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You can enhance the relevance and usefulness of the content generated by the Sales Research Agent by adding context and instructions. The agent applies this information to your prompts automatically, so that you don't have to repeat it every time.
You can provide two types of context in natural business language:
General context: Includes information that’s relevant regardless of the topic the agent researches. This includes information about your role, industry, fiscal year, and currency. For example, you can add your organization's fiscal year start, so that the agent can map language in prompts like “Q1” or “this fiscal year” to the correct time period.
Business function: (Optional) Provides the agent with a role, context, and instructions that are relevant only for specific use cases. For example, create one business function to reflect how your org approaches market research and a separate business function for win/loss analysis. You can select which business function to use when researching a business question.
It's not mandatory to create a business function. We recommend that you try the Sales Research Agent first without creating the business function. After this, you can create a business function if you find you have the following needs:
- You have a need to define custom fields or logic.
- You want more control over how data is displayed or interpreted.
- You want to apply your own business knowledge to how insights are generated and presented, again with a specific use case in mind.
Set the general context for the agent
In the Sales Hub site map, go to My Work > Sales Research Agent.
The Sales Research Agent page opens with the predefined business functions, such as Pipeline Exploration and Sales Operation.Select the Manage your context icon (
) at the top-right corner of the page.
Select the Your general context tab, specify the following information:
Enter the context information covering your role, industry, fiscal year, and currency. This information helps the agent better understand your business and your role, and tailor the insights to be more relevant to you.
In the Acronyms and data dictionary section, add definitions for acronyms or column headings for data used by your organization in the context. For example, if your organization uses "ARR" to refer to "Annual Recurring Revenue," you can add that definition here. When the acronyms are used in prompts or present in your uploaded data or data sources, the agent can correctly interpret their meaning and return better results.
To permanently delete the general context information at any time, select Delete all at the bottom of the page.
Create a business function for the agent
In the Sales Hub site map, go to My Work > Sales Research Agent.
The Sales Research Agent page opens with the predefined business functions, such as Pipeline Exploration and Sales Operation.Select the Manage your context icon (
) at the top-right corner of the page.To create a business function, under the Business functions tab, select Add.
Tip
Keep your instructions concise and only add them if necessary. Overloading the agent with too much information might lead to less relevant responses.
Enter a meaningful name for the business function that reflects its purpose. For example, "Market Research." This name will appear on the home page of the Sales Research Agent, next to the existing business functions.
In the Role description box, describe the functional role that the agent will assume within your organization. This helps focus the agent on what you want it to do. Consider including the following information in your description:
- Agent's domain expertise
- The audience it serves
- The type of insights it should prioritize
- Any behavioral expectations such as, concise summaries or strategic recommendations.
For example, "You are a market research analyst for a nationwide coffee company. Your role is to provide actionable insights into business performance, customer segmentation, and growth opportunities to inform sales strategy. You specialize in identifying trends, comparing segments and territories, and recommending strategies to optimize revenue and customer experience."
In the Business context box, provide additional context about your organization, market, or sales approach that will help the agent generate relevant responses. For example, you can define terms or formulas that are specific to your org.
For clarity, add separate instructions on different lines starting with hyphens and add terms in quotation marks. For example:
-"Cross-sell threshold" measures the percentage of customer accounts with deals that involve products from at least three product groups. -"Cross-sell threshold" for a territory should be at least 80% to be considered positive. -"Cross-sell threshold" for a business segment should be at least 60% to be considered positive.In the Data instructions box, specify how the agent should interpret and use the data from your connected data sources, such as highlighting relationships, filters, joins, columns, or conditions. This field is useful if the agent does not understand all your custom business logic or schema customizations on its own.
For clarity, add separate instructions on different lines starting with hyphens and use quotation marks for column names. For example:
-Use 'ProductGroupName' column when analyzing by product unless explicitly instructed otherwise. -For committed pipeline, filter by recommendation = 'Committed' or 'Committed at risk'.Add starter prompts to get inspiration with common questions related to the business function. Starter prompts are displayed on the home page for quick access whenever you select the business function. The short prompt will show prominently to users, while the full prompt will be sent to the agent when the user selects the short prompt from the home page.
(Optional) Select Configure advanced settings to add data sources for this business function.
If your research includes data sources outside of your Dynamics 365 Sales environment (such as Fabric Lakehouse), select the data source and environment. Select the Auto-connect this data source when the business function is selected checkbox (at the bottom of the section) to eliminate the need for connecting to the data source each time you select the business function and submit a prompt.
You can also specify the tables and columns that the agent should consider when answering questions with this business function selected. This is optional and recommended only if the agent isn't selecting the right data scope on its own. Use logical names only for tables and columns. Select the Only pull the tables and columns specified in this configuration checkbox (at the bottom of the section) if you want to limit the agent to only use the tables and columns specified in this configuration. If this checkbox isn't selected, the agent will use the specified tables and columns as a starting point but may also pull in other relevant data based on the question asked.
Select Create to save the business function.
Close the pane and verify that the new business function appears on the Sales Research Agent home page.
Select the new business function and then either select a starter prompt or enter your own prompt to generate a research blueprint.