2025 Release Wave 2: Features coming to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights-Journeys
What is a Release Wave
It’s happening again! Dynamics 365 Release Wave 2 is coming, starting this October. If you don’t already know, Microsoft Release Waves are the announcements and rollouts of new features! These new features will be coming to Customer Insights Journeys.
Many different resources are available to familiarize yourself with the upcoming release wave features (including this blog!) and catch up on what you may have missed from the previous Release Wave. These resources help make you aware and will support you regarding how best to prepare, specifically by utilizing the Release Wave planner.
Microsoft has released its Dynamics 365 2025 release wave plan, which covers and explains many new features coming to Dynamics 365 and how to use them, from Customer Insights-Journeys to Business Central and more.
We have also created resources discussing what came out the first time around in this year's 2025 Release Wave 1. This will be a great way to revisit those features if you want to catch up on what you may have missed or refresh yourself on what you already utilize.
Another tool that can help you during this time of excitement and new features is the Release Planner. It is a straightforward interface for searching through the update plans. Organized by applications, filtering, and other criteria, this tool significantly improves your experience planning for Release Waves.
Now that we understand Release Wave, let's explore the new features coming to Release Wave 2!
Create Static Segments with up to 200,000 Members
As a marketer, you constantly grow your audience through outreach, events, and strategic plans. The growing number of individuals you are looking to target can sometimes be overwhelming, especially when you want to quickly connect with these new audience members. Coming soon, you can create a static segment of up to 200,000 members quickly and easily by uploading a CSV file or leads in a Dataverse view. You can also use the API to upload a CSV file and match contacts or leads.
Receiving large customer lists or adding a large audience to your mailing lists no longer needs to be stressful. When you are ready to utilize a new email group, you can add new members as soon as you receive the new list. This tool will now make it easier to contact your audience, regardless of size and how you received the mailing list.
Set Message Expirations to keep Communication Relevant
Another new update to Customer Insights – Journeys is the ability to set message expirations when connecting with your audience. When you add a new customer to a pre-existing journey and they begin receiving outdated communication set for pre-existing audience members on that specific journey, sometimes this can frustrate customers and lead them to lose trust in your messages. This frustration can also increase the chance of people sending your emails to spam, lowering your sender reputation score. The expiration tool will keep your customers engaged, knowing that only relevant messages will be sent to them.
You can set expirations for the messages based on date or a trigger for any channel, including emails, text messages, push notifications, etc. Once your expiration has been set, you can review the analytics within that message to see how many people did not get your message due to the expiration tool. Keep your messages up to date with the new expiration tool.
Message expiration. Image courtesy of Microsoft
Maximize Event ROI with Paid Registration
Hosting a paid event? No worries, with the new Paid Events feature coming to Customer Insights-Journeys, you can now set up registration and ticket purchasing straight within Dynamics 365.
In your event setup process, you can now create and manage different types of tickets for your events. You can adjust pricing, limits, and access rules, set up discount codes and incentives, and integrate with trusted payment providers for a secure checkout. This will help eliminate the manual reconciliation process using real-time payment tracking.
Paid registration. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Streamline Event Planning with Set Registration Periods
Along with paid registration, another new event feature is the set registration period tool. This will let you know your attendance count, allowing you to finalize logistics, allocate resources, and reduce unnecessary costs from overbooking or under-preparing. Registration deadlines help teams plan smarter and deliver better-prepped events with better decision-making. The highlights of this tool include:
Set open and close dates for the event.
Disable events automatically once the registration period closes.
Integrate with reminders and communications to keep attendees up to date.
Build an Event Registration Website Using Power Pages
Planning events is about to get a whole lot easier. Before outbound marketing was removed, event portals existed for your needs, but were underutilized due to the lack of customization. Now, through Customer Insights-Journeys, you can build an event registration portal on your website using Power Pages to make prepping for your event faster and more organized, as well as customizable. Your audience will have a centralized location to find information regarding your event, passes, sessions, speakers, registrations, and more.
Through Power Pages studio, you can edit the portal and utilize the listed features below:
Leverage out-of-the-box Power Page templates for quick access.
Use Power Page Studio to customize your portal.
List your upcoming events.
Prep your audience with event summaries.
Use Power Pages to host and go live with your portal.
Event Portal template. Image courtesy of Microsoft
Overall, there are tons of new features for you to utilize that will improve your marketing capabilities. Whether you are planning a event, prepping a marketing message, or segmenting your audience, you now have more tools in your arsenal to be successful while using Customer Insights-Journeys marketing app.