Microsoft's 2024 Release Wave 2

Microsoft has rolled out its plans for the 2024 Release Wave 2 for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, featuring a host of new functionalities set to be deployed from October 2024 through March 2025. This blog post highlights some of the most compelling new features within Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications that have caught my eye with the applications I mainly worked with. For a deeper dive into the 2024 Release Wave 2, check out the Microsoft Release Planner website.

As a reminder, these are the upcoming Wave 2 dates to be aware of:

• July 29th, 2024 – Early Access availability
• October 1st, 2024 – General availability

Dynamics 365 Sales

As expected, D365 Sales will continue to enhance customer insights and boost sales through data intelligence and user-friendly experiences. One standout feature is the 360-degree view with AI-generated account summaries. In the fast-paced sales environment, salespeople often juggle multiple accounts simultaneously, making it challenging to stay organised. This new feature offers a consolidated view of vital customer data, such as behaviours, opportunities, leads, campaigns, and the latest news about the account. Powered by AI, this enables sales personnel to quickly research customers without sifting through excessive information.

D365 Customer Service

Here’s something that’s not AI-related but still a game-changer for agents: the new drag-and-drop feature for adding attachments in emails. If you’ve used Dynamics CE for email composing, you know how cumbersome adding attachments can be. This update simplifies the process, allowing agents to drag and drop attachments, ultimately saving time and boosting productivity. Plus, if an agent forgets to include an attachment, the system will now alert them. Another UI improvement is the enhanced recipient experience, which displays recipient presence status and out-of-office messages.

D365 Customer Journeys

This is one of my personal favourites. I’ve been showcasing it in client demos to illustrate how Copilot can make life easier. With the ability to describe journeys using Copilot, even those new to the process can create journeys in minutes. By simply describing in everyday language what you want to create, you can rely on generative AI to build the customer journey for you. This allows marketers to do more with less. We all know how fiddly it can be to get a journey right, but now we can get journeys to market quickly and efficiently.

D365 Field Service

Continuing with the exciting Copilot features, the D365 Field Service Outlook Add-In now creates comprehensive work order summaries. This ensures that both service managers and frontline workers have all the essential information at their fingertips while working in Outlook app. These summaries capture all the crucial details needed to understand the context of each work order.

The work order summary in Outlook matches what agents see in the Field Service web app and mobile app. By default, the summaries include booking information, activity details, notes from the work order, product/service details, tasks, asset information, and work order history. However, administrators can configure these fields to better meet their business needs.

This feature makes the daily tasks of service managers and frontline workers easier, more efficient, and streamlined, ensuring everyone stays on top of their work orders.