In late January, Microsoft published the 2022 Dynamics 365 release wave 1 plans describing the new enhancements and capabilities that will roll out between April 2022 and September 2022.
Download the Dynamics 365 2022 release wave 1 PDF here.
The new features coming to The Power Platform have been published in a separate release plan. This blog will focus on the new features coming to the Dynamics 365 but if you would like an overview of the Power Platform 2022 release wave 1 plan, click here.
In addition, Microsoft has released the timeline for the first major update of the year – the2022 Dynamics 365 Release and Power Platform 2022 Release Wave 1.
Highlights of the 2022 Dynamics 365 Release Wave 1
Marketing
Dynamics 365 Marketing empowers Marketers to leverage the power of data and AI in order to improve marketing content creation and delivery.
Microsoft’s goal in Marketing is to help businesses better engage with their customers. In order to achieve this goal, Microsoft is:
- Enabling moments-based marketing with real-time, event-based journey orchestration for all business scenarios.
- Leveraging the power of data and AI to personalize interactions across the customer journey.
- Collaborating across people, departments, and applications to create engaging campaigns.
- Collaborating across organizations to create the best marketing campaigns possible using built-in Microsoft Teams chat.
Sales
Dynamics 365 Sales enables sales professionals to harness the power of data and intelligence – helping them to more accurately forecast, compare annual projections, and measure performance using predictive scoring. The ultimate goal of Dynamics 365 Sales is to help the seller close more deals, faster, while being as productive as possible.
For this release, Microsoft has focused on enabling the seller to make the best use of data to provide their customers with personalized experiences.
Updates to Dynamics 365 Sales include:
- Forecasting and pipeline intelligence enhancements – providing sales teams with predictability to their revenue forecasts, and a workspace that provides comprehensive views and insights into sales pipelines.
- Enhancements to the Dynamics 365 Mobile App – enabling sellers to be more productive from anywhere, whether on the go or on their couch. Salespeople can now capture mobile phone contacts and recent calls.
- Relationship Intelligence – empowering sellers to build better relationships with customers by using predictive relationship intelligence.
- Process Automation – featuring an easier set up process, the ability to choose the right engagement plan for your customers, and the power to engage efficiently with customers.
In addition, the Sales Hub will now be preinstalled on all environments. The Sales Hub app comes configured with several core Sales and Sales Insights features to help users get started quickly. The modern and interactive interface makes it easy to navigate.
Service
Dynamics 365 Customer Service focuses on the setup experience for administrators with the new Customer Service admin center app as well as improving agent productivity with updates to the agent inbox view.
The updates to Dynamics 365 Customer Service features:
- Contextual collaboration using embedded Microsoft Teams – featuring the ability to chat with contacts from Dynamics 365 and the ability to access linked Microsoft Teams chats.
- AI-suggested contacts
- AI-generated conversation summaries – for agents.
- Transformation of contact center routing
- A robust and detailed knowledgebase – not only helps agents find answers for customers faster, but also enables customers to self-serve through support portals.
- Agent experiences are improved with automation and knowledge management – Agents will be able to handle multiple interactions at a time, interact with multiple apps without losing content, and enhance workflows with productivity tools.
- All-in-one contact center – Simplify administration with new Customer Service admin center application.
- Improved omnichannel engagement – enables instant engagement and connectivity between agents and customers, and gives supervisors real-time visibility into operational efficiency.
- Usability enhancements to service level agreements, or SLAs – enable service administrators and customer service agents to serve their customers better.
Dynamics 365 Field Service brings innovation and usability enhancements to the schedule board, allowing for more intuitive and faster usage, as well as improved dispatcher productivity.
The updates to Dynamics 365 Field Service are focused around Enhancements to the Field Service mobile application. These enhancements will boost technician productivity.
The enhancements to the mobile app include:
- Windows 10 support – technicians on Windows devices, such as Microsoft Surface tablets, will be able to see their bookings, manage their work orders, and perform inspections with this rich application deeply integrated with the rest of their Dynamics 365 applications.
- Booking calendar control – Customizable quick actions from the provide handy shortcuts for users, such as navigating to customer location or changing booking status.
- Layout optimizations for tablets – will make the app easier to navigate and use.
- Enhancements to lookup controls – allowing simple selection from a list of items.
Other Updates
In addition, the 2022 Dynamics 365 Release Wave 1 contains updates to the following applications as well:
- Finance and Operations
- Human Resources
- Commerce
- Fraud Protection
- SMB/ Business Central
- Customer Insights
- Supply Chain Insights
- Guides
- Remote Assist
- Microsoft cloud for industry solutions
Early Access
Beginning January 31, 2022, new features from the release will be available for Early Access. Power Platform users will have the opportunity to test some of the new capabilities in a sandbox environment, before they are automatically enabled in April 2022. To see a list the early access features, check out the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform pages. For questions about early access, please visit the Early Access FAQ page. Click here for directions on opting into early access features.
Take advantage of the early access period, test out the latest updates in a non-production environment, and get ready to roll out updates to your users with confidence.
How Can We help?
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions about your current system or the Dynamics 365 2022 release. We will be posting further blogs when more details become available.
We will continue to update you as we learn more details. Watch our blog for more details or sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.
Contact us today. We’d love to hear about you and discuss how Dynamics 365 can drive the digital transformation and change the way you do business. Our goal is to make sure are getting the most out of your Dynamics 365.
enCloud9 is your Premier Dynamics 365 Partner. When engaging with enCloud9, you are engaging with a gold-certified partner that is up to date with the latest technology.
Further Learning
Visit our blog for tips and tricks on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
enCloud9 is focused on bringing you the latest on sales, marketing and customer service. You might enjoy a recent blog article we wrote about How Dynamics 365 Helps Throughout the Customer Buying Journey.
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