Intelligent Suggestions in Dynamics 365 Sales

During 2023 Release Wave 1 the feature called ‘Provide intelligent suggestions to improve seller effectiveness’ was announced. I have to say the description of this feature was a little vague and blurry (just like the related screenshots), but my understanding of the functionality was, that the system / artificial intelligence will automatically create suggestions in the system related to sales records, like leads, opportunities, accounts, etc.
These suggestions will then show as cards in the sales accelerator and in the ‘up next’ widget on forms (just like other work items). Suggestions are designed to give insights to sellers, and help them to focus on the right deals, prospects, and customers.
It took a while before this feature was available to try out, as it was not part of the early release, but I am happy to announce that this feature is in preview today so you can start playing around with it!

Enable Suggestions Preview

You can enable the suggestions preview by opening the Sales Hub in Dynamics 365 Sales. From there you’ll need to change the area selector to ‘Sales Insights settings’. You should be able to see the ‘Insights(preview)’ item on the sitemap, below the ‘Productivity’ area.
Once you click on the ‘Insights(preview)’ item, you’ll notice a new page that opens up. You can enable the preview from here by clicking the ‘Enable’ button on the bottom of the screen. If you want to limit access to suggestions, you can configure this by clicking the ‘Configure’ button below ‘configure access’. This button is greyed out when the Insights preview is disabled, but will show as an active button when the feature is enabled.

Suggestion Generation

When I enabled the preview feature, I was a bit confused as I read in the documentation that one of the ways suggestions can be generated, is through an AI model, but keep in mind that is not part of the preview. There are a few options when it comes to the AI model that will be responsible for generating suggestions. Customers have the ability to bring their own AI model, for example, maybe your organization has an AI model to determine the churn risk of an account? Well guess what? The output of this model can be used to generate the suggestions in Dynamics 365 Sales! When I first read the information shared on the learn.microsoft website, it sounded to me like Dynamics 365 Sales will have out of the box AI models, but as I stated before this is not the case today. After seeing everything that Microsoft has done with Copilot, I am even more convinced that this will happen in the future. Keep in mind this is just a guess on my end, I haven’t received any confirmation on that. Having said that, you’re probably wondering, how to preview this feature if there aren’t any out of the box AI models to generate these suggestions?! There are actually a few ways to create suggestions in Dynamics 365 Sales. You can import suggestions into the system, create a suggestion manually, or you can create a power automate flow that creates suggestions based on certain triggers. To test this feature, I created a Power Automate flow that will show a suggestion when the estimated revenue of an opportunity is more than $250,000.

Suggestion Data

The first thing I want to mention is that the system name of the suggestion table is msdyn_salessuggestion. Before you create suggestion rows, it’s important to understand the columns in the suggestion table, as this will determine how and where the suggestion will be displayed. Below is a screenshot of a row in the suggestion table. (I added the columns to the form, so I had full visibility to the columns available.) On the top left you can see a preview of how the suggestion card will look in the ‘Up-next’ widget of a form. There are two lookup columns in the suggestion table, one is related to the account table, called ‘Account’ (msdyn_relatedrecord), and the other one is related to the opportunity table, labeled ‘Associated Opportunity(msdyn_qualifiedrecord).

The account lookup column is the row the suggestion is related to. I noticed that if the account lookup is populated, the suggestion will show up on the account form in the ‘up-next widget’ and in the sales accelerator worklist. If the account lookup is not populated, the suggestion card doesn’t show up at all. It seems that at this point in time, suggestions can only be related to accounts, although the Microsoft documentation seems to suggest that in the future we will be able to tie them to other tables as well. The data in the ‘name’ column will show as the name of the suggestion in the work list of the sales accelerator. I didn’t see the ability to configure the suggestion card as we can with the other cards, but I am hopeful that will become available later. The ‘suggestion reason’ column holds the data that shows as the title in the suggestion card. The ‘suggestion insight’ column shows the entered data in bullet points on the card. You’ll also notice that the data entered in the ‘Potential revenue’ field shows next to the ‘Due by’ field on the card, which is actually the date/time that was entered in the ‘Suggested date’ column. This seems to be the date the suggestion is due by. The ‘Expiry date’ represents the date the suggestion is expired and will no longer be shown to the seller(s). The suggestion records are not deleted from the database when this date is reached, it’s just no longer visible to users. To learn more about the columns in the table take a look here.

Manually Creating Suggestions

To see what the suggestions look like in the Sales Accelerator or on a form, you’ll need to have one or more existing suggestion rows in Dynamics 365. I already mentioned the ability to import them or use a power automate flow to automatically create them, but you can also create suggestions manually. First, you’ll need to add the relevant fields to the suggestion table’s form (so you can enter data in them), plus you’ll need to add the table to the model driven app. As I mentioned earlier, the system name of the table you’re looking for is msdyn_salessuggestion. NOTE: I noticed in one of my environments the label of the table showed as ‘Insight’, while in another environment the label showed ‘suggestion’. Once the table has been added to the app and the rows have been added to the form, you should be able to create your first suggestion.

Suggestion Segments, Sequences & Assignment

Just like we can assign leads and opportunities in Dynamics 365 Sales by using the assignment rules in the Sales Accelerator, we can also use assignment rules to assign suggestions to sellers. NOTE: It’s not required to create assignment rules, but available if needed. The creation of assignment rules for suggestions are slightly different from when you create an assignment rule for other records. More information can be found here. Before you can configure an assignment rule for a suggestion, you’ll need to create a segment first.

Segments

A segment is a way to filter incoming suggestions. The segment can have certain criteria that need to be met, to add the suggestion to a segment. In my example I only want suggestions to be added to my segment if the estimated revenue of the related opportunity is equal to or greater than $250K.
Once the segment is created and activated, you can use it in the assignment rules. Take a look here to understand how to create assignment rules for suggestions.

Sequences

We can also create sequences for suggestions. This is also optional and not required when using suggestions. The way this works is that if a suggestion is ‘accepted’, it will automatically start showing activities from the sequence the suggestion is related to! NOTE: This will not tie the suggestion’s related record to the sequence, but it will tie the suggestion to the sequence.

Working with Suggestions

Once suggestions are created and assigned to a seller or a team of sellers, they will start to show up in the Sales Accelerator in the Sales Hub, and on the ‘Up next’ widget of the related account row’s form. New suggestions can be accepted, declined, or assigned to a different user or team. These actions can be done from the work item in the Sales Accelerator or from the ‘Up next’ widget on the account form. If a suggestion has been declined, it disappears from the Sales Accelerator. Once the suggestion has been accepted, other actions will be available.

The actions available are dependent on the configuration: If you have sequences enabled and the suggestions is linked to a sequence, it will automatically show the steps in the sequence after the seller accepts the suggestion. The seller will see the options related to the activity in the sequence (skip, snooze, assign, etc.) and below that they will see the actions related to the suggestion, which are ‘close insight’ and ‘assign’. The last action allows the seller to assign the insight to a different seller or team.
If a suggestion that is not tied to a sequence is accepted, the seller will see several actions he/she can take: connect the suggestion to a sequence, create activity (this will allow the seller to create an appointment, email, phone call or task. Keep in mind when an activity is created this way, the suggestion will be auto populated in the ‘regarding’ field, meaning this activity will be tracked on the suggestion row, not the opportunity or account row. The new activity will show up under the suggestion in the ‘Up next’ widget on the account form. (Screen shot above)
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