Microsoft continues to drive development and innovation with its bi-yearly product and application updates.
Microsoft has announced its 2024 Release Wave 1 plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. This unveiled a suite of new capabilities scheduled for release between April and September 2024. This announcement reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to fuelling digital transformation, focusing on removing barriers between data, insights, and individuals across various business applications.
Digital Transformation
The 2024 Release Wave 1 showcases Microsoft’s focus on streamlining working processes as well as integrating data and insights into their applications. The updates span the entire Dynamics 365 suite, delivering improvements in user experiences, productivity, process automation, and AI capabilities.
Power Platform
The Power Platform updates are designed to accelerate business process development and innovation, offering new ways for users to create, automate, and analyse with greater efficiency and less complexity. The integration of advanced AI through Copilot in app development and process automation represents a leap forward in how businesses can leverage natural language to streamline operations.
Power Apps: This update focuses on leveraging Copilot to streamline app development, making it possible to use natural language to design custom apps. This aims to streamline the creation process and allow developers to rapidly deliver modern apps with responsive layouts that cater to individual requirements.
Power Pages: Copilot now supports every step of the site-building process, from design to content editing and data binding. This revolutionises how sites are built, offering a blend of design freedom and AI-powered efficiency.
Power Automate: Copilot capabilities introduced across cloud flows, desktop flows, and process mining. Similarly to with Power Apps, this enables users to employ natural language for building automation flows and optimising processes. This enhancement simplifies automation capabilities, improving accessibility.
Dynamics 365
The 2024 Release Wave 1 for Dynamics 365 is rich with features aimed at enhancing customer understanding, boosting sales, improving service delivery, and optimising operations across the board.
Dynamics 365 Sales: The updates are designed to enhance customer understanding and boost sales through actionable insights, data-driven intelligence, and user-friendly experiences. The introduction of Microsoft Copilot for Sales enriches the selling experience with generative AI capabilities tailored for sales roles, offering support within Outlook and Microsoft Teams mobile apps.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service: Continues to enhance agent efficiency with new Copilot features, improved response verification, and diagnostic tools. Enhancements to the voice channel and unified routing aim to deliver a more efficient and personalised customer service experience.
Dynamics 365 Field Service: This application is set to transform service operations with new Copilot capabilities, modern experiences, and integrations, focusing on efficient management, scheduling, and execution of field service tasks.
Dynamics 365 Finance: Continued development towards fully autonomous finance with an emphasis on intelligence, automation, and analytics to boost user productivity and agility. The focus is on enhancing business performance planning, adding AI-powered experiences, and streamlining financial operations.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces enhancements that promise to revolutionise business processes for increased insight and agility. The introduction of Copilot aims to significantly improve user experiences, making it easier to navigate complex supply chain challenges. Enhanced demand planning capabilities transform the forecast process, leveraging AI to provide more accurate predictions that help optimise inventory levels and reduce costs. Furthermore, warehouse processes see optimisation for greater efficiency and accuracy, ensuring that businesses can better meet their delivery commitments.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Focusing on usability, performance, and scalability, Dynamics 365 Project Operations is set to receive updates that streamline project planning, invoicing, time entry, and core transaction processing. Core functionality improvements include support for discounts and fees, enhanced resource reconciliation, and more intuitive journals and approvals. Additionally, contract management receives a boost, along with added mobile capabilities designed to handle larger projects and invoices with increased ease and efficiency.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources
The updates to Dynamics 365 Human Resources continue to refine recruiting experiences. They integrate Dynamics functionality with external job portals and talent pools for a more seamless hiring process. The expansion of the human capital management ecosystem also includes additional payroll partners.
Dynamics 365 Commerce
Investments in Dynamics 365 Commerce focus on enriching omnichannel retail experiences, with significant advancements in mobile point-of-sale experiences. This includes Tap to Pay for iOS and enhanced offline capabilities for Store Commerce on Android. The business-to-business buying experience also sees improvements, with streamlined order management solutions for buyers working across multiple organisations.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data
This release empowers organisations to unify and enrich customer data for insightful analysis and intelligent actions. Enhancements make data input and management faster and more intuitive, with AI enabling quick insights and controlled access to analytics. Real-time data ingestion and updates enable organisations to optimise experiences in critical moments, enhancing customer engagement and loyalty.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys
By leveraging the power of AI, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys transforms how marketers work, optimising interactions with customers across departments and channels. This release empowers marketers with a deeper customer understanding, enabling them to reach customers in more impactful ways. Granular lead qualification continues to boost the synergy between sales and marketing, driving superior business outcomes.
The 2024 Release Wave 1
The 2024 Release Wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform marks a leap in digital transformation capabilities, offering businesses the tools and insights needed to better navigate their digital setups.
With a focus on AI, operational efficiency, and enhanced user experiences, Microsoft continues to pave the way for innovative business solutions that meet the evolving needs of organisations worldwide. As these new features roll out, organisations are encouraged to explore and integrate the advancements.
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