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We are so excited to partner with the best in the CRM business because their releases help you too! The most recent release for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is currently rolling out, and below are important dates and links to review. Microsoft releases new features in "waves" during the update timeframe. Click here for the Microsoft Release plan.

Key Dates

Milestone	Date	Description
Release plans available	Jul 16, 2024	Public disclosure of 2024 Release Wave 2 plans.
Early access available	Jul 16, 2024	Early access public preview available of new features and capabilities before they are enabled automatically.
General availability	Oct 1, 2024	General availability for 2024 Release Wave 2 begins.

 

Sales Pipeline Experience

Analyze Opportunities with Grouping and Aggregation (General Availability October 2024)

The opportunity pipeline view now offers enhanced grouping and aggregation capabilities, allowing advisors to dynamically group opportunities by account name, seller name, or closing date/month. This feature streamlines sales strategies by enabling better segmentation and targeting within the pipeline. Additionally, it facilitates the aggregation of numeric values, providing insights into the financial potential of opportunities for improved prioritization and decision-making. Learn more here.

 

Customize Lead Qualification for a Seamless Experience (General Availability October 2024)

Streamlined lead qualification in Dynamics 365 Sales allows for customization of the qualification process to match organizational needs, saving time and enabling quick lead assessment. Copilot lead summaries provide concise overviews for informed decision-making, and the ability to generate multiple opportunities from a single lead enhances sales prospects and collaboration among team members. Prepopulated fields in generated opportunities reduce redundant data entry, increasing productivity and focusing efforts on high-value tasks. Learn more here.

 

Sales Engagement and Execution

Notify Sellers and Sales Managers after Assignment Rule Execution (General Availability August 2024)

Sales managers, admins, and advisors will be able to receive notifications after the execution of assignment rules. These notifications help sales managers and admins quickly identify assignment failures, troubleshoot issues, and improve automation effectiveness, while advisors are alerted to new assignments to prioritize their tasks efficiently. Configuration options include global settings for seller notifications on successful assignments and rule-level settings for assignment failure alerts. Learn more here.

 

Copilot and AI Innovation

Get Summarized Information from Proposals (General Availability August 2024)

The new proposal summarization feature allows advisors to automatically generate summaries of lengthy proposals, saving time and boosting productivity. This feature ensures a comprehensive understanding of customer needs according to the BANT framework (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline), enhancing the quality of customer interactions. Advisors can quickly grasp key details from proposals linked to their contacts, opportunities, leads, and accounts, and receive recommendations for the next best actions based on their recent activities. Learn more here.

 

Get Enriched Lead Summary Information with Customer Insights (General Availability August 2024)

Dynamics 365 now integrates Copilot with Customer Insights to provide enriched lead summaries, enabling sellers to nurture leads more efficiently and intuitively. This integration offers a wealth of information beyond basic lead profiles, allowing for personalized, data-driven conversations and deeper connections with customers. By leveraging detailed insights, such as missing contact information and interests, sellers can enhance their engagement strategies and convert leads into valuable opportunities. Learn more here.

 

Elevate Your Sales Pitch Using Copilot Email Assistance (General Availability To Be Announced)

Copilot Email Assistance helps sellers write effective emails by generating personalized, high-quality messages tailored to each customer’s needs, addressing challenges such as structuring emails and striking the right tone. Using natural language processing, Copilot crafts clear, concise, and compelling emails, improving customer engagement, increasing sales, and enhancing brand reputation. Advisors can select predefined categories or input their text, adjust the tone and length, and customize the suggested content before sending it.

 

Get 360-degree View with Account AI-Generated Summary (General Availability October 2024)

The Account summary feature provides advisors with a consolidated, AI-generated overview of vital customer data, including buying behavior, opportunities, leads, marketing campaigns, and the latest news about an account. This allows advisors to efficiently research accounts, prioritize work, and engage with customers in a personalized and targeted manner without manually compiling information. Admins can enable this feature and configure the data fields, while advisors benefit from a 360-degree view of each account. Learn more here.

 

Stay Efficient with the Copilot Immersive Homepage (Public Preview October 2024)

The Copilot home experience enhances sales efficiency with real-time insights and natural language chat functionality, helping sellers manage activities, nurture relationships, and drive success. The immersive interface provides an expanded workspace for productive conversations, allowing seamless access to customer details, deal information, and meeting schedules. Advisors can track performance using charts, plan effectively with an embedded calendar, and stay ahead with suggested actions and real-time insights. Learn more here.

 

Summarize Lengthy Emails Using Copilot (General Availability To Be Announced)

Copilot helps advisors by summarizing lengthy email threads, saving time, and condensing complex discussions into concise summaries. This streamlines communication, allowing teams to quickly grasp key points and make informed decisions, enhancing productivity and collaboration. Advisors can review detailed summaries for emails over 1,000 characters and efficiently share feedback using the generated summaries. Learn more here.

 

Work Efficiently Using AI-Powered Action Suggestions (General Availability October 2024)

Copilot provides AI-powered action suggestions to help advisors efficiently manage conversations and monitor sales processes. By generating actionable insights, Copilot assists in planning and executing daily tasks, improving decision-making, and productivity, and reducing conversion time for opportunities and leads. Advisors receive recommendations for email follow-ups, post-meeting actions, record updates, and engagement strategies for new opportunities, accessible across multiple touchpoints within the CRM. Learn more here.

 

Streamline Sales Process with Sales Document Summary (General Availability November 2024)

Advisors often spend significant time sifting through lengthy documents to understand client needs and preferences, which can lead to decreased productivity and missed opportunities. The sales document summarization feature saves time by automatically summarizing important details from proposals, reports, and agreements, allowing professionals to focus on building relationships and closing deals. This feature enhances customer interactions by providing comprehensive insights into customer needs according to the BANT framework, and offers summaries and recommendations for the next best action based on recent activities. Learn more here.

 

Building Modern Apps

Using the Power Platform Environment Settings App

The Power Platform Environment Settings app offers a modern, secure, and extensible settings management experience for application developers, replacing the legacy web client. It maintains the same security, access control, and extensibility features, with incremental rollouts beginning with the settings application and preserving existing customer extensions. During the initial release, advanced settings links will redirect to the new app, though administrators can disable this redirection until general availability. Learn more here.

 

Act on Your Data Efficiently with New Grid Features (General Availability October 2024)

New grid features in model-driven apps allow users to group, aggregate data, reorder columns, set column widths, and more, enhancing efficiency and ease of use. The Power Apps grid control includes functional and stylistic improvements such as grouping data by columns, aggregating numeric columns, reordering columns via drag-and-drop, updated Fluent styling for list mode, and enhanced sorting options. These features are enabled by default for read-only grid components and the pipeline view, with additional configuration options available for other instances. Learn more here.

 

Hide the Legacy App for Admins (General Availability October 2024)

Admins should transition to using modern, model-driven apps by hiding the legacy model-driven app to ensure they have the full product experience. Previously, the legacy app was hidden by default for users but remained visible for admins. A new setting in the Power Platform admin center allows control over the visibility of the legacy app for admins, and with the latest release, the Auto option is treated as Off unless explicitly changed. For more information, go to Dynamics 365 - custom hidden for admins.

 

Select Records Faster with Look-Up Control (General Availability October 2024)

The new look-up control feature in Power Apps enables users to select records quickly, enhancing productivity during data entry. Users can now press Enter to select the first value in the dropdown menu without navigating to it with the keyboard. This feature is available to all users by default, streamlining the process of searching for and selecting values in forms. Learn more here.