Microsoft has published the plans for the release wave 2 2020 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. In these plans you will find a summary of the new features that will be released between October 2020 and March 2021. The second release wave of 2020 will provide a large number of new features and improvements and will continue to strongly support the digital transformation of users.
Details of the Dynamics 365 updates can be found in this overview:
Highlights Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365 Sales includes updates for simplified user experiences. These include collaboration tools, a new mobile experience for quick access to customer information, and new forecasting enhancements to natively create and manage bottom-up sales forecasting processes.
Dynamics 365 Sales Insights optimizes digital sales in several areas: Sales acceleration, conversation intelligence, relationship intelligence, and advanced forecasting and pipeline intelligence with predictive lead and opportunity scoring to help sales teams uncover top deals.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service enhances the productivity capabilities of account executives so they can participate in multiple sessions simultaneously. Omnichannel for Customer Service has been enhanced with additional extension options to enable integration with mobile applications, the Microsoft Bot Framework, and outbound messaging channels.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides new features that allow customer service representatives to use similar case suggestions to quickly and easily resolve customer issues. A new analytical view for customer service managers helps them focus on key support areas that require attention. These highlights are also incorporated directly into the central Customer Service Hub app, giving users insight into the context without having to switch between applications.
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist extends the range of scenarios beyond calls, enabling technicians to perform activities such as collecting service and repair data, conducting independent surveys and rounds, and deriving service insights from their service operations. Availability for non-AR-enabled devices with modified functionality enables technicians to resolve problems faster the first time in more environments.
Dynamics 365 Field Service continues to provide intelligence capabilities, including a new Field Service dashboard to monitor key KPIs and metrics for work order completion. There are many user experience improvements to enable proactive service delivery. The mobile Field Service app has been enhanced with features such as push notifications and real-time location sharing. This release wave also includes planning improvements such as multi-day manual planning and improved competency-based matching.
Dynamics 365 Marketing improves the customer journey design experience, including layout options, zoom and performance enhancements. Integration with live events and Microsoft team meetings allows users to create and host live events as a webinar provider. Segmentation is enhanced with a new natural language experience for creating and consuming customer segments, eliminating the expertise required to build complex segments.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights further enhances data collection, unification, segmentation, and extensibility capabilities using the Microsoft Power Platform to enable and extend industry experiences. For example, users can use Microsoft Power BI to gain deeper insights into customers, create custom apps with Microsoft Power Apps, and trigger workflows based on insights and signals using Microsoft Power Automate.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources extends vacation and absence and provides management capabilities to enhance the employee experience. Employees and managers can manage leave and absence directly from Microsoft teams. Microsoft continues to build an HCM ecosystem that enables the integration of recruiting and payroll partners.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations unifies operational workflows to provide the visibility, collaboration and insight needed to drive success between teams from sales to finance. Project Operations connects your sales, resource, project management and finance teams in a single application to generate more orders, accelerate delivery, empower employees and maximize profitability.
Dynamics 365 Business Central enhancements for this release wave include service improvements to meet the needs of a rapidly growing customer base, improved performance, file storage management, geographic expansion, as well as VAT support, customer-requested features and deeper integration with Microsoft teams.
Highlights Power Platform
Power Apps includes significant enhancements for Power Apps developers of all skill levels that improve the complexity and usability of apps created over the Web and mobile devices. Manufacturers can create Power Apps directly within Microsoft teams to easily customize the team experience. Using the App Designer, manufacturers can also add custom pages to model-driven apps, bringing together the best canvas and model features, including the creation of custom layouts and components. Power Apps portals add Microsoft Power Virtual Agents as a component in the Studio for Power Apps portals and support code components created using the Power Apps component framework. AI Builder introduces new AI scenarios for scanning and translating documents, as well as improvements for connecting to remote training data. The AI Builder home page and model details page are updated to improve recognizability and integration with Power Apps and Power Automate.
Power BI invests in three key areas that foster a data culture: compelling data experiences, modern enterprise BI, and insights that drive decision making. Power BI Desktop offers many new features that allow users to create content quickly and easily. For example, authors can empower their users to create content for business and create AI-infused authoring experiences. Power BI Mobile provides support for shared views for iPad, and Power BI Service integrates with Azure Synapse to automatically create and manage materialized views of larger Power BI models, and improved integration with SharePoint lists to create additional custom reports. Microsoft continues to improve data protection features that allow customers to classify and label sensitive data.
The enhancements in Power Automate combine the best of WinAutomation with the cloud-based AI Builder and connector-based features in automated flows. This new release gives customers the ability to automate everything from office apps to older terminal applications that haven't been updated in decades. In addition, enhancements to automated flows running in the cloud include more comprehensive automation and approval experiences.
Power Virtual Agents provides advanced authoring capabilities, including tools for creating richer content, adaptive mapping capabilities, document theme suggestions, improved Power Automat integration, speech integration with intelligent speakers, themes to customize the appearance of the bot, and more.
For a complete list of new features, see the Wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2020.
Early Access - Early access to the new functions
Starting August 3, 2020, customers and partners will be able to test the latest features in a non-production environment. These features include user experience improvements that will be automatically activated for users in production environments in October 2020. Take advantage of the early access period, try the latest updates in a test environment and prepare to deploy updates to your users.
Do you have questions about the new features, early access or would you like to learn more about Dynamics 365? Our experts will be happy to assist you personally.
TSO-DATA
David Eggenhofer
dynamics365[at]tso[dot]de
+49 (541) 1395-707
