What you need to know about 2022 Release Wave 2

Microsoft has released plans for this year’s Release Wave 2, with new features and improved usability across the Dynamics 365 suite of applications – Dynamics 365 Marketing, Sales, Business Central, and more. New features and usability enhancements are added to address the needs of each application’s user base, so working with these systems will only keep improving over time. The core theme of this Release Wave is improving upon the AI innovations introduced earlier this year, so expect better content recommendations, intelligent reporting, and actionable insights.

Early access to test and validate the new features will be available on August 1, with general availability on October 1. If you don’t want to read the entire Release Wave plan, here are the updates you should know about.

CRM

Coming to all Dynamics 365 CRM model-driven apps is the new and exciting modern advanced find feature, which will allow easier exploring of all your tables in CRM. This new advanced find will replace the legacy experience – but admin can still access the old advanced find via backend settings, and you can reach out to your Syvantis CRM technical consultant if you’d like instructions on how to do that.

Modern advanced find in Dynamics 365 CRM model-driven apps. Courtesy of Microsoft.

The new enhancements will help users be more productive with model-driven apps in a couple of ways:

• Use the global search bar in the header and choose any table to search. The advanced find side panel will appear for you to begin a structured search from.

• Create a personal view from the search and browse them in the view selector and search for them by name. You’ll notice a new person icon next to your personal views so you can distinguish those against system-created views.

• Hide views you don’t use to streamline your view selector. This is a personal setting that will apply to all the devices you use but won’t apply to other users in your org.

• Choose how the view selector will display your views:

  • Alphabetically

  • Personal views first, then alphabetically

  • System views first, then alphabetically

  • Share personal views with your team.

You can still access the legacy advanced find by going to Advanced Settings and clicking on the filter in the top ribbon.

Marketing

Dynamics 365 Marketing recently saw updates to customer journeys with the addition of real-time journey orchestration. Expect better content personalization and audience segmentation to gain an edge in the customer experience economy and provide them with the right messaging at the right time, every time.

Improved lead capture forms and automated lead nurturing help drive pipeline numbers, and a dashboard will better pull in sales and marketing analytics so your team can strategize according to the real-time numbers and work with sales teams more efficiently.

Plus, reach more prospects and customers than ever – with the capacity to target up to 100 million customers and send 300 million messages or interactions each month. 2022 Release Wave 1 introduced AI-based content ideas, which suggests marketing email content based off of input keywords and themes. The same AI operation has been enriched to better provide users with natural language suggestions, personalization elements, and insights to predict customer intent at every step of the marketing journey.

Sales

AI will continue to play a huge role in new CRM developments, and Dynamics 365 Sales will notice changes in the user experience. Core productivity features will be better integrated into the application’s workspaces, so sellers are never far from the tools they need to work more efficiently throughout the day. Conversation intelligence will provide sellers with real-time tips, question detection, interaction capturing, and more – and these insights will pull in customer interactions across Teams, Outlook, and other Azure-based communication services.

Seller dashboards will be improved with process automation, sales accelerator tools to organize customer lists, sequence designers, and the built-in collaboration tools like Teams and Outlook will better track conversations, keep up with records, and allow users to work across the entire organization to get the information they need and meet the needs of prospects and customers throughout the sales pipeline. 

Service

Customer Service will better support Omnichannel communications with enhanced capabilities for voicemail, callbacks, and direct agent dialing, as well as optimized queue routing to get cases to the right agent. Omnichannel communications will allow agents to reach customers via SMS, phone calls, social media channels, and live chat – all managed through a singular platform.

Gain better context into every customer interaction with built-in and embedded Teams features, allowing agents to have the information they need from past customer experiences, as well as the ability for live collaboration with other agents.

Field Service will see improvements to the way field agents connect with customers and colleagues alike with resource management, scheduling optimization, and offline access to SharePoint documents like blueprints, images, diagrams, and more.

Business Central

Improvements made to Business Central were uniquely based off real user feedback, and one big change to note is that account schedules will be renamed to financial reporting for transparent understanding and ease of use.

Reports were added to give better visibility into bank reconciliation, with a test report and statement report to oversee outstanding reconciliations and to check ledger entries. Mistakes happen – now, posted journal entries are reversable to make quick changes as needed after an entry has been manually unapplied.

Reports can be done through Excel, and users can choose between several layouts to best view and analyze data. Power BI reports will now pull in dimensions for better visibility into the business data you work with on a daily basis, like the general ledger and budgets. Expect more seamless integrations with Power Platform apps like Power Automate and the Dataverse, too.

Power Apps

Power Automate Flows will now be easier to share between users, like through Teams or using a shareable link. Users can also create more complex flows using Teams – like the ability to define multiple stages in approvals and view the history and outcome of each level. Building flows will be easier, with the ability to filter items by switching between basic and advanced editing mode. Generate Power BI quick reports to visualize Power Apps data right within your workspace, and use a built-in Teams chat to collaborate without leaving your app.

Infrastructure enhancements to the Microsoft Dataverse will allow better collaboration between Power Apps users to co-create, edit, and test. Virtual tables will provide easier access to data stored outside of the Dataverse and can be connected to SQL, Excel, SharePoint, Azure Data Lake, and more. There will be better security role delegation and admin oversight, too.