Today’s business world is constantly evolving, and the tools we use have to evolve as well. No one knows this better than Microsoft, which is why they ensure that their solutions stay on the leading edge of technology. It was a particularly big year for updates to Dynamics 365 and Power Platform on this front, and there’s many exciting new expansions and features that both users and resellers should know about.
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Dynamics 365 updates
Sales
Dynamics 365 Sales updates will include a new mobile experience for better access to customer information on-the-go, improved collaboration tools, improved forecasting tools and a more simplified end-user experience.
Customer Service
Customer service’s most exciting update will allow agents to engage in multiple sessions at the same time. In addition, Omnichannel is now compatible with new extensions, such as mobile applications, Microsoft bot framework and outbound messaging channels.
Sales Insights
All of Dynamics 365 Sales Insights updates relate to continuing improving digital selling in areas like relationship, conversation and pipeline intelligence. It also comes with improvements to sales acceleration as well as advanced forecasting with predictive leads and opportunity scorings.
Customer Service Insights
The Customer Service Insights updates will help both your agents and managers. Agents will have new capabilities to access similar case suggestions, enabling them to resolve issues quickly and easily. Managers will enjoy a new analytical view to help them focus on areas that need the most attention.
Remote Assist
With new Remote Assist updates, your technicians will be able to perform surveys and walkthroughs independently, capture service and repairs data and gain more insights from their operations.
Field Service
Dynamics 365 Field Service has many enhancements for both their desktop and mobile experiences. The mobile app will now have push notifications and real-time location sharing. Desktop users will find that they have a new dashboard to monitor key KPIs, as well as multi-day manual scheduling and skill-based matching.
Marketing
Marketing updates are around the customer journey design experience and segmentation. The customer journey design experience will include new layout options, zoom, performance improvements and integrations with Microsoft Teams. Segmentation updates include a new natural language experience, which will allow more of your users to build complex segments without additional training.
Customer Insights
Customer Insights users will be able to build customer apps, gain deeper insights, and trigger workflows with new extension capabilities to the Microsoft Power Platform. These capabilities will allow your users to enhance data unification and segmentation, and extend line-of-business experiences.
Human Resources
Dynamics 365 Human Resources also sports more integrations this year, allowing employees and managers to manage leave from Microsoft Teams. Microsoft will continue to build on this feature, allowing future integrations to major recruiting and payroll platforms.
Commerce
Commerce has had to make major changes in 2020. Dynamics 365 has updates to help with that, including in-store and curbside pickup scenario improvement. In addition, you will be able to stay closer to your customers with increasing engagement online and AI-powered recommendations.
Connected Store
Connected Store gets even more connected with new integration capabilities with Commerce, Microsoft Teams, and Power Platform. These integrations will allow you to have an intelligent command center, store analytics, and store insights.
Fraud Protection
With the new “manual review” capability added to Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, customers can flag transactions for review, and human agents will review those transactions and act appropriately. Updates to this platform also include integration with Commerce.
Finance
Asset leasing will be introduced to Finance to enhance capabilities and deliver more global coverage now—up to 42 countries. Finance will also reduce manual processes for users.
Supply Chain Management
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management has changes to both Product Information Management and Cost Management. PIM has engineering change management a well as enhanced production versioning capabilities. Cost Management will now enable companies to maintain multiple ledgers with dual currency and dual valuation.
Project Operations
The updates to Project Operations are all about connectivity. Now your sales, resourcing, project management, and finance teams can all be connected with a single application. Just think of how many deals you can win and how much faster your teams will be able to work!
Guides
Guides updates will prioritize intelligent workflows. With data and AI innovations, instructions can be changed at the drop of a hat and you can gain more insights from your data.
Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central will enable you to meet all the demands of your growing customer base with improved performance, better handling of file storage, and geographic expansion. The update will also support Group VAT and a deeper integration with Microsoft Teams.
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Power Platform Updates
Power Apps
Power Apps will also have new integration with Teams so that you can customize your Microsoft Teams experience. In addition, developers of all skill levels will be able to add custom pages with custom layouts and components.
Power Aps Portals will have support for code components created in Power Apps as well as add in Microsoft Power Virtual Agents into the Power Apps portals studio.
Finally, AI Builder will have improvements in connections to remote training data, as well as new AI scenarios for receipt scanning and translation. Discoverability and integration with Power Apps and Power Automate will also be improved.
Power BI
Microsoft knows as well as you do that there are three key areas that drive a data culture: modern enterprise BI, amazing data experiences, and decision insights. Power BI’s updates this year focus on those key areas, enabling authors to empower their users, and helping users create content quickly and easily.
In addition, Power BI Service will better integrate with Azure Synapse and SharePoint, and Power BI Mobile will add split view support for iPad.
Power Automate
The updates for Power Automate focus on combining the best of both WinAutomation and the cloud-based AI builder. Users will be able to automate basically everything in the system, and will experience richer automation and approval experiences.
Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents will bring together tools to create richer content and Adaptive Cards capabilities. The updates will also improve Power Automate integration as well as voice integration with smart speakers, and allow customization for the look and feel of the bot.
Keeping up with the updates
The above updates are part of Microsoft’s 2020 release wave plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Apps, and are being released between October 2020 and March 2021. It’s tough keeping up with it all, especially when you have a business to run! Wish you had an experienced partner to guide you? Become a Sherweb partner and get access to subject matter experts on all things Microsoft, a library of resources to increase your knowledge and a massive network of other Dynamics partners that can help your business achieve its goals.
