Insights
For store performance reporting, Copilot streamlines the process with narrative summaries for channel reports directly in the Store Commerce app. At the end of the day, Copilot provides instant, precise summaries of crucial metrics, such as sales, revenue, profit margins, and overall store performance. Its real-time analysis keeps you informed, continuously updating as new data arrives. This empowers your team to communicate results effectively and address performance insights accurately and promptly.
With Copilot, retail teams have the tools to stay ahead, deliver tailored customer experiences, and enhance operational efficiency.
Copilot’s Dependency on Dataverse
To unlock the full potential of Copilot in Dynamics 365 Commerce, a Dataverse environment is essential. All Copilot features rely on Dataverse to function seamlessly. For this integration, you’ll need to connect a Dataverse environment to your Finance and Operations (F&O) environment.
To set this up, Power Platform Integration must be enabled through Lifecycle Services (LCS). This step ensures that your Dynamics 365 environment can fully leverage the data-sharing and AI capabilities that Copilot offers.
Cross-Region Data Sharing and Security
Security is paramount for organizations, and Dynamics 365 respects regional data compliance standards. For instance, if your Dynamics 365 environment is hosted within the EU boundary, you have the option to use an OpenAI endpoint within the same region.
This setup ensures that all security boundaries defined in your environment are maintained, allowing you to operate within your organization’s compliance and regulatory requirements.
Non-Recurring Tokens
In Dynamics 365 Commerce version 10.0.40, a new non-recurring token feature has been introduced, allowing for flexible payment handling without saving a recurring customer card token. This enhancement is available for online stores, call center orders, and point-of-sale (POS) customer orders, offering greater control and compliance for one-time payments.
To use non-recurring tokens, the following features must be enabled:
- Enable the Use of Nonrecurring Tokens in Commerce
- Extensibility to Support Incremental Credit Card Capture
- Restrict Payment Token Usage to Order Context
In addition, on the Adyen portal, the recurring setting must be disabled in the checkout settings to activate this feature.
Configuring Authorization Expiration
With non-recurring tokens, you can configure the authorization expiration settings at each payment level for the store. If no specific expiration value is set, the system will default to the “number of days before expired” value specified in the Accounts Receivable parameters.
POS Transactions with Non-Recurring Token
- Cash and Carry Transactions
For Cash and Carry transactions, customers pay for goods on the spot, and payments are processed as “captured payments.” In this scenario, the card is not tokenized, ensuring a straightforward transaction with no need to store card details. - Customer Orders
For customer orders, the tokenization of the card used to pay for the balance depends on the requested shipping date:- Within Threshold: If the shipping date is within the system-defined threshold, the card will not be tokenized.
- Exceeds Threshold: If the requested shipping date is beyond the defined threshold, the system enforces tokenization to prevent payment failure during order fulfillment.
- When tokenization is required, the cashier receives a prompt to inform the customer that their card information will be saved, ensuring transparency and obtaining customer consent for storing card data temporarily.
Cash Management For Multiple Currencies in a Store
Introduced in version 10.0.38, the Cash Management for Multiple Currencies feature allows all cash management operations, including tender declarations and returns, to support foreign currencies. This enhancement provides retailers with greater flexibility in managing and tracking multiple currencies within a store.
Retailers can configure the POS system to accept multiple currencies as payment. However, the returned change is typically provided only in the store’s default currency.
For example, in a U.S. store where the default currency is United States dollars (USD), a customer may complete a transaction using Euros (EUR). Any change for this transaction would be returned in USD, adhering to the store’s primary currency.
Throughout the business day, this setup enables stores to accept various currencies while maintaining a streamlined cash management process. Consequently, while the cash drawer begins the day with only the default currency (USD), it may contain multiple currencies (USD and EUR) by the end of the day.
Optimized Payment Flows
Microsoft is actively modernizing the POS user interface by transitioning to a React UI framework. This new framework delivers fluid, efficient user flows that work seamlessly across various browsers and applications, creating a consistent experience for POS users.
As a first step, the updated React UI has been applied to payment flows, one of the most frequently used operations in POS. Previously, traditional POS payment flows required multiple window prompts and numerous mouse clicks. With this React-based update, payment processes are consolidated into a single-pane action window, significantly improving efficiency and reducing time spent per transaction.
To activate the new payment interface, users need to enable the “Unified Payment Experience in POS” feature flag.
As of version 10.0.40, the updated interface supports payment types like cash, cards, and cheques. Additional payment options—including on-account transactions, foreign currency, credit memos, internal and external gift cards, and loyalty points—are expected to be available in version 10.0.42.
Bar Code Scanning for Mobile Apps
With the release of version 10.0.40, Dynamics 365 Commerce now supports barcode and QR code scanning using the rear camera on mobile devices. This new feature eliminates the need for separate hardware, such as barcode scanners, and bypasses the need for custom software to read QR codes and barcodes.
The built-in scanning functionality is available within the Store Commerce app for both Android and iOS devices, enhancing accessibility and reducing operational costs. It supports major workflows, including:
- Product scanning for quick item lookups,
- Streamlined logon processes,
- Gift card processing, and more.
Additionally, this feature supports reading the Cloud POS URL during activation, simplifying the setup process for IT administrators by allowing easy POS activation on mobile devices.