Service X-Factor
Service X-Factor is the podcast where service operations stops being a cost center and starts being a competitive advantage. Hosted by Microsoft MVPs Scott LeFante and William McLendon, this show reveals the secret ingredients behind service operations success—transforming chaos into clarity and strategy into profits.
Service X-Factor
How Microsoft Is Turning Field Service Into A Growth Engine
The wrench turns faster when the app gets out of the way. That’s the spirit of our deep dive with Microsoft’s Luis Masieri, Group PM for Dynamics 365 Field Service, as we unpack how AI is reshaping frontline work, customer outcomes, and the business model of service. We explore why the mission has shifted from operational efficiency to AI-first growth, and how technician experience sits at the heart of it.
We start with the mindset that separates thriving rollouts from stalled ones. Lift-and-shift thinking fails because it copies legacy processes into a new tool. The teams that win revisit outcomes, simplify flows, and invest in change management so techs, dispatchers, and managers adopt with confidence. From there, we dig into where AI delivers now: scheduling optimization agents that handle routing and exceptions, Copilot experiences that surface procedures and history, and remote assist that turns senior expertise into a force multiplier. The result is faster ramp for new techs, fewer taps in the mobile app, and better first-time fix rates.
Luis shares how Dynamics 365 Field Service balances domain complexity—assets, warranties, inventory, contracts—with approachable workflows that work across industries. We talk subcontractor realities, licensing that reduces friction, and integration between CRM and ERP to keep data flowing end to end. You’ll also hear what’s new: Outlook and Teams calendar sync for bookings, scheduling engine enhancements, the ability to extend Copilot with your own knowledge, and the steady reliability and security work that keeps everything running.
Looking ahead five years, picture a connected, predictive network where assets signal their own needs, AI agents take the first action, and humans handle the edge cases. Mixed reality resurfaces with better hardware and hands-free guidance. Documentation writes itself as work happens. The paperwork burden shrinks, and the joy of the trade returns. If you care about technician productivity, customer loyalty, and turning service into a growth engine, this conversation will help you see the path forward.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review so more service leaders can find it.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. This is Scott LaFonte, your host for the Service X Factor Podcast. Unfortunately, my co-host, Will McClendon, is on assignment, aka he's stuck in an airport. So we're gonna do this one without him today. And today we do have a very special guest from Microsoft. And I'm gonna let him introduce himself because he could do a better job of it than I can. But today we have Luis Messinieri. Hey Luis, how are you, man?
SPEAKER_01:Hey Scott, it's good to be with you. I'm doing well.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. So so for those that don't know who you are, Luis, uh why don't you tell us a little bit about uh what you do at Microsoft?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Uh so I'm a group product manager in the Dynamics 365 Field Service Team. Uh and my team and my area I look after is uh the easiest way of explaining to people is everything but scheduling. And so all things related to like their frontline worker experience, the mobile app, uh, all the way through like the back office uh service managers, how they use a product to get insights out of it and manage work quarters, all the way through like the IT teams that configure the application to use uh for their organizations.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Awesome, that's great. Yeah, and as you know, I as folks may know, I've I've been in the field service space for about uh 14 years now, and and I've known Luis actually for quite a few years now. We've we've conversed on on the product and different things on the roadmap and feedback. So, you know, so I think you know we have a a pretty good relationship and and I don't give you a hard time, so that's good.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. No, it's great to be with you and and kind of I don't want to say the culmination, but uh a stopping point along our uh journey to just do this together. So uh I'm excited to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00:It's been a long time coming. I've had on you know Jason Cohen and Dan Gittler before, who I gotta get back on since he's in his new role and and it's been quite some time. So, but yeah, definitely uh happy to have you on today. It's like I said, been a long time coming. So um, you know, I think for our listeners' perspective, Luis, I mean, uh talking about your personal journey, I mean, what you know, what drew you uh to field service, or is it just one of those things where it's like, all right, you know, I I you know got this job and and I'm assigned field service and let me do my thing. And I mean, how how did you get started in field service?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, great uh question. And uh the answer is somewhere in between. Uh so yeah I have always been drawn to work that uh really set the intersection of like technology with uh real world impact. And I think field service is a great example of that. It's really where it's a software where it meets people where they are, and really just being having the ability to just have great service that we can provide and great customer experiences to create brand brand loyalty is something that I I find pretty uh energizing. So uh it was both an opportunity that I came up, I didn't know how much I was gonna enjoy the work because of the impact that I get to see the in and the out. And so it's been a really fun journey to just uh help build this product and evolve it. That's great.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I always can relate to, I think when I got involved in field service, uh one, I didn't I didn't know anything about it except you know the way it was explained to me, of course, and the way I related to it, and what got me excited was like, oh I could I could explain it from right yours and I and my personal experience, like if we have a technician come out to our house to fix something, right? And so it becomes very relatable to people like, oh, okay, now I get it. And then we talk about the different industries, of course, that that are applicable to field service, and you know, we'll get into that and and some of the different uh different uh industries that have used it and and what you've seen over the years or heard over the years. So kind of piggying back off of that, I mean, what's what would you say is the most rewarding part of your role at Microsoft and you know what really gets you excited to come to work every day?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, I would say that at Microsoft at large, it's really the scale that that we have as a company and and the ability to see the impact, not just in a small pocket in uh Seattle or California, uh, but really just throughout the world. Uh, we have customers that are spread uh all the way from South America to Asia to Europe to the United States, and really being able to see how this product just crossed geo boundaries and has an impact uh everywhere in every corner of the world is just uh fascinating. And so I I appreciate the scale of the work. I think the other part of it, particularly now in the AI era, is really having the scale of Microsoft. Also gives you access to uh the latest and greatest AI tools and really the capabilities to really build on what's next. So having so much access really creates an exciting opportunity to be able to build the best product out there.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And that's great. And we've you know we're seeing a lot more of that AI capabilities, and and you know, I'm gonna ask you some questions about AI, of course, later. But you know, in terms of within the the product stack, we're seeing the you know copilot for field service, you know, and being able to use some of that co-pilot, at least from a summary perspective, and asking some things on the mobile, and of course, not that you do scheduling, but now we're seeing that you know some of that within the scheduling area as well. So there's been a lot of evolution and a lot of emphasis on AI, probably not just at Microsoft, but really, I mean, if you look at it even just from a you know M365 co-pilot, you know, and then you got the chat GPTs, the clouds, and probably uh a whole bunch of tools that I'm not even aware of, but you know, I use several because some are some are good for certain things and some are better for others, but I really impressed really impressed with what has been going on within the D365 stack from uh um an AI perspective. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I'll add, you know, on top of the Microsoft scale of the impact, I think the the most rewarding part of the job obviously is being able to just deliver capabilities to customers and to organizations and just seeing their eyes light up when we're able to solve a business challenge that they've had. So whether it's a customer telling me that they've seen the highest level of productivities ever for their technicians because of how they've implemented field service and they've been able to just optimize the workflows to people's reactions to seeing some of the future of field service and some of those AI capabilities that really put technicians back into the field and outside of just dealing with a mobile app, uh, those are very rewarding moments that really make all the hard work uh feel like it it matters and it pays off.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, that's that's uh spot on because I've I've you know, and I'm sure you've you've heard obviously the success stories that you just talked about, you know, some of those where you know customers are getting really excited and they're really seeing the ROI of field service. And then on the flip side, I've seen some customers struggle because maybe they don't have a clear objective or roadmap, or maybe they don't have the right partner engaged. I I've seen it, you know, anywhere in between those as well. And and it's heartbreaking because you know they get frustrated because they think it's the product that that isn't suitable for them, when in reality it's it's probably the exact opposite. It's not that the product can't do it, it's just that either expectations aren't set appropriately, or you don't have the right goals and objective between, or you've gone you know, completely custom instead of understanding what the tool can do for you out of the box, and then sort of doing the building blocks on top of that. And so that was one of the things that I focused on. And I think Jason Cohen came to my session uh last week at Summit, where I really talked about tips and tricks and and things that have caused implementation failures and and what you can really do to avoid those. So it was a really great session and and happy to see uh, of course, my my good friend Jason there. But yeah, I I mean it's it's just one of those things that to your point though, when when a customer is is doing really well, it's it's super exciting and really gets you uh juiced up to continue going along the field service journey.
SPEAKER_01:What I see as kind of the differentiating factor between those kind of successful implementations and those customers that struggle at times. And I talk to customers very openly about this when we do uh executive briefings or or sales pitches or whatnot, is really the change management piece. Uh, I think to your point, I see a lot of customers just kind of say, I want to lift and shift, have been doing things for 30 years into this new product, and I expect it to work exactly the same way, but they're not willing to put in the work to just reassess why some of those processes are done the way that they were pre-AI, pre-technology, pre-internet. And it just not a one-to-one shift. So having the open mind of we need to rethink why things were done a certain way and just really try to see what was the outcome that you were trying to accomplish, and then figure out how do you evolve it to a new way of doing things, is how I see success happens. And the other part of change management. So that's that's one part of it. The other part of the change management is really just the rollout and really dealing with people in the organization, right? If they've had been used to doing things a certain way for 10 years, and all of a sudden you put a new tool in front of them without any training, without any guidance, without any change management, of course they're gonna struggle. Of course, they're gonna resist the change. So putting proper change management really just makes a huge difference in whether people accept the tools or it ends up being a failed implementation.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. No, that's spot on. And that was definitely one of the things, and I'm glad you brought it up, one of the things that we discussed last week, and one of the things that really is discussed you know on field service projects, but you know, really every project needs to have change management. Because to your point, without it, you know, projects fail, right? Right. And and it's probably one of the biggest reasons why projects fail is lack of of proper change management. So uh definitely glad you you brought that up. So let's let's talk about um you know what what do you feel or or you know for folks is you know what is what is the core mission of your team? And you know, what do you what is the team trying to really accomplish for the field service organizations that are out there, especially now in the in the evolution of AI. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:You know, at the core of it, our mission is really to empower organizations to deliver exceptional service. And so that means getting the right technician with the right skills at the right time with the right data to really fix things. And uh historically, this has been focused a lot around like just optimizing operations, so whether it's scheduling, dispatching, work order management. But as we look forward to the future, our mission has really transformed to be one of building the best AI-first tool for field service organizations. So we're able to transform those organizations from just a service engine to a growth engine for organizing for their companies. So the introduction of predictive maintenance, the introduction of like AI power capabilities and a deeply connected customer experience is really how we see the future of field service and how we'll be able to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and how we'll be able to help organizations transform themselves uh into a future.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's that's awesome because you know, I think it goes into one of the questions I was going to ask, and I think you spot on is you know, how has that mission and solving problems today differ from three to four years ago? Um, and you know, and I know three or four years ago probably everyone was yeah, you know, knew that AI was coming. It just was a matter of of when and then how quickly it would evolve. And so we're seeing that innovation. I mean, even you know, heard about it last week from there was a lot of Microsoft folks at uh Summit. And then of course this week at Power Platform Community Conference, uh there was a lot of uh excitement and discussions around AI and a lot of the product evolution that has just either recently come out or is coming out in the next release, and the different things from a roadmap perspective. So it's really getting organizations uh really excited about what is coming and how Microsoft is evolving and becoming, or it is or becoming it depends on how you look at it and who looks at it, uh, a leader in this space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so one of the funny anecdotes a year to this date. So we have those customer advice reports that we bring uh top customers are using the product twice a year, one time in North America, one time in the European area. And a year to this date, we were in the European CAB, and customers did not want to talk about AI, like they were kind of coming at us, they're like, I don't want to talk about AI, I want to talk about like this specific feature, this specific bug in the product that is not working. Like, when are you gonna fix that? And it's so interesting to see how much a difference a year makes. Because like this year, I just came back from being with some of our customers in Ireland, and the conversation on the tone had completely shifted. Customers were excited, bringing up ideas before we even talked about AI on how they're thinking within the organizations, how AI can help them with their field service departments and operations. And it's just really eye-opening to see how much of a difference a year made, let alone three years to your point, on what we were doing three years ago with field service to kind of where we are now. And so it's just really exciting to see what where the market is at, where customers are at, and kind of where we go from here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, and and that's also uh fantastic because I've I've seen a lot of the same thing where dealing with customers last year that were uh hesitant to go into the AI space, you know, for a bunch of different reasons, right? Securities, privacy of data, all these different things. And even though you can talk about you know what Microsoft does to keep you know your data uh private and secure, especially within uh you know Microsoft D365 and how it utilizes the whole security model of D365, there's there was still that doubt. And then this year that conversation has shifted to say, hey, we want to use AI, and and now it's not even just did the co-pilots within D365, it's now, hey, how can we use you know Copilot Studio? How can we use Azure Open AI? How can we use all these different tools to really uh solve some of these and these mundane or do these mundane tasks or ask these questions so that we can save our people time and focus on you know the items that truly matter?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think this goes back to the point that we were making previously around change management. At the core of it, I think it's everybody a year and a half, a year ago, had just fears of kind of AI coming for their jobs or or just really not understanding what AI could do for them. And I feel like as people have gotten more familiar with their own personal experience with AI, whether it's using Cloud, ChatGPT, M365, Copilot, they have kind of seen the value of what it can do for them. And I think it makes it a little bit easier for them to digest. Well, if this can do this for me, I can only imagine what it can do for our organization at scale. So I think that that's part of that internal change management for people to really just get more comfortable with the tools themselves and therefore be more comfortable with thinking of the use cases and the adaptability of that for their organizations.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Spot on. And you know, speaking about AI, I mean, in in your opinion, you know, how is AI transforming field service and you know what AI capabilities are are you and your team really you know super excited about?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so when it comes to field service, I think there's a couple different uh ways that I think about how AI is transforming the organizations and the product. Um the first one is really helping organizations move from reactive to proactive servicing. So instead of asking what happened, being able to ask what will likely happen next. Uh, those are just really powerful moments in in the experience for organizations to really just be able to move from one of the uh from the old way of doing things to a new way of doing things. I think as it comes to the product, it's the part where I see AI really transforming the product the most, I think in in two areas. One of them is obviously across our scheduling area. Um, as you pointed out earlier, like that's not my core area of focus for the product, but I still represent the overall portfolio. And we're seeing some great success and adoption with our scheduling optimization agent, which is out in the market, and uh just being able to just optimize how technicians are routed to their next jobs and kind of handling exceptions and things like that. So that is a pretty exciting part of it. The other part of that is really just for the technicians themselves, and really our goal has really evolved in a very non-intuitive way, I guess, to get technicians out of the app. So we want technicians using the app the least amount possible, because what we hear time and time again when we talk to technicians and organizations is that what people enjoy the most about their jobs is actually doing whatever their core skill set is. So whether it is installing a new pipeline or uh fixing an HVAC, they just want to be twisting bolts and changing pipes. They don't want to be spending time wrestling with technology. And so historically, a lot of our products in the field service market have been all about like tap, tap, tap, uh getting into the app, capturing data for the organization. And really, AI is providing a new way for us to think about how do we do all of that faster and in a way that really allows the technician to spend less time inputting data or searching for data and really spending more time doing their jobs. And so I'm pretty excited about where that is going and kind of what we'll see in the next year uh in field service uh for technicians.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. And and have you seen that in terms of, you know, speaking of technicians, you know, we've all heard about the uh shortages and skill gaps, and they they called it for years the silver tsunami and and was really uh exasperated by of course the the pandemic. Um you know, has that influenced in any way the product development uh on the on the mobile side?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So we have been hearing about this for for a while to your point, and there's kind of like two ways in which we have been trying to work with organizations to help them deal with this. Uh the first one is as far as AI goes, uh being able to uh work and bring to market capabilities to help people just find find information faster. So through Copilot Studio and M365, Copilot, uh being able to use parse, a library of uh PDF documents, and being able to find the answers to questions faster that really helps new younger technicians uh on board without having to have all that knowledge given to them before they go to the first job. The second one is uh the remote assist capabilities in the product. Uh so really having not having to have a ton of technicians with all the knowledge out there, but instead had a handful of them available. And those newer technicians that don't know everything, when they get stuck in a job, they can remotely call that expert and just get their guidance and then they learn from that. And so that is another way that we have kind of evolved the product to help address some of that. And then the third part of it that we hear very often is organizations also moving to use more subcontractors to really address that shortage. And so we have been investing in the product and making dealing with subcontractors in field service uh easier, whether it's the launch of a reduced price skew for subcontractors or some capabilities within the product to like help them onboard faster and work in the product easier. And that's another way that we're helping organizations just really deal with the shortage of staff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, that's great because you know I hear it time and time again with implements as well, uh, where they're they're struggling or they're using, to your point, those subcontractors. And um, you know, now of course, with as you said, the ability to have a sub subcontractor SKU, I think uh alleviating some of those barriers to entry for organizations that say, do I really want to pay for a license for a subcontractor, or do I want them to use a portal, which of course then has limited capabilities and presents its own challenges, right? So I think that's really open people's eyes and it probably just also changed a little bit of their expectations around their experience with field service.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and without giving too much away, I think this is an area where we're gonna continue to like double down uh helping manage subcontractors and the work uh collaboration between these two organizations. And so you will see some more of those workflows light up in field service in the coming months and years. So uh look forward, keep an eye on that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I definitely look, you know, as you know, I spend uh most of my time in field service, so definitely looking forward to seeing what comes uh comes next in the in the next uh years to come. Um if we turn our our sites into say, you know, you know, the product team in terms of insights, I mean, what has been the most challenging aspect of of building uh a field service software? And you know, of course, in your opinion, uh, you know, what have what have been some of those things that have really just been like, man, this is this is this is a challenge that of course you're willing to overcome, but it's been really um a little bit difficult or challenging at at certain times.
SPEAKER_01:How long do I have? I probably have a long list of of challenges that I can go through. I would start by saying uh at the core of it for us as a product team is really balancing the complexity of the domain with the simplicity of the experience. So field service goes all the way from scheduling to warranties, dealing with contracts, assets, the mobility of technicians. And our job at the core of it is to really hide that complexity and build intuitive workflows for the organizations to really get their job done. Now that said, it's easier said than done. So for it to feel that effortless, it really requires a lot of work on our end to just abstract all of that complexity. And on top of that, because we are building ultimately a a more flexible platform for customers to really solve their business challenges, it creates another layer of complexity for us because every customer is slightly different. Every industry where fuel services use is slightly different. And so creating something generic that works across the board is very challenging. And that's where partners like yourself and our partner community really come in to just really help with that last mile of the implementation to really make it look and feel exactly like it needs to be for that organization. So if you take the product out of the box, it's probably gonna get you like 90% there. There's still like 10-15% that needs to be done to be tweaked to get it to your needs and liking. The third area is the fact that field service itself sits somewhere between CRM and the ERP. And so being having to talk to so many systems to just keep track of your inventory, to keep track of your technicians' hours, to keep track of the customers themselves and the relationships and the churn and the lifetime value of customers, having to just sit at the intersection of those two systems creates another layer of complexity because we can't foresee where all this data is going to come from and how it's gonna be used by organizations. And this is again where the partner community really helps us uh get that implementation right for their customers. And so those are some of the biggest challenges that I've seen over the years in building the successful field service software. Now, more recently, although more internal facing, let's say, the AI revolution that we're going uh also poses a new set of challenges, in which, to your point, part of it is just getting customers to understand why AI is important and how it's gonna help their business. Uh, but the other part of it is everything is moving so fast and so quickly that it's hard for ourselves to really stay up to date with the latest. It's hard for our customers to adopt everything uh that we're putting out because we're doing it so quickly. So it it does create a new set of challenges, uh, that everything is moving so fast. Uh it's exciting, obviously, but also I understand that for customers receiving the end, uh, it can feel like a lot and that sometimes they're missing some of the new things that are happening just because of the volume of things that are coming out so quickly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and I gotta imagine that as you're as you're building these new items, especially around AI, right? It's kind of like technology in in general, right? You you buy a laptop six months later, it's really outdated. Right. It's probably the same thing with AI because it is evolving so quickly that by the time you release some new features, you're already you you already have to be thinking or at least building all those upcoming features as well, because otherwise you're just gonna fall fall further and further behind. So it's just like a catch 22. It's just like it's a you know, constant, you know, hamster wheel where you guys are, I would imagine, just churning and just be like, okay, you know, we got this out, but we're still building for all these other features that just came out or the new technology that makes it better, makes it faster and smarter. And uh, I can't even imagine how you guys keep up. I think you guys work 23 hours a day is what I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you know, I would say on that point, it that is also a reason for customers to buy the product or a product as opposed to like build it themselves. Because, like the moment that you are buying the platform and and the SaaS, then you don't have to worry about keeping up with all of that because. Like that becomes our job to just like enhance those capabilities with the latest and uh release those new capabilities that you haven't seen yet. And if you are trying to just implement a field service software for your company, and on top of that, you feel like you want to go out out of your own to build your own AI journey, then good luck with that. Because to your point, in three, by the time you're done even speculat the V1 of your AI capabilities, you're probably gonna that the landscape would have changed already, and you're probably gonna have to like evolve it again, right? And so if you take a bet on a platform like uh Microsoft and Dynamics Physics, uh you really get all of that baked in and you don't have to worry about that, but it's really about lighting up those scenarios and we'll continue to evolve it for you underneath the surface with the latest and greatest.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And like I've told customers before, I said, hey, if you need to add in, like let's just say you have a a custom table, right? And and and we know this is you know, in in certain co-pilots within, you know, like let's just say co-pilot and sales and and I'm sure eventually field service, but in service, you can add in those those custom tables and start asking questions. Um so and that's really you know, to your point, I don't have to do anything else. I can just add knowledge um and start asking questions, and Microsoft does the rest. Yeah. You know, in your opinion, what does field service look like, say, in five years? I mean, what do you think? Is it going to be a ton of more AI and autonomous agents within there doing a lot of the heavy lifting work, or is it going to be something even different?
SPEAKER_01:Oh god, uh such a great question. And I think if I had a magic bowl, then I probably would have retired already. Um but I would say that I definitely think in five years, just seeing what has happened just in the past three, just kind of predicting five years ahead, we'll look back and wonder how we ever work without these AI agents. I think for a field service it'll be it'll become fully connected, a predictive predictive network where assets signal their own needs to us, agents take the first action, take the first step at it, and the humans are really there to handle the exceptions. Now, I think that's true for like kind of just getting the work going. I think for technicians, it's gonna be probably the most exciting time of their lives because they went from being trademark and women that just knew how to do work really well to like having all this paperwork added on top of it for themselves. And I really think that AI is gonna help bring back that joy of their day-to-day because they're not gonna be having to deal with technology, but technology is really gonna augment their work. And so, whether it is through helping them find what they need faster so they can get back in, uh having access to knowledge that they didn't even know they needed or they had access to in their pockets, or really again, just reducing that friction of them having to be in the application to capture the work that they've done by just having copilot and mixed reality, uh really help them just capture things as they go along, right? So I think as I think about those emerging technologies, it seems like the pendulum keeps swinging back and forward with like mixed reality, uh, but I really see that as a game changer for the field service space. And if we could get some of those like glasses where technicians we can just be seeing what technicians are doing and they can ask questions about what they're seeing, oh my gosh, that that is gonna really change the game. Yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and I'm hoping too that a lot more organizations, and I'm seeing it a little uh get more to that, as you said earlier, right? The predictive maintenance or and even prescriptive maintenance, right? We see, of course, organizations still use an agreement, and I I love agreement. Um, and that's you know, a little bit of being proactive, um, but really getting to that to your point, like, hey, you know, using AI to say, yeah, great, you're fixing this, but based on what we're seeing, and based on maybe even uh assets within this particular category, here's what we're seeing, and here's what we'd recommend. Um, I think that's where hopefully as well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that organizations start um really, you know, use uh the technology uh to do that as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and again, without saying too much, you'll have to keep an eye uh to see what comes in the product, uh definitely an investment and focus for for the team.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. And then you know, one last question, uh Luis, because I know we're getting to the to the end of our time here. I mean, from a release perspective, and I know we're in in the uh we're getting towards the the tail end. Well, no, I guess we're kind of in the uh of the release. I mean, what are some things uh if if folks haven't read the release notes, you know, what are some things that are that are in this release or even the upcoming release if if it's uh that they should keep their eye out, their eye on for?
SPEAKER_01:So there's definitely a bunch of improvements across our um AI stack. So whether it is in the Field Service Web, the ability to not customize the copilot side uh in co-pilot studio so that you can add custom knowledge extra information, uh, that will definitely have an impact for like the service managers and the back-end persona using the product. So that's a pretty exciting part of the release. The other piece of it is uh one of the number one pieces of feedback that we have gotten for years has been the ability for the fuel service bookings to sync for technicians into their calendars in Outlook and Teams so they can see both their bookings and their M365 calendar together. And so, like we just launched the capability uh in the product to do just that and uh configuring that and taking advantage of that uh exciting. Um, we continue to make improvement in our scheduling engine as well. So, improvements on just to uh schedule optimization agent that we just launched, but also the schedule board itself. There's a bunch of paper cuts that we have been really listening to that feedback and added to uh for new capabilities that just really make the quality of life of schedulers better, whether it is being able to just share like a uh or just save that URL and it deeply goes to like where you where you were at, uh, or just seeing the time scales in the schedule board. There's a lot of really small things that like are sometimes invisible, but like when you run into them, I I'm excited about some of that as well. And then like there's always that invisible work that happens behind the scenes that is just hard to quantify, hard to talk about. But uh the team really spends a lot of time uh fixing that, but also you're strengthening the product so that your data stays secure, the product stays up uh so that you don't have to worry about those things. You don't have to worry about like outages and things like that. Uh security and fundamentals are really a core priority for our product, have been and continue to be.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's awesome. And and to your point, I mean, I've seen it evolve uh over the years in terms of even just that capability to, as you said earlier, right? It you know, it's kind of kind of sits between CRM and ERP and really having that you know tightly knit integration. You know, we've seen it with FNO, but now we see it with you know the business uh connector as well, which is which is great because as you said, right, we have to manage inventory, we have to do things with on the on the financial back end, all these different components are really exciting to see how the product has evolved and how it will continue to uh in you know in the you know next year, the year and you know, five years down the road. So super exciting. I can't wait to see what you and the team are gonna continue to build. As you know, I'm probably one of your biggest supporters, and uh it's been great for uh obviously, you know, be part of in some cases the private previews, the test out, for example, the whole you know, adding bookings to the to uh Outlook calendar, which is was for me a game changer. It's like yeah, you know, uh it was one of those things I was like, man, this is great. Yeah, you know, never would have thought of it either. But it was fantastic. So, you know, really um, you know, and I super, super love talking to you and and happy to have you on today. And you know, we're gonna have to bring you on like a panel, maybe you, Gitler and and Cohen, and we'll just all we'll jam on field service.
SPEAKER_01:That'd be awesome. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for for having me and thank you for kind of spending time talking about this. I think I'll kind of close by just reinforcing the piece that is most exciting to me about the work that we're doing in field service right now is when we talk to organizations about the impact that AI could, uh, there's a lot of pockets where people fear that AI could come for their jobs. But when we talk about it in the context of field service, people are asking us for like more, faster, better, because they really see the value that AI could have to really just reduce the amount of work that technicians need to do and really get them back into what they love doing, which is twisting those knobs and whatnot. So it's really not copilot, it's not about replacing people, but about amplifying them and uh so much excitement uh in this space. I am super excited to continue to share some of that with you all and keep an eye on what will keep coming next. Awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Luis, for that. And thank you for being uh everyone. We appreciate you for listening. And until next time, have a great day. Thanks, everyone.
