At the start of the month, Microsoft announced its much anticipated 2021 release wave 1 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. The news included new solution updates while providing businesses with the necessary time to get prepared for those changes.

Release wave 1 for automatic production deployment begins in April 2021, continuing until September 2021. Microsoft have already published these plans to give customers visibility of the new and upcoming changes.

This blog outlines the key features so Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform users can start to prepare their adoption strategy.

Overview: What’s new?

The 2021 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 provides new innovations that will help deliver significant capabilities to transform your business. The new features will enhance your Dynamics 365 applications including Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Finance, Field Service, Human Resources, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, Business Central, Customer Insights, Fraud Protection and Customer Voice. Here are a few highlights of the new features:

• Dynamics 365 Business Central – centred around simplifying and improving the way partners administer tenants, and the way administrators manage licensing and permissions. Enhancements for this include integration with Microsoft Teams, regional and country expansions and moves to Visual Studio Code to provide modern development tools to further enhance productivity for developers.
• Dynamics 365 Sales - focuses on adding productivity enhancements for sellers and providing more access to data-driven insights to help with decision making. You should be on the lookout for automation and sequencing, conversation intelligence, and many exciting updates to the mobile app enhancing the mobile experience for sellers on the go.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service - transforming the contact centre by providing intelligent omnichannel routing across channels. This will provide a logistic and integrated first-party voice and chat solution so customers can be up and running quickly.
• Dynamics 365 Field Service - introducing a comprehensive experience for customers that will allow them to self-schedule service and rate technicians to ensure maximum satisfaction. Other investments in 2021 release wave 1 include streamlined onboarding experiences, comprehensive customer engagement capabilities, and broader resourcing options.

So, what does this mean for your business?

If you are a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform user, this release will directly affect you. As of April 2021, Microsoft will automatically apply wave 1 updates to production environments that will in turn create new opportunities to maximise productivity and improve decision making.

Our advice would be to start thinking about your adoption strategy now to make sure your organisation is equipped to ensure a seamless rollout to production for users and environments. In order to support the rollout of wave 1, you’ll be required to conduct training and internal communication and testing and validation to ensure this will not affect the end-user experience.

If your business requires any assistance or advice on how to roll out Microsoft’s 2021 release wave 1 across Dynamics 365 or Power Platform, give us a call on 01698 844 600 or visit our website.