Cortana, the most well-known artificial intelligence from Halo game series is by far the coolest development of Microsoft Team. Although they call it, “Intelligent Virtual & Personal Assistant.” Doesn’t matter, it still has the same name –Cortana, (my most favorite feature on windows 10) and the game-changing fact is, Cortana is now integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365. We all know that Dynamics 365 is already a major player in the game of business solution field which contains the whole bunch of excellent features that can put your business ahead of the competition in multiple areas. And, with the new updates on 5th January, they introduced Cortana as an AI integration of Dynamic applications to use your data smartly, and efficiently. Throughout the year, Microsoft planned to introduce multiple integrations between Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Cortana.
So, let’s see what Cortana is, what her capability is and what does it bring for us to the table:
What is Cortana?
Like Google assistant on your android smartphone and Siri on your iPhone, Cortana is a virtual assistant introduce by Microsoft to smartly manage your Windows Operating system. It first appeared on Windows Phone, later Windows 10 and not it’s on Microsoft Dynamics 365. The last couple of years, Cortana has changed and enormously improved to be an ideal artificial intelligent virtual assistant for your system. It can understand most of the voice and written command and comes up with the smartest solutions. It can even understand the natural conversational commands to tell/show you what you need.
How Cortana is going to change Dynamics 365:
• Time to be more creative and do things with voice: You heard me right! You can activate Cortana on you Microsoft Dynamics 365 and it will allow you to view, create, update and delete entry records directly from Cortana. You don’t need to open the web application, just ask what you need, Cortana will do it for you. Here are some of the example commands you may try:
o Search for an entry record,
o Create a new entry record,
o Create an appointment,
o Delete the phone call activity,
o Create a task list, or
o Open a task list and so on.
• Forecasting:
o Sales Forecasting: Activating Cortana on you Dynamics 365 allows it to go through your records and interest on Dynamics 365 activity and intelligently make a forecast for your business directly on the Cortana search panel. It analyzes all the past data to wisely generate future sales predictions. This sales forecast can give you some extra benefits which you didn’t think about before, such as:
Eliminate times to analyze sales data,
Cortana AI can target the best leads which can reduce lost opportunities, and
As it gives you better predictions about future sales, you can focus on future business potential.
o Inventory Forecasting: As far as I know, Microsoft Dynamics 365 has the excellent inventory management system. Cortana made this system smarter than ever. It allows inventory forecast to predict when you need to order or how many products are left. So, technically it’s saving your effort to find out items to avoid stock-outs. Here are some other benefits using Cortana AI for inventory forecast:
Avoids stock out which could lead to missed sales,
Eliminates time to analyze the inventory data,
Automate the creation of purchase orders for clients, and
Minimizes the working capital.
Although Cortana is on its preview state on Dynamics 365 and Microsoft announced a short about the discontinuation of Cortana on Dynamics 365, it has a lot of potential to the users who users Dynamics 365 for their business solution. Let’s have a bigger hope that Microsoft integrates Cortana with Dynamics 365 to make it more professional and smart.
