On July 18th, 2023, Microsoft unveiled the plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform's 2023 release wave 2. This comprehensive compilation outlines a range of new capabilities scheduled for release between October 2023 and March 2024. The second release wave of the year introduces an extensive array of enhancements, encompassing AI features and improvements.
This release wave further reinforces Microsoft's dedication to crafting applications and interactions that bring value to every role by dismantling barriers between data, insights, and individuals. The new capabilities empower novel approaches to making informed choices through AI-guided insights and recommended actions. They also streamline task and process automation, seamlessly integrate collaboration into the work process, and provide fresh low-code methods for constructing solutions.
Highlights from Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365 Marketing is set to elevate Copilot features, enabling marketers to swiftly create new experiences and introduce unparalleled levels of personalization to email content, images, and layouts. Furthermore, enhancements in business-to-business (B2B) dashboards and direct lead assignment to appropriate sales representatives will align marketing and sales teams, fostering a unified approach throughout the buying journey.
Dynamics 365 Sales will concentrate on empowering sales organizations to prioritize and manage digital sales processes through enhanced sequence capabilities. Users will be able to assign and monitor lead assignment status using improved lead assignment capabilities, including recommendations, data summaries, information retrieval, and contextual actions within the workflow.
Viva Sales is poised to transform the sales process by delivering advanced AI capabilities such as email summarization, CRM recommendations, sales email composition, meeting summarization, and real-time sales tips. Moreover, investments in collaboration spaces within Microsoft Teams will continue, along with new sales Copilot experiences designed to expedite deal progression and enhance sales closure speed.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service will sustain its drive to empower agents with enhanced Copilot capabilities, "Join me On Teams" functionality, and visual enhancements within the agent workspace. The ability to view live chats and voice calls within the Inbox and personalize conversational control size will also be introduced.
Updates for Dynamics 365 Field Service encompass new capabilities for frontline workers, service managers, and dispatchers. As well as, delivering highly requested features such as the conversion of quotes to work orders, improvements to inspections, and advancements in resource scheduling capabilities.
Dynamics 365 Finance is focused on bolstering organizational visibility into data, continuous enhancements for accounts payable and bank statement automation, and broader out-of-the-box country coverage in Latin America. Automation of complex tax scenarios and e-invoicing requirements for new countries will be extended, enabling business model expansion and agility.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management will persist in enhancing and optimizing business processes to provide the agility and resilience necessary for businesses to excel within an increasingly intricate business landscape. Enhanced sales and procurement processes, increased flexibility for manufacturers, and improved warehouse processes related to counting, customer returns, and product receipts are among the highlights.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations is investing in enriching services procurement scenarios and project contracting. New functionalities and scenarios within pricing models will cater to evolving patterns in the service-centric economy.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources will enhance recruiting experiences with functionally rich and intuitive interfaces tailored to recruiters, candidates, and hiring managers. The expansion of the human capital management ecosystem to include learning management system integration via Microsoft Dataverse's public APIs is planned, along with an extended payroll partner network.
Dynamics 365 Guides will introduce several new capabilities and enhancements, including Object Anchors, Azure Remote Rendering, and availability on Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High. Notably, features facilitating seamless integration with systems of record will enable customers to build mixed reality workflows integrated with their business data.
Dynamics 365 Commerce leverages AI to enable effortless creation of engaging product content for digital commerce sites. Investments in the B2B sector will allow distributors to manage orders from a centralized dashboard, fostering collaboration among B2B sellers, distributors, and buyers.
Dynamics 365 Business Central will enhance its core functionality to aid companies in managing intercompany operations and consolidations across environments. Ongoing enhancements to Copilot capabilities will be complemented by improved warehouse functionalities, expanded Power Automate templates, and enhanced capabilities for automating the testing of dependent apps.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will augment Copilot features, enabling you to ask questions and receive immediate insights and actionable recommendations. Enhanced real-time data management capabilities will offer a current view of your customers, while seamless access to insights within Dynamics 365 apps will empower your team to deliver personalized experiences across the customer lifecycle.
Highlights from Microsoft Power Platform
Power BI is enhancing the individual creation experience by aligning and elevating features with Microsoft 365. This involves achieving greater consistency on the web platform and integrating the Power Query diagram view directly into Power BI Desktop.
Power Apps is broadening the reach of Copilot, infusing AI-assisted experiences to boost developer productivity. This encompasses bringing natural language capabilities to all users and providing insights to administrators.
Power Pages continues its progress in enhancing the Copilot maker experience for site construction. Managed environments will now include Power Pages capabilities for maker usage and onboarding. In terms of data connectivity, seamless access to existing data sources is a priority.
Power Automate is making the process of building new flows more accessible by incorporating natural language capabilities across both cloud flows and desktop flows. Process mining is being enhanced to expedite the creation of automation processes and authoring experiences.
Power Virtual Agents is introducing general availability for a range of capabilities, including Multi-Lingual bot support, Generative Answers and Actions, standalone interactive voice response (IVR), and IVR integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Moreover, integration with the Conversational Language Understanding service is being established.
AI Builder is empowering makers to effortlessly handle both structured and unstructured documents. Utilizing the capabilities of GPT, responses to customer requests can be pre-generated according to enterprise guidelines. These responses will be accessible within a human validation station, allowing makers to conveniently review and enhance content that's automatically generated by intelligent copilots.
Early Access to 2023 Release Wave 2 started on July 31st, 2023, where customers and partners will gain access to an early validation period for the latest features in a non-production environment. These features, including user experience enhancements, will be automatically enabled for production environment users come October 2023.
Want to learn more about what Dynamics 365 and Power Platform can do for your business?
For further details on release wave 2 highlights and features please visit: 2023 release wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog
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