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Previously, sellers relied on a sidecar pane to view summaries, which many found disconnected and inefficient due to its narrow format. The new interface eliminates the need to open a separate panel, offering one-line AI-generated synopses that can be expanded for more details. 

“This isn’t just a visual refresh. It’s about making insights contextual, actionable, and always visible,” said Swapnil Agarwwal, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. 

Sellers can now preview lead summaries such as: “Acme is exploring Airpot coffee machines for their new manufacturing site with a $24.9K budget expected to close by May 25th, 2025.” Clicking the summary reveals deeper research, including company background, seller recommendations, and next steps—especially for users leveraging the Sales Qualification Agent. 

Currently, the full summary bar experience is live for Lead records. Microsoft has confirmed that Opportunity and Account summaries will follow soon, with similar agent-generated research pages in development. 

Legacy features like summary customization, copy functionality, and Copilot sidecar generation remain intact. The feature is being enabled by default in all supported environments as part of the latest rollout. 

The feature arrives at a time when businesses are exploring generative AI but remain cautious about fully adopting open-ended models. NLU+ provides a middle ground—allowing teams to train intelligent virtual agents using their own conversation data, without losing control over performance, security, or accuracy. 

Unlike traditional keyword-based bots, NLU+ enables virtual agents to interpret full sentences and context, making interactions more human and less scripted. It draws from annotated examples of real customer conversations to continuously improve how it recognizes user intent and extracts relevant information. 

Microsoft says the system is particularly effective for industries with domain-specific language or complex workflows, such as travel, insurance, or utilities. For example, a user requesting a flight booking could express all key details like origin, destination, date, and passenger count, in a single sentence, and the system would capture everything without further prompts. 

The introduction of NLU+ marks a broader shift in Microsoft’s virtual agent strategy, which now includes a layered approach: standard NLU for quick deployments, generative AI for open-ended use cases, Azure CLU for integration with other Microsoft services, and now NLU+ for enterprises needing precision and customization. 

NLU+ is available to Dynamics 365 Contact Center customers through Copilot Studio. Businesses can upload historical data, define their own intents and entities, train their models, and deploy virtual agents from a unified interface. 

The update enables plug-and-play integration between AI agents and enterprise systems, removing the need for custom code and paving the way for faster, more secure deployment of autonomous digital labor. 

This shift to open standards addresses one of the biggest challenges in enterprise AI: balancing innovation with governance.  

Businesses adopting AI agents have often been limited by closed ecosystems and point-to-point integrations that slow development and introduce security risks. With MCP support and Agent2Agent (A2A) capabilities on the horizon, Salesforce aims to eliminate these trade-offs. 

More than 30 technology partners, including AWS, Google Cloud, Box, IBM, PayPal, Stripe, and WRITER have committed to publishing MCP servers on AgentExchange.  

These connections will allow AI agents to interact directly with a wide range of external systems, including document storage, financial services, cloud databases, content generation tools, and more. 

According to Salesforce, organizations will be able to build and deploy agentic solutions up to 16 times faster using these standardized integrations. Partners benefit by extending their platforms into the growing agentic ecosystem, while customers gain access to enterprise-grade AI agents that are both adaptable and secure. 

To support adoption, Salesforce is aligning its ecosystem strategy across product and go-to-market teams. The company is also launching a new program through Salesforce Ventures to support startups building MCP-enabled AI solutions.  

These initiatives complement Salesforce’s efforts to equip its global network of system integrators and consulting partners,  now more than 272,000 AI-certified specialists to help organizations implement agentic architectures at scale. 

The expanded interoperability and governance features come as the company continues rolling out Agentforce 3, its upgraded AI agent platform with observability, real-time performance tracking, and native MCP integration.  

The new release introduces a centralized Command Center, expanded interoperability through Model Context Protocol (MCP), and over 100 new prebuilt industry actions aimed at increasing time-to-value. 

The update comes amid growing enterprise demand for agentic AI. Internal data shared by Salesforce notes a 233% increase in AI agent usage over the past six months, with 8,000 customers deploying Agentforce.  

Despite rapid adoption, businesses have struggled with tracking agent activity, managing performance, and ensuring governance at scale—challenges that Agentforce 3 aims to directly address. 

At the core of the release is the Agentforce Command Center, a comprehensive observability layer that allows teams to monitor agent health, track usage trends, respond to live performance alerts, and analyze agent effectiveness across tools. The platform integrates with popular monitoring systems like Datadog and Splunk and captures detailed session traces using OpenTelemetry standards. 

Agentforce 3 also includes native support for MCP, enabling seamless integration with third-party tools and systems.  

Salesforce has partnered with over 30 technology providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, Stripe, Box, PayPal, IBM, and WRITER—to offer plug-and-play MCP servers via the expanded AgentExchange ecosystem. This allows businesses to securely connect AI agents to a broad set of enterprise services without custom development. 

In addition to enhanced monitoring and integration, the updated platform features a rebuilt Atlas architecture aimed at improving response time, resilience, and accuracy. 

 Enhancements include 50% lower latency, real-time response streaming, web search integration, inline citations for grounding, and expanded LLM support through partnerships with providers like Anthropic and Google. 

Salesforce also announced expanded availability for Agentforce 3, with regional deployments in Canada, the UK, India, Japan, and Brazil, and new language support including French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Italian. Public sector availability has also been confirmed, with Agentforce now authorized for use in U.S. Government Cloud Plus environments under FedRAMP High standards. 

Customers including PepsiCo, UChicago Medicine, and 1-800Accountant have already adopted Agentforce, reporting improvements in support efficiency, subscriber retention, and agent-driven automation. Salesforce reports that Agentforce has autonomously resolved up to 70% of support inquiries during peak periods and is now supporting over 200 prebuilt workflows across industries. 

Agentforce 3 is available now, with features like Command Center, hosted MCP servers, and global deployment rolling out over the coming weeks. Salesforce has also introduced new pricing models with unlimited usage options for employee-facing agents. 

The update reflects a shift toward modernized electronic filing and aims to simplify compliance with evolving IRS requirements. 

The new app is now preinstalled in all U.S. Business Central environments and delivers a redesigned architecture for 1099 processing, from vendor setup through to electronic submission.  

Unlike the previous workflow, this solution no longer supports printing on official IRS-supplied forms. Instead, it generates digital files and substitute copies for vendor distribution, aligned with IRS electronic filing rules. 

This change is largely driven by updated federal regulations requiring businesses that file 10 or more information returns, including 1099s, to submit them electronically.  

As a result, even small businesses are now expected to comply with e-filing mandates.  

Microsoft also cited the technical burden of aligning preprinted forms, which often changed with little notice and required last-minute software updates, as a factor behind the shift. 

With the new IRS Forms app, users can now configure, print, or email substitute 1099 forms directly from Business Central.  

The solution also introduces enhanced flexibility, allowing companies to add or modify form boxes without waiting for partner or Microsoft intervention.