Review and apply purchase order changes received in vendor emails (production ready preview)

[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

The Supplier Communications Agent helps speed up communications with vendors about purchase orders by enabling Copilot to read emails from some or all vendors.

When Copilot analyzes a vendor email, it determines what the message is about. For example, the agent recognizes whether it's a purchase order confirmation or a purchase order change request. It also identifies which purchase order it applies to. Copilot then matches the information that it extracts from the email to fields in the system and indicates whether there are any changes. Therefore, you just need to review the information that Copilot provides, review the proposed changes, and decide whether to accept those changes. Copilot saves you time, because you don't have to manually find, open, and edit the purchase order in the system.

Copilot classifies each vendor email that it reads into one of the following categories, based on the intent that it detects in the message:

• Purchase order confirmation – Copilot detected that the intent of the message is to confirm one or more purchase orders (all the purchase orders that the email mentions).
• Purchase order change request – Copilot detected that the message contains at least one requested change to a purchase order. For example, the vendor wrote to tell you that they can't deliver the full quantity that was requested for one or more lines, to tell you that they can't deliver on time, or to reject the entire order.
• Rejected – Copilot detected that the vendor can't supply the requested purchase order.
• Other – Copilot couldn't identify any of the previous intents.

For the first two categories, Copilot identifies which purchase orders the email is related to and matches the information in the email to information in the system.

When you review incoming changes that are based on an email, the system shows the original email, the current information in the system, and the changes proposed. Therefore, you can more easily understand each change. After you finish reviewing the proposal and making any corrections that are required, you can apply the changes directly to the relevant purchase order.

Configure the agent to track your email

You need to configure the Supplier Communications Agent to monitor a specific email address for incoming messages from vendors. Follow these steps to complete the configuration.

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management environment as a user who has permissions to manage the agent configuration.
2. Go to Agents > Agents (Preview).
3. On the Library tab, for Speed up updates in purchase orders with Supplier communications agent, select Select.
4. On the Agent configuration page, use the dropdown menu to specify which vendors the agent should analyze emails for. Select Any vendor to track all vendors or Specific vendors to track a list of specific vendors that you provide.
5. Select the mailbox that the agent should monitor. The dropdown menu shows all mailboxes that the sign-in user has access to. If the mailbox that you're looking for isn't in the list, follow the steps in Synchronize mailboxes with Dataverse.
6. Select Activate.

Review and accept changes suggested by the agent

The agent detects changes in the following fields:

• Quantity
• Unit of measure
• Price
• Confirmation
• Delivery date
• Cancellation

To review and accept changes that the agent suggests based on the emails that it reads, follow these steps:

1. Open the Purchase order receipt and follow-up workspace.

2. The (Preview) Emails from vendors tile indicates the number of emails that require review. Select the tile.

   The left side of the (Preview) Emails from vendors page lists all the emails that the agent reads. The right side shows summaries that Copilot generates.

3. Follow one of these steps:

   • To apply all the changes that the agent suggests, select Apply all suggestions. This action affects all purchase orders that the message mentions.
   • To apply all suggestions to a single selected purchase header and all its lines, select Apply suggestions in the Purchase order header section.
   • To apply suggestions to specific purchase order lines, select the relevant lines, and then select Apply suggestions in the Purchaser order lines section.

Teach the agent how to better interpret incoming email content

If a vendor uses acronyms or other language that the system doesn't recognize, the Supplier Communications Agent might not have enough data to interpret it. However, you can teach the agent to better process incoming email content. By teaching the agent, you help improve its accuracy.

Two types of teaching are available:

1. Column mapping teaching (improves recognition of field names)
2. Value teaching (improves recognition of field values)

Teach the agent about column mappings

Agent teaching applies when any of the following situations occur:

• The incoming email from the vendor contains a term or acronym that the agent can't interpret.
• The email contains multiple possible matches for a single field in Supply Chain Management. For example, various vendors might use many different names to refer to the field named Confirmed receipt date in Supply Chain Management. Examples include:
  • Estimated delivery date
  • Confirmed delivery date
  • Transportation load date
  • Ship date
  • Ship by
  • Approx. delivery date
  • And more.

If the agent detects ambiguity when trying to identify a field, it shows that "Some columns are mapped with low confidence." In this case, select Review to manually choose which of the fields from the vendor's email you want the agent to use. This action opens a dialog that lists possible mappings for the field. After you choose the correct mapping, choose how broadly to apply it: to all vendors from now on, to the current vendor from now on, or just for this one time.

To map more fields, select Show more. This action expands the list of fields that are available for mapping. Agent teaching for field mappings is currently supported for the Confirmed receipt date, Unit, Quantity, and Unit price fields.

Teach the agent about value mappings

For some fields, a vendor might use values that are synonyms or industry equivalences that aren't saved in your system. You can train the agent to recognize these equivalences. For example, as a value for the Unit field, you might use cartons while one of your vendors always uses the name cassettes for the same unit. When the agent detects the different value as a change, you can clarify the equivalence. When you edit the field, the teaching pane appears. You can then save the equivalence for all vendors, for the current vendor, or not at all.

Locate existing teaching items

If any teaching is previously saved for all vendors or a specific vendor, you can always find it later, review it, or delete it by following these steps:

1. Go to Procurement and sourcing > (Preview) Supplier Communications Agent > (Preview) Emails from vendors.
2. On the Action Pane, select Taught items to view everything that the agent was taught.
3. If you see any lessons that you want to delete, select them, and then select Delete on the Action Pane.