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Twice each year, Microsoft gathers all projects under the umbrella of the Dynamics 365 label and hashes out a roadmap for every moving piece of the suite. The result is a huge document covering all Dynamics apps including Marketing, Sales, Finance and Operations, Human Resources, Commerce, Fraud Protection, Business Central, and Customer Voice, and a number of smaller subdivisions under each of these apps.
This document, which can be read in its full four hundred and fifty pages, can be found on the Microsoft website here. It outlines every major planned feature that Microsoft will be attempting to produce between October of this year and March of 2021. This blog will cover some of the basics for each of the major components of the Dynamics 365 suite, but all in all Microsoft has big plans for the Dynamics 365 suite in the coming months.
Dynamics 365 Business Central
Another exciting section of this wave’s changes are with Dynamics 365 Business Central. Business Central will be investing in service enhancements to meet the demands of the growing number of Business Central partners and providing telemetry for those partners. Accessibility, reliability, and support are primary focuses of this update so that partners can more effectively manage the growing use of Business Central. In the end, this will provide a better product for both the partner and the end customer. Business Central will also see improved performance, handling of file storage, and geographic expansion. They will be adding support for Group VAT, a lot of highly requested features, and more integration with Microsoft Teams. There’s a lot more to talk about in this update, which can be referenced here.
Dynamics 365 Marketing
Dynamics 365 Marketing has been seeing a lot of improvement since its release in 2018. Microsoft has been committed to building on the system to provide a solid starting platform for its user’s sales funnels. With the next few updates, Dynamics 365 Marketing is will focus on on using “data and AI to enable teams inside and outside of marketing departments to deliver the right content through the right channel, at the right time, individualized for the customer across the entire customer journey.” They are planning to invest in much smarter technology so that a marketer’s job will be made simpler and more effective. They are also focusing on adding more digital options as a response to the coronavirus which will help Marketing reach customers during this time. They are further revamping the customer journey designer and reworking the segment system to take plain language which will result in easier access to non-technical staff.
Dynamics 365 Sales
Dynamics 365 Sales is also seeing some major changes in the coming months. Dynamics 365 Sales will emphasize simplified experiences, app integrations, gamification, a new mobile experience, and enhancements to forecasting which will create and manage sales forecast processes. Sales Insights will work on sales acceleration, conversation intelligence, relationship intelligence, and advanced forecasting and pipeline intelligence with predictive lead and opportunity scoring. Dynamics 365 Product Visualize which has also been included under the Sales umbrella will be a new Dynamics 365 addition which will allow “sellers to showcase and customize products in their real-world environment. Sellers can place a 3D digital twin of a product in their customer’s environment, let them explore it as if it’s physically there, and make detailed notes about their requirements.” Product Visualize is slated to release in March of 2021.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Dynamics 365’s service focused apps including, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Customer Service Insights, Field Service, and Remote Assist, all have updates scheduled for wave 2. Customer Service will be expanding agent productivity capabilities, which will allow them to engage in multiple sessions simultaneously, adding more extensibility options, updating the Microsoft bot framework, and upgrading the outbound messaging channels. Service Insights will be working on using AI to provide agents with similar cases they have already completed to help resolve issues more easily. They will also be helping managers look quickly at other key support areas. Field Service is also adding AI functionality including a new Field Service dashboard for monitoring KPIs and work order completion metrics. There are also many upgrades to the overall user experience and a mobile app upgrade. Remote Assist is expanding its range of scenarios beyond just calls which will allow technicians to perform activities such as capture service and repairs data, perform surveys and walk throughs, and derive service insights from their operations.
Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations
Some of the most important updates that come in these upgrades are for Finance and Operations and their related programs. Dynamics 365 Finance will be focusing on automating common tasks to reduce manual processes. Like many other programs on this list, they will be upgrading AI and providing insights in Finance. They will also be expanding global coverage for this app as they have been doing for the last few updates. Supply Chain Management is going to be updated to better assist in the coronavirus pandemic. They will be tracking supply and production in near real time with memory services and adding engineering change management. Cost Management will be modified to add new features which will allow for multiple cost accounting ledgers, dual currency, and dual valuation.
Finally, there will be some updates to user experience. Dynamics 365 Guides will focus on intelligent workflows which will allow for work instructions to be configured to adjust on the fly based on operator inputs. Insights will be included to make it easier to use time-tracking data. Project Operations will be unifying operational workflows to provide visibility and insights needed for teams working between sales and finance. It will connect all teams within a single application to win more deals and maximize profitability.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources
Dynamics 365 Human Resources will see several changes as well. One of the main goals for this wave will be expanding leave, absence, and other benefit management capabilities which will assist in the employee experience. Employees and managers will be able to manage leave and absence directly from Microsoft Teams, which will be incredibly convenient for both employee and manager alike. They will also focus on enabling streamlined integrations to recruiting and payroll partners and thereby building a full Human Capital Management ecosystem.
Dynamics 365 Commerce
Dynamics 365 Commerce and Connected Store are also seeing changes in the next few months. Dynamics 365 Commerce will be “expanding capabilities for non-developers to easily design and manage digital commerce experiences. Customers can increase lift online and in store with “Shop similar looks” for recommendations. Customers can discover and deploy third-party services, connectors, modules, and themes from Microsoft AppSource.” Dynamics 365 Connected Store will be adding an integration with Commerce, upgrades to task assignment for front-line workers using Teams, integrating workflows with Microsoft Power Platform, and upgrades to intelligent command center, store analytics, and store insights.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Product Insights are also seeing major changes. Customer Insights will be enabling “every organization to unify disparate data—be it transactional, observational or behavioral sources—to gain a single view of customers and derive intelligent insights that drive key business processes.” Dynamics 365 Product Insights will be enabling organizations to better understand their customers’ journey, usage, and experience across all channels of their products.
Dynamics 365 Customer Voice
Last, but not least, we have Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, the newest addition to the Dynamics 365 suite. Users of Microsoft Forms Pro may have noticed that it was renamed last month to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice and has been fully integrated with the Dynamics 365 platform. It is the next step for Forms and is described as “an enterprise feedback management application, powering simple yet robust feedback capture, an integrated customer data platform, and built-in insights tools to enable timely follow-up actions to close the loop with your customers.” Customer Voice includes feedback solution templates that will help create survey questions, workflows, and reports including a customer feedback template. This will be a welcome addition to the Dynamics 365 suite, and an exciting new chapter for this important program.
Availability
The 2020 release wave 2 has a few important dates to mention for Dynamics 365 customers who are looking to get their hands on the upgraded software. The plans have been available since July 8th, but only just hit the early access stage which released on August 3rd. This phase will allow users to try out and test new features of the Dynamics 365 upgrade before they are fully released. The first fully live updates will be coming out on October 1st. It’s worth mentioning here that a lot of these programs have a release schedule which will stretch over the six month period that the Wave 2 plan covers, so not all features will be ready out of the box on October 1st. All in all, there is a huge swath of major changes coming across the board and it will be exciting to see a lot of these changes released when they are eventually published.
