Microsoft releases two major waves of new features each year, which are then rolled out. One in April and one in October. For the October release wave, we’ve taken a close look at all the newly announced features and compiled a clear overview of them for you. These enhancements will between October 2021 and March 2022 be rolled out.
View the full release plan for [...]. here Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
1. General Improvements
Dataverse Search
This is the change that most of our customers have likely already noticed, and it’s also very visually apparent. There is now a search bar at the top of the screen, allowing us to quickly find relevant information. As the name suggests, the search function has now been expanded to cover the entire Microsoft Dataverse.
This means we can also search for documents stored in Dataverse. You can now search through the text in notes and attachments. The search function has also been further optimized through the use of AI technology to better understand natural language. As a result, a search query no longer needs to be an exact match, as it now takes into account common abbreviations, misspellings, and synonyms.
Optimized Sitemap
Navigating the app is now even easier and faster thanks to collapsible groups in the left sidebar.
Users can now also hide default groups such as Home, Recent, and Pinned from the site map.
Advanced Lookup
The entire advanced search process has become even simpler. Now you can quickly and easily view all kinds of data in greater detail. Your search results will open in a new pop-up window. From this window, you can quickly sort the results and dig deeper into specific records without ever having to navigate away.
Grid View
With this new feature for grid views, you can quickly add, rearrange, and remove columns using the new “drag & drop” function.
Columns that can be added to the grid view are those that are already in the current table or in a related table. Therefore, it is not possible to add columns that are completely unrelated to the grid view.
Side Panels
All model-driven apps now have the ability to use multiple side panels throughout the app to display data quickly and clearly. These are displayed as separate tabs next to the content you’re viewing. This feature was announced, but was not yet available at the time we published this blog post.
2. Integration with Microsoft Teams
In this new release wave, Microsoft is continuing the trend toward deeper integration of all tools in the ecosystem, and more specifically with Teams:
Meetings
You can now create a Teams meeting in Dynamics 365 when you schedule an appointment. The meetings start directly from the Dynamics 365 app, and you can update records in a Teams meeting without having to open Dynamics 365 Sales. Notes taken in Teams are also automatically synced and added to the records in Dynamics 365.
Chat Notifications
Sending chat notifications to Teams also happens automatically. If you tag people as “@user” in the timeline of a Dynamics 365 record, the Sales Chat Bot is triggered to send a notification to the tagged user and bring it to their attention. Of course, it’s also possible to restrict this functionality in terms of the frequency or type of notifications.
Messages
You can search for and filter records in Dynamics 365, share them with colleagues in a chat, update the records, and add notes to the timeline—all from within a Teams conversation. This way, your colleagues don’t have to switch back and forth between apps.
3. Mobile Experience for Sales Reps on the Go
Microsoft continues to work hard to improve the mobile user experience for Dynamics 365. After all, Microsoft’s technology is designed to help us become better salespeople. That’s why the following features have been added or updated:
Easily find, create, and interact with information
- The smart lookup experience has been improved to allow users to link activities to a relevant record more quickly.
- The meeting experience was enhanced by incorporating data from appointments in Dynamics 365 Sales and information from Exchange.
- In-app notifications have been improved for the mobile experience.
Effortless logging and sharing of information
- Activities are summarized in a simple way.
- Note-taking via the speech-to-text feature is enabled through Microsoft Voice Detection.
- Links to specific pages can be generated and shared within the app.
- The collaboration experience has been improved to make it easier to create and delegate tasks.
Automatic Transcription
- For Microsoft Teams calls or online meetings.
4. Managing Sales Opportunities
To enable sales representatives to perform all tasks from a single workspace, there is now a more intuitive way to work with sales opportunities. This feature is currently available in preview and will not be generally available until the next release wave.
Pipeline
This is the most important metric your organization can establish for the sales team. It provides immediate insight into the current state of the sales pipeline. These metrics can also be customized to meet the needs of your specific business or industry.
Charts
Here we see two possible charts displayed: a bubble chart named deal tracker. This chart plots all open opportunities on a timeline along the X-axis and assigns a score to the opportunities along the Y-axis. The size of the bubbles indicates the estimated value of each opportunity. It makes it much easier for a salesperson to understand which opportunities may deserve more attention.
Opportunities
The editable grid provides an overview of the opportunities, displayed in a list. But you can also quickly make changes to the records directly from the grid. You can also quickly make changes to the opportunities using the linked columns in the side panel. The side panel mentioned above also displays related information about the record you’re working on. In the example above, you can see all the details of an opportunity.
You can also see which activities have already been completed for this opportunity. In this example, the user notices that he still has an outstanding task to send a reminder to the customer, because he is still waiting for a response regarding a proposal and quote he had sent earlier. Next, they can compose the email within Dynamics 365 and—as a final step—check off this task directly from the side panel.
What isn't quite as clear in the image above is that the salesperson never has to open another screen or a second tab when using the tool. All adjustments are made via the pop-up window, the side panels, or inline!
There are certainly more options for customizing the view for your salespeople. The customization can also be tailored to your organization or to specific needs. For more information, please contact us!
