Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
2020 RELEASE WAVE 1 PLAN
The Dynamics 365 release plan (formerly release notes) for the 2020 release wave 1 describes all
new features releasing from April 2020 through September 2020. You can either browse the
release plan online or download the document as a PDF file. The PDF file also includes
information about Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Power Platform
governance and administration, and Common Data Model and data integration.
The Power Platform features coming in the 2020 release wave 1 have been summarized in a
separate release plan as well as a downloadable PDF.
2020 release wave 1 overview
The 2020 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 brings new innovations that provide you with
significant capabilities to transform your business. The release contains hundreds of new
features across Dynamics 365 applications including Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field
Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Commerce, and Business
Central, our comprehensive business management solution designed for small to medium-sized
businesses.
Marketing
• Dynamics 365 Marketing is a marketing solution that helps businesses manage customer
engagement through rich personalization and automation while leveraging their Microsoft
assets.
Sales
• Dynamics 365 Sales is centered around the customer relationship. It helps organizations
understand customer needs, drives more relevant and authentic engagements, and improves
selling efficiencies.
• Dynamics 365 Sales Insights leverages the power of the Microsoft cloud to bring together
sales information via Dynamics 365, communications via Office 365, relationships via
LinkedIn, and the power of Microsoft AI to transform selling. Sales organizations gain a 360-degree view of their customer engagements to offer agility, adapting to rapid market
changes, while adhering to business strategy, accommodating specific business
requirements and guidelines.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
• Dynamics 365 Product Visualize, an augmented reality mobile application on iOS, accelerates
the sales process by helping buyers and sellers reach a shared understanding faster.
Service
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service is an end-to-end service for customer support, spanning
self and assisted scenarios across multiple channels of customer engagement. It provides
comprehensive and efficient case routing and management for agents, and enables
authoring and consumption of knowledge management articles.
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides an actionable view into critical
performance metrics, operational data, and emerging trends using industry-leading artificial
intelligence (AI). These insights empower customer service managers to make better
decisions to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency with confidence.
• Dynamics 365 Field Service is an end-to-end solution for on-site service that empowers
organizations to move from being reactive to providing proactive or predictive field service,
and to embrace new business models such as outcome-based service or “anything-as-aservice.”
• Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is a mixed-reality solution available on HoloLens for first-line
workers to collaborate with remotely located personnel to more effectively and efficiently
get their job done.
Finance and Operations
• Dynamics 365 Finance drives automation and predictive analytics capabilities, paving the
way for deep proactive management.
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management empowers employees and organizations with the
ability to obtain a unified view of inventory, warehouse, manufacturing, service, and logistics
with predictive analytics that turn data into insights to support better strategic decisions.
• Dynamics 365 Guides is a mixed-reality application that enables employees to learn in the
flow of work by providing holographic instructions when and where they need them.
Dynamics 365 Guides addresses the needs of three key personas: content authors, operators,
and managers/analysts.
NOTE Starting in February 2020, we will have a new business process application.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations unifies operational workflows to provide the visibility,
collaboration, and insights needed to drive success across teams—from sales to finance.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Human Resources
• Dynamics 365 Human Resources helps HR professionals get the workforce insights needed
to build data-driven employee experiences across multiple areas including Organization and
Personnel management, Compensation, Benefits, Leave and absence, Compliance, Payroll
integration, Performance feedback, and Self-service programs.
Commerce
• Dynamics 365 Commerce is built on the proven Dynamics 365 Retail capabilities —it delivers
a comprehensive omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, call center, and ecommerce experiences to provide a delightful shopping journey for consumers across the
different touchpoints.
• Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection focuses on Payment fraud protection and account
creation. It will help enable an e-commerce merchant to drive down fraud loss, increase bank
acceptance rates to yield higher revenue, and improve the online shopping experience of its
customers. The new set of capabilities called Loss Prevention helps brick-and-mortar retail
store operations fight fraud and abuse. This will help retailers reduce shrinkage losses and
improve store efficiencies.
• Dynamics 365 Connected Store delivers insights gathered from observational, location, and
other line-of-business systems to improve the performance of their brick-and-mortar stores.
SMB
• Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a comprehensive business application solution
designed and optimized for small and medium-sized business (SMB) organizations.
Customer Data Platform
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables every organization to unify disparate data—be it
transactional, observational or behavioral sources—to gain a single view of customers and
derive intelligent insights that drive key business processes.
Microsoft Forms Pro
• Microsoft Forms Pro is an enterprise survey solution that empowers everyone in the
organization to develop enterprise-grade surveys to collect timely feedback from the
customers and employees. With the point-and-click simplicity and AI-assisted features of
Forms Pro, everyone has the tools to create, send, and analyze custom surveys that integrate
directly into the workflows and the organization's business system.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Industry accelerators
In 2020 release wave 1, we are adding industry accelerators as a separate section. The following
industry accelerators are included in this wave:
• Nonprofit accelerator enables you to develop nonprofit solutions based on entities and
attributes that nonprofits commonly leverage for constituent management, fundraising,
awards, program delivery, and impact tracking.
• Financial services accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions based on entities and
attributes that banks commonly leverage for customer experience and other business
processes. These entities include banks, branches, financial products, loans, referrals, limits,
requested facilities, and more.
• Health accelerator allows you to build solutions and create new use cases and workflows
with entities focused on enhanced care coordination and the ability to segment patients and
providers based on Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data.
• Automotive accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions based on entities and
attributes that dealerships and OEMs commonly leverage for customer experience and other
business processes. These entities include deals, sales contracts, specifications, fleet,
warranties, inspection, test drives, branding, business, customer-vehicle relationship, vehicle
and equipment, lead, service and after-sales management, and more.
IMPORTANT The Microsoft Power Platform features coming in the 2020 release wave 1 have
been summarized in a separate release plan.
Key dates for the 2020 release wave 1
This release plan describes functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines
and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).
Here are the key dates for the 2020 release wave 1.
Milestone Date Description
Release plans available Jan 27, 2020 Learn about the new capabilities coming in the 2020
release wave 1 (April 2020 – September 2020) across
Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
Early access available Feb 3, 2020 Test and validate new features and capabilities that will
be a part of the 2020 release wave 1, coming in April,
before they get enabled automatically for your end
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Milestone Date Description
users. You can view the Dynamics 365 2020 release
wave 1 early access features now.
Release plans available in
additional 11 languages
Feb 12, 2020 The Dynamics 365 and Power Platform release plans are
published in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German,
Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian),
Spanish, and Swedish.
General availability April 1, 2020 Production deployment for the 2020 release wave 1
begins. Regional deployments will start on May 1, 2020.
Continuing from the 2019 release wave 2, we are continuing to call out how each feature will be
enabled in your environment:
• Users, automatically – These features include changes to the user experience for users and
are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically – These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• Users by admins, makers, or analysts – These features must be enabled or configured by
the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.
You can get ready with confidence knowing which features will be enabled automatically.
We’ve done this work to help you—our partners, customers, and users—drive the digital
transformation of your business on your terms. We’re looking forward to engaging with you as
you put these new services and capabilities to work, and we’re eager to hear your feedback as
you dig into the 2020 release wave 1.
Let us know your thoughts. Share your feedback in the Dynamics 365 community forums. We will
use your feedback to make improvements.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Change history
This topic is updated when a feature's release date changes or when a feature is added or
removed. You can see the full topic in the Dynamics 365 Change history online.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
2020 release wave 1 features
available for early access
This topic lists the Dynamics 365 features that can be enabled for testing in your environment
beginning February 3, 2020.
Features from the following apps are available as part of early access:
• Dynamics 365 Marketing
• Dynamics 365 Sales
• Dynamics 365 Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 Field Service
• Dynamics 365 Finance
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
• Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities
• Dynamics 365 Human Resources
• Dynamics 365 Commerce
• Dynamics 365 Business Central
The features from these apps update the existing user experiences. You can opt in early to
enable these features in your environment. This will allow you to test these features and then
adopt them across your environments. For information on how to enable these features, see Opt
in to 2020 release wave 1 updates .
IMPORTANT If you are using UCI or Power Automate, there might be early access features that
could impact your users. For Microsoft Power Platform early access features, see 2020 release
wave 1 features available for early access.
Dynamics 365 Marketing
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Marketing features, see What's new and planned for
Dynamics 365 Marketing.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Export marketing results data to
Excel for further analysis
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved customer journey
experience
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved email content designer End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved event management
experience
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Dynamics 365 Sales
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Sales features, see What's new and planned for
Dynamics 365 Sales.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Customize forecast models End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Easier selection of email templates End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improve and adjust forecast
accuracy
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
License enforcement - users with
new Team Member licenses
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Manage activities with ease End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Sales Team Member app module End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Save standardized PDF documents
to Dynamics 365 Sales or Microsoft
SharePoint
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Understand forecasts with precision
pipeline management
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Work with opportunities in the
Kanban view
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Dynamics 365 Customer Service
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Customer Service features, see What's new and planned
for Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Agent productivity enhancements to
knowledge capabilities
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Configurable case resolution page End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Customer Service app available for
users with Team Member license
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Customer Service Hub app is now
available by default
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhancements in service level
agreements
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhancements in the queue page End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Familiar, modern email experience
for agents
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
License enforcement - users with
new Team Member licenses
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Rich text notes and keyword search
in the timeline
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Support for Site entity in the Unified
Interface
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Dynamics 365 Field Service
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Field Service features, see What's new and planned for
Dynamics 365 Field Service.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Enhanced work hours calendar for
resources
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Integrated technician time tracking End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Requirement dependency for
efficient workflow
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Resource scheduling dashboard End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Dynamics 365 Finance
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Finance features, see What's new and planned for
Dynamics 365 Finance.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Allow filtering the Tax 1099 detail
report by reporting year
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Budget planning query optimization
for performance
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Credit management End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Date range for Posted transactions
by journals report
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Electronic reporting advanced
formula editor
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended French localization ISO
20022 format for international
payment and treasury transfer
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization
Advanced notes management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization bank
account setup enhancement
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization General
ledger simulations
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization
Improved inquiry on debit/credit
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Extended Italian localization Intent
letters - invoicing of usual exporters
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization
Miscellaneous charges per kilogram
in Intrastat declaration
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Posting
invoices with zero amount
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Sales
invoice lines sorting by packing slips
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization
Separate accounts for credit notes
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Tax
invoice for goods delivered for free
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Unique
Certification
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Swiss localization QR-bill
implementation
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Prohibit submission to workflow
when the invoice total and
registered invoice total are not equal
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management features, see What's new
and planned for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Calculate PO delivery date based on
lead times and working days (public
sector)
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Catch weight product processing
with warehouse management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Compare item price storage End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Country of origin enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
External catalog enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Fixed assets integration with Asset
Management lifecycle
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Hazardous materials product
information management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Hazardous materials shipping
documentation
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved job card device End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Inbound and outbound logistics
improvements
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Master planning includes items with
on-hand inventory when preprocessing filters are enabled
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Miscellaneous charges
enhancements
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Purchase order delivery via cXML End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Visual scheduling for work orders in
Asset Management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities
For a complete list of the Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities features, see What's
new and planned for Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Entity store data is available in Azure
Data Lake
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 1, 2019 Aug 2020
New task recorder capabilities for
RSAT
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Recommended fields End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Dynamics 365 Human Resources
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Human Resources features, see What's new and
planned for Dynamics 365 Human Resources.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Create leave rules to meet company
and regulatory policies
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced benefit plan configuration End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced worker benefit inquiry End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Flex credit programs End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Leave calendar views End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Online benefit enrollment End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Qualified life event processing End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Dynamics 365 Commerce
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Commerce features, see What's new and planned for
Dynamics 365 Commerce.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Enable resetting of receipt numbers
at the beginning of the fiscal year
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Improved inbound and outbound
inventory operations in store
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 May 2020
Set preferred payment methods for
returns
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Support for bulk URL redirects Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Task management in HQ and POS
for first-line workers and managers
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Dynamics 365 Business Central
For a complete list of the Dynamics 365 Business Central features, see What's new and planned
for Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
AL interfaces Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Application version for aliasing base
application
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Auto-insert recurring sales and
purchase lines
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Bank reconciliation improvements End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business Central integration with
Common Data Service
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Camera/location AL API available in
the browser
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Collapse and expand document lines End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Disable export of data to Excel Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Enable non-interactive printing in
the cloud
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced customer and vendor
document layout
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced mobile accessibility
related to device orientation
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Enter data more easily End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Import profiles and UI
customizations
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved load time for pages End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved onboarding experience End users, automatically Feb 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Long-running operations can be
canceled from the web client
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Look up events and insert event
subscriber in code
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Manage direct-debit collections in
Service Management
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Multiple variable declarations of the
same type in the same line
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Navigate trees more easily End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Notify requester about all changes
for an approval request
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Obsolete tag property Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Optimized use of space on a page End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Print to attachment End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Receive more items than ordered End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Register capacity in units of seconds End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Revert Qty. to Invoice when
canceling order
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Show and go to related records from
a list
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Unhide parts on a page End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Use a Find function on the Role
Explorer
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Use filters and views more easily End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Marketing
Overview of Dynamics 365 Marketing 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Marketing is a marketing solution that helps businesses manage customer
engagement through rich personalization and automation while leveraging their Microsoft
assets. Since its launch in April 2018, Dynamics 365 Marketing has seen adoption by customers
of various sizes and industries implementing a wide variety of use cases—including marketing
campaign automation, demand generation, communication and newsletter scenarios, fan
engagement, prospect capture, and event management.
Our customers are looking to achieve more with less effort through an intuitive experience that
doesn't require the assistance of technical experts to perform common tasks. With 2020 release
wave 1, the product remains focused on easy personalization and simplification while continuing
to invest in fundamental improvements.
Key investment areas for this release are:
• Personalized marketing: The application helps marketers build and send effective content
effortlessly. It can send emails related to business transactions that include context details,
and send test messages that render dynamic content for a selected contact.
• Marketing made simple: We continue to streamline the product by reducing click counts,
and have introduced many improvements that help make marketers’ lives easier.
Improvements include: enhanced content editor usability, in-line editing of entities inside
the journey experience, ability to understand relationships between the customer journeys
and the marketing entities, and more.
• Integration and adaptability: The application is more powerful now as we enable events
forms to be integrated with third-party content management systems, and also bring in
Microsoft Forms Pro experience for managing surveys.
• Performance and scalability: Fundamental investments continue to deliver improved
performance, scalability, and throughput for campaign execution and email marketing. The
application delivers an improved unsubscribe experience, prevents phishing, improves
accessibility, and more.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Marketing
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview Early access* General
availability
Contextual email messages End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Aug 2020 - -Ability to test-send
dynamic email messages
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Automated scheduler End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Compliance made easier End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Improved segment design
and management
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Spam checker End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Improved event
management experience
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Support for surveys using
Microsoft Forms Pro
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Export marketing results
data to Excel for further
analysis
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved email content
designer
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview Early access* General
availability
Improved customer journey
experience
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
In-place editing of email
and forms
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - May 2020
Discover and use segments
from Customer Insights in
marketing campaigns
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - May 2020
* Some features are available for you to opt-in as part of early access on February 3, 2020,
including all mandatory changes that impact end users. Learn more about early access.
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Contextual email messages
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Aug 2020 - -
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Business value
With this release, Dynamics 365 Marketing can send context-rich email messages triggered by
business transactions such as purchases, returns, payments, and more. Marketers can
personalize messages, leveraging data from transactions such as order number or product
purchased.
You can create customer journeys that target contacts associated with a recent record creation
(such as a purchase), and are able to send email messages to the same contact multiple times
throughout the customer journey as the context changes.
Feature details
• Context-based journeys: Create customer journeys that target contacts associated with a
recent record creation (such as a purchase).
• Updated messages based on context: Send email messages to the same contact multiple
times throughout the customer journey as the context changes.
Ability to test-send dynamic email messages
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Business value
Dynamics 365 Marketing enables marketers to design visually rich marketing email messages
that include personalized dynamic content. Careful testing is necessary, however, to account for
variation in email client rendering and to confirm that dynamic content is accurate. Improved
test-send functionality enables you to preview and test your messages before going into
production, ensuring that your messages are consistent.
Feature details
• Upgraded error detection: Improved error checking for outgoing test messages.
• Test-send dynamic content: Test messages that contain fully rendered dynamic content
(including dynamic field values, entity relationships, loops, and conditionals) based on a
selected sample contact record.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Personalized dynamic data in a test message
Automated scheduler
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
The automated scheduler uses AI to enable marketers to maximize customer engagement by
sending email messages to their customers at the time when they’re most likely to see and open
the messages.
Feature details
• Send email messages when contacts are likely to read them: Based on past interactions
with marketing email messages, the automated scheduler uses machine learning to find the
days and times when each contact is most likely to be actively reading their email messages.
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• Automatically select the best time to send an email message: By analyzing historical
data, the automated scheduler automatically selects the best times to send the next email
message for each contact, within a time window that you specify.
Customer journey with Smart scheduling option on
Compliance made easier
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Business compliance with GDPR and accessibility guidelines is crucial. Improvements to
Dynamics 365 Marketing help marketers meet compliance requirements, but some development
work, consultancy assistance, or both, is still necessary.
Feature details
• Consolidated opt-in confirmation messages: New functionality combines multiple
notifications and confirmation requests into a single message, such as combining updated
GDPR consent together with multiple new subscriptions.
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• Historical view of subscription-list and GDPR consent-level changes: Easily view the
history of subscription-list and GDPR consent-level changes without building your own
report.
• Accessibility checker: Check the accessibility of emails, forms, and pages created using the
Marketing content designer and receive guidance on suggested fixes.
Email accessibility checker
Improved segment design and management
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Business value
Improved segment management saves marketers time by simplifying segment creation and
editing. You can create complex segments, targeting specific contacts, by combining behavioral
and demographic data directly within the dynamic segment editor.
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Feature details
• Simplified segment creation: Combine behavioral and demographic data directly within
the dynamic segment editor.
• Static segments are redesigned: Static segments now handle an unlimited number of total
contacts (up to 10,000 at a time) and allow rule-based addition to list members.
• Query selection: You can select static segment contacts based on query and segment data.
• Time zone-aware segments: Segments are time zone-aware, mirroring the time zone
functionality in customer journeys.
• New partial date operator: Partial dates allow you to create segments for events such as
“today” or based on people doing an action on the first day of the month, rather than
specifying exact dates.
The segment designer
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Spam checker
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Spam checker allows marketers to maximize customer engagement with their emails by
providing an AI-based assessment of the email content (a spam score) and suggesting ways to
minimize the spam score.
Feature details
Today, marketers don't know if their email campaigns will land in a customer’s inbox or be
flagged as spam. The new spam checker feature in Dynamics 365 Marketing enables marketers
to diagnose and mitigate any issues with email content that could potentially cause it to be
flagged as spam. The spam checker feature also provides prescriptive guidance on what can be
fixed. With this feature, marketers can confidently create emails and use them for campaigns,
while maximizing the chance that emails will land in their customers’ inboxes.
Spam checker enables you to:
• Assess spam risk: Determine how likely it is for an email to be caught by spam filters
through a risk assessment score of high, medium, or low.
• Get recommendations: View what changes need to be made to improve the spam score
and increase the chance for your email to land in your recipient’s inbox.
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Spam score showing medium risk
Improved event management experience
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
With this release, the event registration experience is undergoing a major overhaul to increase
the speed and concurrency of the registration process.
Feature details
• Use marketing forms in events: Event planners are able to use forms within the Marketing
application to create forms for event registration, which enables event planners to build
registration forms using a familiar drag-and-drop interface and to include more types of
fields.
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• Embed registration forms into any CMS: For the first time, event registration forms can be
embedded into any third-party content management system (CMS), just like other forms in
the Marketing application.
• Design forms within the event: Event planners can design event registration forms from
the event entity without leaving the event.
Event registration using marketing forms
See also
What's new in Dynamics 365 Marketing (docs)
Support for surveys using Microsoft Forms Pro
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Surveys are a critical feedback component for customer-obsessed organizations. Dynamics 365
Marketing with integrated Forms Pro brings a rich set of capabilities for asking for feedback
about your customers' needs These survey capabilities help you make data-driven decisions and
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apply your findings to your marketing initiatives. Marketers can automate survey experiences
and leverage data generated from surveys for advanced segmentation and customer profiling.
Feature details
• Survey integration: Create surveys in Dynamics 365 Marketing using Microsoft Forms Pro.
• Automated survey responses: Automate survey responses by including them in the criteria
for segmentation or lead scoring, or when branching a customer journey.
Forms Pro survey
Export marketing results data to Excel for further analysis
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Dynamics 365 Marketing tracks how your contacts interact with marketing initiatives and
provides detailed analytics. You can use your contact analytics to understand the impact of
marketing campaigns. Marketing now allows you to export your marketing data to Excel,
providing more options to determine your contacts' responses to your campaigns.
Feature details
• Analyze marketing data in Excel: Export marketing results directly to Excel.
• View data on your terms: View marketing results in Marketing or Excel.
Export icon shows at the top right corners
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
February 2020 update (docs)
Improved email content designer
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
New features allow marketers to create attractive and sophisticated email messages, capturing
customer attention more effectively. Interface updates and advanced preview capabilities ensure
that email creation is quick and consistent.
Feature details
• New and improved email templates: New email templates with updated layout capabilities
give you a head start on the design process.
• Drag to resize elements: More intuitive controls enable you to drag and resize email
content elements including images, dividers, and buttons.
• Improved color picker: Improved color picker controls offer support across browsers and
mobile devices.
• Email-wide property controls: Updated property controls allow you to set email-wide
properties, creating a consistent look with just a few clicks.
• More customization options: Picture-over-picture and button-over-picture capabilities add
flexibility to your designs. To help boost email open rates, you can now add custom
preheaders with tailored email message preview text. Options such as rounded corners and
individually customizable columns offer even more design possibilities.
• Improved email preview: You can now preview fields with resolved dynamic text. The
enhanced preview means you’ll see exactly how your messages will look when customers
receive them. The built-in accessibility checker helps you ensure that all recipients can view
your messages.
• Updated forms and pages designers: The email content designer improvement s are also
available in the forms and pages designers.
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Attractive email design with button over picture
See also
What's new in Dynamics 365 Marketing (docs)
Improved customer journey experience
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Some of your customer journeys might include email messages with time-sensitive content.
Time-sensitive emails could include time-limited offers, holiday promotions, or a two-week
reminder for an upcoming event. Because contacts might join the journey at any time, you can
now prevent delivering outdated information by setting an expiration date for one or more
selected email messages.
Feature details
• Expiration dates and times for time-sensitive content: Set a static expiration date and
time—for example, March 31, 2020, at 10:00 PM in the customer’s time zone.
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• No outdated messages: Any contact who enters an email tile after its expiration date
doesn't receive the email message.
• Determine who didn't receive your message: Information on who didn't receive a
message due to an expiration date is captured and available from email and journey insights.
• Warning when stopping live records: Before stopping email messages, forms, or segments
used by live customer journeys, the user sees a warning message to help prevent the user
from inadvertently corrupting an entity used in a live journey.
Add an expiration date and time to customer journeys
See also
What's new in Dynamics 365 Marketing (docs)
In-place editing of email and forms
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - May 2020
Business value
Marketers no longer have to navigate away from a customer journey to an email, page, form, or
segment record to create or update content. In-place editing simplifies creating and managing
journeys, allowing you to create and edit underlying elements within the context of the journey
itself.
Feature details
• Simplified content editing and creation: Navigate to a journey, create the relevant flow,
select a tile, and create or edit the content directly from the customer journey.
• Full editing and creation capabilities: All the capabilities of the email, page, form, and
segment designers are preserved when accessed from the customer journey.
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• Edit and create marketing forms within events: You can now create or edit event-related
marketing forms from the event itself.
Discover and use segments from Customer Insights in marketing
campaigns
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - May 2020
Business value
Customer Insights provides access to aggregated data from various sources and segments
computed by analysts and data scientists using that data. By using these segments, marketers
can better target their audience and increase campaign effectiveness.
Feature details
• Customer Insights integration: Access aggregated data and segments computed by
analysts and data scientists using that data.
• Use segments created with customer data from sources beyond marketing: Customer
Insights integration with Dynamics 365 Marketing provides instant access to aggregated
demographic, psychographic (interests, attitudes), and behavioral (intent, interactions) data
that would often have otherwise been locked in siloed databases.
• Use specialized Customer Insights segments: Instantly view specialized Customer Insights
segments in Marketing. Examples include segments based on lifetime value, churn
propensity, affinities, and interests based on search activity and more.
• Improve your targeting: Customer Insights segments enable you to target your customers
with the right message at the right time.
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Segments from Customer Insights showing in the Marketing app's segmentation view
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Sales
Overview of Dynamics 365 Sales 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Sales continues to be a highly adopted sales tool that brings value to sales teams
around the globe with out-of-the-box capabilities tailor-made for several sales scenarios. It is an
entire system that is much more than a mere sales application.
Dynamics 365 Sales is centered around the customer relationship. It helps organizations
understand customer needs, drives more relevant and authentic engagements, and improves
selling efficiencies.
With the 2020 release wave 1 of Dynamics 365 Sales, we have spent time listening to customers
and empathizing with their experiences to learn about what works and understand what doesn’t.
As with the previous release, there is a continued emphasis on simplified experiences, improved
workflow, and a new mobile experience—all designed to make it more useful for users.
Dynamics 365 Sales continues to evolve to meet changing customer and sales needs. In the
2020 release wave 1, we are expanding the focus to include inside sales scenarios, including
sales acceleration, automated record updating, and sales cadences. We aim to streamline the
work of inside sellers and deepen their engagement with customers.
These are the 2020 release wave 1 themes:
• Simplify: Get things done more easily to keep the focus on selling.
Sellers need to focus on building deeper relationships with customers. To do this, they must
focus their time on personal engagements and understand customer needs to close more
deals faster. Dynamics 365 Sales is committed to simplifying experiences and introducing
intelligence that promotes productivity. Through close collaboration with our customers and
consistently listening to their feedback, we continue to enhance the seller experience.
• Enhance productivity: Leverage productivity tools to enhance selling effectiveness.
Every sales team uses a variety of productivity tools to draft proposals, communicate with
customers, and collaborate internally with peripheral teams. These tools are key to meeting
ever-changing customer demands. It is imperative to enable a smooth and frictionless
experience, so sellers can move quickly between tasks and spend their time on building
customer relationships. Dynamics 365 Sales offers seamless integration with relevant
productivity tools to help sellers be more agile. They can communicate, collaborate, and
analyze—leveraging the tools they love, without constantly switching context.
• Accelerate: Prioritize the next best customer and next best action to accelerate sales.
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Sales acceleration aims to transform the sales process with intelligent prioritization that
helps convert leads and to close opportunities successfully and faster. To reach every
customer, sellers benefit from cross-channel communication directly from Dynamics 365
Sales, all while enforcing consistent sales processes through sales cadences.
• Transform forecasting: Track the pulse of your business accurately to inform strategic
decisions.
Forecasting empowers sellers to confidently build a strong pipeline, while shortening sales
cycles and improving forecast accuracy. As a result, sales leaders gain a more accurate view
of their business, and can plan more effectively. Dynamics 365 Sales will introduce a
Forecasting solution that offers both the flexibility to meet unique business requirements
and an intuitive interface to forecast intelligently.
The challenges of sales organizations described in this section are based on enterprise research,
analyst reports, and conversations with customers.
As always, we want to hear from our customers and partners. If you have any ideas or thoughts
about Dynamics 365 Sales, please share with us at https://aka.ms/SalesIdeas.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Sales
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Forecasting
With Dynamics 365 Sales forecasting, we are introducing a new set of capabilities that empower
organizations to natively create and manage bottom-up sales forecast processes.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Customize forecast models End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Improve and adjust forecast
accuracy
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Understand forecasts with
precision pipeline management
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Licensing
Dynamics 365 Sales is a highly adopted sales tool that brings value to sales teams around the
globe with out-of-the-box capabilities tailor-made for key sales scenarios. It is an entire system
that is much more than a mere sales application.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
License enforcement – users
with new Team Member
licenses
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Simplified experiences
To make Dynamics 365 Sales better, we are continually introducing enhancements that remove
unnecessary friction and make features easier to use.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Contextual email
communication
End users by
admins, makers, or
analysts
Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Easier selection of email
templates
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Enhanced experience for
adding products to
opportunities
End users by
admins, makers, or
analysts
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Manage activities with ease End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Manage feature settings and
configure the Sales Hub
application from a centralized
location
Admins, makers, or
analysts,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Sales Team Member app
module
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Save standardized PDF
documents to Dynamics 365
Sales or Microsoft SharePoint
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Work with opportunities in the
Kanban view
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
* Some features are available for you to opt-in as part of early access on February 3, 2020,
including all mandatory changes that impact end users. Learn more about early access.
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Forecasting
Overview
Organizations need to accurately forecast sales targets to truly understand business health and
to make accurately informed strategic decisions. CEOs need to foresee demand for every
product to undertake strategic business transformations, COOs need to understand the scope of
the business to allocate resources efficiently, and CFOs need visibility into upcoming cash flows
to craft financial plans for business growth. However, organizations often struggle to develop
accurate sales forecasts that can truly inform these strategic decisions.
With Dynamics 365 Sales forecasting, we are introducing a new set of capabilities that empower
organizations to natively create and manage bottom-up sales forecast processes.
Accurate forecasting helps everyone on the team:
• Sellers can manage their pipeline and focus time more effectively, by identifying the deals
they need to close to meet quotas.
• Sales managers and leaders can plan sales team execution and meet sales forecasts more
confidently with greater flexibility and a clearer view into bottom-up projections, all the
while gaining a deeper understand of those opportunities that impact the business.
• Sales enablement managers can benefit from greater flexibility to offer more granular and
meaningful guidance that accurately reflects sales execution.
Customize forecast models
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Although many organizations follow a common methodology of requiring sellers to forecast
best, most likely, and worst-case revenue, there are variations to this approach across industries,
products, and geographies. The native forecast capabilities provide flexible configurations and
filtering to support multiple types of forecasting, rollup categories, and measurements.
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Feature details
• Use flexible column modeling: Create custom rollup and calculated columns.
• Support different organizational structures: Create forecasts based on territory or
reporting hierarchy.
• Benefit from quota management: Enable quotas in the forecast grid or upload quotas for
entire forecast time periods using an Excel template.
• Benefit from advanced filtering: Use limits to filter out specific opportunities included in
the forecast with the new query builder.
• Adapt security modeling to meet business needs: Select who has access to specific
forecast models and fields.
Configure the forecast to meet business needs
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is intended only for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.
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See also
Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales (blog)
Configure forecasts in your organization (docs)
Improve and adjust forecast accuracy
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Although bottom-up forecasting is based on existing opportunity data, sales managers know
that in certain cases their experience requires subjective judgment. Sellers may not have the
expertise required to accurately predict the confidence or the value of a deal. This may lead
some sellers to hide ongoing deals until the period comes to an end, to increase their chance of
exceeding quota.
To ensure sales managers can provide leadership with meaningful forecast numbers that they
trust, forecasting offers great flexibility. Sales managers are empowered to adjust any of the
enabled forecast values.
Feature details
• Adjust forecasts seamlessly: Easily make adjustments to any forecasted values that are
propagated based on existing forecast or organizational hierarchy, including deleting
adjustments or reverting back to an older adjustment.
• Gain deeper understanding with forecast adjustments: Identify the underlying records
that contribute to changes and capture the reasons for the changes in order to analyze the
history of adjustments.
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Adjust the forecast with notes and view the history
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is intended only for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.
See also
Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales (blog)
Adjust values in a forecast (docs)
Understand forecasts with precision pipeline management
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
A forecast can contain a lot of information and in some cases, a deep hierarchy. Often, the
organization’s forecast and opportunities are disjointed. Sellers and sales managers need to
understand where forecast values are coming from in order to introduce necessary changes that
can help to resolve these gaps. In the forecasting capabilities for Dynamics 365 Sales, both the
forecast and the underlying opportunity data are part of one fluid experience, allowing sellers to
directly modify deal information in the flow and to instantly see changes to the forecast
reflected.
Feature details
• Benefit from a responsive forecast grid with visual cues: Enable visual representation of
the whole forecast hierarchy and quota attainment in each cell, directly from the grid.
• Edit participating records inline: View and edit underlying opportunities for any calculat ed
metric to instantly modify the forecast.
• Manage pipeline and visualization: Easily manage and update the full forecast with the
drag-and-drop feature to move opportunities across different stages, to instantly update
forecast data.
• Benefit from near real-time updates: Enjoy automatic recalculation of forecast values to
ensure data is always as fresh as possible.
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Adjust deals using a visual Kanban board
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is intended only for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.
See also
Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales (blog)
View and manage underlying opportunities (docs)
Licensing
Overview
Dynamics 365 Sales continues to be a highly adopted sales tool that brings value to sales teams
around the globe with out-of-the-box capabilities tailor-made for key sales scenarios. It is an
entire system that is much more than a mere sales application.
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Dynamics 365 Sales is centered around the customer relationship. It helps organizations
understand customer needs, drives more relevant and authentic engagements, and improves
selling efficiencies.
With the 2020 release wave 1 of Dynamics 365 Sales, we have spent time listening to customers
and empathizing with their experiences to learn what works and understand what doesn’t. As
with the previous release, there is a continued emphasis on simplified experiences, improved
workflow, and a new mobile experience—all designed to make it more useful for users.
Dynamics 365 Sales continues to evolve to meet changing customer and sales needs. In the
2020 release wave 1, we are expanding the focus to include inside sales scenarios, including
sales acceleration, automated record updating, and sales cadences. We aim to streamline the
work of inside sellers and deepen their engagement with customers.
The opportunity is now to revolutionize sales engagements, increase productivity, and evolve to
meet the ever-changing needs of customers.
The challenges of sales organizations described here are based on enterprise research, analyst
reports, and conversations with customers.
2020 release wave 1 themes:
• Simplify: Get things done more easily to keep the focus on selling.
Sellers need to focus on building deeper relationships with customers. To do this, they must
focus their time on personal engagements and understand cus tomer needs to close more
deals faster. Dynamics 365 Sales is committed to simplifying experiences and introducing
intelligence that promotes productivity. Through close collaboration with our customers and
consistently listening to their feedback, we continue to enhance the seller experience.
• Enhance productivity: Leverage productivity tools to enhance selling effectiveness.
Every sales team uses a variety of productivity tools to draft proposals, communicate with
customers, and collaborate internally with peripheral teams. These tools are key to meeting
ever-changing customer demands. It is imperative to enable a smooth and frictionless
experience, so sellers can move quickly between tasks and spend their time on building
customer relationships. Dynamics 365 Sales offers seamless integration with relevant
productivity tools to help sellers be more agile. They can communicate, collaborate, and
analyze— leveraging the tools they love, without constantly switching context.
• Accelerate: Prioritize the next best customer and next best action to accelerate sales.
Sales acceleration aims to transform the sales process with intelligent prioritization that
helps convert leads, and close opportunities successfully faster. To reach every customer,
sellers benefit from cross-channel communication directly from Dynamics 365 Sales, all while
enforcing consistent sales processes through sales cadences.
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• Transform forecasting: Track the pulse of your business accurately to inform strategic
decisions.
Forecasting empowers sellers to confidently build a strong pipeline, while shortening sales
cycles and improving forecast accuracy. As a result, sales leaders gain a more accurate view
of their business, and can plan more effectively. Dynamics 365 Sales will introduce a
Forecasting solution that offers both the flexibility to meet unique business requirements
and an intuitive interface to forecast intelligently.
As always, we want to hear from our customers and partners. If you have any ideas or thoughts
about Dynamics 365 Sales, please share with us at https://aka.ms/SalesIdeas.
License enforcement – users with new Team Member licenses
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
This licensing enforcement helps customers align with the Team Member license restrictions
described in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide.
Feature details
For Team Member licenses purchased during or after October 2018, license-based access will
restrict users to a set of designated app modules. These users will no longer be able to access
Customer Service Hub, Sales Hub, or custom app modules. The designated app modules are as
follows:
• Customer Service Team Member
• Sales Team Member
• Project Resource Hub
During the early access phase, users with Team Member licenses will be able to use the
designated app modules mentioned above alongside all existing apps. Once license
enforcement is turned on (starting April 1, 2020), unentitled apps such as Customer Service Hub,
Sales Hub, and custom apps will not be accessible.
Customers can also proactively preview full enforcement before general availability. We
recommend that the Team Member scenarios be tested and customizations migrated to the
designated app modules, as needed.
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NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Sales Team Member app for users with Team Member license (docs)
Simplified experiences
Overview
Sellers want to focus their time on building successful customer relationships and winning deals.
They seek tools that help them complete mundane tasks quickly and intuitively, while providing
access to relevant information promptly.
We are actively listening to our customers to learn how we can make Dynamics 365 Sales better,
easier, and more efficient. Dynamics 365 Sales aims to help sellers develop deeper relationships
and improve their productivity.
As part of our commitment to make Dynamics 365 Sales better, we are continually introducing
enhancements that remove unnecessary friction and make features easier to use.
Contextual email communication
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Feature details
With a rich text editor and a pop-up, non-blocking window, composing email has never been
better in Dynamics 365 Sales. Salespeople will be able to write email with context of the record
they are working on, navigate between records, have multiple active draft emails open
simultaneously, preview the content before sending, add attachments, and use email templates
to optimize commonly used tasks. The email opening up in a non-blocking window gives
salespeople all the relevant content at a glance while they compose their email to the customer.
NOTE This feature was released for public preview in October 2019. More information:
Contextual email communication in Dynamics 365: 2019 release wave 2 plan
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales
Professional.
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See also
Contextual email communication (docs)
Easier selection of email templates
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Sales organizations use email templates to ensure consistency and to create deeper
engagement across customer communications.
Dynamics 365 Sales automates data entry in emails by mapping template text to field data and
automatically fills in these values in emails. Standardized content saves sellers time and effort in
crafting common messages.
As part of our commitment to simplifying experiences across the product, we are introducing
enhancements to the email template selection experience. These improvements will help sellers
take advantage of email templates effortlessly—unifying communications across the
organization and improving productivity.
Feature details
• Select an email template from the gallery intuitively: Benefit from a list of all available
email templates from which to scroll and find the most relevant one.
• Get a quick view of the template before selecting it: Preview templates from a list that
displays highlighted titles so context is clear prior to making a selection.
• Benefit from categories to simplify template lookup : View templates via categories, such
as those recently used or added to help quickly identify the relevant one.
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Email templates
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales
Professional.
See also
Insert an email template (docs)
Enhanced experience for adding products to opportunities
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Dynamics 365 Sales holds a vast amount of customer information that feeds into pipeline
management, product procurement, and overall sales tracking. To ensure these are managed
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properly, opportunities must accurately reflect customer interest. To achieve this, sellers are
required to update opportunities regularly to reflect the purchase intent for every product, as it
arises, even if sellers manage a wide range of products.
Keeping opportunities current competes with selling activities as well as many other repetitive
tasks, which means oftentimes, product information is either excluded or not updated to reflect
the latest customer interest. In the 2020 release wave 1, we simplify and expedite matching
products to opportunities, reducing friction and motivating sellers. With this feature, sellers can
add products quickly and intuitively, with minimal effort.
Feature details
• Look up products directly from the catalog: Search and find products based on free text
across name and description columns within the Product entity. Filter products based on
product family or predefined views to simplify and expedite finding the right product.
• Explore product details inline and compare products to make an informed selection: View
additional information for each product before selecting it.
• Add multiple products at once: Select multiple products at the same time to save time and
increase productivity.
Add products to an opportunity
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Product details
Search and select products
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.
See also
Add products to an opportunity by using the enhanced experience (docs)
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Manage activities with ease
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Working collaboratively on opportunities and leads means there are tasks that must be
completed by multiple team members. Creating new tasks, assigning these tasks, and
completing them is critical to the overall success of customer engagements. Activity
management in Dynamics 365 Sales provides an efficient way to manage and assign tasks across
the team to ensure harmony.
As part of our commitment to simplifying experiences across the product, we are introducing
enhancements to activity management. These improvements offer productive and intuitive ways
to manage tasks across the team, offering sellers peace of mind knowing that team tasks are
organized, prioritized, and delivered.
Feature details
• Find activities quickly: View activities listed in a newly improved grid. Benefit from a newer
interface for managing and filtering activities to help quickly find the right activity to work
on.
• Navigate activities easily: Simplified process to create a new activity, edit an existing
activity, or complete or delete an activity without having to navigate away from the main
page.
• Update activities intuitively: Once the Kanban control is added to the Activity entity, use
drag-and-drop pipeline management with a Kanban board to drag and move activities and
instantly update the status. Ideal for managing many activities.
• Benefit from Calendar view: Once the Calendar control is added to the Activity entity, see
all activities in a visualized calendar view to easily get a clear understanding of daily to-dos .
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Manage activities with ease
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales
Professional.
See also
Track and manage activities (docs)
Manage feature settings and configure the Sales Hub application from a
centralized location
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Administrators need to configure the sales application per their organization's needs. Providing
a centralized location for discovering and managing Dynamics 365 Sales settings aims at
simplifying the administrators' experience and helps them to be more productive.
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As part of our commitment to make Dynamics 365 Sales better, we are continually introducing
enhancements that remove unnecessary friction and make features easier to use.
Feature details
• Easily discover specific Dynamics 365 Sales feature configuration settings within the Sales
Hub application's App Settings.
• Easily discover entities and features that support configurability, and navigate to their
settings and configure them.
Feature setting
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General settings
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is intended only for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.
See also
Overview of admin settings (docs)
Sales Team Member app module
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Sales Team Member is a new app module that will be available to users with the Team Member
license and is designed for users who are not tied to a particular function, but require basic
Dynamics 365 functionality within sales scenarios.
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Feature details
The Team Member license provides use rights to a limited set of use cases. The Sales Team
Member app module enables those use cases and provides guidance and clarity on the use
rights. The new app module will support the following sales use cases:
• View customer details.
• View leads and opportunities related to a customer.
• Create and view activities for a customer or related leads or opportunities.
Admins can configure the app for additional scenarios, but not beyond those listed in the
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is available with the Dynamics 365 Team Member license.
See also
Sales Team Member app for users with Team Member license (docs)
Save standardized PDF documents to Dynamics 365 Sales or Microsoft SharePoint
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Over the last few months, Dynamics 365 Sales made it easier for sellers to create and email
standard PDF documents based on quotes and other entity records. To make it even easier to
collaborate on these PDF-generated documents, we are introducing the ability to save the PDF
directly in Dynamics 365 Sales as a Notes attachment or in Microsoft SharePoint.
Feature details
With this enhancement, salespeople will be able to:
• More quickly save standardized PDF documents created from Word templates as
attachments in Notes.
• Save standardized PDF documents based on Word templates in SharePoint.
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Dialog box to save the PDF to Dynamics 365 Sales or Microsoft SharePoint
PDF document added to Notes
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PDF documents added to the SharePoint site
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
This capability is available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales
Professional.
See also
Create PDF documents from sales records (docs)
Work with opportunities in the Kanban view
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
We are actively listening to our customers to learn how we can make Dynamics 365 Sales better,
easier, and more efficient. Dynamics 365 Sales aims to help sellers develop deeper relationships
and improve their productivity.
As part of our commitment to make Dynamics 365 Sales better, we are continually introducing
enhancements that remove unnecessary friction and make features easier to use.
Feature details
• Easily toggle between the existing grid view and the new Kanban view.
• Sellers can view their opportunity pipeline by sales path on the Kanban board.
• Simplified and intuitive experience to move opportunities into a different stage. The Kanban
view allows your sales team to move opportunities from one stage to another by simply
dragging them.
Teams
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
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This capability is available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Dynamics 365 Sales
Professional.
See also
Work with opportunities in the Kanban view (docs)
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Sales Insights 2020 release wave 1
Everything we do at work creates data. This data sits at the center of the organization, powering
processes, generating archives, and informing decisions. As organizations grow and expand, so
does their data footprint, which in turn ignites the need to accelerate processes and enhance
decision-making through digital transformation. Organizations that embrace digital
transformation show significant improvements to profit margins, increasing revenue while also
reducing costs.
For sales organizations, transformation means making sales data go further to help sell smarter
and faster as well as to outsmart competition. Deeper customer knowledge and accelerated
intelligence can guide organizations to proactively pursue opportunities at the right time and
with the right context. Furthermore, coaching and learning can be tailored to each organization,
so your business is always moving forward.
Dynamics 365 Sales Insights leverages the power of the Microsoft cloud to bring together sales
information via Dynamics 365, communications via Office 365, relationships via LinkedIn, and
the power of Microsoft AI to transform selling. Sales organizations gain a 360-degree view of
their customer engagements to offer agility, adapting to rapid market changes while adhering
to business strategy and accommodating specific business requirements and guidelines.
We do this by democratizing sales intelligence. Dynamics 365 Sales Insights is designed to
empower everyone in the sales organization to be more productive, more agile, and more
customer focused—ultimately closing more deals, faster:
• Sales leaders can improve sales team efficiency and impact, manage pipelines more
intelligently, and enhance customer relationships with actionable insights and relevant
recommendations. Intelligence is drawn from all forms of communication to deliver a
coherent and current state of the business.
• Sellers, whether in the field or at call centers, can spend more time on selling activities, with
automation of mundane tasks, and better prioritize pipelines with timely sales guidance,
benefiting from relevant insights tailored to meet specific context and individual
performance.
• Sales enablement professionals, who help to operationalize selling, can become more agile
with simpler discovery of winning strategies, develop more meaningful guidance with
deeper understanding of sales performance, and broadcast the right information at the right
time with streamlined dissemination across the sales team. All this, while adhering to and
enforcing business strategies with powerful tools that augment sales guidance.
We deliver on this vision by infusing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and advanced
technologies into ongoing sales processes. Powered by data across Dynamics 365, Office 365,
and LinkedIn and built on top of Microsoft Power Platform to easily integrate external data
sources, Dynamics 365 Sales Insights offers a wide breadth of actionable insights tailored to
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meet specific business needs. Altogether, it can empower sales organizations to close more
deals, forecast more accurately, and meet sales quotas, while maximizing selling potential
through deeper customer relationships.
Our product offering includes:
• Dynamics 365 Assistant: Dynamics 365 Assistant offers sellers just -in-time intelligence,
automating mundane tasks and surfacing the right information, at the right time, in the right
context. The assistant aggregates data and insights across multiple systems to offer a
frictionless way for sellers to excel.
In previous releases, the assistant offered relationship insights in Dynamics 365 Sales
alongside daily planning and meeting assistance via the Teams mobile app. Now we are
bringing all insights together, while enhancing with more actions and context. Furthermore,
we are making assistance available wherever selling happens, across new surfaces.
• Sales Studio for AI guided selling: Sales Studio empowers sales organizations to build AIdriven insights and sales guidance that align with and help to enforce business strategies
and best practices, unique to every sales organization. This helps ensure that sellers and
sales managers are well-informed and empowered to sell smarter and faster.
In previous releases, Sales Studio introduced the opportunity to build sales guidance, made
available via the Relationship Assistant. Now we are combining all sales guidance under the
Dynamics 365 Assistant, so guidance built via the studio will be surfaced to sellers across
surfaces. Furthermore, enhanced capabilities and simplified experiences empower sales
enablement managers to build actionable insights, with full context, while monitoring
engagement to always learn and improve sales guidance.
• Advanced forecasting and pipeline intelligence: Focusing on the right leads and
opportunities helps ensure valuable time is spent on those customers that are most likely to
move to the next stage.
In this release, we will introduce advanced forecasting capabilities powered by cutting -edge
machine learning models that empower organizations to more accurately predict their
forecasts and more easily identify anomalies across opportunities. Pipeline intelligence is an
enhancement to previous releases, introducing significant model improvements to capture
more information, across a broader set of dimensions.
• Relationship analytics and Auto capture: Relationship analytics helps form trusted
customer relationships that power long-term sales engagements and lead to repeat selling.
Objective measures spark attention when needed, so no lead is left behind and no
opportunity overlooked. Auto capture ensures consistent information, so models and
insights are powered by meaningful data. Combining reliable data with top quality AI
models offers accurate and valuable understanding that enhances productivity and provides
visibility to inspire alignment across the sales team.
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In this release, we capture a wider set of signals and offer flexibility to adapt models to
specific business needs so relationship health understanding is more accurate. At the same
time, we incorporated Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify contact information
updates and detect action items within captured activities, all while continuing to focus on
capturing more sales information with minimal effort and improving the accuracy and
consistency of the data captured.
• Conversation intelligence: Conversation intelligence offers a unique opportunity to
monitor all customer conversations and extract valuable insights that can help sales
organizations move forward faster and smarter. Sales managers can easily identify "rock
star" sellers and winning strategies, as well as potential gaps, to inform coaching and
propagate positive behaviors across the team. Sellers benefit from the opportunity to selfreflect and learn.
In this release, we introduce new ways to easily onboard the organization so everyone can
benefit from Conversation intelligence. We offer deeper analysis, with emotion detection, to
help tune in to those behaviors that drive successful outcomes. With real-time insights, we
ensure that sellers are empowered with the information they need, when they need it.
As always, we want to hear from our customers and partners with any ideas or thoughts about
Dynamics 365 Sales Insights. To learn more or give us feedback please go to:
• Dynamics 365 Sales Insights product website
• Dynamics 365 Sales Insights product documentation
• Dynamics 365 Sales Insights product ideas site
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Sales Insights
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Advanced forecasting and pipeline intelligence
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Benefit from more accurate pipeline
predictions
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Jun 2020
Remove the guesswork with
predictive forecasting
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Uncover hidden insights in your
forecasts
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Conversation intelligence
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Better understand customers with
advanced conversation insights
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
Boost seller productivity with
conversation insights inside
Dynamics 365 Sales
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
Dynamics 365 Assistant
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Benefit from enhanced insights End users, automatically Feb 6, 2020 Apr 2020
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Relationship analytics and Auto capture
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Who knows whom now available
worldwide
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
- May 2020
Improvements to automatic activity
and contact suggestions
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Sep 2020
Sales acceleration
Sales acceleration aims to help inside sellers sell smarter. Building a strong pipeline, offering
context, and surfacing automated recommendations throughout a sales cadence, helps to
transform the sales process.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Connect with customers across
multiple channels
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 -Enforce best practices with sales
sequences
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 -Gain full context on every customer
in one place
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 -Work effectively with an intelligent
queue
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 -Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
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For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Advanced forecasting and pipeline intelligence
Overview
To stay ahead of the market, sales teams are constantly pressured to sell more and faster to
meet sales quotas. It is imperative that sellers spend time on the best leads and opportunities,
prioritizing prospects that are likely to move quickly through the pipeline. Potential customers
are introduced into the pipeline through various channels and sellers struggle to tell these
“hidden gems” apart—for example, new prospects who are ready to buy, stranded prospects
who need to be contacted, or unlikely prospects who are better left unattended. Managers need
to proactively understand their business even when their sellers have yet to update them,
keeping them honest and accurate.
Predictive forecasting and pipeline intelligence with predictive lead scoring and predictive
opportunity scoring help sales teams uncover top deals. Intelligent scores offer sellers guidance
on where best to invest their time, improving resource allocation and increasing productivity,
while helping to ensure rigorous quotas can be met, efficiently.
Intelligent forecasting and optimal resource allocation help everyone on the team:
• Sellers can manage their time more efficiently by focusing on potential customers and deals
they are most likely to win.
• Sales managers can plan sales team execution and meet sales forecasts more confidently
with greater flexibility and clearer view into bottom-up projections, all the while gaining a
deeper understand of those opportunities that impact the business.
• Sales enablement managers can benefit from greater flexibility to offer more granular and
meaningful guidance that accurately reflects sales execution.
Benefit from more accurate pipeline predictions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Business value
With competitive pressure growing, sellers are pressed to sell faster. Accelerating selling
depends on engaging with the right customers, to leads most likely to convert, and to
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opportunities most likely to close as won. Time spent on a lost lead or opportunity is the time
that could be invested in closing another deal.
With the growing abundance of data, there is an opportunity for every sales organization to
benefit from Dynamics 365 Sales Insights, powering resource allocation and intelligent pipeline
management with machine learning models, to direct sellers to the next best customer
engagement.
Predictive lead and opportunity scoring provides sellers with meaningful predictions, guiding
toward the next best customer, and ensuring time is spent with thos e leads and opportunities
most likely to convert or close as won, respectively.
Feature details
• Gain a deeper understanding of scores: Benefit from extended score explanations to help
better understand the reasoning behind every score.
• Benefit from models informed by a wider set of signals: Calculate predictive lead and
opportunity scores accounting for a wider set of signals, including custom related entities.
Remove the guesswork with predictive forecasting
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Growing volumes of sales data offer a unique opportunity to inform business decisions and
enhance sales performance. Sales organizations can transform forecasting with large-scale sales
data to make more comprehensive and reliable sales predictions.
Predictive forecasting complements subjective bottom-up projections with objective data-driven
forecasts. By leveraging both historical and pipeline data, sales managers can forecast sales
more accurately and without bias.
Feature details
• Explore historical evidence: Complement subjective bottom-up forecasts with predictive
projections to identify discrepancies or inconsistencies without manual effort.
• Leverage your existing data: Compare actual performance directly against predictions to
visually contrast how the number of deals won is pacing against predictions. The predictive
model captures all related data from past deals and open pipelines to identify signals that
have the most impact.
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Compare actual results against predicted values
See also
Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales (blog)
Analyze revenue outcome by using predictive forecasting (docs)
Uncover hidden insights in your forecasts
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
To ensure sales managers can provide leadership with meaningful forecast numbers that they
trust, the forecasting capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales offer great flexibility. Sales managers are
empowered to take snapshots to freeze a forecast in the moment and to analyze forecasts,
gaining a deeper understanding through changes that occur between snapshots.
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With deal flow analyses, comparing two snapshots visually, sales managers can easily view
changes in forecasted values as well as the underlying records that contribute to the change. For
example, if a sales manager's team forecasted to close 100,000 deals, but only closed 80,000, the
sales manager can investigate which deals slipped and why to get a deeper understanding and
inform future planning.
Feature details
• Take advantage of snapshots: Trigger snapshot creations before or after adjustment
periods end. Empowers sales enablement managers to offer automated snapshots.
• View snapshot history: Explore a log of all snapshots taken per forecast and manage these
as needed. Empowers sales enablement managers to develop valuable learnings for the
organization.
• Benefit from deal-flow and snapshot visualization: Visually compare two forecast
snapshots to better understand how and why forecasting has changed over time.
• Take advantage of cumulative trend chart: Inspect forecast projections visually across a
timeline chart.
Know how the forecast is changing over time
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See also
Driving accountability with advanced forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales (blog)
Analyze deals flows between snapshots (docs)
Conversation intelligence
Overview
Talking directly with customers is an important part of any sales cycle. While many organizations
have already amassed large volumes of conversational data, most are not deriving any value
from these interactions, despite the tremendous potential. In today’s resource-constrained
environment, extracting value from existing data is vital for profitable growth. By leveraging
Microsoft’s recent advancements in AI and natural language processing, Conversation
intelligence automatically extracts these insights to help close deals faster and to identify new
opportunities.
By automatically transcribing calls and analyzing content, sentiment, and behavioral style,
Conversation intelligence provides meaningful insights. Sellers can effectively guide buyers
toward a purchase using proven conversation techniques. Managers can make better strategic
decisions for new sales motion or sales training by identifying new market trends. By
understanding unique behaviors of top sellers, managers can bring those learnings to the rest of
the team to lift the team performance.
In the 2020 release wave 1, we bring call summary and action item extraction right within
Dynamics 365 Sales to help sellers save precious time after every customer call. We are also
introducing new AI models that detect emotions and high-level topics discussed during
customer conversations.
Conversation intelligence is relevant to everyone on the team:
• Sellers need a simple way to keep track of conversations and ensure they follow best
practices to make the most out of every conversation.
• Managers need to keep track of team performance in real time, so top sellers are reinforced,
successful behaviors propagated, and potential gaps immediately addressed to meet sales
quotas effectively and to ensure customer satisfaction.
Better understand customers with advanced conversation insights
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -
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Business value
In today’s world, organizations must be able to quickly understand customer needs and
sentiment toward business brands. Understanding vocal patterns and the nuances of a customer
tone can help to determine the potential for success or failure of a deal.
With advancements to Conversation intelligence, sales managers and sellers will be able to
better understand customer attitudes and discern potential approaches for handling
competitive threats at a deeper level. Providing organizations with emotion analysis based on
vocal tones, topic analysis of key discussion points in the conversation, and easy drill-down into
relevant conversations that inferred specific insights, all offer greater ability to take appropriate
action to move deals forward faster.
Feature details
• Emotion detection: This feature includes an AI model and conversation review experience
enhancement.
• Deeper topic analysis: Explore communication patterns and important topics that lead to
successful conversations.
• Updates to insights details page: Create faster drill-downs into conversations that led to
the insights.
Call insights sample page
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Boost seller productivity with conversation insights inside Dynamics 365 Sales
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Business value
Sellers spend an average of 8 minutes after every customer call summarizing what they learned
and the next steps. Often these learnings are not captured within Dynamics 365 Sales. When
multiple sellers are jointly working on a shared opportunity, it is critical that everyone has
exposure to all customer conversations.
In the 2020 release wave 1, a complete call summary including action items, topics discussed,
and call playback, are available directly within Dynamics 365 Sales phone call activity logs.
Capturing these learnings automatically with Conversational Intelligence enables a seller to
focus their time on customer needs. Additionally, sales enablement managers can create sales
guidance and insights for sellers using Sales Studio.
Feature details
• Easy access to conversations: View call summary within Dynamics 365 Sales phone call
activity including playback, transcript, action items, topics, keywords, brand mentions,
conversation KPIs, and sentiment analyses.
• Access to conversational insights and highlights: Easily view playback, keywords,
sentiment, compete mentions, conversational KPIs, and action items.
• Create the next best actions and highlighted information: Conversational data available
within Dynamics 365 Sales is easily accessible via Dynamics 365 Assistant Studio.
Dynamics 365 Assistant
Overview
In today’s competitive environment, sellers spend significant time on the road, fostering
personal customer engagements to convert more opportunities into wins.
But sellers often struggle to manage their day productively. They spend valuable time collecting
information across multiple systems to paint a complete picture for each opportunity, to take
the next best course of action that will lead to a successful outcome. Then they spend more time
updating CRM, so everyone on the sales team is on the same page. Ultimately, this leaves little
time to focus on what matters most—building meaningful relationships with customers.
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When time is limited and information stands to offer strategic differentiation for closing deals,
having personal and contextual sales guidance can empower sellers to achieve more. Dynamics
365 Assistant offers the seller a competitive advantage by surfacing relevant and actionable
insights and by automating mundane tasks. This gives time back to sellers and, in turn, increases
productivity across the entire sales organization.
In the 2020 release wave 1, we focus on delivering Dynamics 365 Assistant across more mobile
surfaces, providing more recommendations and insights from across new data sources, so every
field seller on the road receives the right information, at the right time, and in the right context.
Offering contextual insights and task automation helps every seller:
• Field sellers can receive assistant on-the-go, empowering them to get things done while in
motion, in the surface of their choice, to ensure nothing gets overlooked.
• Insider sellers can benefit from just-in-time guidance based on sales cadences, to ensure
every customer is contacted at the right time and in the right way.
Benefit from enhanced insights
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 6, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Companies deliver guided selling to keep sellers on track and to enforce successful selling
strategies. Sellers often struggle to get the information they need to achieve successful
outcomes. This means valuable steps that are key to achieving success might be overlooked.
Sales Studio empowers sales enablement managers to surface sales guidance at the right time
and in the right context, so no step is skipped and no relevant information untapped.
In previous releases, we introduced next-best-action recommendations. As part of our
commitment to make our AI-driven experiences better, we are continually introducing
enhancements that make sales guidance contextual and impactful. New capabilities help sellers
gain more control as well as introduce additional information and relevant actions to help get
things done in the moment.
Feature details
• Improved user interface: Have a new and modern layout for insight cards based on the
adaptive cards’ infrastructure. With the new layout, the content of the card is better
organized and supports the option to perform advanced actions directly from within the
cards, so sellers are more productive without changing context.
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• Group insights by sections: Group cards by card type. Cards with 100% confidence, like
task due today or opportunity due soon or upcoming meeting will be in the notification
section while cards with a lower level of confidence that are based on predictive models and
heuristics will be in the insight sections. The separation into these two sections helps
organizations to provide better guidance and focus to their sellers through cards.
• Drill down to receive more context: Benefit from the flexibility to drill down into cards to
receive more information so sellers can always have all the information they need to choose
the best course of action.
Benefit from enhanced insights
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Relationship analytics and Auto capture
Overview
Relationships are the cornerstone of successful engagements, and information is a strategic
resource that powers more valuable customer connections. Sellers that foster trust and longterm relationships win more deals and spark opportunities to generate more revenue.
Relationship analytics helps to objectively understand the quality of customer relationships in
real time, guiding sellers to focus on the right customers. This ensures no deal at risk is
overlooked and no deal ready to close lingers. With impartial insights into relationship health
and clear visibility into what contributes or withholds success, sellers can make smarter
decisions. Sales managers can benefit from a more accurate indication of success to better
coach sellers and to more accurately anticipate sales.
Auto capture enables more reliable data to power trustworthy intelligence with powerful AI
capabilities, made available via Dynamics 365 Sales Insights. Sales organizations benefit from
high-quality information that is consistently recorded and actionable insights that inspire datadriven decisions, altogether powering efficient customer engagements that increase revenue.
Data entry automation and better understanding of what drives successful relationships are
relevant to everyone on the team:
• Sellers need to focus on making sure every customer engagement is a seamless
continuation of the previous one. Automation helps save time updating Dynamics 365 Sales
while relationship benchmarks help to uncover effective sales strategies and identify selling
experts. All contribute to moving deals forward at an accelerated pace.
• Sales managers need to track progress effectively and have a clear understanding of the
status of ongoing deals to quickly identify gaps and proactively address them.
Understanding behaviors and attributes of top sellers helps to proliferate best practices
across the sales team.
• Sales enablement managers need relationship insights to better understand what drives
successful outcomes, based on attributes of similar deals. Relevant sales guidance,
contextual to every engagement, is more likely to be used by sellers.
Who knows whom now available worldwide
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
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Business value
Previously released in North America in October 2018, Who knows whom will be making a
worldwide debut in 2020 release wave 1.
Feature details
Global Availability: Who knows whom is now available worldwide.
User controls: Sellers can independently opt in and opt out from the connection graph without
requiring involvement from the tenant admin.
Improvements to automatic activity and contact suggestions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 1, 2020 Sep 2020
Business value
As part of 2019 release wave 2, we released for public preview a new version of Auto capture. By
incorporating AI capabilities, mapping of captured activities to the appropriate records was
improved, and new contacts mentioned in captured activities were automatically detected.
Furthermore, we improved onboarding and streamlined the UI, making it easier for admins to
enable the feature and easier for sellers to track activities and contacts.
As part of 2020 release wave 1, these capabilities become generally available.
Feature details
• Benefit from the automated mapping of activities to entities: AI-driven mapping of
activities to entities. We incorporated Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to improve
the association between activities to the appropriate records and increase the quality of the
data in Dynamics 365.
• Take advantage of UI improvements so nothing falls between the cracks: Auto capture
aggregates activity suggestions at the top of the timeline wall to increase discoverability of
captured activities, so sellers can track, edit, or dismiss captured activities in a more
streamlined manner. Once the captured activity is tracked, it will be added to the timeline
wall seamlessly.
• Benefit from dedicated list views for activity and contact suggestions: To make data
entry more productive and proactive, Auto capture introduces new list views for captured
activities and contacts so sellers can have a one-stop-shop from which they can track
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multiple activities and create new contacts. This offers a more complete and accurate picture
of customer-related activities.
• Onboard easily with no preliminary setup or prerequisites: Auto capture onboarding
experience is now simplified, and configuration barriers removed. Auto capture is no longer
dependent on server-side sync and admins can enable it for specific security roles or for the
entire organization while selecting the types of communication channels to capture.
Sales acceleration
Overview
Sales centers are focused on high-velocity selling. Inside sellers receive long lists of prospective
buyers from multiple sources, then rush to go through these lists so they can meet their quotas.
Inside sellers manage customer lists. Sales organizations vary—some manage leads that need to
be converted, others manage opportunities that need to be won. Our vision is to tailor Sales
acceleration to meet specific business needs, whether managing leads, opportunities, or any
custom entity. This can be managed via the Sales Studio. With the 2020 release wave 1, we are
taking the first step in this direction for tailored solutions, supporting leads and opportunities.
Customer lists are managed via an intelligent work queue. The intelligent queue helps sellers
prioritize effortlessly. When coupled with pertinent information in one single place, every
conversation becomes that much more meaningful.
With rigorous quotas to meet, it is imperative to spend time prioritizing and focusing on the
best leads (those most likely to convert), or the best opportunities (those most likely to close as
won). To make every conversation count, inside sellers need to collect relevant information
across multiple systems—examining past engagements, reading through notes logged, getting
up to speed on the latest news, and leveraging the most up-to-date sales materials and best
practices. Time spent on researching information to identify the best lead or opportunity is time
that could be spent engaging with the next valuable customer.
Sales acceleration aims to help inside sellers sell smarter. Building a strong pipeline, offering
context, and surfacing automated recommendations throughout a sales cadence, helps to
transform the sales process.
Dynamics 365 Assistant will offer just-in-time actionable insights to keep sellers on the right
path. Powered by sales cadence, these suggestions will help sellers to better align with
organizational best practices. Altogether, selling smarter means selling faster—empowering
sellers to achieve their sales potential.
Accelerating sales is relevant to everyone on the team:
• Inside sellers need a fast and easy way to prioritize their customer list via the intelligent
queue, so that they can reach out to the next best lead or opportunity. Having relevant sales
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information and customer context available at a glance helps make every communication
more successful.
• Managers need a comprehensive view to understand where the team stands in terms of
meeting their quota. They need to quickly identify who is waiting for assignments and who
needs assistance to sell faster.
• Sales enablement managers need a seamless way to promote sales cadence and to enforce
best practices. Using Sales Studio and Dynamics 365 Assistant, they can ensure selling across
the team is consistent and reflects business strategy.
Connect with customers across multiple channels
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Business value
Inside sellers are focused on high-velocity selling. This means they are always looking for ways
to save time, so they can focus on converting more leads and winning more opportunities faster.
With Sales Acceleration, our commitment to helping sellers save time goes a step further. Sellers
can communicate with contacts without leaving Dynamics 365 Sales, benefiting from integrated
communications across multiple channels by leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 Channel
Integration Framework.
Time saved on switching between apps or looking up contact information is time spent calling
the next customer.
Feature details
• Connect with customers easily: Benefit from multichannel communications, connecting
with customers via email or phone with an integrated dialer, without switching context.
• Compose emails effortlessly: Take advantage of email templates, aligned with sales
cadences, to communicate simply and consistently with customers.
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Email channel
Phone channel
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Enforce best practices with sales sequences
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Business value
Consistent experiences and clear communications are a critical aspect of achieving successful
outcomes. Best practices from sales enablement managers help to propagate and reinforce
winning selling strategies. Infusing suggestions and insights throughout the sales motion helps
to keep inside sellers on track, makes the most out of every customer interaction, and increases
the likelihood of successful outcomes.
Sales sequences help sales organizations develop and enforce winning strategies. Sales
enablement managers can create, monitor, and improve standard interaction strategies, defining
sequences of a sale that optimize lead conversion and closing of deals and inspire consistency
across the sales team.
With sequences, sellers receive in-the-moment guidance, guided toward the correct activity, on
time using an appropriate communication channel with the necessary content. Everyone on the
team adheres to organizational best practices, while sales enablement managers are
empowered to optimize sales practices for better outcomes through a frictionless cycle and can
easily distribute sales strategies.
Feature details
• Build sales sequences: Build sales sequences that reflect organizational best practices and
sales strategies to help inside sellers in the moment.
• Guide inside sellers in the moment: Offer guidance to direct sellers toward the next step
they need to take. Guidance includes recommending the most suitable channel to reach out
to the customer and the best time.
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Cadence designer manager view
Cadence designer edit capabilities
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Gain full context on every customer in one place
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
Every communication with a customer is an opportunity to win them over. As inside sellers run
through a long list of potential customers, they often struggle to gain a holistic view, including
history of communications, customer needs, and specific circumstances. This view is necessary
for crafting the right pitch most relevant to the customer and likely to achieve a positive
outcome.
To help inside sellers make the most out of every customer conversation, Sales Acceleration
brings together relevant context across multiple entities, including past activities, product,
account, relationship scores and more—all made available in a dedicated form. This at-a-glance
summary helps sellers make the most out of every communication, without switching context—
saving time, converting leads, and closing deals, faster.
Feature details
• Get all the information you need in a single place: Benefit from a multitab experience that
collects and surfaces customer information from related entities to help craft winning
messages for every communication.
• Receive historical context for every customer: View present and past activities via the
timeline, note, and additional data through integrated data across the system, all available
with internal tabs on the entity form.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
Work effectively with an intelligent queue
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
Inside sellers need to work efficiently to meet their daily quota. To do this, they spend significant
time exploring long lists of potential customers. With Sales Acceleration, inside sellers can trust
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that they are handling the lead or opportunity that is most likely to qualify or close successfully.
Immediate access to relevant information helps to make every communication more effective.
Sales Acceleration offers flexibility across multiple dimensions, tailoring the order of the
intelligent queue to meet immediate needs. Being able to filter, sort, or group by multiple
attributes quickly empowers inside sellers to reach relevant customers, applicable to a specific
need—that is, reach out to all customers from social media.
To ensure inside sellers never miss the next best customer, notifications are sent whenever a
new prospect enters the queue—because that prospect expressed the most recent interest in
your product or service.
Feature details
• Benefit from a prioritized list of customers: With a prioritized work queue, identify the
next best lead, customers likely to convert, and opportunities likely to close as won. The
intelligent queue surfaces a sorted list of assigned customers with associated next tasks due.
The queue is organized based on definitions made in Sales Studio. Default sorting is based
on a composite scoring, presenting the next best action based on organizational sales
cadences.
• Tailor the intelligent queue to meet specific needs: Sort, filter, or group by entity
attributes (main fields) to meet specific needs like reaching out to customers from a specific
source or geography, or reaching out to customers interested in a specific product offering.
• Receive online notification: Get notified whenever a new lead or opportunity enters the
intelligent queue or is reassigned to you, so nothing falls between the cracks.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Product Visualize 2020 release
wave 1
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Product Visualize, an augmented reality mobile application on iOS,
accelerates the sales process by helping buyers and sellers reach a shared understanding, faster.
Dynamics 365 Product Visualize was released to public preview in April 2019, and features deep
data and workflow integration with Dynamics 365 Sales. With the 2020 release wave 1, a new set
of capabilities will focus on enabling salespeople to conduct deeper and more information-rich
demonstrations of their products.
The expansion of the Spatial Notes (3D model annotations) system directly addresses pain
points heard from customers about the challenges they face as they try to convey information
about a product, like its capabilities, how it functions, and how to service it. This is particularly
true for companies that manufacture complex equipment with long sales cycles and increasing
levels of technical sophistication that their customers struggle to comprehend. Consistent with
the Spatial Notes data strategy introduced in public preview, all Spatial Notes are stored in
Common Data Service. This allows for augmented reality–assisted sales interactions to connect
downstream processes.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Product Visualize
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General availability
Attach a PDF file to a 3D model Users, automatically Apr 2020 Jun 2020
Attach a video to a 3D model Users, automatically Apr 2020 Jun 2020
Offline mode Users, automatically Apr 2020 Jun 2020
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Description of Enabled for column values:
• Users, automatically: These features include changes to the user experience for users and
are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• Users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured by
the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Attach a PDF file to a 3D model
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users, automatically Apr 2020 Jun 2020
Business value
Attaching PDF content to various points on a 3D model will give Dynamics 365 Product Visualize
customers much more flexibility to enrich the sales conversation. As an example, a large
consumer package goods brand might want to provide sales data to enable sellers to analyze
and determine their optimal product assortment. Customers can also link to a service manual,
brochure, or any other PDF resource that will enhance the sales conversation.
Feature details
Users will be able to attach PDF content to a specific point on the model (anchored), or attach it
generally around the model (unanchored). The PDF content will be rendered as 2D. It won't be
spatially rendered in the context of the 3D model. The PDF content will be stored in Common
Data Service.
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PDF notes
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Attach a video to a 3D model
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users, automatically Apr 2020 Jun 2020
Business value
Customers with complex products need to be able to visually demonstrate how their product
functions. Video is a highly requested and common media format. By watching a video in the
context of a 3D model, a prospective buyer can better understand the product or parts of the
product.
Feature details
A video—including its audio—attached to 3D model notes will play spatially around the model.
The video will rotate to always face the user as they walk around the model. The user can also
expand the video screen, which will expose the pause, rewind, and fast-forward controls.
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Video attached to a 3D model
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Offline mode
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users, automatically Apr 2020 Jun 2020
Feature details
Use Offline mode to save 3D models and associated notes to your device. This capability is
critically needed when users are in environments that have low connectivity or no connectivity at
all. With Offline mode:
• You can select which products you want to save to your device.
• You can manage downloaded content and delete locally saved products as needed.
• The 3D model and associated notes (images, text, videos) are saved and made available for
offline access.
• The locally saved data is stored in the Dynamics 365 Product Visualize app, not with your
local files.
• You can still sign in to the app in low- or no-connectivity environments to access the
downloaded content.
NOTE Notes made offline aren't saved or synced back to the cloud.
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Offline mode
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Service
Overview of Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2020 release
wave 1
Dynamics 365 Customer Service is an end-to-end service for customer support, spanning self
and assisted scenarios across multiple channels of customer engagement. It provides
comprehensive and efficient case routing and management for agents, and enables authoring
and consumption of knowledge management articles. For wave 1 of 2020, we are focused on
the following three areas:
• Agent productivity: Delivering improvements that help agents be more productive such as
improved knowledge article search, email authoring, and timeline enhancements.
• Omnichannel for Customer Service: Expanding the range of supported channels and agent
productivity tooling.
• Connected Customer Service: Linking IoT diagnostics, IoT device updates, and case
management to help organizations evolve a proactive and predictive service model.
The next sections offer details on the specific features being released across these areas.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Customer Service
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Customer Service
Customer Service empowers every organization to provide the best customer experiences and
outcomes with purpose-built tools that ensure thorough case management and efficient issue
resolution.
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Connected Customer Service
(IoT + Customer Service)
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Agent productivity
enhancements to knowledge
capabilities
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Configurable case resolution
page
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Customer Service app
available for users with Team
Member license
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Customer Service Hub app is
now available by default
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhancements in case routing
rules
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhancements in service level
agreements
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhancements in the queue
page
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Familiar, modern email
experience for agents
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
License enforcement – users
with new Team Member
licenses
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
New work hour calendar in
Service Scheduling
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Rich text notes and keyword
search in the timeline
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Support for Site entity in the
Unified Interface
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Automatically create and
update records
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Feb 1, 2020 Jun 2020
Omnichannel for Customer Service
Omnichannel for Customer Service offers a suite of capabilities that extend the power of
Dynamics 365 Customer Service to enable organizations to instantly connect and engage with
their customers across digital messaging channels.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Digital messaging support for
Microsoft Teams
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 - -Digital messaging support for
WhatsApp through Twilio
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 - -Agent macro enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Agent quick reply
categorization
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Conversation message and
message sentiment shift
notification
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Desktop notifications for
incoming conversations
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Digital messaging support for
LINE
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Digital messaging support for
SMS through Twilio
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Digital messaging support for
Twitter
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Digital messaging support for
WeChat
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Elevate live chat conversations
to a voice/video call
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Omnichannel supervisor
experience enhancements
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Routing and work distribution
enhancements
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Co-browse capabilities
through third-party providers
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jan 31,
2020
- Apr 2020
Remote assistance capabilities
through third party
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jan 31,
2020
- Apr 2020
* Some features are available for you to opt-in as part of early access on February 3, 2020,
including all mandatory changes that impact end users. Learn more about early access.
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
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• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Customer Service
Overview
Customer Service provides comprehensive and efficient case routing and management for
agents with productivity tooling as well as authoring and consumption of knowledge
management articles, all designed to help streamline customer issue resolution, consistent with
service level agreements.
Connected Customer Service (IoT + Customer Service)
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Leveraging Connected Customer Service enables businesses to actively look for issues with
customers' devices through IoT signals and proactively resolve those issues, simultaneously
increasing customer satisfaction and reducing assisted support service cos ts.
Feature details
Connected Customer Service helps organizations evolve a proactive and predictive service
model by fully integrating IoT diagnostics, IoT device updates, and case management. Key
capabilities in this release include:
• Convert IoT Alert to a support case.
• View all devices registered to the customer.
• View all IoT Alerts from devices registered to the customer.
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• Send command to the customer’s device.
• View IoT activity in the case timeline.
See also
Connected Customer Service (docs)
Agent productivity enhancements to knowledge capabilities
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
The ability to quickly find and share knowledge articles is a key asset that agents can use to help
customers resolve questions and issues. By referring customers to knowledge articles that
address common issues, agents can improve their efficiency and focus on resolving more
complex or unique issues.
Feature details
In this release, we're enhancing agent access to and usability of knowledge articles so that
agents can:
• Use an improved layout of knowledge search results to simplify scanning, reading, and
action.
• Review knowledge articles in a separate, full screen.
• Search the knowledge base outside the context of a customer case. (Knowledge search is
now available in the Customer Service Hub app navigation for anytime access.)
• Use a modern toolbar with more font choices and the ability to cut and paste formatted
content from Office documents such as Word and Excel while maintaining formatting.
Meanwhile, use the enhanced inline table capabilities that allow quick tables and adding or
deleting rows and columns.
See also
Knowledge Base Search control (docs)
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Configurable case resolution page
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
When resolving a case, businesses often need to capture additional details that help characterize
the case and resolution approach taken, helping drive trend reports and service analytics. By
supporting customization of the Case Resolution dialog box, Dynamics 365 Customer Service
helps managers identify recurring issues and proven resolution patterns to inform other incident
responses.
Feature details
With this release, administrators can:
• Add fields such as resolution type in the form/dialog box for case resolution.
• Introduce new client-side business validations or remove existing ones.
• Customize the case resolution entity (generally available on April 1, 2020).
• Choose between the non-customizable modal dialog experience (default setting) and the
customizable form experience.
See also
Modify Case Resolution Dialog (docs)
Customer Service app available for users with Team Member license
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Employees with the entry-level Team Member license can now address self-service support
scenarios using a Dynamics 365 Customer Service app.
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Feature details
Customer Service Team Member is a new app module that will be available to users with the
Dynamics 365 Team Member license. In the customer service context, this app module enables
the following limited set of use cases provided by the Team Member license for employee selfservice:
• Create cases.
• Read and update the cases that they created.
• Search and view knowledge articles.
See also
Customer Service Team Member app (docs)
Customer Service Hub app is now available by default
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses will benefit from the latest Dynamics 365 Unified Interface app capabilities by
moving to the Customer Service Hub, Unified Interface app. This feature makes it easier for
customers to find and use the Unified Interface, Customer Service Hub app.
Feature details
As previously announced, customers will need to migrate to the Unified Interface experience by
October 1, 2020. The Customer Service Hub solution that is built on the Unified Interface
framework will be automatically installed in all the environments in this release. Existing
customers will have access to the Customer Service Hub app, and users with the Customer
service app access security role will be able to view and use the app.
See also
Availability of Customer Service Hub (docs)
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Enhancements in case routing rules
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Routing cases to the right queue, user, or team as quickly as possible ensures customers get
service quickly and without having to transfer between agents.
Feature details
Case routing rules help trigger automatic or manual routing of cases to the right support
resources. This release provides a new experience built on the Unified Interface that enables
easy configuration of routing rules and brings feature parity with the legacy web client.
See also
Routing rule set (docs)
Enhancements in service level agreements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses must ensure that they deliver the right level of support to which their customers are
entitled. Service level agreements (SLAs) help administrators define a contractually agreed-on
target level and key performance indicators (KPIs) that track the success and failure of SLA
metrics.
Feature details
In this release, a new SLA administration experience has been enabled on the Unified Interface
that brings feature parity with the legacy web client. Administrators can now leverage the
various out-of-the-box actions available with Microsoft Power Automate to easily configure
actions, such as success, failure, and warning actions for SLAs. For example, the administrator
can post a Microsoft Teams message to an agent when an SLA is violated.
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NOTE Even though the Service Level Agreement Unified Client experience is enabled via a
separate package, admins would need to configure the feature, and it will not automatically
impact the end user.
See also
Configure SLAs in Customer Service Hub (docs)
Enhancements in the queue page
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Agents are constantly navigating between queue grids and record forms and that results in too
many click actions and context switching. With the enhancements made to the queue page,
agents can now save time with fewer click actions and resolve customer issues more quickly.
Feature details
In this release, the user experience has been enhanced for agents to manage their queues. The
agents can now select an item in the queue and view its details on the same page without
having to switch contexts. They can also go through the list of items in the queue without the
need to navigate away from the page.
See also
Navigate through records and pages (docs)
Familiar, modern email experience for agents
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Email is a critical communication channel that support agents use to communicate with
customers. A robust, modern email experience ensures agents can quickly and easily create
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high-quality emails through templates and with rich formatting capabilities to further the best
customer service experience possible.
Feature details
Agents spend a significant amount of time using email to communicate with customers. Simple
and intuitive email experiences help improve agent productivity and quality of service to
customers. In this release, we are bringing the following modern email capabilities to the agent
experience:
• Author emails using a complete rich text experience, including the ability to send, receive,
and manage images inline.
• Use a modern toolbar and have the ability to cut and paste formatted content from Office
documents such as Word and Excel, while maintaining formatting.
• Preview email templates prior to applying them to email.
• Compose email in a pop-up, non-blocking window, with the ability to write an email with
context of the current record, navigate between records, and have multiple active draft
emails open simultaneously.
See also
View and create email (docs)
License enforcement – users with new Team Member licenses
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Helps customers to be aligned with the Team Member license-based access mentioned in the
licensing guide.
Feature details
For Team Member licenses purchased during or after October 2018, the license-based access
feature will restrict users to the following set of designated app modules:
• Customer Service Team Member
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• Sales Team Member
• Project Resource Hub
During the early access phase, users with the Team Member licenses will be able to use the
designated app modules alongside all existing apps. After the licenses are enforced (starting
April 1, 2020), restricted apps, such as Customer Service Hub, Sales Hub, and custom apps, will
not be accessible to users with the Team Member licenses. Customers can also proactively
preview full enforcement before general availability. We recommend that the Team Member
scenarios be tested and customizations migrated to the designated app modules, as needed.
See also
Customer Service Team Member app (docs)
New work hour calendar in Service Scheduling
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Scheduling resources quickly and accurately is a key part of optimizing service for a business.
This enhanced user experience makes scheduling easier and introduces flexibility to customize
the experience for how the business operates to enhance scheduling efficiency.
Feature details
Administrators currently navigate several screens to access a resource's calendar and update
work hours and time off. With this release, we are delivering a new experience using an
accessible Power Control Framework (PCF) calendar control in the Unified Interface.
Organizations will have flexibility to design new experiences (for example, using canvas apps)
that modify resources' working hours from outside entity forms and views.
See also
Create customer service schedule and define the work hours (docs)
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Rich text notes and keyword search in the timeline
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
The timeline control provides an easy and immersive experience to view a customer’s history
across cases, accounts, or contacts. This experience gives agents a better understanding of the
customer’s history, which helps them deliver more personalized service in an efficient and
effective manner.
Feature details
Enhancements to the Dynamics 365 timeline control include:
• Create rich text notes that provide detail about the case and enable formatting for emphasis
and readability.
• Perform keyword search filter to quickly display matching records.
• Identify closed or completed activities visually.
• Show only User or System records with the additional filter.
See also
Timeline (docs)
Support for Site entity in the Unified Interface
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
As businesses migrate to the new Unified Interface, they require continuity of access to
administrative configurations and settings.
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Feature details
To provide business continuity during transition to the Unified Interface, this release delivers
support for administrator configuration and interaction with the Site entity used to define
customer service locations.
See also
Understand Site (docs)
Automatically create and update records
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Feb 1, 2020 Jun 2020
Business value
Businesses can migrate to the latest Dynamics 365 applications and continue to take advantage
of automatic creation of case records based on emails submitted by customers. Administrators
can also use this feature to create leads or any other entity record from a set of available
activities.
Feature details
This feature enables a new record creation administration experience on the Unified Interface
and brings feature parity with the legacy web client. The new experience uses Microsoft Power
Automate and provides an easy-to-use interface to create or update conditions and actions.
See also
Automatically create or update records in Customer Service Hub (docs)
Omnichannel for Customer Service
Overview
Omnichannel for Customer Service provides a modern, customizable, high-productivity app that
allows agents to engage with customers across different channels. This app offers contextual
customer identification, real-time notification, integrated communication, and agent
productivity tools like knowledge base (KB) integration, search, and case creation to ensure
agents are effective.
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Supervisors get real-time and historical visibility and insights into the operational efficiency of
agents and the utilization across various channels.
The enterprise-grade routing and work distribution engine allows customers to configure agent
presence, availability, and routing rules, thus ensuring agents are working on the most relevant
engagements.
Digital messaging support for Microsoft Teams
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
Businesses that already use Microsoft Teams for internal business collaboration can now use it
to facilitate internal support delivery to employees. This may reduce the number of tools and
infrastructure a business has to manage for internal business operations and simpli fy the user
experience, depending on the solutions they already use.
Feature details
As organizations continue to adopt Microsoft Teams for internal team collaboration and
business operations, there is an increasing desire to allow their employees to obtain internal
support through Teams. This feature allows organizations to connect their employees with
internal support personnel using Omnichannel for Customer Service by bringing in Microsoft
Teams as an engagement channel for support of internal functions like tech support, human
resources, and finance.
• Administrators can configure the Microsoft Teams channel in the Omnichannel
Administration app.
• Employees can contact the business through Microsoft Teams and seek support in an
asynchronous nature.
• Agents can use the same unified, contextual, and productive Omnichannel for Customer
Service app interface to engage with customers and resolve their issues.
• Supervisors and managers can access the rich reports to run the support center efficiently
and effectively.
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Digital messaging support for WhatsApp through Twilio
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
Businesses can offer expanded channel choice to customers by offering WhatsApp messaging as
a support channel to service customers who prefer to communicate through WhatsApp.
Feature details
Social messaging platforms such as WhatsApp give businesses an opportunity to engage with
customers in their own context to provide them with a seamless and personalized customer
service experience. WhatsApp is a channel introduced in this release of Omnichannel for
Customer Service. It has the following capabilities:
• Administrators can configure the WhatsApp channel in the Omnichannel Administration
app.
• Customers can reach out to the business through WhatsApp and seek support in an
asynchronous nature.
• Agents can use the same unified, contextual, and productive Omnichannel for Customer
Service app interface to engage with customers and resolve their issues.
• Supervisors and managers can access rich reports to run the support center efficiently and
effectively.
Agent macro enhancements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Macros enhance agent productivity by automating a series of common and repetitive tasks,
helping to ensure consistency and quality of these tasks across large teams. This enhancement
to macros enables more complex logic to be applied to the automation process to reduce the
burden on agents, increase the consistency of optimal service experiences, and decrease the
amount of time taken to help customers.
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Feature details
This feature allows administrators to create decision branches in macros to add logical
conditions for evaluating the context variables as macro steps. Subsequently, when users run the
macros, the logical conditions will be evaluated and appropriate steps that are defined in the
macros will be run. Some example conditions are as follows:
• If a conversation has a case attached, open the existing case form; otherwise, open a new
case form.
• If the priority of a customer is high, use the "high-priority email template"; otherwise, use the
"normal acknowledgement template".
Agent quick reply categorization
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
In their daily conversations with customers, agents need to repeat some common tasks, such as
use welcome scripts and greetings, and ask questions. This feature enables administrators to
configure and group the common elements as “Quick Replies” and empowers the agents to
leverage them as part of their conversations, reducing the amount of time spent typing
repetitive messages.
Feature details
In this release, the enhancements to Quick Replies allow administrators to classify and tag Quick
Replies into categories to enable quick discovery of an appropriate reply, in addition to the
existing keyword search. The categorization capability can also be leveraged to group quick
replies into logical chunks that represent key conversational states for agents. These logical
chunks help agents select appropriate messages corresponding to the problems.
Conversation message and message sentiment shift notification
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
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Business value
Customers can be highly emotional in their engagement with support when the severity and
impact of the issue is high. Understanding customer sentiment and the rapid shifts that might
occur during the support engagement enables service delivery to quickly tune messaging to
improve customer sentiment and provide the best support.
Feature details
This feature allows administrators to define thresholds for sentiment shift from positive to
negative so that agents and supervisors get timely alerts to indicate sentiment shift and allows
them to take actions.
This feature allows the following:
• Set up alerts and display them to agents and supervisors when a conversation is drifting
toward a negative sentiment.
• Configure notifications for the sentiment drifts.
• Indicate the conversational sentiment shift appropriately in the session tab so that an agent
(who is working on multiple conversations) is drawn toward the conversation that is trending
low on sentiment and must be addressed with immediate remedial steps.
Desktop notifications for incoming conversations
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
The Omnichannel desktop notifications allow agents to quickly respond to customers and not
miss the in-app notifications when they are using other applications and the Omnichannel
application is running in the background.
Feature details
When enabled by the administrator, this feature allows agents to freely work across multiple
applications on their desktop without missing out on incoming conversations. The Omnichannel
notifications display as operating system-level notifications when the Omnichannel app is out of
focus, in the background, or minimized.
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Digital messaging support for LINE
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses can offer expanded channel choice to customers by offering LINE messaging as a
support channel to service customers who prefer to communicate through LINE.
Feature details
Social messaging platforms such as LINE give businesses an opportunity to engage with
customers in their own context to provide them with a seamless and personalized customer
service experience. LINE is a channel introduced in this release of Omnichannel for Customer
Service. It has the following capabilities:
• Administrators can configure the LINE channel in the Omnichannel Administration app.
• Customers can contact the business through LINE and seek support in an asynchronous
nature.
• Agents can use the same unified, contextual, and productive Omnichannel for Customer
Service app interface to engage with customers and resolve their issues.
• Supervisors and managers can access the rich reports to run the support center efficiently
and effectively.
Digital messaging support for SMS through Twilio
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses can offer expanded channel choice to customers with text messaging as a support
channel to service customers who prefer to communicate through SMS.
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Feature details
The SMS channel is a useful tool for organizations to interact with their customers in a timely
manner and increase customer satisfaction, improve agent productivity, and reduce support
costs. Customers will need an SMS subscription with Twilio to leverage the following capabilities:
• Administrators can configure the SMS channel in the Omnichannel Administration app
using Twilio as a provider.
• Customers can reach out to the business through SMS and seek support in an asynchronous
nature.
• Agents can use the same unified, contextual, and productive Omnichannel for Customer
Service app interface to engage with customers and resolve their issues.
• Supervisors and managers can access rich reports to run the support center efficiently and
effectively.
Digital messaging support for Twitter
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses can offer an expanded channel choice to customers by offering Twitter messaging as
a support channel for those customers who prefer to communicate that way.
Feature details
Social messaging platforms such as Twitter give businesses an opportunity to engage with the
customers in their own context to provide them with a seamless and personalized customer
service experience. Twitter Direct Message is a channel introduced in this release of
Omnichannel for Customer Service. It has the following capabilities:
• Administrators can configure the Twitter Direct Message channel in the Omnichannel
Administration app.
• Customers can reach out to the business through Twitter and seek support in an
asynchronous nature.
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• Agents can use the same unified, contextual, and productive Omnichannel for Customer
Service app interface to engage with customers and resolve their issues.
• Supervisors and managers can access rich reports to run the support center efficiently and
effectively.
Digital messaging support for WeChat
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses can offer an expanded channel choice to customers by offering WeChat messaging
as a support channel to service customers who prefer to communicate through WeChat.
Feature details
Social messaging platforms such as WeChat give businesses an opportunity to engage with the
customers in their own context to provide them with a seamless and personalized customer
service experience. WeChat is a channel introduced in this release of Omnichannel for Customer
Service. It has the following capabilities:
• Administrators can configure the WeChat channel in the Omnichannel Administration app.
• Customers can reach out to the business through WeChat and seek support in an
asynchronous nature.
• Agents can use the same unified, contextual, and productive Omnichannel for Customer
Service app interface to engage with customers and resolve their issues.
• Supervisors and managers can access the rich reports to run the support center efficiently
and effectively.
Elevate live chat conversations to a voice/video call
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
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Business value
Businesses can offer expanded channel choice to customers by offering the ability to elevate a
conversation from live chat to a voice/video call to provide expediency is addressing complex
issues.
Feature details
This feature allows organizations to elevate live chats to include voice/video communication.
Voice conversations can be more efficient for resolving complex customer issues. Adding video
creates a more personal connection with your customer and allows for quick exchanges of visual
information.
The feature enables:
• Administrators to configure chats to enable the elevation to voice and video.
• Agents to elevate a text chat to a voice or video conversation with their customers.
• Agents and customers to control their voice or video conversation using common controls
like camera on/off, mute/unmute, and end call.
Omnichannel supervisor experience enhancements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses need to monitor and manage the efficiency levels of agents in their ongoing
conversations with customers. The enhanced supervisor experience provides supervisors with
timely insights and metrics on the efficiency of the service delivery of agents and opportunities
to help agents deliver better support to customers.
Feature details
In this enhancement to the supervisor experience in Omnichannel for Customer Service,
supervisors can:
• Drill down to specific agents and look at their operational metrics.
• Manage agent availability remotely.
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Routing and work distribution enhancements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Manual intervention in automated systems can be necessary when the volume of support issues
fluctuates unexpectedly. The configuration of routing rules based on extended attributes and
manual selection of additional work are important capabilities for achieving operational
efficiency in a push-based work distribution model.
Feature details
The following capabilities are added to routing and work distribution in Omnichannel for
Dynamics 365 Customer Service:
• Agents and supervisors can pick cases manually, thereby allowing for self-regulation and
decompression of the backlog in environments that are configured for automated push
workstreams.
• Agents can pick urgent work items even when their capacity is full.
• Agents can pick work items without having to wait for the system to automatically assign.
• Organizations can define rules based on related level 1 attributes when configuring skill
attachment or other routing rules.
Co-browse capabilities through third-party providers
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jan 31, 2020
- Apr 2020
Business value
Agents can quickly and accurately support customers when customers can co-browse on their
device with the agent and show the issue they are having. This feature enables integration
capabilities to add existing third-party, co-browse services into Omnichannel for Customer
Service.
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Feature details
The ability for the agents to co-browse with customers is critical in many customer support
scenarios. Agents can better help customers when customers can show agents what's happening
on their device. With this release, we are providing APIs and related artifacts that allow partners
to integrate existing third-party, co-browse solutions with the Omnichannel for Customer
Service Chat channel.
See also
Omnichannel for Customer Service Guide (docs)
Remote assistance capabilities through third party
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jan 31, 2020
- Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses can offer customized and expedient support to customers by allowing agents to
access the customer's machine remotely to address their issues.
Feature details
The ability for agents to remotely access the desktop with customers is critical in many customer
support scenarios. Agents can better help customers when they can view the customer's device
to see what's happening, as well as access the device remotely to address the issue. We are
providing APIs and related artifacts that allow partners to integrate an existing third-party
remote assistance solution with Omnichannel for Customer Service.
See also
Omnichannel Channel for Customer Service Guide (docs)
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights 2020
release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides an actionable view into critical performance
metrics, operational data, and emerging trends by using industry-leading AI. These insights
empower customer service managers to make better decisions to improve customer satisfaction
and operational efficiency with confidence.
Thanks to the power of AI, machine learning, and business intelligence (BI), you can easily get a
clear view into your contact center on what's happening, why it's happening, and what could
happen, in order to make decisions with confidence. The AI model used by Customer Service
Insights proactively learns from users' gestures and optimizes itself over time. Best of all, the AI
capabilities are included out of the box and don't require any AI expertise to use.
In the 2020 release wave 1 updates, you'll see a number of new capabilities in Customer Service
Insights. These features include new views across the dashboards to help customer service
managers focus on key support areas that need attention. These highlights will also be included
directly in Dynamics 365 Customer Service, so you can get insights in context. Other new
capabilities will help you take better action on the insights, including richer integration with
Power Virtual Agents and access to the insights data for further analytics.
Please review the "what's new" page regularly for the latest updates. Additional feature requests
can be added in the Customer Service Insights ideas page.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Data access for custom analysis
and reporting
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020 -
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Highlighting topics as
automation candidates for
Power Virtual Agents
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
Enable robust customer service
insights in the Customer Service
Hub
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020
Improve topic generation by
excluding unnecessary phrases
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Jun 2020
Focused insights highlight
relevant information
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Data access for custom analysis and reporting
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Business value
Data provides endless possibilities to surface insights and opportunities to optimize the
customer support experience. Connecting to Customer Service Insights data outside of the
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application allows businesses to meet their custom reporting needs, helping to deliver better
service and customer satisfaction.
Feature details
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides dashboards showing key business metrics, in
addition to derived and calculated insights like issue topics and impact scores. While the out-ofthe-box solutions have a number of benefits, there isn't a way to deeply customize the reports
or bring in data from other sources.
With this release, users will be able to connect to the data derived in Customer Service Insights
through a basic web request, allowing that data to be used in custom reports or analytical
solutions.
See also
Export data from Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights (docs)
Highlighting topics as automation candidates for Power Virtual Agents
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Business value
Businesses will now find it easier to identify support topics that might best be handled by virtual
agents to optimize self-service opportunities for customers.
Feature details
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights identifies key topics and support issues customers are
facing. With the general availability release of Power Virtual Agents, users can select topics to be
automatically imported as bot topics in Power Virtual Agents.
With 2020 release wave 1, the integration is further improved with suggestions for the best
topics to automate based on a number of factors related to the topic, such as its overall impact
and the channels where customers typically engage. These suggestions will appear on the home
page of Customer Service Insights as a separate card, with links to the details for each topic.
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Enable robust customer service insights in the Customer Service Hub app
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -Business value
Agents and managers using the Customer Service Hub app will now have richer analytics and
insights to help them deliver better customer service and improve customer satisfaction.
Feature details
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides many key analytics and insights about your
customer service data.
With this release, these insights will now be embedded within the Dynamics 365 Customer
Service app, providing rich insights to users in the familiar context of the Customer Service Hub
app.
Improve topic generation by excluding unnecessary phrases
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Business value
Analyzing support topic clusters helps businesses optimize support delivery and improve
customer experience, but can be time-consuming. This feature helps organizations improve the
quality of AI-driven clustering by identifying phrases, such as a company name, that can skew
the clustering and should be excluded.
Feature details
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights automatically parses support case data and groups
semantically similar cases into autogenerated topics by using natural language understanding.
Knowing which are the top-trending topics allows managers to optimize their support and
provide feedback to core product teams. However, common phrases like the company or
product name can dilute the strength of the topic-clustering algorithm, making the support
topic clusters less useful. Today, users can specify delimiters that are used as tags (among
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others) within the case title that can be ignored to help alleviate this problem, but there's no
way to ignore non-delimited text.
With this release, users will be able to specify additional keywords or phrases (such as the
company name or other common, irrelevant terms) that should be ignored when the text is
parsed, resulting in more accurate and meaningful topic generation.
Focused insights highlight relevant information
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
With data as a commodity in technology today, businesses need ongoing help deciphering all
the data they're gathering. This update distills the data and highlights insights to help managers
focus on specific areas for improvement and take action quickly.
Feature details
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides five out-of-the-box dashboards showing key
topics and support issues that customers are facing, along with more than 100 different business
metrics. Although the breadth of information ensures that users can view what they need, they
can also benefit from additional guidance on how to read the data and take action.
With this update, a new landing page in each workspace will highlight the key insights in that
organization. This will distill the large amount of information, helping customer service
managers understand which issues are having the most impact and take action quickly.
See also
Discover key insights from your customer service data (docs)
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Field Service 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Field Service is an end-to-end solution for on-site service that empowers
organizations to move from being reactive to providing proactive or predictive field service, and
to embrace new business models such as outcome-based service or “anything-as-a-service.”
For the 2020 release wave 1, we are focused on the following areas:
• New feature capabilities including time entries and inspections.
• Previewing AI-based suggestions for IoT alerts and incident types.
• Ongoing enhancements to resource scheduling and optimization capabilities.
• Continued investment in proactive service with Azure IoT.
• Deeper alignment with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management for supply chain
management and asset management.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Field Service
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Insights
Feature Enabled for Public preview Early access* General
availability
Incident type AI-based
suggestions
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 -IoT alert AI-based
suggestions
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 - -IoT alert measures and
service history
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020
- Jun 2020
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Proactive service delivery
Feature Enabled for Public preview Early access* General
availability
Leveraging Power
Automate flows
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 -Combined asset
capabilities across
Dynamics 365 Supply
Chain Management and
Field Service
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Integration with
Dynamics 365 Supply
Chain Management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Intune support for Field
Service Mobile
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Scheduling
Feature Enabled for Public preview Early access* General
availability
Next generation schedule
board experience
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 -Enhanced work hours
calendar for resources
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Requirement dependency
for efficient workflow
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Resource scheduling
dashboard
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Technician success
Feature Enabled for Public preview Early access* General
availability
Field Service inspections End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 -Integrated technician
time tracking
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Technician time-capture
precision
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
* Some features are available for you to opt-in as part of early access on February 3, 2020,
including all mandatory changes that impact end users. Learn more about early access.
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Insights
Incident type AI-based suggestions
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -
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Business value
Incident types provide a means to standardize service work, including the services to be
performed and the parts required. Improving incident types to more accurately reflect actual
work performed allows organizations to better plan their parts availability and technician
scheduling, leading to better outcomes like first-time fix rate.
Feature details
Incident type suggestion analyzes an organization's completed work orders to make
improvements in accuracy of incident types. The feature provides suggestions based on
historical data to improve incident types, suggesting where records may be improved by
merging other incident types, or by adding existing products or services. Improved incident type
accuracy will allow higher first-time fix rates, inventory planning, and less time that a technician
needs to spend on their device with fewer clicks to accurately capture work details.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
IoT alert AI-based suggestions
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
Businesses continue to leverage IoT capabilities to further delivery of proactive service to
customers. Understanding and taking quick action on IoT alerts improves service delivery. This
feature helps businesses assess the importance of alerts and when to take actio n to improve
proactive service delivery.
Feature details
As IoT device alerts are received, it helps to have smart suggestions about how to treat the alert,
like suggesting priority or incident type. New IoT alert suggestions add AI-based suggestions for
the priority and incident type from the alert, based on past service history and actions. For
example, an alert suggestion might show that a temperature-based alert is a high priority, and
needs an incident type for recalibrating the equipment.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
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IoT alert measures and service history
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020
- Jun 2020
Business value
IoT alerts help businesses to provide more proactive service. With improved IoT alerting by
including device measures such as temperature or vibration and the service history, it's easier
and faster to take service action.
Feature details
In order for IoT alerts to be actionable, additional context is helpful to determine what to do
with the alert. With IoT alert measures and service history, we're building on the previous
preview by enhancing the time series experience and also adding a summary of the measures
for the alert. For example, you can see the temperature and vibration reading history from a
piece of equipment overlaid with past work orders.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Visualizing device readings (docs)
Proactive service delivery
Leveraging Power Automate flows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
With tight integration between Power Automate and Field Service, businesses can more easily
and quickly use flows to improve process automation.
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Feature details
Existing workflows such as agreement process maintenance are being migrated to use Power
Automate flows with the added benefit of solving for scenarios such as change of record
ownership. Flows are designed to allow change of ownership while avoiding service disruption
for customers.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
Combined asset capabilities across Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and
Field Service
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Business value
Many customers need to model, track, and service valuable assets. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain
Management has added rich enterprise asset management capabilities, which are now aligned
with the comprehensive asset service capabilities in Dynamics 365 Field Service.
Feature details
This feature aligns the asset entity models between Field Service and Supply Chain Management
to enable technicians to complete asset management-related tasks while using Field Service.
Leveraging the Common Data Model and Common Data Service, these asset management
capabilities have now been brought together to support a variety of asset-centric scenarios.
Aligning the customer asset entity across both Field Service and Supply Chain Management's
Asset Management solution helps in unlocking the full capability of Field Service scenarios for
Asset Management customers and the capabilities of Asset Management for Field Service
customers. This supports the critical asset lifecycle that begins in manufacturing, continues
through installation, maintenance, and repair, and ends in retirement.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Integrate Dynamics 365 Field Service and Supply Chain Management (docs)
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Integration with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Business value
Customers often need support for both supply chain management and field service scenarios as
part of their Dynamics 365 deployment. This feature enhances Field Service with Supply Chain
Management features to make it faster and easier for technicians to complete service tasks while
using Field Service.
Feature details
This feature provides integration between Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and
Dynamics 365 Field Service for warehouse, payment type, and shipment method. It leverages the
Common Data Model and Common Data Service.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Integrate Dynamics 365 Field Service and Supply Chain Management (docs)
Intune support for Field Service Mobile
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020
- Apr 2020
Business value
Businesses can take advantage of the power of Microsoft Intune to manage the Field Service
Mobile app.
Feature details
Security and data protection are important for businesses, especially when working with
technical employees deployed in the field. Intune brings this layer of centrally managed control
to devices, including corporate-managed devices and bring-your-own-device scenarios. With
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Intune, administrators can roll out the Field Service Mobile application to their iOS and Android
field technicians via standard Intune infrastructure and controls.
This feature enables the Field Service Mobile app as a first-party application within the Intune
administration experience. By enabling Intune support, businesses can take advantage of all
Intune features including deployment, configuration, security, and updates.
With an Intune-enabled Field Service Mobile app, IT administrators can:
• Add and assign your Field Service Mobile app to user groups and devices, including users in
specific groups, devices in specific groups, and more.
• Configure the Field Service Mobile app to start or run with specific settings enabled and
update your existing app when already on the device.
• See reports and track app usage.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Manage Field Service Mobile with Microsoft Intune (docs)
Scheduling
Next generation schedule board experience
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -Business value
The reimagined schedule board experience makes it faster and easier for dispatchers to manage
scheduling and better ensure effective use of valuable resources.
Feature details
The schedule board is a powerful tool that provides centralized scheduling capabilities for
dispatchers to schedule technicians. It is also used by other workstreams to plan work for
various types of resources, such as sales reps and engineers. There is investment in the schedule
board in every wave across critical tenets, including performance, scale, security, and user
experience.
This is a completely new version of the schedule board, enhancing both the user experience and
performance on the hourly view. The time it takes to create bookings, along with the initial
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schedule board load time, is measurably improved. The intraday scheduling experience is also
simplified.
The 2020 release wave 1 preview will support drag-and-drop scheduling scenarios for individual
requirements in the hourly view of the schedule board. It will be followed by regular updates
with additional functionality throughout wave 1.
Next generation schedule board experience
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
A new solution will be installed for the new schedule board experience
Enhanced work hours calendar for resources
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Managing resource availability is a key factor in the efficiency of a business's service operation.
This enhancement improves the user experience, making it easier to manage work hours and
time off.
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Feature details
Resource managers currently set resources' calendars, establishing work hours and time off. This
is a new and simplified experience for maintaining working hours. The experience is accessible
and consistent with Unified Interface experiences. Additionally, the calendar control will be a
Power Apps component framework control, meaning that partners and customers can enable
scenarios to modify resources' working hours from outside entity forms and views, like with a
canvas app.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Add work hours (docs)
Requirement dependency for efficient workflow
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Sometimes it's necessary to sequence work in order to make sure that it's done in the correct
order. For example, a physical installation must occur before electrical connection. Businesses
can optimize operations workflows by ensuring dependent tasks are done in order. This feature
allows organizations to complete work in a specific order.
Feature details
This feature enables the configuration of requirement dependencies to ensure technicians follow
the optimal workflow and achieve the most efficient service operation. Requirement
dependencies allow customers to schedule requirements in a specific order by relating them
through a predecessor and successor dependency relationship. For example, a technician might
need to pick up a unique part from the warehouse and then perform work at the customer's site.
Critical jobs that rely on a series of tasks dependent on one another can now be linked together
as predecessors and successors and booked through the resource scheduling optimizer.
In 2020 release wave 1, this feature will only be supported by resource scheduling optimization
with the ability to view these bookings on the schedule board. Also these dependencies will
work only for single-resource, single-day scenarios.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
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See also
Schedule in sequence with requirement dependencies (docs)
Resource scheduling dashboard
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
In order for service managers and dispatchers to ensure they are using their resources
effectively, they need to see the right metrics and measures. This new dashboard will provide
out-of-the-box resource scheduling metrics and measures.
Feature details
This dashboard enables a field service manager or dispatcher to use the Resource utilization
report to monitor resource utilization, bookings, and truck roll KPI. They can also unpack
territory insights such as fulfilling requirements with available resources, measure operation
performance, and understand how resources are using their time and how each resource is
performing over time compared to other groups.
It helps a resource scheduling optimization admin/dispatcher to do an analytical recap of each
optimization request such as number of requirements, number of bookings, allocated hours, and
least allocated resource.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Resource scheduling and optimization analytics dashboard (docs)
Technician success
Field Service inspections
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - -
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Business value
In many cases, field service technicians need to capture a set of answers to questions as part of
offering service. For instance, a technician might need to conduct safety checks before servicing
a piece of equipment, or perhaps need to inspect pressure levels or remaining liquid in a
machine. In other cases, technicians might need to perform an inspection after the work is
complete, or the inspection itself might constitute the entire work order.
Feature details
Field Service now includes the capability to define and capture inspections. It enables customers
to:
• Create an inspection through a designer experience.
• Associate an inspection with a work order.
• Complete an inspection via a mobile experience.
• Capture the inspection results for analysis or further action.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
Integrated technician time tracking
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Capturing time in an easily viewable and editable format within Dynamics 365 Field Service is
needed by many Field Service organizations to accurately record cost and revenue. Customers
can now track technician time in Field Service.
Feature details
Field Service time entry aligns with Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation to capture time
entries into the same entity that Project Service Automation has used for consistent capture,
regardless of whether your organization uses Field Service, Project Service Automation, or both.
Customers will not be required to install Project Service Automation simply to capture time
entries within Field Service.
Field Service will support:
• Automatic time capture for work orders based on booking timestamps.
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• Manual time capture.
• Custom time capture mechanisms unique to specific business processes or needs.
This feature enables you to capture time actuals that capture costs from approved time entries,
enabling organizations to drive more accurate accounting practices and profit-loss calculations.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
See also
Time entries for Dynamics 365 Field Service (docs)
Technician time-capture precision
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Dynamics 365 Field Service has supported capture of booking timestamps when the underlying
Field Service states are changed. However, many customers need to capture timestamps at the
more granular frequency of the change of booking status. They use this to drive increased
accuracy of costing, better understanding of where time goes on each booking and work order,
or other extension scenarios. This is now supported via configuration in Field Service.
Feature details
Field Service has introduced this configuration setting to simplify implementations for Field
Service customers and to allow customers the flexibility of deciding the level of detail they wish
to capture when performing work.
This includes:
• Define in Field Service settings the frequency at which timestamps will be captured for each
booking.
• Enabling the system to respect that setting regardless of whether the booking status change
occurs on the mobile device or via a web browser.
• Capturing appropriate details on the relevant timestamps.
• When a time entry is created from a timestamp, ensure that the time entry holds the right
level of detail depending on the org's setting.
NOTE This feature is available in the Unified Interface only.
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See also
Timestamp frequency setting (docs)
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Remote Assist 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is a mixed-reality solution available on HoloLens for first-line
workers to collaborate with remotely located personnel, to more effectively and efficiently get
their jobs done. The product was released for general availability in October 2018 for HoloLens,
October 2019 for mobile (Android and iOS), and November 2019 for HoloLens 2.
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is used in the following scenarios:
• Maintenance, repair, and operations: Enable customers to run their operations more
efficiently through remote collaboration for project implementations and reviews, interactive
walks, break/fix, and so on.
• Technician success: Improve field technicians' mean time to repair by enabling access to
remote experts for advice or to relevant data in a heads-up, hands-free setting.
• Asset capture and audits: Save time and travel costs by using remote asset capture; headsup, hands-free access to inspection checklists; and real-time evidence capture.
For the 2020 release wave 1, we're focused on the following areas:
• Enabling features that support break/fix scenarios, such as video recording or file sharing.
• Introducing new capabilities beyond performing Teams calls around asset capture by using
spatial markup.
• Expanding integration with Dynamics 365 Field Service by allowing richer information to flow
in the work orders.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Remote Assist
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Capture asset condition through spatial
markup
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 -Capture session history through call
recordings
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Share files between technicians and experts
to improve collaboration
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Capture asset condition through spatial markup
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 -Business value
First-line workers don't always need to engage with a remote expert through a call; they often
have to work independently, in scenarios such as solving a specific incident or performing a
quality review on an asset installation. When performing these operations, they'll benefit from
being able to capture spatial information about a specific asset and integrate that information
with their business processes.
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Feature details
This feature was originally planned as the ability to capture and share annotations without being
in a call. We've evolved the feature scope based on extensive customer learnings and feedback.
Now, the feature will introduce the concept of "asset capture" in Dynamics 365 Remote Assist,
which will enable technicians to use spatial markups to do checkups and inspections without
being on a call, and save their work for post-processing. Inspectors will be able to do an asset
survey or asset inspection hands-free and in context, which will improve their paper and Excel
processes and result in faster, safer, and more accurate inspections.
Captured data will be stored in Common Data Service and integrated with Dynamics 365 Field
Service inspection. Field Service technicians will be able to reference the information recorded in
Dynamics 365 Remote Assist in their work orders, so they can better keep track of asset history.
Capture session history through call recordings
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Business value
For businesses, it's important to keep a record of different incidents that happen on a daily
basis. Oftentimes, these records are kept through paper trails or text-based collateral. Taking
advantage of the information captured through video in a Dynamics 365 Remote Assist session
will allow operations managers, technicians, and business decision makers to refer back to
sessions later and create a knowledge base of calls for other technicians.
Feature details
In this release, we're enabling the following scenario:
• The ability for technicians using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for mobile to comprehensively
document their processes and service calls through video recordings between users. This
feature is available on HoloLens today for group calls.
Share files between technicians and experts to improve collaboration
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
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Business value
Solving an issue with the help of a remote expert is usually a complex task where rich
information and context are essential. In addition to getting the expert's help directly, field
technicians can solve specific incidents faster if they can receive instructions, diagrams, or
photos from the expert. This allows businesses to save costs by reducing incident resolution
times.
Feature details
In this release, we're enabling collateral files—including instructions, diagrams, photos, and
other media—to be captured and shared with remote experts through text chat as conversation
attachments. Technicians will also be able to link those files to Dynamics 365 Field Service work
orders. This functionality is already available on HoloLens.
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Finance and Operations
Overview of Dynamics 365 Finance 2020 release wave 1
Chief financial officers are expected to grow beyond reporting and transactional mediation, and
more to proactive creation of business value, risk reduction, and finding new investment
opportunities. They must spend time on action, not on daily transactional activities. Dynamics
365 Finance will drive automation and predictive analytics capabilities, paving the way for deep
proactive management.
Our 2020 release wave 1 plan focuses on automation, predictive analytics, and core capabilities
as the key themes to help the CFO in this journey.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Finance
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Core financials
This release focuses on automating common tasks to reduce the number of processes that users
complete manually. It also introduces credit management capabilities that help an organization
manage risk and automate downstream processes. It also enhances usability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Automatic collection task creation End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 -Automatic vendor payment proposal End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 -
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Add Vendor ID, Customer ID, Vendor
Name, and Customer Name to the
voucher transactions list page
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Allow filtering the Tax 1099 detail
report by reporting year
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Budget planning query optimization
for performance
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Credit management End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Date range for Posted transactions by
journals report
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Prohibit submission to workflow when
the invoice total and registered invoice
total are not equal
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improve performance when copying
charges to vendor invoice lines
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- May 2020
Require 'Recalculate ledger periods'
when changing fiscal calendar on
Ledger
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- May 2020
Vendor invoice batch posting End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- May 2020
Retained earnings calculation
enhancements for financial reporting
when using currency translation
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jun 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Advanced ledger settlement:
Settlement and reverse settlement
processed separately
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Trial balance with transactional detail
report
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Touchless email reminders to customer End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Aug 2020
Finance Insights
AI-powered capabilities coming in the form of Finance Insights
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Customer payment predictions End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 -External data for cash flow forecasting End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 -Forecast bank balance End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 -Intelligent budget proposal End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 -Treasurer workspace End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 -Globalization
This release focused on merging the Italian add-in EXIL into core localization, shipping ISO
20022 format for international payment for France (highly requested on the Idea Portal), and
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extending configurable business documents with PDF conversion and direct printing features (in
Public Preview).
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Electronic reporting advanced formula
editor
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended French localization ISO
20022 format for international
payment and treasury transfer
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Advanced
notes management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization bank
account setup enhancement
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Improved
inquiry on debit/credit
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization
Miscellaneous charges per kilogram in
Intrastat declaration
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Posting
invoices with zero amount
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Sales
invoice lines sorting by packing slips
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Separate
accounts for credit notes
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization Tax
invoice for goods delivered for free
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Extended Swiss localization QR-bill
implementation
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Use fiscal data from an invoice account End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 6, 2020 Apr 2020
Extended Italian localization General
ledger simulations
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization Intent
letters - invoicing of usual exporters
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization Unique
Certification
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization
commission settlement on payments
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization
Configurable posting profiles for banks
and remittance types
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization Protest
handling for bills of exchange
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Aug 2020
Extended Italian localization Tax
plafond
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 Aug 2020
Configurable business documents
conversion to PDF
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 To be
announced
Configurable business documents
direct printing
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 To be
announced
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Public sector
This release focuses on improvements to budgeting, accounts payable, and Canadian tax.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Daily statement of treasurer's
accountability
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Update bank balances when posting
transactions using advanced ledger
entry
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Allow interest distribution and
escheatment to update bank balances
when posting
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- May 2020
A-133 Circular Report for Grants (SEFA) End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Remove option to replace budget plan End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Vendor details to bridged transactions
and check forms
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Canadian Harmonized Sales Tax End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 Jul 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Core financials
Overview
This release focuses on automating common tasks to reduce the number of processes that users
complete manually. It also introduces credit management capabilities that help an organization
manage risk and automate downstream processes. In addition, it enhances usability in a number
of ways.
Automatic collection task creation
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 -Business value
Currently, identifying the invoices and customer orders that collections agents should focus on
is a labor-intensive task. This feature automates this process using predefined rules.
Feature details
The process of creating collection tasks automatically begins with your organization defining
rules that are based on invoice attributes including payment prediction, due dates, and amounts
due. The tasks that are based on these rules let collections agents focus their activities in areas
that have the highest value for your organization.
Automatic vendor payment proposal
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 -Business value
Organizations typically pay vendors according to a set of rules that apply to their specific
circumstances. For example, they might rank vendors in order of importance and pay their most
important vendors first. Other organizations might use one or more different methods of
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categorizing their vendors and pay vendors in specific categories on specific days. Automating
this process helps organizations apply their own rules to create vendor payment proposals more
consistently and efficiently than is possible using a manual process.
Feature details
A “rules engine” lets treasurers and accounts payable managers define rules within the product
to help the system learn which vendors to pay, and then determine when to pay them. The
system then uses this information to generate payment proposals automatically and send them
through a workflow process for approval.
Add Vendor ID, Customer ID, Vendor Name, and Customer Name to the voucher
transactions list page
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Business value
This feature adds columns to the Voucher transactions list page, so that information you need
is more readily available.
Feature details
The new columns that will be added include Vendor ID, Customer ID, Vendor name, and
Customer name. These columns will be added to the Voucher transactions list page.
Allow filtering the Tax 1099 detail report by reporting year
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
By filtering the Tax 1099 detail report by reporting year, members of your accounting staff won't
have to spend as much time and energy finding the information that they need to work with
now.
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Feature details
For the Tax 1099 detail report, a new filtering option is available that lets you filter by reporting
year. For more information about 1099 reporting at the end of a reporting year, see Year-end
1099 reporting.
See also
Year-end 1099 reporting (docs)
Budget planning query optimization for performance
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
By improving the performance of processing budget planning data, this feature reduces the
likelihood that queries will be blocked. The feature also adds optimizations to the queries used
in data processing.
Feature details
A new feature is available within Feature management that helps improve performance when
processing data in the Budget Planning module. On initial release in 10.0.9, this feature will
improve performance when using the Publish button in Excel to update existing records.
See also
Configuring budget planning (docs)
Credit management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Credit management will proactively suggest credit control activities, thereby improving cashflow,
reducing bad debts, and providing insight and controls that help you manage credit risks while
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ensuring that customers have the flexibility to take advantage of promotions and make the
purchases they need. To learn more, refer to the Credit and collections in Accounts receivable.
Feature details
Credit management's capabilities will include:
• Management of risk scores
• System-suggested credit limits
• Configurable blocking rules
• Dynamic release of credit holds
• Credit limit management
• Tracking historical credit limits
See also
Credit and collections in Accounts receivable (docs)
Date range for Posted transactions by journals report
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
The Posted transactions by journals report now requires a date range, which allows it to be
generated faster. Specifying a date range limits the amount of data that’s processed for the
Posted transactions by journals report. Without any restriction, the amount of data that’s
processed can be huge, and can significantly degrade system performance.
Feature details
This feature is enabled by default. This change adds two fields to the user interface, a From date
field and a To date field, on the report dialog for the Posted transactions by journals report. For
more information about processing a journal in the General ledger, see General journal
processing.
See also
General journal processing (docs)
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Prohibit submission to workflow when the invoice total and registered invoice
total are not equal
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Finding an issue before an invoice is submitted to workflow helps prevent errors that might stop
posting and require resubmitting the vendor invoice to workflow later, saving submitters and
approvers time in the long run.
Feature details
This feature lets you prevent a vendor invoice from being submitted to the workflow process
when the invoice total and registered invoice total are not equal. Instead, the person who
submitted the invoice receives an alert that the totals aren’t equal, letting them correct it before
submitting it to workflow.
See also
Submitting a vendor invoice for review (docs)
Improve performance when copying charges to vendor invoice lines
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Business value
Improving the performance makes the invoice readily available to clerks and staff who approve
invoices and who have responsibility for the accuracy of the information the invoices contain.
Feature details
You’ll most likely notice this enhancement when creating an invoice or changing the Default
quantity for lines option on an invoice document. Improving the performance makes the invoice
readily available to clerks and approvers who have responsibility for the accuracy of the invoice
information.
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Require 'Recalculate ledger periods' when changing fiscal calendar on Ledger
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Business value
This feature requires that fiscal periods be recalculated after changing the fiscal calendar on the
Ledger page. This requirement helps ensure that transactions are assigned to the correct
periods in the new calendar.
Feature details
The fiscal calendar assigned to a ledger can be changed at any time. When you change the
calendar, you must also run the Recalculate ledger periods process, although the process
doesn’t have to be run immediately. However, recalculating the periods later, or not running the
process at all, can result in issues when reporting or in closing the year. Enabling this feature
requires you to recalculate fiscal periods immediately when you change the fiscal calendar on
the Ledger page.
Vendor invoice batch posting
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Business value
Posting invoices in a batch lets the workflow process continue without having to wait for the
posting to finish, which improves the overall performance of all the tasks submitted to the
workflow.
Feature details
This feature lets you add an automated posting task to the Vendor invoice workflow so that the
invoice is posted using a batch.
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Retained earnings calculation enhancements for financial reporting when using
currency translation
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jun 2020
Business value
When generating financial reports that include currency translation, the retained earnings
calculations now include rates and balances from the account's entire history, rather than only
the year and rate.
Feature details
When you enable this feature, any retained earnings account that has the Currency translation
type set to Transaction date will calculate the translated balance of the account using rates and
balances from its entire history, rather than only the year and rate.
Advanced ledger settlement: Settlement and reverse settlement processed
separately
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
The settlement process can now run successfully with only a warning, even if the process
includes transactions that are marked for unsettlement and settlement.
Feature details
When the Advanced ledger settlement feature is enabled, both settled records and unsettled
records can be marked. Previously when both settled and unsettled records were marked, both
the Settle marked transactions and Reverse marked transactions processes would fail with an
error, because each process is separate. Now, each process will run to completion but generate
a warning. For example, if some records are marked to settle and some are marked to unsettle,
and the Settle marked transactions process is run, the records marked for settlement will be
settled and a message will let you know that the records marked for unsettlement were not
processed.
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Trial balance with transactional detail report
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
This report helps ensure that your accounts are in balance by listing information that can expose
any errors in account balances. For example, all accounts that have debit balances should equal
all accounts that have credit balances. The report includes detailed information posted to the
general ledger.
Feature details
The trial balance with transaction detail report displays the details about each transaction for
ledger accounts. The information in the report includes opening balances, debits, credits, and
the resulting balances for a given date range. For transactions, the report information includes
the transaction date, voucher number, transaction description, debits or credits, and a running
balance for the year to date based on the current fiscal year.
Touchless email reminders to customer
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Aug 2020
Business value
Automating this process to send reminders of overdue invoices to customers meets a business
need that collections managers have expressed, saving both labor and time.
Feature details
When enabled, email reminders will be sent automatically to customers, with the overdue
invoices as attachments based on email templates.
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Finance Insights
Overview
Finance Insights accelerates your digital transformation by bringing the power of AI into your
finance processes. As organizations look to make decisions rapidly, reduce risk and focus on
strategic initiatives, it is critical to free finance from repetitive, time-consuming, and low-value
daily activities. Leveraging the power of AI, Finance Insights enables you to not only quickly
understand and act on your company's cash position, but also to take proactive action to
improve it. Menial tasks are automated or removed, the barrier of developing or hiring AI
expertise is bypassed, and you're left with insights to move your business forward.
In 2020 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Finance provides configurable and extensible models to
help you accurately and intelligently predict your company’s cash flow. Customer payment
predictions show which customers you can expect to pay on time or late and what factors are
contributing to that prediction. Using your cash in and out including budget and external data,
you can view a forecasted bank balance and cash flow over time. These new capabilities, paired
with automation in vendor payments and collections, provide a rich and intelligent financial
system to power your company’s success.
Customer payment predictions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -Business value
Organizations often find it challenging to predict when customers will pay their invoices. This
lack of insight can lead to inaccurate cash flow forecasts and inefficient collection processes.
Customer payment predictions will use machine learning to predict when an invoice or sales
order will be paid. Organizations will be able to use these payment predictions to make
collections proactive and improve the accuracy of cash flow forecasting.
Feature details
Customer payment predictions helps answer and respond constructively to the following
questions:
• When will an invoice or sales order be paid?
• What customers will pay on time or late?
• What invoices or orders will they pay?
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External data for cash flow forecasting
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -Business value
Most organizations are complex and use a number of systems that help support their
operations. Organizations also use data from external sources that are pertinent to their
industry. This feature lets you include data from external sources in predictions of payments and
cash receipts, thereby helping improve the accuracy of the predictions.
Feature details
This feature lets you include external data in cash flow forecasting.
Forecast bank balance
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -Business value
Organizations have multiple bank accounts and the balances of those accounts are affected by
transactions that cause funds to flow in and out of them. The Forecast bank balance feature
helps organizations predict the cash that will be available to meet business commitments and if
necessary, take additional action to meet them.
Feature details
Forecasts of bank balances will be based on recurring activities, as well as information from
customer payment insights and vendor payments. The bank balance forecasts help treasurers
more accurately understand the availability of funds at specific times.
Intelligent budget proposal
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -
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Business value
Customers increasingly find it beneficial to generate budgets more often than annually.
However, creating a new budget typically requires a significant investment in time and energy.
Intelligent budget proposal enables creation of an annual budget, along with periodic forecasts
through an automated, intelligent process.
Feature details
The Intelligent budget proposal feature lets you create a draft budget automatically, but with a
high degree of confidence from the use of historical data.
Treasurer workspace
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -Business value
A treasurer’s job is to manage cash efficiently. Treasurers must analyze information and take
action using multiple pages in the product. This workspace is tailored to a treasurer's needs so
that they can complete their entire day’s activities from a single location, which helps bring
simplicity and efficiency to their work day.
Feature details
This feature adds a new workspace that includes all necessary elements for completing the
analysis and activities that a treasurer needs to successfully manage an organization's cash.
Globalization
Overview
To run their operations globally, businesses need to meet regulatory and other local
requirements in multiple countries in the areas of tax, e-invoicing, payment formats, regulatory
reporting, audit, and business document layouts. These requirements are different for different
countries and are frequently changed by tax authorities, often with very tight law enforcement
dates.
To reduce the complexity of meeting the constantly changing regulatory and other local
requirements in multiple countries and efficiently address global regulatory trends, we made key
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globalization areas of Dynamics 365 Finance configurable by power users and even business
users (for business documents).
Partners and customers used our configuration tools to extend 37 out-of-the-box country
localizations as well as to create features for more than 60 additional countries, resulting in
more than 7,000 new features.
In 2020 release wave 1, we focused globalization investments on maintaining regulatory
compliance in 37 countries and regions and extending out-of-the-box localization by
integrating a partner’s Italian add-in EXIL into the core Italian localization. We also are delivering
ISO 20022 format for international payment and treasury transfer for France, which was highly
requested on the Idea Portal. In addition, we extended configurable business documents with
PDF conversion and direct printing features (in Public Preview).
Electronic reporting advanced formula editor
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
In addition to the Electronic reporting formula editor, you can use the advanced Electronic
reporting formula editor to improve the experience of configuring Electronic reporting (ER)
expressions. The advanced editor is browser-based and powered by the Monaco editor. It allows
the following new features for formula editor:
• Code autoformatting
• IntelliSense
• Code completion
• Code navigation
• Code structuring
• Find and replace
• Data pasting
• Syntax colorization
See also
Electronic reporting advanced formula editor (docs)
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Extended French localization: ISO 20022 format for international payment and
treasury transfer
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
With more and more international money transfers, French businesses can use the solution to
create an electronic payment file that meets the country-specific requirements. Because the
format is fully configurable, it's easier to adapt it to bank-specific requirements by a power user.
Feature details
France localization required at least one payment format for international payment and treasury
transfer where the payment would be allowed:
• In foreign/non-EUR currency
• In EUR outside of the SEPA area
• In EUR with selected fees allocation
• In EUR without BIC or IBAN
See also
Country-specific update for France: ISO 20022 Credit transfer format for international payment
and treasury transfer (docs)
Extended Italian localization: Advanced notes management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box. There is no need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features that are
available in the Italian market.
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Feature details
It is possible to define notes not only for a specific type of document but also for using
references to individual customers, vendors, and goods. Defined notes are printed in sales and
purchase documents per a combination of customer, item and vendor, and item.
See also
Advanced notes management (docs)
Extended Italian localization: bank account setup enhancement
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
A company needs to store data related to the company's own reference banks and the banks
that are used by the company's customers and vendors. Having all of the Italian banks already
available as reference information with the bank description and their routing numbers saves a
lot of entry time. This is done through normalizing Bank and Bank group information as well as
an import of a file provided by the banks that includes the bank descriptions, the routing
numbers (bank codes), and the bank addresses.
See also
Bank data usability enhancement (docs)
Extended Italian localization: Improved inquiry on debit/credit
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy received selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
When a user needs to review customer and vendor transactions or wants to print the
corresponding account statement, the order of the transactions is not easy to read. A user often
needs to have the transaction details to be able to analyze the business trends. The transactions
were previously sorted and displayed by registration date. Now, it is possible to see the list of
transactions sorted by invoice number with an indication of the related payment or credit note
for every invoice.
See also
Improved inquiry on debit/credit settlement (docs)
Extended Italian localization: Miscellaneous charges per kilogram in Intrastat
declaration
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
The miscellaneous charges in the Intrastat declaration are calculated as a percentage of the
invoice amount. In Italy, another common scenario is to calculate the miscellaneous charges
according to goods weight, which is the cost for each kilo multiplied by the number of kilos.
See also
Miscellaneous charges per kilogram in an Intrastat declaration (docs)
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Extended Italian localization: Posting invoices with zero amount
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
It is fiscally mandatory to post sales and purchase invoices even when the total invoice amount
is equal to zero (0). This feature allows you to create accounting documents for these invoices.
See also
Posting invoices with zero amount (docs)
Extended Italian localization: Sales invoice lines sorting by packing slips
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers deploying Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy get selected regulatory and
competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the Extended Italian
Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in the Italian market.
Feature details
This feature allows for specific sales invoices to be printed per packing slip.
See also
Sort sales invoice lines by packing slip (docs)
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Extended Italian localization: Separate accounts for credit notes
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
It is necessary to post the values of issued credit notes on general ledger (GL) accounts different
from revenue accounts. A separate setup is available for credit notes in posting profiles where
the user can define different accounts from usual revenue accounts.
See also
Separate accounts for credit notes (docs)
Extended Italian localization: Tax invoice for goods delivered for free
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
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Feature details
When goods are delivered for free to a customer, there is still an obligation to pay taxes. There
are two cases where this can occur:
• The company pays the sales tax. The goods are shipped to the customer with a delivery note
that includes the reason code Free. The company issues a self-invoice where the text Free
invoice is clearly printed on the header, the value of goods is printed, the sales tax is
calculated, and the total of the invoice is equal to the tax amount.
• The customer pays the sales tax. The goods are shipped to the customer with a delivery note
with the reason code Free. The delivery note is then invoiced to the customer. On the
invoice, the text Free invoice is clearly printed on the header, the value of goods is printed,
the sales tax is calculated, and the total of the invoice is equal to the tax amount.
See also
Tax invoice for goods delivered for free (docs)
Extended Swiss localization: QR-bill implementation
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
The payment slips used in Switzerland go back over 100 years and are used 100 million times a
year. The increasing regulatory requirements for payment traffic have made some system
modifications necessary. The QR-bill now is replacing the existing multiplicity of payment slips in
Switzerland, and the coverage on the ERP side is required to help with increasing efficiency and
simplifying payment traffic.
Feature details
This feature satisfies Swiss-specific requirements around QR-bill creation and processing aligned
with identified and supported business scenarios.
See also
A country specific update to support Swiss QR-bills (docs)
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Use fiscal data from an invoice account
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
This feature provides flexibility in how fiscal data, such as the tax exempt number, is defined for
business operations in the Accounts payable and Accounts receivable modules.
Feature details
You can use fiscal data, such as the customer or vendor name, or the sales tax group and tax
exempt numbers from an invoice account on sales orders, free text invoices, or purchase orders
to be updated automatically based on information from the invoice account.
Extended Italian localization: General ledger simulations
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
The feature allows register anticipated general ledger (GL) transactions to simulate GL entries
that can then be deleted or modified. This is used by the accountants to pre-verify and adjust
the year-end profit-and-loss statement.
See also
General ledger simulations (docs)
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Extended Italian localization: Intent letters – invoicing of usual exporters
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
A company is called a usual exporter when, in the previous period, the previous calendar year for
fixed plafond or the previous 12 months for variable plafond, more than 10 percent of the whole
revenue is from sales to foreign countries. This type of company has a special tax-exemption
process where they can purchase and import goods and services without paying sales tax, within
a limited value (plafond) of their sales to foreign countries in a previous period.
When this limit value is reached during the year, they continue to buy using the normal sales tax
percentage. The usual exporter company must send an intent declaration (a numbered and
dated letter) to its vendors declaring its exemption to pay tax.
When the usual exporter company exceeds its tax plafond, it must communicate this to its
vendors so that they will immediately begin issuing invoices with sales tax.
See also
Intent letters - Invoicing of usual exporters (docs)
Extended Italian localization: Unique Certification
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
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Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
The Unique Certification (CUD) is a document employees periodically receive that details the
income for activity that is carried out as an employee. The document must be submitted to the
Revenue Agency in electronic form. The feature allows you to collect all of the required data and
then create a file that follows the layout recommended by the Revenue Agency.
See also
Unique certification (docs)
Extended Italian localization: commission settlement on payments
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
Many companies settle the commissions of their sales agents when customer invoices are paid
and not when the invoice is issued. The reason is to lead the agents to debt collection.
This feature introduces the possibility to specify whether the settlement should occur at the
moment of invoicing or payment. This determines the posting timing of commissions on general
ledger accounts.
Extended Italian localization: configurable posting profiles for banks and
remittance types
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Aug 2020
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Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
When the drafts are remitted to one of the company banks, it is necessary to update a different
offset account in the general ledger. This is based on the bank and the remittance type selected
by the user in the case of bills of exchange, and based on the bank selected by the user in the
case of promissory notes.
The feature allows you to create a different dedicated posting profile for every company bank
account to post the transactions in the ledger account linked to the selected bank. The bank
account is specified during the journal creation, and because it is linked to a specific posting
profile, the transactions for the remittance will use the main account connected to the bank.
Extended Italian localization: protest handling for bills of exchange
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Global and local customers deploying Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected regulatory
and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the Extended Italian
Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in the Italian market.
Feature details
When bills of exchange are not paid, the bank sends an electronic file to the company with the
list of the protested payments. This feature allows you to import an external electronic file into a
journal using matching by the field Bill ID. The structure of the external electronic file is a
common structure that has been adopted by all banks.
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Extended Italian localization: Tax plafond
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Global and local customers who deploy Dynamics 365 Finance in Italy receive selected
regulatory and competitive Italian features out of the box without the need to apply the
Extended Italian Localization (EXIL) add-in or any other add-in with similar features available in
the Italian market.
Feature details
The extended Italian localization tax plafond is a tax-exemption process that allows companies,
usually exporters, to purchase and import goods and services without paying sales tax within a
limit value of their sales to foreign countries in the previous period. A company is a "usual
exporter" when, in the previous year, 10 percent of the company's revenue value came from
selling to a foreign country. To support that, the initial plafond and the validity dates (from and
to dates) are established at the beginning of the period. The company can buy without paying
sales tax until the purchases value is below the initial plafond.
Configurable business documents conversion to PDF
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 To be announced
Business value
The ability to exchange business documents in PDF format is routinely requested by customers
and partners. This features helps customers cover end-to-end scenarios for exchanging business
documents from within the product.
Feature details
This feature allows conversion for any business document generated in Excel or Word via a new
setting, Convert to PDF, in Electronic reporting destination setup for a given report.
For more information, see Output conversion to PDF.
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Configurable business documents direct printing
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 To be announced
Business value
This feature helps increase efficiency by letting customers print business documents (such as
orders and invoices) directly from the system. This enables batch processing for printing many
documents at once.
Feature details
This feature lets you select printer destinations for electronic reporting destinations of Word,
Excel, and PDF-based configurations. This setup is then used to send PDF documents (either
converted from Word or Excel, or documents that were generated in PDF format) to the
Document Routing Agent (DRA).
For more information, see Printer destination.
Public sector
Overview
The release includes improvements in Public sector around budgeting, accounts payable, and
Canadian tax.
Daily statement of treasurer's accountability
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Business value
Use the Treasurer's statement of accountability report to generate a trial balance report
specifically for the treasurer’s fund to be used for reconciliation purposes.
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Feature details
You can generate the report on a daily basis to review the activity in selected accounts for the
treasurer’s fund and compare that to the equity activity in other funds. This daily report allows
you to search for discrepancies, unexpected balances, and possible adjustments needed, and to
complete other general audit functions.
Update bank balances when posting transactions using advanced ledger entry
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
This features adds flexibility to organize your accounts in a way that's optimal for your
organization and business situation by letting you associate a bank account with one or more
main accounts.
Feature details
The bank account must have an account number and routing number associated with it.
Allow interest distribution and escheatment to update bank balances when
posting
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Business value
This feature enhances the interest distribution and escheatment processes by letting you update
the banking portion of the Advanced ledger entry in a single step in the posting process.
Feature details
This enhances two previously released features, Interest distribution and Escheatment, which
use the Advanced ledger entry to post the affected transactions. This feature lets you update
bank balances when posting advanced ledger entries that are associated with one or more
banking main accounts.
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A-133 Circular Report for Grants (SEFA)
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
A variety of information related to federal grants is available in a single place through this
report.
Feature details
The A-133 Circular report for grants includes the Catalogue Of Federal Domestic Assistance
(CFDA) title and number, award number, year of award, name of the federal agency providing
the funds, and name of the pass-through entity for a selected period of time.
Remove option to replace budget plan
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
You can improve the security of your organization's budget planning by specifying who can
replace existing budget plans.
Feature details
Now you can specify the users who can replace existing budget plans. To use this feature, open
the Parameters tab from the Budget planning configuration page. Then select the Prevent
replacement of budget plan scenarios check box to hide the Replace the existing budget
plan scenario option in the Budget plan generation processes list. Selecting this option will
remove the option for all users when generating a budget plan, including the system
administrator.
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Vendor details to bridged transactions and check forms
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
In the earlier version, the Bridged transactions page didn’t display any vendor details. The
Accounts payable Checks page didn’t display the bridging status or vendor details. The Bank
transactions page did not display any bridging status, either. This feature addresses these
shortcomings by displaying more information on the Bridged transactions, Bank transactions,
and Checks pages.
Feature details
This feature introduces the following changes:
• Updates the Bridged transactions page to display the vendor number, name, address, and
pay-to information in the inquiry.
• Updates the Bank transactions page to display the Cleared date.
• Updates the existing Checks form to display the vendor name, address, and pay-to name
and whether the check has cleared along with the Cleared date.
Canadian Harmonized Sales Tax
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Dynamics 365 Finance now supports the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). The HST helps public
sector entities maintain compliance with Canadian tax policies. The HST is used by some
Canadian provinces and is a combination of the Goods and Services Tax and the Provincial Sales
Tax.
Feature details
Portions of the HST can be recovered by public sector entities if the tax has been paid to
vendors, depending on the purpose of the purchase. The purpose is designated by the financial
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dimension values and main account on the transaction document line (for example, purchase
requisitions, purchase orders, or vendor invoices).
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2020
release wave 1
The Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2020 release wave 1 includes:
• Planning: The Planning Optimization service will become generally available for distribution
scenarios, while support for generating planned production orders will be going into public
preview.
• Asset management: Enables integration with fixed assets to provide a comprehensive asset
view that includes both physical and financial information.
• IoT intelligence: Connected manufacturing and quality scenarios will become generally
available, and the connected assets scenario will be enabled for public preview.
• Sales and procurement: Several enhancements have been made in these areas, thereby
enabling country of origin, hazardous materials management, and e-procurement vendor
collaboration.
• Warehouse management: Enables mass deployment support for warehouse mobile
applications, catch weight improvements, improved material handling, and improvements in
inbound and outbound logistics.
• Manufacturing: Job card device experiences have been enhanced to improve productivity
for manufacturing operations.
Also, several miscellaneous enhancements are being introduced throughout Supply Chain
Management to support Common Data Service integration, performance, usability, monitoring,
and reliability.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Asset Management
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Manufacturing resource scheduling based
on asset availability
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 -Integration with new Project module
changes related to project type
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Sep 2020 -Fixed assets integration with Asset
Management lifecycle
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Visual scheduling for work orders in Asset
Management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
IoT integration with asset management
maintenance requests from IoT
intelligence
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Costing
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Compare item price storage End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Multiple inventory asset representations
(preview)
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Inventory
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Inventory on-hand service End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020
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IoT intelligence
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
IoT intelligence core insights End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Manufacturing
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Improved job card device End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
New data entities for the manufacturing
area
End users, automatically Mar 1, 2020 May 2020
Manufacturing intelligence End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Planning
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Master planning includes items with onhand inventory when pre-processing
filters are enabled
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Portals
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Customer self-service experiences End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jun 2020
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Trade and source
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Enterprise scale – purchase system
performance
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 -Enterprise scale – sales system
performance
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 -Calculate PO delivery date based on lead
times and working days (public sector)
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Country of origin enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
External catalog enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Hazardous materials product information
management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Hazardous materials shipping
documentation
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Miscellaneous charges enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Purchase order delivery via cXML End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Sales process control via enhanced order
holds
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Delegation of multiple purchasing work
items
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 Sep 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Sales order operator efficiency –
distribution
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 To be
announced
Warehouse management and transportation
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Catch weight product processing with
warehouse management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Inbound and outbound logistics
improvements
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Mass deployment for Warehouse mobile
app
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Enhancement to use existing catch weight
tags with warehouse management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 6, 2020 Apr 2020
Warehouse management – inbound load
management enhancement
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 May 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Asset Management
Manufacturing resource scheduling based on asset availability
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 -Business value
Production planners will be able to schedule production orders while taking into account
planned downtime for maintenance.
Feature details
This functionality provides alignment with the materials requirements planning engine and
planning service, enabling a single view of manufacturing resources and capacity.
Integration with new Project module changes related to project type
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Sep 2020 -Feature details
This feature introduces enhanced cost control and financial integration by enabling tighter
interfacing with the Projects module. It provides enhanced control over finances and
maintenance costs, plus the ability to invoice work orders.
Fixed assets integration with Asset Management lifecycle
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature details
This functionality enhances the "acquire to retire" asset lifecycle with end-to-end process flows
with the Fixed Assets module.
This functionality will enable customers to acquire and install or commission assets using the
Fixed Assets module by enabling seamless process flows between the Fixed Assets and Asset
Management modules. Financial impact to an asset during the maintain phase will be
transferred back to the Fixed Asset module for relevant accounting treatment.
Visual scheduling for work orders in Asset Management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
This functionality will enable users to visually schedule maintenance work orders using the Gantt
chart.
IoT integration with asset management maintenance requests from IoT
intelligence
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
This functionality provides users with the capability to automatically generate maintenance
requests in asset management for equipment down or production delay scenarios in IoT
intelligence.
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Costing
Compare item price storage
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
This new way of executing the Compare item price report is useful in cases where the output
contains a large number of lines. For example, requesting a comparison of the current active
standard cost against next year's pending standard cost for 60,000 items would yield a very long
report, where data is difficult to review. Being able to sort and filter the results, or to export the
results to an external system, makes the report faster and easier to navigate.
Feature details
We are introducing new functionality for comparing item price storage. When you execute the
"Compare item price" report, you must provide a unique name for the specific execution, and
the results of the report will be stored under this name.
The output will be accessible on the Compare item price storage page. This page dynamically
adjusts columns and aggregates balances depending on the configuration made by the user.
You can add a filter so the items with the largest net change in price are listed at the top of the
grid. A drill-through function provides the ability to see the net change by cost group type or
cost group. In case a specific price requires further analysis, a link to the actual cost calculation is
available.
We are also introducing a new "Compare item price" data entity. This data entity enables you to
export the output of a specific, named "Compare item price" report to any format supported by
data management, making the data available for use with external applications.
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View comparison chart, filtered by item with breakdown by Cost group type and Cost group
Compare item prices storage details, filtered by item with a breakdown by Cost group
See also
Compare item prices storage report (docs)
Multiple inventory asset representations (preview)
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
International organizations are under increasing pressure to be compliant by local governments
(local GAAP) and General Accepted Accounting Practices like IFRS/IAS, even in cases where
these practices might be in direct conflict. International organizations having subsidiaries in
countries with a hyper-fluctuation of local currency might be required by the local government
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to account and manage inventory in local currency. To comply with IFRS/IAS, the subsidiary is
required to account and manage inventory in a stable currency like the euro or US dollar.
Feature details
Organizations often prefer to account for inventory by standard cost as part of their
management accounting setup. Local governments, tax authorities, and IFRS do not recognize
standard cost as an accounting principle and often require average or specific identification.
Collectively these requirements must be addressed in a comprehensive solution that supports
the ability to perform inventory accounting in multiple inventory representations, where each
representation can be configured with a specific set of accounting policies.
With this new functionality, customers can define as many inventory representations as required.
Inventory accounting in dual currency and inventory accounting in dual valuation is supported.
Inventory accounting is performed in individual ledgers. Several ledgers can be created for a
legal entity in the organization, ensuring that multiple inventory representations can be
obtained. All documents (purchase orders, sales orders, transfer orders, and so on) posted in a
legal entity will be accounted in all the ledgers associated with the legal entity.
A ledger is defined by:
• Calendar
• Currency
• Exchange rate table
• Convention
A convention is a collection of inventory accounting policies that can be associated with one or
more ledgers. This provides the ability to share a common convention in the organization.
The multiple inventory representations support multiple inventory accounting policies. For each
policy, a single rule can be selected, and it applies to all products.
Input measurement basis:
• Normal historical
• Standard
Cost flow assumption:
• Average
• Specific identification (Batch)
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Recording interval:
• Perpetual
Lastly, this solution provides a detailed audit trail from a cost-accounting measure all the way
back to the original document posted in Supply Chain Management.
Inventory
Inventory on-hand service
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 -Business value
Providing near real-time access to inventory on-hand information through a separate microservice simplifies integration with external systems, optimizes response times, and reduces the
incremental load and performance impact on Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
Feature details
Organizations that leverage Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management for managing their
inventory on-hand might also have other external systems that could benefit from on-hand
inventory information. These could be ext ernal sales solutions or mobile solutions. Other
scenarios include the requirement to share inventory on-hand information with trading partners.
The inventory on-hand service is a separate micro-service that provides on-hand information in
a hyper-scalable, hyper-performant manner without incurring additional load or compromising
the performance of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
All information that relates to on-hand information is exported in near real-time to the inventory
on-hand service through low-level SQL integration. External systems access the inventory onhand service through RESTful APIs that enable on-hand information on given sets of dimensions
to be queried, and that enables retrieval of a list of available on-hand positions.
The inventory on-hand service also enables external systems to update on-hand information. In
these scenarios, the service will maintain on-hand information that is accurate in near real time,
even though the on-hand changes are processed in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
with significant delay (for example, through a daily import job).
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IoT intelligence
IoT intelligence core insights
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Internet of things (IoT) intelligence supports the following core insights and action scenarios:
• Delayed orders: Provides notification services and actions for managing delayed production
orders. Displays impacted operations. Provides users with the ability to define order-delay
metrics for combinations of resources and products, and notifies users when exceptions to
these thresholds occur. Enables users to take relevant business actions for delayed orders,
including the ability to view impact or create a maintenance request.
• Equipment down: Provides notification services and actions for managing equipment -down
scenarios. Displays impacted operations. Provides users with the ability to define metrics for
machine-down thresholds and notifies users when an exception to these thresholds occurs.
Enables users to take relevant business actions for delayed orders, including the ability to
view impact or create a maintenance work order.
• Quality anomaly: Provides notification services and actions for managing quality anomalies.
Provides users with the ability to define quality attributes for products and get notified when
exceptions to these attributes occur.
• Automated inventory updates: Provides automated inventory updates from the shop floor.
Provides the ability to define batching/grouping rules for automatic inventory update
journals and report as finished (RAF) creation based on part -out signals received from the
IoT Hub.
Seamless onboarding experience:
• No-code capability: Provides a fast, code-free method for users to connect their machines
to IoT intelligence service and get started with actionable insights.
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Manufacturing
Improved job card device
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Providing a single integrated user experience where shop floor workers can effectively manage
production jobs can help to improve effectiveness and efficiency and help reduce error rates.
Capturing accurate data about production activities also enables manufacturers to increase
productivity, decrease scrap and defect ratios, reduce work-in-progress, and improve
throughput.
Feature details
We are enhancing the job card device by adding capabilities that have so far been available only
on the job card terminal. This will provide shop floor workers with a more intuitive and touchfriendly experience toward managing production jobs. Enhancements include:
• Improvements to the user interface of the Report progress dialog box, which will provide a
more intuitive, touch-friendly, and workflow-driven experience.
• The ability to print labels for license plates when using a mobile device to report as finished.
These enhancements to the job card device represent the first steps toward renewing the
manufacturing execution capabilities and delivering a single, integrated, touch-friendly
experience that integrates time, attendance, and job management. It will also eventually bring
together internet of things (IoT) and sensor data, work instructions, quality management, and
asset maintenance jobs.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
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New data entities for the manufacturing area
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Mar 1, 2020 May 2020
Feature details
We are expanding the collection of data entities for the manufacturing area of Supply Chain
Management, thus opening new possibilities for admins, system integrators, and system
developers. For example, some of these entities will let you extract data for building analytics
and visualizations, while others will help you to migrate master and reference data when
preparing new instances of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.
Release Entity Purpose
10.0.9 Capacity reservation Enables users to export capacity reservations, which can be useful
(for example) for building capacity overview visualizations.
10.0.9 Batch order formula lines Enables users to import and export batch order formula lines.
The import option can be useful when migrating data.
10.0.9 Batch order co- and byproduct
Enables users to import and export batch order co- and byproducts. The import option can be useful when migrating data.
10.0.9 Production route transaction Enables users to export production route transactions. This can
be useful for building analytics for manufacturing performance.
10.0.10 Production jobs Enables users to export production jobs. This can be useful for
building visualizations of the production plan.
10.0.10 Indirect activities
(JmgIpcActivity)
Enables users to import and export indirect activities. This can be
useful when preparing data for new instances.
10.0.10 Indirect activity categories
(JmgIpcCategory)
Enables users to import and export categories for indirect
activities. This can be useful when preparing data for new
instances.
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Manufacturing intelligence
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
As manufacturers build increasingly robust data assets around their products, people, assets,
and processes, opportunities quickly appear to deliver products and services more efficiently
and reliably. By creating a feedback loop encompassing the data collected in the business
applications, sensors on the floor and external signals, and leveraging the Microsoft best-inclass business intelligence and artificial intelligence offerings, customers can gain operational
efficiency, drive quality, reduce waste, and be more agile.
Feature details
This feature provides a Production Insights dashboard for production managers and
executives that:
• Focuses on the current performance and industry standard measures for Overall Equipment
Effectiveness (OEE), with timelines and trends in context with equipment and rolled up
across plants through resource hierarchies.
• Helps key questions like "Are we going to meet our goals today?" and "Is my production line
healthy?"
• Augments the supervisor’s knowledge with data insights to recommend actions, for instance:
o Regressions on time series metrics, such as machine slowing down over time, scrap rate
increasing over time, or WIP increasing over time.
o Deviations in key metrics (operation time, standard cost, and so on), with detection of key
influencers.
o Prediction of operational metrics, such as: probability of delay in operation, probability of
scrap, probability of over-consumption.
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Planning
Master planning includes items with on-hand inventory when pre-processing
filters are enabled
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
This feature ensures that items with on-hand inventory will always be included in the master
planning run when the Pre-processing: Automatically filter by items with direct demand
setting is enabled on the Master planning parameters page.
To use this capability, you must enable the Include items with on-hand when pre-processing
filters are enabled feature in Feature management.
IMPORTANT If you are relying on Explosion or Net change update functionality for
manufacturing planning processes, then this feature must be enabled. Otherwise, incorrect onhand data might show up in the Net requirements form for the items without direct demand,
and incorrect planned orders might be generated during explosion.
See also
Automatically filter by items with direct demand (docs)
Portals
Customer self-service experiences
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jun 2020
Feature details
The customer portal template is a Power Apps portals template that will be available in the
Power Apps template gallery. It allows companies to create an externally facing website that is
connected to a Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management environment.
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The template doesn't provide an entire end-to-end solution, but instead provides guidance and
a starting point for creating custom websites for business-to-business (B2B) sales-order
processing and related scenarios. It helps companies bring dual-write, Power Apps portals, and
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management together to create a self-service experience for their
enterprise customers.
Out of the box, the template provides the following functionality:
• View order history
• View account information
• Create orders
• Preconfigured web roles and entity permissions for Power Apps portals users
Because this is a Power Apps portals template, system customizers can use all features and
customization capabilities that Power Apps portals offers. They will also be able to extend the
functionality to the extent supported by dual-write.
Trade and source
Enterprise scale – purchase system performance
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 -Feature details
Through telemetry and customer feedback on purchase order processing scenarios, we have
identified some key improvements to system performance that can help customers who are
dealing with a large volume of purchase orders through different scenarios.
Enterprise scale – sales system performance
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 -Feature details
Through telemetry and customer feedback on sales-order processing scenarios, we have
identified some key improvements to system performance that can help customers who are
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dealing with a large volume of sales orders. These improvements help in both manual entry
order and import scenarios.
Calculate PO delivery date based on lead times and working days (public sector)
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Calculate a delivery date for a line based on a vendor's lead time and your organization's
working-days calendar. Vendors can enter a lead time for each line. When a purchase order is
confirmed, a delivery date for a line is calculated from the confirmation date, based on the lead
time and the working-days calendar. If no lead time is specified, the delivery date is the
confirmation date. After the admin enables the feature, the admin must enable the functionality
using the procurement and sourcing parameters.
Country of origin enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Trading across country borders often requires that companies include information about the
country of origin of the products they are moving. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
includes a related field on the product master document. The enhancements will build on that
existing capability. Often, suppliers will provide a certificate to customers that has an expiry date
and certificate number. These enhancements will provide the capability for the procurement
organization to document this information. They can then use this information to prepare
shipping documentation.
The feature also enables the procurement organization to follow up with suppliers when a
certificate expires. Sales organizations can also verify this information before making sales—for
example, if product from a specific country shouldn’t be shipping into another country due to
possible tariffs or additional paperwork that the shipping department will need to prepare.
These updates will help organizations build trade-compliance processes.
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External catalog enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Procurement organizations were able to leverage the external catalogs cXML protocol in
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations version 7.2. Due to different vendor
systems, setting up and testing external catalogs can involve some troubleshooting. With the
new catalog enhancements, the procurement organization can enable the logging feature that
captures common issues that might require changes to external catalog parameters.
We're adding additional support to allow the return of the SupplierPartIAuxiliary ID from the
shipping basket and to capture it on the purchase requisition and the related purchase order.
This identification is used by some suppliers to represent a unique configuration for an item.
Hazardous materials product information management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Distribution companies that handle products that contain hazardous or dangerous goods need
to be able to store additional information about those products. This information will help a
company build a process to conform with regulations around shipping and handling the
products. With this enhancement, product information management will include additional
setup options to store data related to the item, including item descriptions per the different
shipping regulations on the dangerous-goods lists.
Hazardous materials shipping documentation
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature details
Because additional information regarding hazardous materials will now be stored for products,
we are introducing additional documents that can be used in the warehouse to manage
shipments that contain hazardous materials. The new documents are an enhanced bill of lading,
CMR document, multimodal dangerous goods document, enhanced packing list, and Verified
Gross Mass (VGM) document. These documents will work much like the existing bill of lading.
The operator can generate the data for the document and then edit as needed to include
external data or adjustments needed to represent the shipment.
Miscellaneous charges enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
We are providing enhancements to the charges framework to support additional scenarios for
sales and procurement. These enhancements include making the charges allocation feature that
is available on purchase orders also available on sales orders. This allows sales entry operators
the ability to allocate sales header charges to sales lines. Additional sales charges has the ability
to set up from and to amounts. This is being made available on purchase orders to allow
scenarios for charges to be assigned based on the value of the purchase order.
Customers have also requested the ability to set up charges both in sales and procurement by
site and warehouse. This will allow for scenarios where charges like freight might vary based on
the site and warehouse allocated to the document.
Purchase order delivery via cXML
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Procurement organizations can gain operational efficiencies and provide value-added service to
their organization by enabling external catalogs and allowing employees to purchase directly
from suppliers’ e-commerce sites. When the requisition is returned, approved, and converted to
a purchase order, the communication of the purchase order back to the vendor is manual. With
this enhancement, we have added support for the cXML purchase order request message. You
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can enable vendors for this feature if your supplier supports receiving the purchase order.
Additional setup and parameters are enabled through the external catalog configuration.
Purchased orders are sent using confirmed purchase orders. The procurement team can enable
background processing for the purchase order sending the order, and they can monitor the
acknowledgment of purchase orders.
Sales process control via enhanced order holds
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
In business-to-business trading scenarios, departments are trying to reduce the time involved in
processing a sales order through the organization. This often involves collaboration between
customer services, financial teams, and operation teams to review the order and deal with
exceptions. Often, a full workflow process is too much overhead for the sales order. With this
enhancement, organizations can use additional parameters on order holds to create virtual
workflows, and they can use status indication processes to enable communication of the order
status and requirements for follow-up activities to control the order. The status information is
visible on the warehouse release and shipment, which enables the communication of status
information between the sales representatives and the operational fulfillment teams.
Delegation of multiple purchasing work items
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 Sep 2020
Feature details
This feature will enable users to delegate multiple work items to another user in one action on
the Work items assigned to me page. This feature will make it easier to hand over work to a
colleague.
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Sales order operator efficiency – distribution
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Sales order management efficiency is important for distribution businesses that need to process
and manage large volumes of sales orders. In response to feedback from customers, we have
identified key areas for improvement to the operator experience around quick order entry, order
editing, inventory availability, and item searching. These improvements will reduce the number
of steps needed to perform common actions, which will lead to improved operator efficiency.
Warehouse management and transportation
Catch weight product processing with warehouse management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
With catch weight products, you can now handle business scenarios related to warehouse
management processes.
This feature provides a catch weight tag that fetches the captured weight per catch weight unit
assigned. The goal of this approach is to weigh the product only once—at the time of receipt.
This works for products that don't change weight over time (such as frozen shrimp) and
products that have a handling unit of measure that is shippable (such as a box of shrimp). With
this approach, the user scans the catch weight tag to identify the weight at the time of picking
or packing based on the product configuration. Then invoicing is based on the weight that is
associated with the captured catch weight tag.
Feature details
The feature is enabled in the Feature management interface. The new functionality includes
upgrade capabilities for existing catch weight items that have open inventory transactions. The
items can be enabled for warehouse management processes by means of the Change storage
dimension group for items option.
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See also
Feature exploration (video)
Catch weight product processing with warehouse management (docs)
Inbound and outbound logistics improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Most of these features have been released as flighted during 2019 wave 2 timeframe. They are
now released as public preview and customers have the ability to include these features in
production environment through Feature management from Dynamics 365 Supply Chain
Management version 10.0.9.
Inbound:
• Quality check. With this functionality, you can perform rapid quality checks on the spot at
the time of receiving to the inbound dock area.
• Put away clusters. This is a way to pick multiple license plates at once and take them for a
putaway to different locations. It is very useful for retail where many license plates are not
full pallets of inventory.
Warehouse operations:
• Packaging product dimensions. This allows users to have different sets of dimensions fo r
when an item is being stored in the warehouse (storage), being packed into a box for
packing, and being packed into a box with more of itself (nested packing).
• Item consolidation – location utilization. The new location utilization form serves as a tool
to warehouse managers to easily view and filter the volumetric utilization of location across
the warehouse.
• Location license plate positioning. This allows the user to see where the LP is located in a
multi-pallet location, such as double-deep pallet racking. This functionality adds a sequence
number to the license plate for each license plate that is put to a location.
• Location product dimension mixing. This new location profile functionality enables better
location managing when using product variants or products with dimensions, such as with
the fashion industry. It allows you to decide whether configurations, colors, style, and sizes
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can be mixed on a certain location (profile) or if only one or a combination of some of those
dimensions can be put to the same location.
• Flexible warehouse-level dimension reservation. Available since version 10.0.7 and 10.0.8.
This enhancement introduces flexibility in the inventory reservation policy to allow
businesses who sell batch-tracked products and run their logistics as WMS-enabled
operations, to register their customers’ requests for specific batches on sales orders even
though the inventory reservation hierarchy associated with the product prevents this (by
being of type that is known as “batch-below”.)
Outbound:
• Small package shipping. Small package shipping adds functionality for setting up carrier
login credentials, printing labels received back from carrier web services, charging freight to
customer third-party accounts, additional freight terms, and additional accessorial delivery
types.
• System-directed work sequencing. This setup offers the ability to sort and filter which
work orders the system will present to the user for execution.
• Wave load building. Advanced load building allows the wave to assign the shipment to an
existing load, if one exists that meets the criteria, or create a new load if required.
• Warehouse slotting. Picking locations can be replenished before releasing orders to the
warehouse. Warehouse slotting allows you to create replenishment work at any time based
on order demand.
• Wave label printing enhancements (available since version 10.0.2 and version 10.0.4):
o Allow for labels to be printed according to number of cartons on a single work line,
without using the containerization feature.
o Include an enumeration of the labels (1/124, 2/124…124/124).
o Allow for BOL (bill of lading) to be created and printed on label.
o Allow a unique Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) to be created per carton and
included on a label.
o Allow for creation of GS1-compliant number sequence for BOL and SSCC numbers.
o Allow for HAZMAT code to be included on a label.
o Support for reprint of labels (from handheld devices).
o Support for voiding of labels (for short pick scenarios) and reprint.
o Support for clean-up of wave label history.
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These amendments will make it more efficient to support labeling of cartons prior to
palletizing. It supports companies shipping to large retailers that perform order receipt
confirmation automatically using scanning of each individual carton.
• Wave step code. With this functionality, you can pre-define codes that can be used as wave
step codes. This functionality removes the risk of entering the wrong step code.
• Shipment consolidation policies:
o Batch release to warehouse (consolidate shipment enhancements). Available since
version 10.0.3.
o Load planning workbench. Available since version 10.0.5.
o Shipment consolidation workbench and manual consolidation. Available since
version 10.0.7. This consolidate shipment policies feature allows for automated
consolidation of a shipment at the time of batch releasing sales or transfer orders.
Shipment consolidation policies can be set up. The policies have queries to define their
applicability and a modifiable set of fields driving the decision for grouping load lines on
shipment level automatically at release to warehouse. When releasing to warehouse
manually, the same logic is triggered when added to open shipments. The feature is
included at the five release to warehouse places. The consolidation workbench allows for
further manual overview of consolidation and for adjustments.
• Deferred put processing. Available since version 10.0.4. This is a performance-related
feature focused on increasing the productivity of the warehouse worker. Instead of requiring
online processing of inventory updates each time a put is complete, which “freezes” the
mobile device, we will allow for that process to be performed asynchronously.
• Outbound sorting. This functionality allows for the guided building of pallets from
containers packed through the packing functionality.
• Replenishment over location capacity. This allows all replenishment work to be created
that will be needed for the day and manages availability of the replenishment work to
ensure that the pick location doesn’t run out of inventory, but also doesn’t go above
capacity.
• Planned cross docking. This functionality introduces advanced planned cross docking
where the inventory quantity required to satisfy an order will be directed to the correct
outbound dock or staging area straight from receipt or creation. All remaining inventory
from the inbound source will be directed to the correct storage location through the regular
put away process.
• Put to wall/Put to store. With this feature, you can handle scenarios where consolidation of
product is required to a prepack staging area based on configurable criteria.
• Auto release shipment for cross docking. This feature enables cross docking of supply
coming out of a finished production order. When creating cross-dock work with a supply
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source of a production order, it’s possible to set the cross-dock template up and enable
cross docking.
Mass deployment for Warehouse mobile app
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
This new feature allows users to silently perform a mass deployment of the connection settings
for the Warehouse mobile app. Customers can choose the deployment tool of their choice (such
as Microsoft Intune) to deploy and service warehouse mobile devices.
Enhancement to use existing catch weight tags with warehouse management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 6, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
This feature adds support for using a mobile device to report a production order as finished
when catch weight tags have been registered in advance for the appropriate order.
Use the Mobile device menu items page to add this feature to any mobile-device menu item
that uses the Report as finished and put away work creation process. The feature requires that
the Generate catch weight tag setting be disabled for the used menu item, and also that you
are using catch weight tag tracking for Product, tracking, and all storage dimensions as part
of the Catch weight item handling policy setup.
To use this capability, you must enable the Use existing catch weight tags when reporting
production orders as finished feature in Feature management.
See also
Catch weight product processing with warehouse management (docs)
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Warehouse management – inbound load management enhancement
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 May 2020
Feature details
This feature consists of:
• A new association of the purchase order inventory transactions (Inventtrans) with the load ID
when receiving from the Warehouse Mobile device.
• Enhancements on the calculation of the purchase order quantity left to load that is now
using registered quantities.
• An update to the inbound load warehouse handling operations. The feature is called
"Multiple product receipt postings per load." It adds flexibility to the load receiving process
by allowing multiple product receipt postings for the same load. It lets warehouse managers
keep a load open even after running the Update product receipts job for that load, thereby
allowing additional quantity registrations for the same load. Thereafter, product receipts are
updated to the ledger on an ongoing basis.
These enhancements will allow ISVs to build more robust solutions when integrating with the
load entity.
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Overview of Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities
2020 release wave 1
Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities apply to all Finance and Operations apps like
Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Commerce.
To enable businesses everywhere to accelerate their digital transformation, we are continuously
enhancing the platform and services that support Finance and Operations apps with new
capabilities. As we add product enhancements at a rapid pace, we deliver monthly updates that
will help customers stay current in a consistent, predictable, and seamless manner. The core
capabilities introduced with the 2020 release wave 1 will be persona opt-in enabled, which
allows customers to implement new features at their own cadence. The key driver for all of the
new core capabilities is to increase productivity and return on investment.
This release wave also focuses on fundamentals to enhance the user experience. The targeted
areas of these enhancements include performance, compliance, automation, and supportability
of service.
What's new and planned for Finance and Operations cross-app
capabilities
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Cross-app features
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Embed third-party apps – phase 2 End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Expanded chart types supported by
embedded Chart control now include
Line and Area ranges
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020
Finance and Operations licensing End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 -Grouping with subtotals in grids End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
User productivity – new grid control –
phase 2
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
User productivity – Saved views – phase
2
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
Connect your Finance and Operations
apps with back-end systems using
BarTender labeling system integration
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 -Spotlight your brand using modern
designs for business-critical documents
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020
Usability improvements for filtering and
personalization
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Aug 2020
New task recorder capabilities for RSAT End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Recommended fields End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Embed actions in the message bar End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- May 2020
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Data and process integration
All your data is available in your own Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 data lake.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Create and trigger instant flows End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
Data in Common Data Service – phase 1
& 2
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 19, 2020 Apr 2020
Tables in a customer's Data Lake Storage
Gen2 data lake
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Finance and Operations apps data is
described in the Common Data Model
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- May 2020
Finance and Operations entities in a
customer's data lake
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jun 2020
Entity store data is available in Azure
Data Lake
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 1, 2019 Aug 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
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Cross-app features
Overview
User productivity and experiences
Investments in improved user experiences and enhancements to existing capabilities are focus
areas for the 2020 release wave 1. For example, the new grid control supports grouping of rows
with subtotals. The system can recommend fields and filters based on usage of other users in
the organization. This wave also includes improvement in filtering capabilities (that make it easy
for users to find their desired data) and bolstering personalization so customers and users can
create tailored, optimized user experiences. Task Recorder includes new functionality to support
the Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT).
Connect to BarTender for printing documents
Finance and Operations apps now integrate BarTender, a service designed to deliver accelerated
production of standard business documents. The BarTender service provides customers with the
ideal solution for designing and printing documents like labels, packing slips, and other
monochromatic views.
Reporting and analytics
Modern designs for business-critical documents are available to spotlight your brand. Additional
chart types supported by the embedded Chart control are made available for application
developers to use to create advanced visualizations of business data. Use the Area Range
visualizations to effectively present data that offers a historical view of measured data.
Licensing
The interface will adapt to the Finance and Operations apps that the current user is licensed to
use, avoiding clutter by hiding menus and menu items that are not part of your license.
Embed third-party apps – phase 2
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Feature details
You might have third-party apps that work in conjunction with Finance and Operations apps
that are either built in-house or by a partner. This feature aims to provide a seamless integration
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by allowing you to embed third-party apps within your Finance and Operations apps by using
personalization, similar to how you can embed Power Apps inside of Finance and Operations
apps. You'll have the option to embed third-party apps inside tab pages within existing forms, or
create new full-page experiences that showcase your third-party app.
10.0.8 / Platform update 32 Third-party apps can be embedded inside tab pages in existing
forms via personalization by privileged users in the same places where users can add a Power
App inside a tab page. To facilitate this, the Add a Power App option in the personalization
toolbar has been replaced with an Add an app option. Selecting this option opens a gallery
page where the user can decide which kind of app they want to embed, such as a Power App or
website. Note that only system administrators, security administrators, and IT managers have
access to this capability out of the box.
Note that this functionality is dependent on the Saved views feature being enabled.
10.0.7 / Platform update 31 A new Website Host control has been added to allow developers
to embed third-party apps directly into Finance and Operations pages.
See also
Personalize the user experience (docs)
Expanded chart types supported by embedded Chart control now include Line and
Area ranges
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Business value
These new range chart types are designed to simplify the consumption of large amounts of
historical data using native controls embedded directly in the web application.
Feature details
Deliver information that would normally require two reports. The new chart types supported by
the embedded Chart control are specifically designed for analyzing historical views of data.
These chart visualizations include a smaller time scale, making it easy to drill down into specific
windows. Use the intuitive drag-and-drop Visual Studio designer to create charts bound to form
data sources.
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Finance and Operations licensing
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Feature details
Finance and Operations licensing was divided into three separate apps with the October 2019
release:
• Dynamics 365 Finance
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
• Dynamics 365 Commerce
The 2020 release wave 1 will introduce changes to the user interface and license enforcement
based on the new licenses. Users can only access menu items that their license allows. In
addition, the product name and brand will reflect the license associated with the current user.
This functionality is controlled by Microsoft and is off by default. It will be rolled out in a gradual
manner to specific customers between April and October 2020. Branding changes might be
rolled out earlier than license enforcement.
Grouping with subtotals in grids
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Business value
Users often need to perform ad-hoc analysis of data. This can be done currently by exporting
data to Microsoft Excel and then using pivot tables. By enabling the grouping of data within the
web client and extending the previously added Totals feature to provide subtotals at the group
level, users will be able to get these insights directly from Finance and Operations apps.
Feature details
This feature is only available with the new grid control. It will evolve over the release wave to
eventually allow users to group data in a grid based on the values in up to five columns. Users
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will be able to expand or collapse groups as desired, which can help create a summarized view
of data. Subtotals will also be shown at the group header level.
10.0.9 / Platform update 33
Group data based on a single column. This can be saved via personalization when the saved
views feature is enabled. At this time, the ability to expand or collapse groups is not supported.
User productivity – new grid control – phase 2
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Feature details
A private preview of a new and improved grid control was made available in October 2019 with
10.0.5 / Platform update 29. This feature is transitioning to public preview in the 2020 release
wave 1 with 10.0.9 / Platform update 33. Continued evolution of this feature will come as part of
monthly updates until this feature becomes generally available.
The new grid provides a number of benefits:
• Performance: The new grid provides improved rendering speed and a faster scrolling
experience.
• Positional scrolling: Users can now positionally scroll in the data that has been loaded in
the web browser. For example, if you have browsed through 10,000 rows in a grid, you can
click the middle of the scrollbar to immediately go to record 5,000 without having to retrieve
data from the server.
• General improvements: Various enhancements have been made to improve the usability of
the grid. For example, in the existing grid, users might run into situations occasionally where
the grid headers and data are misaligned, or the grid jumps while users scroll through data
or create new records.
• Reorder columns: Users can now reorder columns by dragging them. Ho ver the mouse
pointer over the column header, and then drag the gripper control that appears on the left
side of the column.
• Mathematical formulas: Users can now enter mathematical formulas into numeric cells in a
grid. For example, you can enter =15*4. To make the system recognize a value as an
expression, start the value with an equal sign (=).
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The new grid also enables more complex features to be built into it. These additions to the grid
will be introduced and enhanced in subsequent monthly updates:
• Totals: Business users can see totals for numeric columns in tabular grids. For example,
financial users can view totals for a filtered set of transactions for a specific customer. This
feature first became available as part of the new grid control feature in 10.0.5 / Platform
update 29, and will continue to evolve in subsequent platform versions.
• Fast data entry: This feature lets users enter data in a grid ahead of the server. Therefore, it
minimizes the need for users to wait for the server to validate one row in the grid before
they move to another row. This feature first became available as part of the new grid control
feature in 10.0.7 / Platform update 31, and will continue to evolve in subsequent platform
versions.
For instructions on how to enable the new grid, follow the link in the See also section of this
article.
See also
What's new or changed in Platform update 31 (docs)
User productivity – Saved views – phase 2
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Feature details
A preview of Saved views was made available in October 2019 with Platform update 29.
Continued evolution of this feature will come as part of monthly updates until this feature
becomes generally available.
10.0.10 / Platform update 34
• Added task recorder support for views. Recordings should be done on published views or
the standard view.
10.0.9 / Platform update 33
• Publish views as default to users.
10.0.8 / Platform update 32
• Continued feature stabilization.
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10.0.7 / Platform update 31
• Overhaul of the administrator’s page for managing views and personalization.
• Bulk import/export of views and personalizations.
• Publish views to users in specific legal entities.
10.0.6 / Platform update 30
• Pin views as tiles, lists, and links on workspaces.
• Assign trusted users to the Saved views administrator role for access to the Publish
functionality.
For instructions about how to enable Saved views, follow the link in the See also section of this
article.
See also
Saved views (docs)
Connect your Finance and Operations apps with back-end systems using
BarTender labeling system integration
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 -Business value
Every delay in printing comes at the expense of business productivity. The BarTender service
allows customers to take advantage of special high-speed printing functions. As a result, the
difference in speed to printer is significant when compared to legacy SQL Server Reporting
Services (SSRS)-based solutions. Reference custom fonts using a simple professional design
canvas for standard label platforms: Tech, Citizen, Zebra, Domino, and hundreds more.
Feature details
Enhancements include IT Admin tools to manage the connection information that is used to
access the local Bartender service. These extensions provide a standard integration for existing
printer devices that use application business logic to define label generation instructions.
The service compiles and renders in the native language of the printer based on the design
definition. For example, the service will render the label using ZedPL for Zebra printers. As a
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result, instructions such as incremental or repeating serial numbers for barcodes will be handled
directly by the Zebra print engine to achieve optimal performance.
Spotlight your brand using modern designs for business-critical documents
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 -Business value
Reduce report customization costs. Customers no longer need to employ expensive engineering
resources to customize application business documents. Embedded Office designer tools are
now available for power users to tailor configurable documents that will accommodate design
requirements specific to your business. Avoid the frustration of waiting for the next service
update. Use Print management to select custom designs and replace standard application
solutions without disrupting business operations.
Feature details
The colors, logos, and styles of modern documents can be changed without requiring developer
intervention. Use built-in brand management tools to customize styling and color schemes,
business contact information, and document logos. In addition, power users can use built-in
familiar tooling to extend the ready-made document templates defined by Microsoft design
professionals.
Usability improvements for filtering and personalization
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Aug 2020 -Feature details
Filtering is one of the most common and important foundational features of the user interface
and affects most users and business scenarios. Being able to find data easily is critical to user
success and satisfaction. Investments in this area will be of use to nearly every user of the
system.
The ability for customers and users to tailor their user experience so that it is optimized for their
needs is also extremely important for achieving customer satisfaction and maximizing user
satisfaction. A continued focus on improving the usability of personalization and in adding
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capabilities so that users can create the views they need is vital for broad uptake of
personalization.
These improvements will come incrementally over the course of the release wave. Check back
for updates on specific improvements and when they will be available.
New task recorder capabilities for RSAT
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Customers are encouraged to create regression test suites using the Regression suite
automation tool (RSAT) and task recorder to ensure updates to Finance and Operations apps are
seamless and issue-free for their businesses. Toward this initiative, a continued investment will
be made to allow coverage of additional scenarios by these tests and to improve the experience
of users creating and maintaining these regression tests.
These improvements will come incrementally over the course of the release wave. Check back
for updates on capabilities that will be added and when they will be available.
10.0.9 / Platform update 33
The task recorder pane is now resizable to give you more space to work with all the content in
that pane. This capability also applies to all the other content that displays in that space,
including the help pane, trace parser, and message details.
See also
Task recorder resources (docs)
Recommended fields
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
To maximize user satisfaction and productivity, Finance and Operations apps have been
encouraging customers and users to utilize personalization to create optimized experiences.
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With AI, we can do more than just provide personalization capabilities; instead, we can utilize
usage data from other users doing similar work to make personalized suggestions to increase
user productivity.
Feature details
When users add a field to a page or a column to a grid, the user will be able to see a list of
suggested fields. Suggested fields will also be surfaced when a user starts to add a field to filter
on in the Filter pane.
See also
Personalize the user experience (docs)
Embed actions in the message bar
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Feature details
Starting in version 10.0.10/Platform update 34, the Message::AddAction() method can be used
to embed an action within a message sent to the message bar. This method supports adding a
single action that is associated with a display or action menu item, which is then visualized as a
link button. This API is meant to serve as a replacement for the SysInfoAction class from
Dynamics AX 2012.
Data and process integration
Overview
Finance and Operations data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
On-premises customers in Dynamics AX 2012 and earlier had direct access to data—you might
be accustomed to accessing data directly and creating reports with tools such as Power BI. As
you migrate to Finance and Operations apps and begin your digital transformation journey in
the cloud, you might want to keep your existing reports and data warehouse investments, at
least for the near future. We want to enable your transition to the cloud easily by enabling
access to all data. Core tables, data entities as well as aggregate measurements defined in
Finance and Operations apps will be available in your own data lake (Data Lake Storage Gen2).
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With an easy-to-use interface, an administrator can configure a data lake with Finance and
Operations apps. Microsoft manages data refresh—a power user can choose tables, entities, and
aggregate measurements. The data is refreshed and kept up to date—you don't need to
manage export schedules.
Core tables, entities, and aggregate measurements are defined in the Common Data Model
along with rich attributes, definitions, and relationships. Data exported to the data lake is
described in the Common Data Model. The data structure in Data Lake Storage Gen2 mirrors the
organization of data definitions in the Common Data Model. Data stored in Data Lake Storage is
described using metadata as defined by the Common Data Model language specification. This
enables existing tools to understand data semantics and relationships—they light up with data
in the data lake.
With the General Availability of tables, entities, and aggregate measurements in Data Lake
Storage Gen2, you can use Data Lake Storage Gen2 as the source of data for reporting and
downstream integrations. If you are currently using Bring your own database (BYOD) to export
data from Finance and Operations, you can transition to Data Lake Storage Gen2—no need to
export data on your own, you can use data already present in Data Lake Storage Gen2.
Create and trigger instant flows
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Feature details
An administrator can create instant flows for entities that are then listed on forms under a Power
Automate menu. Users can trigger these flows and then monitor the performance of each flow
in Power Automate. These capabilities provide a competitive advantage in regard to integration
because they reduce the cost of implementation.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Data in Common Data Service – phase 1 & 2
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 19, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature details
Get your Finance and Operations apps data in Common Data Service and keep it up to date.
We are making the dual-write framework a seamless experience by harmonizing the converging
concepts between Finance and Operations apps and model-driven apps in Dynamics 365. This
allows businesses to exchange near real-time data in a synchronous, bidirectional fashion
beyond application boundaries, giving users a unified experience.
Knowing every business is unique, we have made the dual-write framework extensible. This
includes enabling custom entities, as well as extensions to existing entities, to fully use Common
Data Service and surrounding tools for your most important business data.
Phased release
Phase 1 features provide multimastering capabilities for customers, vendors, and products,
along with an introduction of the company concept in Common Data Service. It also includes
finance and tax reference data. These features have been in preview since July 2019.
The following entities are supported:
• Payment schedules - Header
• Payment schedules – Line
• Payment day - Header
• Payment day - Line
• Customer groups
• Terms of payment
• Customer payment method
• Loyalty card
• Loyalty reward points
• Customers
• Customer contact
• Currency
• Fiscal calendar
• Fiscal calendar year
• Exchange rate types
• Exchange rate pair
• Ledger fiscal periods and financial calendar period
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• Main account category
• Main account
• Ledger
• Exchange rates
• Dimension attribute
• Dimension integration format
• Organization classification and organization hierarchy purpose
• Organization hierarchy
• Organization hierarchy type
• Company
• Released products
• Distinct released products
• Product number identified barcode entity
• Global products
• Product default order settings entity
• Product specific default order settings
• Product dimension group entity
• Tracking dimension group entity
• Unit of measures entity
• Unit of measure conversion
• Product specific unit of measure conversion
• Site entity
• Warehouses entity
• Color entity
• Size entity
• Storage dimension group entity
• Style entity
• Configuration entity
• EcoResProductMasterColor entity
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• EcoResProductMasterSize entity
• EcoResProductMasterStyle entity
• EcoResProductMasterConfig entity
• Product categories
• Product category assignments
• Product category hierarchies
• Product category hierarchy roles
• Tax groups
• Tax item groups
• Tax exemptions
• Tax authorities
• Withholding tax codes
• Withholding tax groups
• Tax ledger account group and tax posting groups
• Vendors
• Vendor groups
• Vendor payment method
• Vendor contacts
• Chart of accounts
While the preview for the Phase 1 set of features around master and reference data scenarios
are continuing, Phase 2 features are about supporting end-to-end scenarios on pricing, quotes,
orders, invoices, and assets. These scenarios can be further enriched by customers and partners.
Entity coverage for these areas will be revealed during preview.
Phase 2 features are planned for preview in the January-February timeframe.
See also
Dual-write home page (docs)
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Tables in a customer's Data Lake Storage Gen2 data lake
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Exporting data to your own Azure SQL Database isn't needed when the data is readily available
in your own data lake. This feature enables customers to reduce their reliance on Bring your own
database (BYOD) and to eventually retire the use of BYOD.
Customers upgrading from Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics AX 2012 who have their existing
data warehouses integrated into an operational database can now upgrade to Finance and
Operations apps with minimal disruptions to their existing integrations.
Feature details
Tables in the Finance and Operations apps are now available within your own Azure data lake.
Customers can choose the required tables while the system keeps the data refreshed on a near
real-time basis. There is no need to monitor and manage export jobs or schedules. Power users
and developers can use a variety of tools and languages to access data within their own data
lake, including DataFlows, Spark, and SQL.
Finance and Operations apps data is described in the Common Data Model
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Business value
The Common Data Model is the data schema that describes all of the data available in Microsoft
services including Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations apps. Customers and partners can
build downstream applications and extensions using the data model described in the Common
Data Model knowing that their applications can integrate tightly with Microsoft services.
Partners, providers, and industry groups can evolve the core ERP schemas with extensions that
are specific to industries and verticals.
AI and analytics tools such as Power BI natively understand the Common Data Model schema.
For example, when ingesting external data using Power BI connectors, users can easily store the
data in the destination using the Common Data Model entities such as Purchase Orders,
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Inventory, and Ledger. This enables users to create rich applications that combine data from
multiple sources without spending too much time transforming and wrangling data from one
entity shape to another.
Feature details
All of the data in Finance and Operations apps, including tables and entities, are described in the
Common Data Model. This makes combining data from multiple applications easy because the
destination data is stored in a broadly accepted standard set of entities.
Finance and Operations entities in a customer's data lake
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jun 2020
Business value
Why export data to your own Azure SQL Database when the data is readily available in your own
data lake? This feature enables customers to reduce their reliance on Bring your own database
(BYOD) and eventually retire the use of BYOD. Having access to Data Entity definitions in Azure
Data Lake enables customers to retire BYOD service without changing their downstream
integrations.
Customers upgrading from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics AX 2012 who have their
existing data warehouses integrated into operational databases can now upgrade to Finance
and Operations apps with minimal disruptions to their existing integrations with access to Table
level data. With the addition of Entity shapes, business users can easily consume the data
without having to understand underlying table definitions and relationships.
Feature details
Entities in the Finance and Operations apps are now available within your own Azure data lake.
Customer can choose the required entities. The system identifies the underlying tables and
keeps the corresponding data refreshed on a near real-time basis. There is no need to monitor
and manage export jobs or schedules. Power users and developers can use a variety of tools and
languages to access data within their own data lake, including DataFlows, Spark, and SQL. By
using Azure Synapse, you can get access to entity data as SQL view definitions.
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Entity store data is available in Azure Data Lake
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 1, 2019 Aug 2020
Business value
Enable advanced analytics and AI (such as reasoning over data) across Finance and Operations
apps and other data in a customer's own Azure Data Lake. Finance and Operations apps provide
easy access to denormalized transnational data in a near real-time basis.
The same dataset that powers analytical workspaces is now available for your own reports and
data mash-up scenarios.
Feature details
Aggregate measurements are denormalized star schemas defined within Dynamics 365 Finance
and Operations apps. Aggregate measurements enable users to navigate operational data
without having to understand complex data schemas. Aggregate measurements are staged in
Entity store, and the operational data warehouse is included.
With the general availability of Entity store schemas in Azure Data Lake, customers can directly
access denormalized data for reporting and analytics. Aggregate measurements are stored in
Data Lake Storage as Common Data Model folders enabling rich data mash-up and analytical
scenarios. For example, aggregate measurement data can be attached as Power BI reference
data flows with and used for reporting with Power BI. Power users can easily create new data
mashups and reports in Power BI Desktop.
Developers and BI professionals can use tools such as Azure Synapse and Azure Data Factory to
work with data and create enterprise data warehouses.
See also
Make Entity store available as a Data Lake (docs)
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Project Operations 2020 release
wave 1
Today’s project-based services businesses operate in a highly competitive market, where
winning new deals, accelerating project delivery, and increasing profit margins are significant
challenges. Teams within these organizations are using disconnected systems for sales, project
management, collaboration, and financials when success in this environment requires unifying
teams around actionable data.
We are excited to announce a new Dynamics 365 application that unifies operational workflows
to provide the visibility, collaboration, and insight needed to drive success across teams—from
sales to finance. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations connects your sales, resourcing,
project management, and finance teams within a single application to win more deals,
accelerate delivery, empower employees, and maximize profitability.
As we see phenomenal growth in the services economy, bringing together these products is key
to our vision. We’re very excited for the innovation Dynamics 365 Project Operations delivers in
this space and are looking forward to the value that Microsoft and its partners can bring to our
customers.
Delivering service organization success
This new application builds on our depth of expertise and existing applications across all
functional pillars of service-based businesses and teams. Powered by Microsoft Power Platform,
we provide customers an unmatched set of capabilities that enable everyone to analyze, act, and
automate across their organization to transform their services-business from the ground up.
• Leaders get business insights to increase visibility across all teams, data, and processes,
plus AI capabilities for better, faster business decisions.
• Sales is enabled to win more deals and accelerate the sales cycle with fast accurate quotes,
flexible pricing, and seamless transitions from estimate to execution.
• Resourcing is set up to optimize resource utilization by aligning the right people, with the
right skills, to the right projects—improving quality and helping to retain top performers.
• Project managers can accelerate project delivery with state-of-the-art, built-in project
management that uses familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft Project capabilities.
• Team members can improve productivity, collaboration, and visibility with integration to
Microsoft Teams, as well as submit time and expenses from anywhere.
• Finance can simplify project accounting with time and expense tracking governance, project
costing, budgeting, invoicing, revenue recognition, compliance, and visibility into key
business health metrics such as gross margin and project profitability.
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Project Operations is powerful on its own, but it is also expandable by our customers who
require additional capabilities from Dynamics 365, including Marketing, Human Resources,
Customer Service, and more. Whether you want the additional functionality of another Dynamics
365 application or to add on a custom application built with Power Apps, everything works
together and like you'd expect because they share a common foundation as well as the security,
privacy, and compliance of a cloud-delivered solution.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Project Operations
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Enhanced Project Accounting capabilities
for resource-based projects in Dynamics
365 Project Operations
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 To be announced
Project Management capabilities End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 To be announced
Project Sales enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 To be announced
Enhanced Project Accounting capabilities
for inventory-based projects in Dynamics
365 Project Operations
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Sep 2020 To be announced
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
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• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Enhanced Project Accounting capabilities for resource-based projects in
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Fixed-price and Time and material billing arrangements with customers for project-based
contracts are often supported by one or more revenue recognition processes and accounting
concepts to track Project work-in-process (WIP) balances. Customers of Dynamics 365 Projects
Operations will be able to leverage the rich accounting and revenue recognition capabilities to
complete their project management processes from Sales to Project Accounting.
Project Management capabilities
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Built on Common Data Service, Microsoft Project for Web was released in the third quarter of
2019. This solution introduced the Project Scheduling Service, a cloud-based version of
Microsoft Project’s highly performant scheduling engine. We have designed a set of core project
entities based on the intersection of key Project Service Automation entities and Microsoft
Project capabilities. The feature represents investments that bring together the core capabilities
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from Project for Web and Project Service Automation as a new product offering called Dynamics
365 Project Operations. This will represent the comprehensive project management capabilities,
such as resource bookings, sales, pricing, costing, approvals, and project actuals. The value of
this feature will help project managers plan projects with visibility and awareness of the financial
impact of the changes they make to their project plans.
Project Sales enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 To be announced
Feature details
We have combined the capabilities of Microsoft Project for Web and Dynamics 365 Project
Service Automation with the Project Financials capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance as a single
product offering called Dynamics 365 Project Operations. This will provide a comprehensive
set of capabilities for project-based organizations.
The following additions to the existing functionalities for Project Sales and Financials are
targeted for this release wave:
• Ability to set up split-billing for project contracts: With this feature, customers using the
project-quoting and contracting capabilities of Projects Operations will be able to set up
multiple customers for each contract with a percentage split of the billings for each of those
customers. This setup for billing will help in scenarios where there is a manufacturer or
product vendor involved who is willing to pay a portion of the cost of a customized
implementation or value-add, as required by the customer.
• Ability to set up "not-to-exceed" limits for project contracts and quotes and enforce
them during invoicing: For Time and material (T&M) project contract types, there is often a
cap negotiated between the customer and the service provider (vendor) to prevent overages
and inefficiencies in service delivery. With this feature, customers of Projects Operations will
be able to set up a cap or monetary limit on T&M project contracts that will be enforced by
the system during invoicing.
• Ability to set up billing and chargeability options for work breakdown structure (WBS)
tasks: In project organizations, it is common to have different contractual agreements for
different phases of work. For example, a vendor could negotiate a fixed-price billing setup
for the prototype phase of a project and a T&M type of arrangement for the actual
implementation. Certain tasks on the project could also be categorized as chargeable while
others could be non-chargeable or complimentary. With this feature, it will be possible for
Project Operations customers to associate project tasks with project contract lines, thereby
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subjecting them to the same billing method on that contract line. The feature will also allow
for a project manager to mark certain tasks as chargeable, non-chargeable, or
complimentary, which will then be enforced when recording sales values and creating
invoices for the costs incurred on those project tasks.
• Support for retainers on project contracts: Retainer-type contracts are those that will
allow the customer to have a predictable cash outflow. The customer will have a standard
monthly payment that will be used by the services provider to draw down against for the
cost of services delivered in that period. Any services in that period in excess of the retainer
will be invoiced at the end of that period or pushed to the next period's billings until the end
of the project. With this feature, Project Operations customers will be able to draw up a
contract with their customers that will have a set retainer schedule and retainer billings by
period. These retainers will be used during invoicing to draw down against the cost of
services delivered. This feature will also work to support advances and prepayments that
represent one-off requests but can be used and reconciled much like a scheduled retainer
payment.
• Project accounting and Financials in Dynamics 365 Project Operations: Fixed-price and
Time and material billing arrangements with customers for project-based contracts are often
supported by one or more revenue recognition processes and accounting concepts for
tracking Project Work in Process (WIP) balances. Project Operations customers will be able to
leverage the rich accounting and revenue recognition capabilities to complete their project
management processes from Sales to Project Accounting.
Enhanced Project Accounting capabilities for inventory-based projects in
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Sep 2020 To be announced
Feature details
• Remove project type dependency from project: When this feature is enabled, an
inventory-based project will no longer have a type of Fixed-price, Time and material, Cost,
Time, Internal, or Investment. The project contract line will determine whether a project is
Fixed-price or Time and material, allowing for the same project to have both a fixed-price
component and a time and material component. Projects that do not have a contract will
track costs but will not track revenue.
• Remove project group dependency from project: This feature will remove the
dependency of Project group for inventory-based projects. Project group will become an
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optional grouping mechanism for these projects. A new entity, Project revenue profile, will
be created and will contain the configuration related to work-in-progress (WIP)/revenue
accrual and revenue recognition for fixed-price projects. The project revenue profile will be
set on the contract line.
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation 2020
release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation helps you to win and deliver projects on time and
within budget, while optimizing resource usage. The application has pricing, sales, resourcing,
time and expense, and invoicing management capabilities, along with some project task and
work breakdown structure (WBS) functionality. The product team's investments for this release
and the next will focus on providing a modular offering for organizations with project-based
services. This offering will seamlessly bring together capabilities across Microsoft Project, Project
Service Automation, and the Service Industries module in Dynamics 365 Finance to enable a
frictionless and functionally rich Quote to Cash for projects.
Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation currently takes advantage of Microsoft Power
Platform and Common Data Service to help our customers connect and build end-to-end
business solutions for project organizations by using rich pricing, costing, and resource
management experiences. With Microsoft Project replatforming to Common Data Service, we'll
be uniquely positioned to deliver a competitive set of project-planning and task-scheduling
capabilities. Our customers will be able to deliver successful projects with this expanded project
management functionality.
The Service Industries module in Dynamics 365 Finance delivers project accounting, with
revenue recognition and customer-facing invoicing that takes advantage of date-effective
exchange rates and a rich sales-tax feature set. Our customers will be able to better manage
invoicing, cash flow, and project accounting by using this expanded financial capability brought
into our solution.
The themes for this and the next release wave are:
• Taking advantage of the best of Office and Dynamics 365 solutions for project management
on the Finance and Operations and CE platforms
• Model alignment with project functionality in Finance
We're currently reworking our engineering and release timelines for this feature set, so please
stay tuned as we strategize on the best path forward for our customers. The timelines will be
updated in the coming few weeks.
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Guides 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Guides is a mixed-reality application that enables employees to learn in the flow
of work by providing holographic instructions when and where they need them. Dynamics 365
Guides:
• Engages employees through hands-on learning
• Helps organizations improve training efficiency
• Generates data to improve processes
Dynamics 365 Guides addresses the needs of three key personas: content authors, operators,
and managers/analysts.
Authors can easily create guides without 3D or programming skills by using a simple PC app and
a HoloLens app. Operators use guides on HoloLens in training and on the job to learn by doing
in a heads-up, hands-free style. Trainers and managers can analyze usage data to optimize their
workflows.
For 2020 Release Wave 1 (April-September 2020), the product team will focus on:
• Expanding extensibility capabilities to enable partners inside and outside the Dynamics 365
ecosystem to connect Dynamics 365 Guides to existing workflows to bring concrete business
value.
• Enterprise-focused features that extend the reach of Dynamics 365 Guides to more use cases
and environments (branching and publishing).
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Guides
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Access Dynamics 365 Guides content
through Common Data Service entities
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Aug 2020 -Extend analytics capabilities with Guides
Insights
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Aug 2020 -Create guides that support branching
flows
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Restrict access to guides that aren’t ready
to use through publishing process
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Access Dynamics 365 Guides content through Common Data Service
entities
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Aug 2020 -Business value
Easy and reliable access to Dynamics 365 Guides data so that customers and partners can
connect it to their digital enterprise ecosystems.
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Feature details
Dynamics 365 Guides stores all content (instructions, text, pictures, videos, and 3D models) in
the Common Data Service. To provide better access to this content, we are moving this data to a
set of Common Data Service entities that define the data structures the content is stored in.
Using the Common Data Service API, customers and partners will be able to read and write
these content entities, push and pull content to and from Dynamics 365 Guides, and build
custom integrations. For example, a system integrator will be able to build an app in Power Apps
that reads Dynamics 365 Guides content and displays it on a mobile device for expert workers
that don’t have access to a HoloLens.
Extend analytics capabilities with Guides Insights
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Aug 2020 -Business value
Guides Insights provide easy access to product usage analytics that enables Dynamics 365
Guides to be part of the larger enterprise ecosystem.
Feature details
Guides Insights allows partners and customers to easily leverage product usage information in
use cases that extend beyond the current Power BI template for time-tracking. Easy access to
pre-defined Common Data Service entities that contain insights computed from low-level usage
data will enable a wide variety of applications. For example, you can use Microsoft Power
Automate to send a notification when a guide is completed. A more complex application could
provide a guide-completion-time-trend analysis.
Using Guides Insights, customers and partners will be able to easily access data in Dynamics 365
Guides, including:
• Raw data collected during operator run-throughs
• Statistical summaries (for example: average times, distributions, and anomalies)
Guides Insights will be designed and developed by the product team based on partner and
customer feedback.
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Create guides that support branching flows
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Business value
Training and maintenance tasks are often too complicated for linear workflows. Using branching
logic makes Dynamics 365 Guides more flexible, increases the number of addressable use cases,
and ensures the solution fits industrial needs.
Feature details
When an author creates a guide, they'll have the option to set up branching events which will
move the operator to a different set of steps based on their input. For example, an author can
create a branch that automatically advances operators from task 2 to task 5 depending on the
operator’s answer to a question in step 2.
Restrict access to guides that aren’t ready to use through publishing
process
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Business value
Restrict operators from using guides that aren’t ready to use.
Feature details
Operators should only have access to guides that are ready to use. This feature will prevent
operators from viewing unfinished guides as they will only have access to guides that have been
published.
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Human Resources
Overview of Dynamics 365 Human Resources 2020 release
wave 1
As mentioned in our announcement, Building a more successful workforce with Dynamics 365
Human Resources, Dynamics 365 Talent: Core HR is now Dynamics 365 Human Resources, with
expanded capabilities.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources helps businesses empower and engage their workforce,
provide modern benefits packages, and stay compliant. It provides a comprehensive personnel
management solution, including performance, leave and absence, and payroll integration. Selfservice programs help HR professionals and employees manage time off and benefits. Human
Resources connects people and operations data to help you optimize workforce costs and take
better care of employees.
For the 2020 release wave 1, we're focused on the following areas to help you expand your
offerings and extend your solutions:
• Leave and absence: Providing greater flexibility in developing new leave plans for your
workforce.
• Benefits management: Delivering enhanced benefits plans to help you attract and retain
your best employees.
• Data access via Common Data Service: Adding entities to improve data integration,
extensibility, and reporting.
The next sections provide details about the specific features we're releasing across these areas.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Human Resources
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Create leave rules to meet company
and regulatory policies
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced benefit plan configuration End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced worker benefit inquiry End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Flex credit programs End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Leave calendar views End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Online benefit enrollment End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Qualified life event processing End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Suspend leave for employees meeting
certain criteria
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 May 2020
Allow employees to buy and sell leave End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jun 2020
Enable an absence manager to
manage leave
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jun 2020
Manage employee sick leave End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 Jul 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Ongoing additions to Human
Resources data in Common Data
Service
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Create leave rules to meet company and regulatory policies
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Providing more flexibility in the policies related to leave plans allows HR to configure leave and
absence to meet their specific regional and company requirements. Along with these policies,
providing additional ways on how employees accrue time off, such as full-time equivalent (FTE),
provides HR more control when providing time-off benefits to employees.
Enhanced leave and absence plan policies and accruals include the following:
• Accrue based on full-time equivalent (FTE), along with employment dates.
• Configurable accrual rounding.
• Expiration rules.
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• Carry-forward transfer rules.
• Adjust leave based on holiday corrections.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Improve the leave and absence experience across the organization (blog)
Dynamics 365 Human Resources leave and absence overview (docs)
Enhanced benefit plan configuration
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Companies are offering broader and richer sets of benefits to attract and retain their employees.
Enhanced benefit plan configuration provides organizations the ability to manage their plans
with a wider range of setup options to offer flexibility, while supporting complex scenarios.
Enhanced benefit plan configuration includes the following:
• Support for complex rate tables and nested tiers.
• Easily create benefit bundles and programs.
• Create flexible and robust eligibility rules in a simplified user experience.
See also
Benefits management overview (docs)
Enhanced worker benefit inquiry
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature details
The enhanced worker benefit inquiry form provides a summarized view of all of the benefitsrelated information for a worker.
The Enhanced worker benefit inquiry form contains the following:
• Single view of all the plans an employee is eligible for.
• View of the coverage options that the employee is qualified for, and might be qualified for in
the future.
• View of employee's life event history and any future dated life events.
See also
Benefits management overview (docs)
Flex credit programs
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Companies might want to showcase the cost of benefits to employees as well as give the
employees control over the way they spend their benefit dollars. With Advanced Benefits, you
can establish flex credit programs to support these scenarios.
Flex credit programs contain the following:
• Establishment of flex credit program, made up of individual plans.
• Proration rule definition to support retirement and other life events.
See also
Benefit management overview (docs)
Leave calendar views
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature details
Enable employees and managers to plan time off more efficiently by providing a leave calendar
for viewing who is and isn’t at work.
Leave calendar views include the following:
• Company calendar to be reviewed by human resources.
• Manager calendar to include time-off information for direct reports.
• Employee calendar to include time-off information for team members reporting to the same
manager.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Improve the leave and absence experience across the organization (blog)
Dynamics 365 Human Resources leave and absence overview (docs)
Online benefit enrollment
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Benefit selections are an important part of an employee's overall rewards package. Online
benefit enrollment provides employees the opportunity to review their benefits prior to
selection, and guides them through the checkout process.
Online benefit enrollment contains the following:
• Auto enroll options based on the prior year's selections.
• Familiar shopping cart experience for employees.
See also
Benefits management overview (docs)
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Qualified life event processing
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Life events provide the opportunity for employees to update their benefit selections based on
changes in their situation, such as adoption of a child or marriage. Life event processing enables
an organization to track these changes, and update the associated benefits.
Life event processing includes the following:
• Create custom actions based on life event changes.
• Future dated life event support.
• Integrate with employee self-service.
See also
Benefits Management overview (docs)
Suspend leave for employees meeting certain criteria
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 May 2020
Feature details
Organizations have policies around when employees should and shouldn't accrue leave. In some
cases, this means an employee's leave accrual is suspended for a while on a specific type of
leave.
Suspending leave includes the following:
• Define start and end dates for leave suspension.
• Prorate accruals based on suspension dates.
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Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Allow employees to buy and sell leave
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jun 2020
Feature details
This feature provides employees with the ability to buy leave via payroll deduction or cash out
(sell) leave to be included in their pay. This allows employees to have more control over how
they want to use their leave benefits.
Buying and selling leave includes the following:
• Provide dates when employees can buy and sell leave.
• Configurable limits and rates for buying and selling leave.
• Approve buy and sell requests.
Enable an absence manager to manage leave
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jun 2020
Feature details
In some organizations, a people manager might not be managing the leave for their team. This
process might be handled by an absence manager for team members across multiple
departments and teams.
Enabling an absence manager to manage leave includes the following:
• Review and approve time off based on an alternate hierarchy.
• View team member balances.
• View absence calendar for team.
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Manage employee sick leave
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
This feature provides organizations the ability to manage employee sick leave in more detail to
meet company and regulatory policies.
Sick leave management includes the following:
• Open-ended sick leave requests.
• Return-to-work notices.
• Sick leave reporting.
• Manage and approve sick leave requests.
Ongoing additions to Human Resources data in Common Data Service
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Business value
Enable scenarios to extend and integrate with Human Resources.
Feature details
Integrations, extensibility, and reporting all have dependencies on Common Data Service as the
source for data across solutions. We are continuing our ongoing effort to bring additional data
to Common Data Service to support these needs.
Our focused efforts include:
• Enabling new scenarios and completing existing scenarios through additional entities.
• Completing existing entities.
• Focusing on the reliability of updating the Common Data Service data that exists and
changes over time.
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Commerce
Overview of Dynamics 365 Commerce 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Commerce—built on the proven Dynamics 365 Retail capabilities—delivers a
comprehensive omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, call center, and ecommerce experiences to provide a delightful shopping journey for consumers across the
different touchpoints. Dynamics 365 Commerce enables you to deliver better business outcomes
by:
• Building brand loyalty through personalized customer engagements.
• Increasing revenue with improved employee productivity.
• Optimizing operations to reduce costs.
• Driving supply chain efficiencies.
The investments in this release further empower the different commerce personas to be highly
productive in their tasks by helping them to know and serve the consumers better, make a
better outreach to them, and efficiently run operations across the value chain.
With frictionless information flow and in-process insights powered by the Dynamics 365
ecosystem, retailers are better equipped than ever to truly realize the vision of digital
transformation:
• E-commerce: Empower marketers to narrate their brand story quickly and more effectively
with the capability to style e-commerce webpages without the need of a developer. With the
capability for bulk redirect URLs, retailers can protect their investments in SEO optimization
by redirecting legacy URLs to the Dynamics 365 Commerce URLs, while also providing a
continuity for the consumer experience. Enhanced inventory visibility with the option to
define inventory buffers empowers merchandisers to meet consumer expectations and
optimize inventory allocation across the distribution network.
• Modern store: By enabling the ability to perform health checks from the point of sale (POS)
for connected peripheral devices and the services upon which the POS has a dependency,
retailers can be certain that checkout lanes are always operational for a smooth consumer
experience. Enhancing the in-store processes that are vital for every retailer, we’re making
improvements around:
o Receipt numbering.
o Inventory visibility.
o Emailing receipts.
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o Supporting serial number tracked products.
o Setting up and selling warranties.
• Know your customers: Engage with the consumer and gain insights about them as they go
through their shopping journey across the channels. Use these insights to provide
personalized experiences and value-added services to make them a real fan of your brand.
• Employee productivity: Empower your employees by providing them with insights and
next-best-action recommendations by providing them with a view of available, applicable,
and upcoming discounts so that they can upsell and cross-sell to consumers. Help them to
be organized and productive in their work through cross-channel task management and
notifications, along with the capability to communicate and collaborate across their peer
groups and management, which also aids them in providing delightful consumer
experiences. Enhanced and new inbound and outbound operations for receiving inventory
and creating and fulfilling transfer orders can also help improve employee productivity in
addition to making these processes more resilient.
• Omnichannel: With support for modern payment methods like Alipay and WeChat Pay,
along with a consistent and improved payment flow across the channels, consumers can
have a much more frictionless checkout experience. Also, by enabling return policies and
improved return scenarios, retailers can provide a level of service to consumers that would
enable them to stand apart from competition.
• Fundamentals: With seamless and reliable connectivity loss management for the POS
devices in stores, along with the efficiency and reliability improvements around data
synchronization and storage, retailers can be confident their store components will operate
smoothly, boosting productivity and efficiency of the store operations. Support for Azure
Active Directory–based sign-in and improvements on the sign-in page provide retailers with
a world-class authentication system, helping them to secure their systems.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Commerce
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Fundamentals
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Commerce product
recommendations add-in
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020
Auto-charges improvements to
support fees based on channel
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Azure AD support for POS sign-in End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Change mode of delivery
operation for POS
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Financial reconciliation of retail
transactions in the store
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 May 2020
POS sign-in page improvements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Commerce data sizing
improvements
End users, automatically May 2020 Jul 2020
Efficiency and reliability of data
synchronization and storage
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
POS and headquarters extensions Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
May 2020 Jul 2020
Seamless and reliable connectivity
loss management
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Globalization
In 2020 release wave 1, we will extend the out -of-the-box Commerce localization by delivering
fiscal service integration for Germany and moving the digital signing of retail transactions for
France and Norway to the fiscal integration framework.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Digital signing of retail
transactions for France based on
the fiscal integration framework
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Digital signing of retail
transactions for Norway based on
the fiscal integration framework
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Jul 2020
Fiscal service integration for
Germany
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Aug 2020
Industry excellence
Investments in core retail business processes and industry requirements and capabilities.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Enable resetting of receipt
numbers at the beginning of the
fiscal year
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Task management in HQ and POS
for first-line workers and managers
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved inbound and outbound
inventory operations in store
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 May 2020
Channel-side calculations for
available physical inventory for
stores
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Email a receipt from the journal End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
External gift card support in ecommerce and call center
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 May 2020
Improved order recall for
omnichannel orders in Customer
Service
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Improved support for serial
number tracking dimension in
store inventory processes
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
New events and placeholders for
transactional emails
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Support for mini-cart on ecommerce site
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Enhanced customer record
creation and edit capabilities in
POS
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Warranty setup and sell End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
Consistency in payments
management across retail
channels
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Aug 2020
No-code site styling Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
May 2020 Aug 2020
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Unified commerce
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Set preferred payment methods
for returns
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Support for bulk URL redirects Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
In-store health check for POS
peripherals
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 2020 May 2020
Define and utilize inventory buffers
to drive inventory level displays in
e-commerce
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Upsell and cross-sell using
available discounts by enabling
store associates to view
promotions in POS
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Editing of partially fulfilled
customer orders in POS
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Jul 2020
POS payments flows
improvements
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
May 2020 Aug 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Fundamentals
Commerce product recommendations add-in
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 -Business value
Provisioning product recommendations as an add-in for Dynamics 365 Commerce allows
customers to acquire and leverage the functionality when aligned as needed. The add-in is fully
integrated in the Dynamics 365 licensing platform and is seamlessly made available to
customers who have the appropriate entitlements.
Feature details
Customers can leverage add-in flows in Dynamics 365 Lifecycle Services (LCS) to provision
product recommendations in a completely automated fashion.
Auto-charges improvements to support fees based on channel
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Business value
Retailers can define auto-charges rules to add a fee based on the channel the order was created
in. Retailers can configure the channel-based auto-charges at both the header level and line
item level.
Feature details
This feature provides additional criteria to allow auto-charges to be defined by Commerce
channels. Functionality will be similar to how Commerce currently filters modes of delivery or
assortments by channel. The feature will use the Commerce organizational model hierarchy and
allow headquarters users who have the Advanced auto charges configuration key enabled to
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be able to define additional filters on their auto-charges table by Commerce channels. The
functionality will be tied to a configuration key to ensure that non-Commerce users of Dynamics
365 Finance and Operations apps are not impacted by these added features.
Azure AD support for POS sign-in
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Business value
Our Commerce point of sale (POS) application today only supports staff authentication based on
our own identity provider. Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) support for POS sign-in has been a
request from various retailers, with generally two requirements: security and maintainability.
Customers with stringent corporate security requirements usually look at Azure AD as a more
secure way to handle authentication against the POS. Many customers typically use multiple
Microsoft cloud services (Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365), and already have their workers set
up in Azure AD. They don’t want to manage them (and their passwords) again in the Dynamics
365 Commerce back office in order to use the Commerce solution. This creates duplicate effort
for them that could be easily avoided.
Feature details
This feature will introduce:
• A new configuration parameter in Commerce headquarters (HQ) to specify the desired
authentication method for POS sign-in.
• A modified POS sign-in page to leverage Azure AD for user authentication.
See also
Enable Azure Active Directory authentication for POS sign-in (docs)
Change mode of delivery operation for POS
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
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Business value
Retailers need the flexibility to make changes specifically to the mode of delivery on customer
order sales lines at any time prior to the fulfillment of the line.
Feature details
Change Mode of Delivery can be added to a point of sale (POS) screen layout. It will only be
applicable to lines that were previously configured using the "ship all" or "ship selected" ordercreation methods in POS. After the original mode of delivery is set for a transaction line, a user
might want to modify the mode of delivery for one or more eligible lines without having to go
through the entire "ship all" or "ship selected" flows. The mode of delivery operation will provide
this convenience. It can be used during the initial order creation processing of the POS customer
order, or during the editing of a customer order. It is not applicable to lines that are not
configured as shipping lines, and the operation will not work for lines that are released to
fulfillment or invoiced.
Financial reconciliation of retail transactions in the store
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 May 2020
Feature details
This feature will only work with the trickle feed order creation process and will be driven by a
parameter for retailers to decide if they want to create financial statements in the Modern point
of sale (MPOS) or Cloud point of sale (CPOS) client or in the Retail headquarters. This feature will
enable store managers to:
• Create financial retail statements for their shift in MPOS/CPOS.
• Make adjustment entries for cash, as needed, using the currently available cash management
transaction types.
• Post financial retail statements in MPOS/CPOS.
• Use financial statements posted in MPOS/CPOS and post the same in Retail headquarters.
This process will eliminate the need to create and post financial statements in Retail
headquarters.
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POS sign-in page improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Retailers want more flexibility to customize their point of sale (POS) sign-in page for their
branding needs, and a better visual experience for touch-enabled devices.
Feature details
This feature will improve the current POS sign-in experiences by:
• Adding new user interface (UI) elements to the sign-in page, including date and time and
custom logo.
• Providing more options for retailers to customize the sign-in page theme and layout.
• Using numeric keypad (numpad) and people picker to optimize the sign-in experience for
touch-enabled devices.
Commerce data sizing improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Our Retail on-premises components, such as Modern point of sale (MPOS) offline and Retail
Store Scale Unit (RSSU), are critical for our contingency story for scenarios of planned
unavailability, for outage of cloud components, and for regions with poor network connectivity.
As a function of this, it is crucial to maximize the efficiency, resiliency, and speed with which data
is synchronized.
Feature details
This features targets the following scope: The ability to configure synchronization-related data
to better differentiate between what is required at the channel database and what is required
within the offline database. It will function at a job level and at a subjob level, at least, to allow
separation of data and minimization of data in the offline database.
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Who uses this feature
This will be used by Retail IT or operations roles that manage the Retail Channel Setup.
License required
No
Setup required
No
Efficiency and reliability of data synchronization and storage
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Our Channel Data Exchange (CDX) component synchronizes data between Commerce Channel
Databases (co-located cloud channel, Commerce Cloud Scale Unit, Commerce Store Scale Unit,
and Modern point of sale (POS) with offline support).
A number of performance and reliability updates have been implemented that solve issues
regarding data unavailability, slowness on other components, or impact on database data and
log sizes. It is a constant focus to maximize availability, reliability, and efficiency in our data
synchronization framework (CDX).
Feature details
This feature will contain several independent improvements in the following areas:
• Improve data package generation in headquarters.
• Improve data package when applying to a channel database.
• Reduce the number of required full synchronizations and, when unavoidable, minimize the
performance impact.
• Multiple data optimizations, including master data stripping at the channel level, updating
DB statistics, and indexing during synchronization.
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POS and headquarters extensions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
Framework enhancements
After moving toward the binary-based extension model, we are wrapping and exposing all our
core point of sale (POS) logic and user interface (UI) controls as SDK (APIs) to help the extension
easily consume and override our logic. Without these APIs, it is difficult for the extension to
implement custom logic. In some cases, the extension has to rewrite some of the existing code
or write too many lines of code to do a simple scenario. To avoid this and to reduce the number
of lines of code, we are introducing more advanced APIs and configuration-driven development
to simplify the overall development process.
POS UI and API extension
We have enhanced the POS framework by adding more POS APIs to consume our logic in
extensions, and UI extension points to add custom columns, app bar buttons, and custom
controls in core POS views.
POS overridable requests and triggers
We added new overridable requests in POS to override the POS workflow or POS business logic,
and to add custom logic or validation. The POS trigger framework helps you to run custom logic
before or after core POS logic. With this new pattern, developers can more easily customize any
workflow in POS.
Seamless and reliable connectivity loss management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Our Real-time Transaction Service (RTS) component is the main connection point between
Commerce Server (formerly Retail Server) serving various channels (for example, point of sale
(POS) and e-commerce) and the Commerce headquarters.
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There are multiple performance and reliability scenarios that could be improved with additional
logic to maximize reliability. The focus is to provide meaningful messages where necessary and
to function seamlessly whenever possible.
Feature details
This feature will contain several independent improvements in the following areas:
• Ensure seamless Modern POS (MPOS) offline is triggered when there are systemic issues on
the Commerce Server (formerly Retail Server). For example, trigger offline functionality if the
channel DB is down.
• Improve design for seamless offline availability so that it is more reliable.
• Add dashboard details in headquarters that show the current status for devices.
Globalization
Overview
In 2020 release wave 1, we will extend the out-of-the-box Commerce localization by delivering
fiscal service integration for Germany and moving the digital signing of retail transactions for
France and Norway to the fiscal integration framework.
Digital signing of retail transactions for France based on the fiscal integration
framework
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
The digital signing of retail transactions for France can be used by customers to build their POS
solutions that are compliant with local cash register regulations.
Feature details
The digital signing of retail transactions for France now takes advantage of the fiscal integration
framework, meaning it supports all of the built-in fiscal integration capabilities. It is included in
the out-of-the-box solution but needs to be configured to be used. The feature enables fiscal
registration of sales by means of digital signing in various cash-and-carry sales and customer
order scenarios, as well as fiscal registration of audit events of various types.
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The Retail fiscal integration framework enables multinational retailers to build common POS
solutions that are compliant with different local fiscal regulations in the countries or regions that
they operate in.
Digital signing of retail transactions for Norway based on the fiscal integration
framework
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Jul 2020
Business value
The digital signing of retail transactions for Norway can be used by customers to build their
point of sale (POS) solutions that are compliant with local cash register regulations.
Feature details
The digital signing of retail transactions for Norway now takes advantage of the fiscal
integration framework, which means that it supports all of the built -in fiscal integration
capabilities. It is included in the out-of-the-box solution but needs to be configured to be used.
The functionality enables fiscal registration of sales by means of digital signing in various cashand-carry sales and customer order scenarios, as well as fiscal registration of audit events of
various types.
The Retail fiscal integration framework enables multinational retailers to build common POS
solutions that are compliant with different local fiscal regulations in the countries or regions that
they operate in.
Fiscal service integration for Germany
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
This functionality enables global and local Dynamics 365 Commerce customers to comply with
the local cash register regulations in Germany.
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Feature details
This functionality includes a sample of the integration of the point of sale (POS) with a thirdparty fiscal service that ensures compliance with cash register regulations in Germany. The
integration sample supports one of the popular third-party fiscal services available on the
German market and enables registration of sales in various cash-and-carry and customer order
sales scenarios.
It also provides options for error handling in basic scenarios (such as when retry is possible) as
well as more advanced scenarios, such as registering a completed transaction that was not
previously registered in the fiscal service. The sample is a part of the Retail SDK and can be built
and used as is. Implementation partners can also extend the integration functionality to cover all
required retail scenarios or build integration with other fiscal services based on the sample.
Industry excellence
Overview
Key areas of investment include centralized and in-store inventory management enhancements
as well as omnichannel management and order processing improvements.
Enable resetting of receipt numbers at the beginning of the fiscal year
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
There is a fiscal requirement in the India market to provide support for resetting of receipt
numbers at the beginning of the fiscal year. Customers and partners are accomplishing this
today through extensions and other ad-hoc steps. However, given that this is a requirement for
all customers in the India market, we have enabled this as a capability within our product.
Feature details
This feature will enable customers to reset receipt numbers at the beginning of their fiscal year
in a reliable and seamless way.
See also
Reset receipt numbers (docs)
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Task management in HQ and POS for first-line workers and managers
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Retailers can create task lists, assign tasks to stores and workers, and track status. Retailers can
notify store managers and store workers about upcoming or past-due tasks in point of sale
(POS).
Feature details
Task management includes the following features:
• Store managers can create task lists for retail stores and track their status by store or by
worker. Recurring tasks can also be created. For example, tasks can be created for Thursday
night closures or the first day of the month.
• Store managers can assign tasks to individual workers in the store, notify them of upcoming
or past-due tasks, update the status, and create ad-hoc tasks within POS.
• Store workers see notifications, view task details, and update the task status in POS.
See also
Task management (docs)
Improved inbound and outbound inventory operations in store
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 May 2020
Business value
This feature will improve upon the point of sale (POS) application by adding new operations to
allow for receiving inventory and the creation or fulfillment of transfer orders. These new
operations are designed to improve user productivity and data processing reliability.
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Feature details
This feature will create new user interfaces in POS to support workflows common to store
inventory receiving and transfer order creation and transfer order fulfillment scenarios. A new
"Inbound operation" and a new "Outbound operation" will be available to add to your screen
layouts with the intent that they can replace the existing picking/receiving POS operation.
These new operations will have user interfaces that are optimized for bar code scanning and
they will provide an easier way to view items on the related inbound/outbound documents.
Additional features will also be added to enhance and validate the data being entered to ensure
smooth processing and error handling when posting receipts or shipments. An asynchronous
document framework has also been added; this framework will allow for postings of receipts or
outbound transfer shipments to HQ to process efficiently and eliminate previous issues that
occurred in the picking/receiving operation with time-outs and processing errors when
attempting to post large documents to HQ.
This feature will be available for preview and use in sandbox/training environments in 10.0.9. It
will be further stabilized in 10.0.10 and it is recommended to consider adding these new
operations to your POS layout in a production environment after 10.0.10.
Channel-side calculations for available physical inventory for stores
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Business value
We have many retailers who would prefer to get an estimated on-hand value for their store
inventory without having to perform real-time service (RTS) calls back to headquarters (HQ) to
obtain this data.
Feature details
Channel-side calculation logic for "physical available" will be added for use with store inventory
lookup-related tasks. This calculation will require a periodic "sync" of inventory data from HQ
through product availability jobs. The store channel database might not know about inventory
transactions posted for the store (such as receipts, count journals, or sales orders processed
against the store warehouse from HQ) without getting this information from HQ.
This channel-side calculation will take the data provided by HQ and check for unposted
transactions in the store's channel database that might impact "physical available," and add or
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remove inventory as necessary to account for those transactions that HQ does not know about
yet.
This calculation is meant to provide an estimated available inventory only. Due to the fact that
the HQ database is the inventory master, it will not be possible to ensure 100 percent reliability
at all times for inventory on hand in the store database. Events might happen in HQ that affect a
store's inventory that might not be known by the channel database.
In order for this feature to work, the use of trickle feed statement posting will also be required.
See also
Calculate inventory availability for retail channels (docs)
Email a receipt from the journal
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 24, 2020 May 2020
Business value
Digital receipts offer a number of advantages and benefits to customers, such as the ability to
keep track of purchases without relying on paper documents, and the ability to forward a receipt
by email to someone. Dynamics 365 Commerce now offers the same features for emailed
receipts as it provides for printed receipts. Specifically, customers can request a receipt for a
previous transaction to be sent (or resent) to them by email.
Feature details
Cashiers can email a receipt for a previous transaction to a customer from Modern or Cloud
point of sale (POS) by going into the journal, selecting a transaction, and selecting Show
receipt. When the cashier selects the new Email icon, a dialog box will open that displays the
value of the receipt email property in the customer's record in Commerce headquarters. The
cashier can:
• Send the receipt to the email address in the text field.
• Change the destination email address for sending the receipt.
NOTE This capability is disabled by default. To enable it in Commerce Headquarters, go to the
Feature Management workspace and enable the Email receipts from the Journal feature.
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External gift card support in e-commerce and call center
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 May 2020
Business value
This feature adds support for external gift cards in the Dynamics 365 Commerce e-commerce
storefront and call center. In addition to providing an out-of-the-box integration to SVS and
Givex, external gift cards via the Dynamics 365 Payment Connector for Adyen, this feature adds
SDK support to integrate third-party external gift cards into the out-of-the-box e-commerce
storefront or through the e-commerce SDK. Previously these integrations required a lot of
custom code for payments and in the back office. This feature helps to reduce or eliminate
integration costs, depending on which storefront is used.
Feature details
This feature provides an out-of-the-box integration with Givex and SVS gift cards through ecommerce. The out-of-the-box integration is provided via the Dynamics 365 Payment Connector
for Adyen. In addition to the out-of-the-box integration, the payment SDK has been updated to
support enhancements to third-party payment connectors to support external gift cards.
Improved order recall for omnichannel orders in Customer Service
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Dynamics 365 Commerce provides solutions to allow order capture and processing through
multiple channels, such as point of sale (POS), call center, and e-commerce. When dealing with
multiple order capture systems, the methods used to provide the customer with their order
reference data are different. POS transactions use receipt IDs, call center orders use order
numbers from a headquarters sequence, and e-commerce orders use a different order number
sequence. Eventually, these orders are centralized in the headquarters and reassigned a
headquarters order number. From a customer service perspective, our headquarters (HQ) users
are challenged today to properly locate transactions and orders in the headquarters if they were
created as “guest checkout” or “customer unknown” transactions.
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By adding more visibility and cross-referencing all of these various order identifiers through our
customer service and order search functionality in both the headquarters and POS applications,
we can provide users with an easier time of locating the order in question in a customer service
scenario.
Feature details
This feature will enhance the existing customer service pages in HQ to allow for crossreferencing and easier lookup of sales orders by customer, order number, receipt ID or ecommerce transaction ID.
POS order recall features will also be improved to allow for lookup by receipt ID, order number,
or e-commerce order number.
E-commerce will be improved to ensure that a customer has the ability to view their order
history and see receipt numbers, HQ sales order numbers, or e-commerce sales order numbers
as applicable.
Improved support for serial number tracking dimension in store inventory
processes
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
As we increase our customer base, we are finding more retailers that sell products that require
serial control. Our current in-market point of sale (POS) application only uses a limited set of
inventory dimensions. The tracking dimensions (serial number, batch ID, and so on) are not fully
supported. This feature will improve upon the POS inbound inventory operation to support the
serial number tracking dimension in store inventory receiving processes.
Feature details
This feature provides POS users with the ability to register serial numbers during receiving of
purchase or transfer orders.
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New events and placeholders for transactional emails
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Customers who make online and in-store purchases expect to receive email notifications for key
events during the transaction. These events include confirmation of the order, notification that
the order is ready for in-store pickup, and shipping confirmation. Transactional notifications also
offer the retailer an opportunity to engage with the customer, providing timely and useful
feedback about their order.
Feature details
Transactional events
With this release, retailers can automatically send an email to customers when an order is ready
for in-store pickup, and when an order ships.
Event Description
Order ready for in-store pickup Triggered when an order with modeofdelivery set to "Customer
pickup" is marked as packed.
Order shipped Triggered when an order whose modeofdelivery is "Standard" is
invoiced.
New placeholders
Additional placeholders will also be made available for use by HTML email templates for
creating a richer and more informative email for the customer.
Header
Placeholder name Placeholder description
%ordernetamount% Order subtotal including discounts, before tax, shipping, or gift
card deductions are applied.
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Placeholder name Placeholder description
%storename% Name of the retail store for in-store pickup.
Line
Placeholder name Placeholder description
%productid% ID of the product. The ID can be used to assemble a URL that
opens the product description page on your e-commerce site.
%linequantity_withoutunit% Quantity of product without the unit of measure (UOM) appended.
%linequantitypicked_withoutunit% Quantity of product picked without UOM.
%linequantitypacked_withoutunit% Quantity of product packed without UOM. Use this placeholder
with the ‘Order Ready For Pickup’ event to indicate the quantity
that is ready for pickup (which might differ from the quantity
ordered).
%linequantityshipped_withoutunit% Quantity shipped for the line without UOM. Use this placeholder
with the ‘Order Shipped’ event to indicate the quantity that was
actually shipped (which might differ from the quantity ordered).
Support for mini-cart on e-commerce site
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
On an e-commerce site, we want to ensure a customer's shopping journey is continuous and
there are minimal disruptions to the shopping process. When a customer adds a product to the
cart from the product page, we want the customer to be able to continue browsing on the
product page. When browsing on the site, the customer should be able to get a cart summary
without navigating to the cart page. This experience provides more cross-selling opportunities
for a retailer. In Dynamics 365 Commerce, we will enable this functionality by supporting
notifications and a mini-cart experience.
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Feature details
The mini-cart is a module that will be supported on the header module of the e-commerce
page. The module can be invoked on hover. It shows items added to the cart, a quick summary
of the order total, and provides a way for the customer to check out. In addition, in Dynamics
365 Commerce, the site builder will expose new site settings that allow the retailer to show
notifications when items are added to the cart, without the user navigating to the cart page.
Enhanced customer record creation and edit capabilities in POS
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Customer information is critical to the success of any marketing effort. We have made
improvements to the customer record creation and edit capabilities in point of sale (POS).
Feature details
We have enabled more fields to capture additional customer information in POS and have made
editing of addresses easier. Additionally, we have enabled the capability to flag a customer
based on certain criteria—for example, high net worth, high return risk, fraud, and so on.
Warranty setup and sell
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Customers are opting for extended support and services when they buy products, especially for
consumer products such as computers and phones that sell at a premium price point. Extended
warranties can be sold in the retail channel during the initial purchase or for a limited time
afterward. For a retailer, providing an extended warranty can help build customer loyalty. With
the extended warranty purchase, customers know where to go for service and support in case of
issues and they can gain the confidence that their issues will be handled well.
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Feature details
Warranty item setup: We are providing the functionality to set up a warranty item type and set
attributes for the item including the association between a product and warranty item, price of
the warranty, warranty duration, and more. Once the warranty item is set up and released to the
organizational unit, a retailer will then be able to sell warranties through point of sale (POS).
Warranty item sell: Extended warranties are sold in a retail channel during the initial purchase
or for a limited time after the initial purchase. In POS, a sales associate will be prompted to
consider an extended warranty when a related product is added to the cart. This provides an
upsell or cross-sell opportunity to the sales associate as part of the sales flow. A customer can
also come back later and buy an extended warranty for the product. In this case, sales associates
can look up the original transaction and sell the customer the related extended warranty.
Consistency in payments management across retail channels
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Aug 2020
Business value
Retailers want to provide the same level of customer service across all channels, while at the
same time ensure that back office employees have a consistent experience when managing
retail orders. It is imperative that payment transactions related to sales orders can be viewed,
modified, or processed by any of our retail order processing interfaces in a consistent way.
Feature details
This feature will enable back office management of point of sale (POS) and e-commerce order
payments using the existing MCRCustPaym* tables previously only used by the call center
channel. By managing our retail sales order payment data in a consistent way, we will allow for
true omnichannel retail order payment management for call center users.
No-code site styling
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 2020 Aug 2020
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Business value
This feature reduces the time, coding dependencies, and cost for site designers to quickly style
e-commerce web pages by enabling no-code style editing workflows within Site Builder.
Feature details
The e-commerce SDK now provides the ability for site themes to define authorable .css
variables. This enables theme developers to place final style choices in the hands of a site
builder author. Within site builder, this represents a no-code-required workflow for authors to
set common style values within a site. Themes can still come bundled with default developerdefined style presets (example: dark, light, modern, classic). These presets can then be
customized with specific style values to match company branding by non-developers within site
builder. The result is both a more flexible theme ecosystem, and a more efficient no-code
workflow for common site branding tasks.
Unified commerce
Set preferred payment methods for returns
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Returns are an integral operation for a retailer. The ability to accept returns for sales and refund
the payments to the customer allows the retailer an option to service their customers’ needs and
issues. These new checks will allow retailers to deploy safeguards on the ir returns process and
be able to track the refunds to the right payment types, thereby reducing operation costs and
mitigating risk for fraud.
Feature details
This feature enables additional controls and restrictions, with the option to set eligible payment
methods for refunds when processing returns.
• A new Returns Policy page is being introduced that gives the administrator the ability to set
preferred payment methods for returns at an organization hierarchy level.
• A store associate will receive a prompt in point of sale (POS) with a list of preferred payment
methods based on the store policy.
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See also
Create and update a returns and refunds policy for a channel (docs)
Support for bulk URL redirects
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Retailers building their site in Dynamics 365 Commerce can now manage their domain redirects
for their pages in bulk format. Through Site Builder, Commerce will support the upload and
download of a CSV mapping file to manage a large list of redirects. When the customer’s
domain switches to point to Commerce-hosted pages, this feature saves time and effort to
ensure the previous URLs will now serve the new hosted content and prevents errors for users
who might be hitting those URLs. Remapping also preserves the previously established SEO. The
mapping file will save Commerce users time by enabling the efficient managing of their domain
mappings in an easy CSV format.
Feature details
Within Site Builder for a given site, a menu option will be available to allow a URL redirect
mapping file in CSV format to be uploaded or downloaded. The CSV file allows for referencing
"source" and "Target" URLs, the redirection type (301/302), and if the source URL is casesensitive (the default is false). Once uploaded, the Commerce rendering platform will manage
user traffic to direct users to the target URL. The CSV can be downloaded from the Site Builder
tool to capture and edit by the user (editing within Site Builder is not supported with this
feature). Once edited, the user can re-upload the CSV file to override the previous mapping CSV
supplied.
In-store health check for POS peripherals
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 2020 May 2020
Business value
This feature enables basic out-of-the-box validation for retail peripherals to allow retailers to
ensure that devices are working properly outside of transactional flows. The ability to proactively
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detect issues helps to avoid customer and retail associate confusion at the time of sale. The
health check can also be extended to check specific peripheral services or custom devices so
that retailers can tailor the health check to meet their individual needs.
Feature details
The health check is a new operation for the point of sale that can be run ad hoc or customized
to run as part of certain flows such as shift opening. Specific errors can be customized to
provide the cashier or store associate specific information for how to resolve the issue on their
own or to provide detailed information on how to report the issue.
Define and utilize inventory buffers to drive inventory level displays in ecommerce
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Because inventory moves quickly in an omnichannel environment, it can be difficult to get an
accurate assessment of stock on hand. Instead of viewing actual on-hand quantity, some
retailers are fine with being presented with an informational message that explains the current
stock status and gives a warning to customers that an item quantity is potentially low or out of
stock.
Feature details
This feature provides users with the ability to define inventory buffers during merchandising,
and API access to the inventory level indicators that are derived from the inventory buffers.
Upsell and cross-sell using available discounts by enabling store associates to view
promotions in POS
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
Promotions play an important role in motivating customers when making purchasing decisions.
Holidays and seasonal events, when the retail market is flooded with enticing promotions, bring
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the highest volume of sales. If store associates know and understand the promotions, they can
easily leverage these promotions to upsell and cross-sell items.
Feature details
This feature has two main parts. First, it helps the sales associates learn more about ongoing
promotions. Knowing about the promotions can help during interactions with customers.
Second, promotions will be displayed based on the items in the cart. This can help the cashier
cross-sell items, as it can provide additional savings for the customer.
Editing of partially fulfilled customer orders in POS
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Jul 2020
Business value
POS users often need to be able to work with and manage a customer order from the point of
sale (POS) application and make changes and adjustments to sales lines that are still
unprocessed.
Feature details
In the current in-market application, POS customer orders are only editable if the order is still
fully open (no quantities on the order have been released to order fulfillment or invoicing
processes). This feature will unblock users in POS by allowing them to edit orders that were
originally created in POS or an e-commerce application and are partially fulfilled. Users will be
able to add additional lines to partially fulfilled customer orders, edit or void lines where the full
quantity is still unprocessed, and in some cases make limited changes to lines where some of
the quantity on the line has already been fulfilled or invoiced.
This feature does not provide POS users the ability to edit orders created by the call center
channel. This capability is planned to be delivered sometime in 2020.
POS payments flows improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 Aug 2020
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Business value
Retail point of sale (POS) usability and discoverability is extremely important for the user
experience. Whether the user is a seasonal or seasoned employee, confidence when using the
POS can directly affect the customer's shopping experience. The improvements introduced with
this feature have shown a demonstrable impact on the user's experience at the POS based on
usability research.
Feature details
This investment provides a unified implementation of the payments UI within the POS. It
provides a consistent user experience with more intuitive flows to enhance the cashier's POS
experience while providing an easier-to-use underlying framework to improve the extensibility
story.
Features include:
• New, consistent payments UI pattern.
• Workflow optimizations for key payment methods.
• Extensibility improvements by adding a UI layer to the new payments views.
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection 2020 release
wave 1
Today’s digitally transformed enterprises conduct significant portions of their business online
and in real time. For example, omnichannel customer engagement (seamless customer journey
across mobile, web, and in-store portals) is revolutionizing the retail industry. Such innovations
are driving higher revenue, reduced operating costs, and improved customer experience.
However, they are also exposing the enterprise to serious threats from those who attempt to
take advantage of the online channel's relative anonymity and accessibility to commit fraud. In
e-commerce, for example, people might attempt to use compromised accounts and stolen
payment instruments to commit payment fraud. Similarly, fraudsters might abuse programs
such as “buy online and return in store” to commit returns or discounts fraud that leads to
shrinkage losses for brick-and-mortar stores.
Fraudsters attempt other nefarious activities such as creating fake accounts to abuse free trials
and new-customer freebies or post fake product reviews. They also try to compromise existing
accounts to commit payment, warranty, or refund fraud. All these examples of fraudulent activity
impact not just an enterprise’s profitability but also its reputation. It is our mission to help
digitally transformed enterprises fight fraud while keeping their doors open for genuine customers
and partners.
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection initially focused on payment fraud protection. It helped enable
an e-commerce merchant to drive down fraud loss, increase bank acceptance rates to yield
higher revenue, and improve the online shopping experience of its customers. In this release
wave we are adding several new features to the product that enhance this capability:
• Extend and tailor ontology and rules: Enables merchants to bring custom data into the
product by extending the data ontology of assessment events, and provides a richer rules
capability to use that specialized data as well as the ML model score to achieve a more finegrained control on real-time decision-making.
• Integration with Dynamics 365 Commerce: Enables Commerce customers to use Fraud
Protection to protect their business via a low-code experience (since the product APIs come
preintegrated out of the box).
• Expanded coverage for transaction acceptance booster: Increases the market coverage
and enables merchants to boost the acceptance rate on more transactions in the United
States and other countries and regions.
• Extended localization beyond English and French, to six additional languages.
Based on customer feedback, we are lighting up a new set of capabilities called Loss prevention
that help brick-and-mortar retail store operations fight fraud and abuse. This will help retailers
reduce shrinkage losses and improve store efficiencies.
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• Provides actionable insights to help merchants stop retail losses by using artificial
intelligence on historical transaction data to detect anomalies in business scenar ios such as
product returns and discounts.
• Enables the customer to take actions on these insights.
While we had a basic account creation protection capability already available in the payment
fraud protection product, we are significantly expanding the portfolio via a new set of
capabilities called Account protection.
• Account protection leverages Fraud Protection’s proprietary risk assessment engine, artificial
intelligence, as well as the Fraud Protection network to enable customers to make decisions
and take proactive measures for events such as account creation, account sign-in, and other
account activities.
• The customer can choose to block suspected fraudulent attempts or challenge them with
two-factor authentication.
• It includes the ability to detect and prevent attempts by bots.
Loss prevention and Account protection will preview in March and will be generally available
later in the year. A noteworthy aspect of Fraud Protection is that the capabilities of Payment
fraud protection, Loss prevention, and Account protection all use a common framework of AI
models, a shared customer knowledge graph including device fingerprinting data, and a
common Fraud Protection network for global insights.
As a result, these applications work in tandem by sharing signals and insights. This synergy
improves the fraud detection accuracy in all three capabilities. Moreover, the customer can see
the connections of events across all three capabilities using the graph explorer. This gives the
enterprise customer an unparalleled visibility into all aspects of its customers’ journeys across
omnichannel engagement.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Expanded coverage for
transaction acceptance booster
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
May 2020 May 2020
Extend and tailor ontology and
rules
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
May 2020 May 2020
Extend geographies and
localization to languages
beyond English
End users, automatically Jan 31, 2020 Jul 2020
Account protection End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Mar 2020 Jul 2020
Loss prevention End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Mar 2, 2020 Jul 2020
Dynamics 365 Commerce
integration with Fraud
Protection
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
May 2020 To be announced
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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Expanded coverage for transaction acceptance booster
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts May 2020 May 2020
Feature details
The transaction acceptance booster feature has enabled sharing of transaction trust knowledge
with selected partner banks to help increase the acceptance rate and reduce fraud. In this
release, more banks will be added to the partner network. This change will increase the market
coverage and enable merchants to boost the acceptance rate on more transactions in the
United States and other countries and regions.
Extend and tailor ontology and rules
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 2020 May 2020
Feature details
There are several cases where a merchant might need capabilities beyond the core features that
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection provides.
In the marquee scenarios of payment fraud and account takeover, merchants might want to use
specialized data beyond the base ontology of Fraud Protection to help improve the fraud
protection capability of the product. For example, for airline ticket purchases, the seat class
might be an important attribute to consider. Furthermore, customers might have niche fraud
protection scenarios, such as refunds, loyalty programs, and warranty programs, each of which
has its own set of relevant data. Merchants will be able to bring specialized data into the
product by extending the ontology as needed.
Custom knowledge can be used to create and update the configuration of model operating
points by using specialized data. These model operating points can consume the full spectrum
of available knowledge to produce decisions for each type of event.
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Extend geographies and localization to languages beyond English
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Jan 31, 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
As a global product addressing a global problem, the Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection portal will
be available in expanded geographies and localized into multiple languages.
See also
Fraud protection overview (docs)
Account protection
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
As incidents of data breaches and bot attacks increase, account takeover has become a
significant risk for many companies, regardless of the industry. Account protection leverages
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection’s proprietary risk assessment engine, artificial intelligence
learning capabilities, and Fraud Protection network. This feature provides device forensics and
bot detection capabilities.
With real-time telemetry through APIs, attributes associated with account creation and account
sign-in attempts are evaluated, returning a risk assessment score with a reason code. Customers
can leverage this information to make decisions and take proactive measures, such as blocking
fraudulent attempts or challenging suspicious attempts with two-factor authentication.
Loss prevention
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2, 2020 Jul 2020
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Feature details
Loss prevention provides actionable insights to help merchants stop retail losses by using
artificial intelligence on historical transaction data and detecting anomalies in business scenarios
that can be abused, such as product returns and discounts. The insights that are provided
enable trend analysis on multiple business dimensions and entities where the return rates and
discounts have deviated from the normal behavior in the merchant’s ecosystem. Merchants are
alerted whenever anomalies are detected.
Dynamics 365 Commerce integration with Fraud Protection
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection enables Dynamics 365 Commerce customers who have an ecommerce presence to make fraud protection available for online purchases. During checkout,
Fraud Protection will assess the risk that is associated with the purchase attempt and enable the
merchant to decide whether to decline the purchase or send it to the payments gateway for
processing and order fulfillment.
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Connected Store 2020 release
wave 1
Dynamics 365 Connected Store creates insights from different types of data (observational, local
weather, and events) and line-of-business applications like point-of-sale systems to improve the
operational performance and customer experiences in brick-and-mortar stores. Connected Store
helps retailers understand how customers move through the store, and where and when they
engage with specific areas of merchandizing.
Connected Store can also:
• Monitor on-shelf availability and identify product stockouts earlier, allowing for either faster
restocking or triggering replenishment.
• Enable store leaders to respond more quickly to incidents and events happening in the store,
like increasing checkout wait times or needed restroom maintenance based on actual
number of guest visits.
Better understand what’s happening in each store
Connected Store uses data collected by computer vision and other IoT sensors, which is then
comprehensively analyzed and combined with local event, weather, and other business data to
produce actionable insights for store leaders, store associates, and business planners. These
insights are delivered as alerts, email reports, or through the Connected Store app.
Make smarter decisions for your retail business
Connected Store provides customer telemetry that was previously available only for online
stores. When retailers understand how customers move through the store, their decisions about
layout and product placement are supported by impartial data and insights that bridge the
physical/digital divide, leading to revenue growth and improved customer experiences.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Connected Store
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Checkout queue
management
End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 To be announced
Foot traffic End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 To be announced
Installation and deployment
guide
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020 To be announced
Notifications End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 To be announced
Scheduled reports End users by admins, makers,
or analysts
Apr 2020 To be announced
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Checkout queue management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 To be announced
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Feature details
Increase customer satisfaction and avoid customer abandonment by using queue analytics to
monitor and react to checkout queue length and wait time. Optimize checkout staffing levels
based on store foot traffic and average queue times.
Foot traffic
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Understand your customer traffic with people count data. Make informed decisions based on
customer traffic to help evaluate the effectiveness of in-store advertising campaigns, sales
promotions, and product placement.
Installation and deployment guide
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Store is a SaaS solution that has on-premises hardware
dependencies. This guide identifies actors and components and provides prescriptive
instructions for customers to plan deployments.
Notifications
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 To be announced
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Feature details
Set up and configure notifications so you can respond more quickly to events in your store.
Trigger notifications based on in-store events like long checkout lines to improve response
times and customer experience.
Scheduled reports
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Plan ahead for changes in foot traffic and easily share this information with your teams and
organizational leaders. Receive daily, weekly, and monthly summaries of activity in your store.
Back to Contents Dynamics 365 Business Central 304
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SMB
Overview of Dynamics 365 Business Central 2020 release
wave 1
Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a comprehensive business-application solution
designed and optimized for small and mid-sized organizations. Since its launch in April 2018,
Business Central has seen increasing adoption by organizations looking to digitally transform
their businesses. For 2020 release wave 1, Business Central investments center on service
fundamentals to meet the demands of a rapidly growing customer base, enhanced user
productivity, geographic expansion, and top customer-requested features. Improvements in
migration tools reflect the prioritization of bringing on-premises Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, and
Dynamics NAV customers to Business Central online.
• Service fundamentals: Performance, reliability, and supportability are at the core of the
business. This wave focuses on service quality and accessibility. This wave also brings the
results of a material top-to-bottom investment in Business Central service security.
Partners are a critical component of the Business Central ecosystem; this wave brings
telemetry visibility for partners through Azure Insights. We are delivering top partnerrequested improvements to the integration with Common Data Service to improve the
extensibility of integrations with other Dynamics 365 workloads. Finally, feature flighting and
support for managing deprecation of code in the AL language enable the non-disruptive
future evolution of the service.
• Productivity: End-user productivity is critical. This release continues the pattern of delivering
improved productivity with enhancements to the modern client experience, streamlined data
entry, and requested features, such as auto-insert for recurring sales and purchase order
lines.
• Geographic expansion: 2020 release wave 1 adds the ability to install multiple language
translations for each tenant. Also, this wave adds localizations for Slovenia, Croatia, Latvia,
Hungary, Peru, and Columbia. Localization for Brazil and India will follow in a later wave.
• Customer requested enhancements: Business Central continues to respond to top
customer-enhancement requests. In addition to multiple features picked from the product
Ideas portal, we are enhancing areas that receive significant feedback, such as bank
reconciliation.
• Customer migration tools: To simplify the journey for existing Dynamics customers to
Business Central online, we’re adding support for migration from a broader set of Dynamics
GP and Dynamics NAV versions, making improvements for selective migration of Dynamics
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GP customers and vendors, and enhancing the Dynamics GP Chart of Account setups
migration.
Together, these enhancements are designed to drive further customer adoption by empowering
the migration of Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, and Dynamics SL customers, activating the
partners who are bringing their vertical solutions to Business Central online, and further
accelerating the growth of net new customers to Dynamics 365.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Application enhancements
The aka.ms/bcideas site is a constant source for making improvements to the application. For
this release, we have updated minor features based on the feedback in the ideas site and made
several improvements to the bank reconciliation functionality.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Extend ListPlus pages previously based
on the Date virtual table
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Multiple languages Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
QR-Bill management for Switzerland End users, automatically - Apr 2020
Auto-insert recurring sales and
purchase lines
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Bank reconciliation improvements End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Enhanced customer and vendor
document layout
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Manage direct-debit collections in
Service Management
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Notify requester about all changes for
an approval request
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Print to attachment End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Receive more items than ordered End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Register capacity in units of seconds End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Revert Qty. to Invoice when canceling
order
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Use resources in purchase documents Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Mar 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Country and regional availability
Availability of Dynamics 365 Business Central is expanding regularly; here we describe the plans
for expansion going forward.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Expanded country and regional
availability
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
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Migrations to Business Central online
Moving from an on-premises solution to Business Central online is a major area of focus for our
partners and customers. With the 2020 release wave 1, we further enhance the scenarios for
migrating data from Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, and Business Central (on-premises) to Business
Central online.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Enhanced Dynamics GP Chart of
Accounts migration
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Migrate all or only active customer
master records from Dynamics GP
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Migrate all or only active vendor master
records from Dynamics GP
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Enhanced Dynamics GP inventory data
migration
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Migrate data from Business Central 14.x
on-premises to Business Central 15.x
online
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Modern clients
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Collapse and expand document lines End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Disable export of data to Excel Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Enable non-interactive printing in the
cloud
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Enhanced mobile accessibility related to
device orientation
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Enter data more easily End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Import profiles and UI customizations Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved load time for pages End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Long-running operations can be
canceled from the web client
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Navigate trees more easily End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Optimized use of space on a page End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Show and go to related records from a
list
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Unhide parts on a page End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Use a Find function on the Role Explorer End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Use filters and views more easily End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Modern developer tools
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
AL interfaces Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Application version for aliasing base
application
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Camera/location AL API available in the
browser
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Look up events and insert event
subscriber in code
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Multiple variable declarations of the
same type in the same line
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Obsolete tag property Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Ability to refactor a field from a table to
a table extension
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Onboarding
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Improved onboarding experience End users, automatically Feb 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Partner acceleration
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
API for continuous delivery of the
AppSource apps via Azure DevOps
services
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 Jul 2020
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Power Platform
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Business Central integration with
Common Data Service
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Service fundamentals
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Ability to see current database locks Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Ability to see table sizes Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Ability to view a list of sessions and
cancel one or more of them
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Performance of web service requests
and reports added to Application
Insights telemetry for partners
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Read scale-out Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Resource limits for reports and web
service calls
End users, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
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• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Application enhancements
Overview
The Business Central ideas site (aka.ms/bcideas) is a constant source of suggestions for
improving the application. For this release, we have updated minor features based on feedback
in the ideas site and have made several improvements to the bank reconciliation functionality.
We will continue to enhance the application through our focus on performance in the mostused areas.
Extend ListPlus pages previously based on the Date virtual table
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Business value
Extending ListPlus pages that contain subpages based on the Date virtual table is relevant if a
customer has specific requirements or wants to analyze additional measurements on pages,
such as Item and Resource Availability.
Feature details
You can now extend ListPlus pages such as the Item and Resource Availability pages that were
based on the Date virtual table by extending the underlying buffer table and subscribing to the
OnAfterCalcLine event. All such pages in the base application now support this extensibility
model.
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Multiple languages
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
In 2020 release wave 1, languages are provided as apps that can be installed from AppSource to
match the individual tenant's needs. Different languages can be installed on the individual
environments of the tenant. For on-premises, these language apps are part of the installation
media and can be installed. This enables a customer from any country or region to use any
supported language. See supported languages here: https://aka.ms/bccountries.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Supported languages (docs)
QR-Bill management for Switzerland
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Apr 2020
Business value
Easily generate, send, and import QR Bills in Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Feature details
The QR Bill allows for easier processing and payment of received invoices from vendors. The QRBill management app for Switzerland allows you to generate QR Bills that are compliant with
Swiss standard, and to receive QR Bills either via file import or direct input scan. You manage all
received QR Bills in the Incoming Documents page and can create purchase journals directly
from the imported QR Bills. Finally, this app ensures that all payment references from the QR Bill
get carried through SEPA files to and from the bank back to the issuer of the QR Bill for easy
reconciliation. With this app you can easily comply with the Swiss requirements for the QR Bill.
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See also
Documentation (docs)
Auto-insert recurring sales and purchase lines
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Recurring sales and purchase orders are the new normal in business. Business Central now
allows you to handle such recurring sales and purchases by using automatic insert of predefined
recurring sales and purchase lines.
Feature details
The existing Recurring Sales/Purchase Lines feature is extended to automatically insert on
documents the recurring sales or purchase lines that are set up for the customer or vendor.
If multiple recurring sales or purchase lines exist for the customer or vendor, you will get a
notification from where you can pick which one to insert. If only one recurring sales or purchase
line exists, it will be inserted automatically.
Note that this works only if the new document was created from a document list—for example,
by choosing the New action on the Purchase Orders page. It does not work if the document
was created from a vendor card, for example.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Create Recurring Sales and Purchase Lines (docs)
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Bank reconciliation improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
By reconciling your bank account statements with your internal bank accounts and customer or
payment ledgers, you can identify missing payments or unusual transactions that might be
caused by errors and thereby improve your financial management. Enhancements of these
processes will ensure that reconciliation tasks can be done efficiently and quickly.
Feature details
The Bank Acc. Reconciliation page will have more space for data and allow better overview
and understanding of the bank statement lines and the related bank account ledger entries. A
Bank Reconciliation report that can be used to report on both ongoing and posted bank
reconciliations and statements is provided.
NOTE For the Bank Acc. Reconciliation page, the changes are only UI improvements, such as
more space and closer columns.
For the Payment Reconciliation Journal page, the changes are mainly about better matching
information in a FactBox and better naming of the totals fields at the bottom.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Reconcile Bank Accounts (docs)
Enhanced customer and vendor document layout
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Businesses deal with multiple customer and vendor contacts who are responsible for different
areas of operation, such as accountants, purchasers, and warehouse people. Each of these
contacts must be sent different sets of documents generated by Business Central.
You can now save time while sending documents to different customer or vendor contacts by
setting up specific contacts to use with specific documents. For example, customer statements
will be sent to accountant contacts, sales orders to your customers' purchasers, and purchase
orders to vendors' salespeople or account managers.
Feature details
You can now populate the Document Layouts page for vendors and customers based on
settings on the Report Selection page. To send specific documents to specific company
contacts, choose the company contacts to use for specific document layouts.
The Document Layouts page for a customer now contains additional usage options for
reminders and posted shipments. The Document Layout page for a vendor now contains
additional usage options for purchase orders and posted return shipment.
Document Layouts page for customers
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
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Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Define Document Layouts for Customers and Vendors (docs)
Manage direct-debit collections in Service Management
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
More and more, business is related to services. Customers want a convenient way of paying for
such work, especially recurring service work. The best way to do this is by using the Direct Debit
Collection functionality in integration with the Service Management modules.
Feature details
You can now view direct-debit collection information on service orders, invoices, and contracts.
When posting service invoices, direct-debit information is stored in the related customer ledger
entries and then transferred to the relevant payment journal during the collection process.
View direct-debit collection information in an invoice
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Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Collect Payments with SEPA Direct Debit (docs)
Notify requester about all changes for an approval request
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
To ensure that an approval request is processed as fast as possible, it is essential that everyone
involved can be notified about the status of every step. This is also the case for approval
processes with multiple approval steps.
Feature details
You can set up an approval workflow to notify the approval requester about every change of an
approval request up until final approval.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
To create a workflow (docs)
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Print to attachment
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
When documents follow multiple steps in a process, such as a sales process or an approval
workflow, it is useful to have a printout from the previous step added to the next step as a
document attachment. Business Central allows you to print documents to document
attachments using the Attach as PDF action.
Feature details
You can now add document printouts to the Attachments FactBox using the Attach as PDF
action.
Shows Attach as PDF action on Sales Orders list page
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
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Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Receive more items than ordered
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
When you receive more goods than you ordered and it's cheaper not to return such goods or
your vendor offers you a discount, order processors and warehouse workers must be able to
handle such receipts without going through a lengthy process of preparing and getting
approval for a new purchase order.
Feature details
You can now receive a quantity higher than the ordered quantity on purchase orders according
to an over-receive policy that you set up on the Over-Receipt Codes page. Here you can fill in
the Over-Receipt Tolerance % field and select a policy to be used by default.
If your company uses purchase order approval, over-receiving can trigger a reapproval. You
define this on the Over-Receipt Codes page. The Approve Over-Receipt workflow response is
available in the workflow engine for this purpose.
On the cards for items and vendors, you can select in the Over-Receipt Code field which policy
to use by default on purchases.
When you have selected an over-receipt code, you can enter a higher-than-ordered quantity in
the Quantity to Receive field on released purchase orders and warehouse receipts.
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Shows over-receipt codes with over-receipt tolerance field highlighted
Shows over-receipt on purchase order line
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
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See also
Receive Items (docs)
Register capacity in units of seconds
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Some manufacturing operations require work center capacity to be measured in units of less
than a minute.
Feature details
You can now define the capacity on work centers in units of seconds. By extending the Capacity
Unit of Measure Type field, a developer can even enable milliseconds or another unit of
measure.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Revert Qty. to Invoice when canceling order
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Partial shipping/receiving and invoicing of orders are common practices in today's business. As
mistakes happen in these core processes, it is important to have robust and easy ways to follow
the correction process, thereby keeping employees productive.
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Feature details
You can now easily correct invoiced quantities on originating orders by canceling invoices
created from them. The Qty. to Invoice field on the originating order is automatically updated.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
To cancel a posted sales invoice (docs)
Use resources in purchase documents
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Mar 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Most businesses tend to outsource or hire external, named resources on a temporary basis, such
as for a particular project or job. The ability to purchase resources allows you to track and
process such transactions.
Feature details
You can now use Resource as a line type of purchase documents. For example, you can add
resources on purchase orders, invoices, and credit memos and post purchase transactions for
them. You can correct purchase documents with resource lines, copy them, or use resource
extended text.
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Purchase invoice with resource lines
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Record Purchases (docs)
Country and regional availability
Overview
Availability of Dynamics 365 Business Central is expanding regularly. Here are the plans for
expansion going forward.
Expanded country and regional availability
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
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Business value
There is a large demand for Dynamics 365 Business Central online. We are expanding the
availability of the service to cover more countries and regions to enable small and midsized
businesses across the world to achieve more.
Feature details
Expansion toward new markets is primarily done through partner-led localizations that are
available as localization apps in AppSource. This allows customers to choose their localization of
choice for their country or region, which makes it easier to comply with local legislation and
enable market-specific business processes.
With 2020 release wave 1, Business Central becomes available in six new countries. For more
information, see Country/Regional availability and Supported Translations.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Country and regional availability (docs)
Migrations to Business Central online
Overview
Moving from an on-premises solution to Business Central online is a major area of focus for our
partners and customers. With the 2020 release wave 1, we further enhance the scenarios for
migrating data from Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, and Business Central (on-premises) to Business
Central online.
For more information, see Upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central On-Premises.
Enhanced Dynamics GP Chart of Accounts migration
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Customers can see the segments from Dynamics GP assigned to the migrated transactions in
Business Central. This way, customers can run reports by dimensions to see the breakdown of
amounts by those dimensions.
Feature details
In this release, we will build out the migration tool to have the segments migrated as
dimensions on the G/L transactions.
Migrate all or only active customer master records from Dynamics GP
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
The migration tool will allow the user to migrate either all customers or only customers who
have an active status in Dynamics GP. Along with that change, we will also migrate all customer
addresses. Currently we only migrate the primary address associated with the customer card in
Dynamics GP.
Migrate all or only active vendor master records from Dynamics GP
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
The migration tool will allow the user to migrate either all vendors or only vendors who have an
active status in Dynamics GP. Along with that change, we will also migrate all vendor addresses.
Currently we only migrate the primary address associated with the vendor card in Dynamics GP.
Enhanced Dynamics GP inventory data migration
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
For customers who move their data from Dynamics GP to Business Central through the cloud
migration tool, we will expand the migration tool in the inventory area to include bringing over
location setup information and quantities on hand for items in those specific locations.
Feature details
We will also bring over serial and lot setup information, and serial and lot numbers for the
quantities of items that are on hand.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Migrate data from Business Central 14.x on-premises to Business Central 15.x
online
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Customers can migrate from Business Central 2019 release wave 2 on-premises to Business
Central online. In order to reach a broader audience of on-premises customers, we add support
to bring a customer from the version immediately before (Business Central April '19) to Business
Central 2019 release wave 2 online without having to perform an on-premises upgrade first.
Feature details
A customer who uses Business Central April '19 on-premises can load the cloud migration
extension and migrate their data to Business Central 2019 release wave 2 online.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
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Modern clients
Overview
Business Central offers an extensive portfolio of clients that empowers users to achieve more at
their desks, on the go, or from within Office 365. With users across a diverse range of business
roles, proficiency levels, and local and accessibility needs, our priority is to ensure the user
interface is both intuitive to start with and powerful when needed.
In 2020 release wave 1, we place additional focus on maturing the desktop experience for
browser and app to cover a broader range of customer needs. We're optimizing page layout so
that developers can craft advanced screens that display richer content, we're opening up more
print-related capabilities, and we're improving load time for complex pages. Based on
community feedback, we're also enhancing the experience for advanced users who need to
manage space on their screen more effectively, and customize more of the user interface
without having to write code.
Collapse and expand document lines
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Business users must be able to optimize their work space for reading and entering data.
Feature details
On sales and purchase documents and other similar documents, business users will be able to
collapse the document lines section on the page. This allows them to optimize their space as
they work through a task, such as comparing document totals.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Working with Business Central (docs)
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Disable export of data to Excel
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
With the Edit in Excel and Open in Excel actions, users can quickly get an Excel spreadsheet
with Business Central data for further processing in Excel. However, some organizations have
data control rules with restrictions on having data sets in Excel, where it is more difficult to
control and audit. Administrators can now specify which users are allowed to export data to
Excel, which gives the organization stricter control over data.
Feature details
Business Central administrators have the option to disable features that allow users to export
data to Excel. The ability to export data from Business Central is controlled by a new D365
EXCEL EXPORT permission set. If the permission is removed for a specific user, then the Edit in
Excel and Open in Excel actions are no longer available to the user on any pages in the
application.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, t o
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Viewing and Editing in Excel (docs)
Enable non-interactive printing in the cloud
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Users can print reports directly from the desktop using the predefined printers configured on
the Printer Management page. If the printers are selected and set up properly, then no
additional steps, such as downloading files or navigating through previews, are necessary. In
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addition, administrators can have the power to configure print jobs for specific tasks, users, or
for more complex printer setups.
Complex printing scenarios where labels must be sent to one printer and a packing slip to
another are common in many businesses. Users expect to be able to configure, save, and retain
certain properties describing such flows, and they expect to print each report directly to a
predefined printer.
Feature details
Printing directly to a printer is now possible from the modern desktop clients. The setup that
you make on the Printer Management page allows you to control which device to print to,
including to cloud printers as defined by extensions. Using the Business Central modern clients,
users who work in the browser can set up a printer selection for each report so that documents,
labels, and other content are printed automatically on the selected printer. Administrators can
manage a list of printers (including cloud printers), for example, by creating a friendly name for
each and setting defaults. Additionally, for on-premises installations, any network printer that
the server has access to will be available on the Printer Management page.
In addition, a predefined Email Printer extension is installed and ready for customers to use.
This supports major printer manufacturers that enable email printing scenarios.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
See also
Specify Printer Selection for Reports (docs)
Enhanced mobile accessibility related to device orientation
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Users on the road must have quick access to all relevant information without having to
manipulate the device or scroll extensively. Users on tablets and phones are more productive
and feel more empowered when they have easy and fast access to related information in
FactBoxes or to additional cues on Role Centers and when they can easily navigate to pages
from the Role Center.
Feature details
This enhancement makes access to information in FactBoxes reachable regardless of the device
orientation by displaying a small chevron (either on the side or at the top of the page), allowing
the user to "pull" the related information onto the screen. In previous releases, this action was
only available with certain screen orientations. Now, it is available everywhere on any device. In
the common scenario where a mobile phone is mounted on a holder in a vehicle (not driving), it
is now possible for the operator to quickly access related information about a customer while
the phone is in the holder.
Another change related to this enhancement is the redesigned Role Center view in Landscape
mode on tablets. The navigation controls have been moved to the left pane, allowing users to
quickly jump to a different page and get started with tasks. In previous releases, this was hidden
under a menu. The change also allows users and administrators to personalize a Role Center
with richer navigation by adding more elements to the Home group (for example, by
bookmarking them). As a result, the cues have been moved to the right pane, allowing users to
scroll the entire Role Center content.
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Role Center on a tablet in landscape mode
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Business Central documentation (docs)
Enter data more easily
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Back-office workers often need to capture information or digitize paper material at high speed.
For some users, this is their main activity for the whole work day. When this cannot be
automated through means like OCR and AI, users require an efficient interface that does not get
in the way of quickly typing in data.
Feature details
Various adjustments that enhance typing or navigating fields in a list.
• In editable lists, users will be able to use the left and right arrow keys to navigate to the
previous or next cell in a row. This provides a consistent experience between editable and
non-editable lists, and increases the speed and agility of exploring data in a list or
worksheet.
• Similar to Microsoft Excel, we've introduced the F2 key that toggles between selecting the
entire value of a field and placing the cursor at the end of the value. This allows users to
quickly replace the value or add to it. The F2 key is available for editable fields and editable
cells in lists.
• When typing to fill in a row of data, the Tab key no longer sets focus to the ellipses that
bring up the context for the row. This improves efficiency when rapidly entering data and
ensures that Tab key presses are predictable. The context menu remains reachable using the
left or right arrow keys.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Entering Data (docs)
Import profiles and UI customizations
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Administrators and consultants benefit from a rich toolset that supports role-tailoring in
Business Central. By having both an export and import function for profiles (organizational roles)
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and their corresponding user interface customizations, customers can easily back up their profile
customizations before making further changes, replicate profiles across environments, or safely
explore possibilities in an online sandbox before importing into production. All this without
requiring the assistance of developers.
Feature details
Import a package of profiles or per-profile UI customizations using a simple wizard that guides
you through the process.
See also
Managing Profiles (docs)
Improved load time for pages
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
When navigating across pages to complete their tasks, business users expect snappy loading of
pages and dialog boxes.
Feature details
Users will find that pages they use often now open faster. Technically, the rendered page is now
cached the first time it is opened. This is done without persisting any business data or sensitive
information to the user's device. Subsequent accesses to the page will immediately render the
page while data is fetched from the service.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Performance Topics for Developers (docs)
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Long-running operations can be canceled from the web client
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Flexibility related to long-running operations is essential in modern business systems even when
you work with large amounts of data.
Feature details
You can now cancel long-running operations or application jobs. The user sees a progress
window that shows the number of processed rows with the option to cancel the operation. A
typical scenario is the ability to cancel long-running batch jobs, but this feature extends to
canceling other long-running operations, such as bulk posting of invoices.
Canceling a report
See also
Working with Reports, Batch Jobs, and XMLports (docs)
Navigate trees more easily
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Users get a better overview of their data when it is grouped into categories. Some data is best
represented as a deep hierarchical list. Business Central empowers developers to design pages
for both of these scenarios, so that users can get the best possible overview and navigate to the
relevant records.
Feature details
On page objects where a repeater control has the ShowAsTree property set to True, users will
experience a new level of efficiency when working with the data tree. Users can easily drill down
and back out again, using a keyboard or mouse, by expanding and collapsing groups or by
using the Expand all and Collapse all actions.
Developers can also specify if a tree should start as fully expanded or fully collapsed.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Working with Business Central (docs)
Optimized use of space on a page
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Some business tasks require advanced screen layouts that reflect the nature of the task and the
volume of data associated with the task. By having highly optimized layouts, users get the best
overview of their data to quickly make decisions and act, reducing the need to scroll and
navigate to get the task done.
Feature details
Improvements to pages composed of multiple parts
The desktop client adds full support for page objects that are composed of multiple parts, such
as ListParts or CardParts. This capability was already possible on a Role Center or FactBox pane.
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But the canvas of other page types wasn't optimal for displaying parts alongside other content,
resulting in overlapping UI elements or unreachable data.
Developers are now able to implement pages by choosing from prescribed AL patterns that give
predictable outcomes. For example, they can display two lists side by side on a ListPlus page. Or,
have multiple dependent lists shown above each other on a Document page. Pages already
using these control patterns will automatically benefit from this change with no further
development effort needed.
• Available April 2020: Optimizations for ListParts as used on List pages, Document pages,
Card pages, and ListPlus pages.
• Available after April 2020: Optimizations for ListParts as used on Worksheet pages, and
CardParts as used on various page types.
Example ListPlus page displaying multiple ListParts
More content on screen
• When users display a page wide across the screen, they'll benefit from more compact page
captions and reduced gray-space along the sides. Take a basic list page as an example.
Compared to past versions of the Business Central Web client, it gains approximately 15%
horizontal space and 5% vertical space for content. These gains result in two more columns
and one more row being displayed.
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• FastTabs with no specified caption are treated as groups that define the structure of a page.
As a result, "caption-less" FastTabs have reduced whitespace and can no longer be collapsed
by users.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Page Parts Overview (docs)
Show and go to related records from a list
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Navigating through your business data, jumping from one context to the other or simply drilling
through data is essential for a busy professional.
Feature details
We are adding capabilities for users to navigate via links to even more places than today. This
allows you to open a related card from a list, such as a customer or item card from a sales order.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Business Central documentation (docs)
Unhide parts on a page
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Business Central is able to adapt to the unique needs of the user, department, or organization.
Feature details
When personalizing pages in Business Central, users can show a hidden part on any page, such
as a FactBox on a sales document. This unlocks two common scenarios:
• Business users can personalize their pages and bring back a part that they have previously
hidden. Similarly, power users and consultants can unhide parts that they have previously
hidden.
• Developers can now choose to place secondary content on a page object and hide it, giving
their customers a simple starting point with the page and the ability to unhide that content if
it is relevant to their business processes.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Personalize Your Workspace (docs)
Use a Find function on the Role Explorer
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Your product functions might span several hundred options across different areas. Finding them
in a visual format on the Role Explorer makes it easier for customers to navigate and go to the
requested page or module. Also, finding reports is much easier now that users have a Find
function in the Role Explorer.
Feature details
The Business Central Role Explorer has a new addition that complements manual navigation and
expanding or collapsing menu groups. Users can now open the Role Explorer, with either the
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"hamburger" icon or the Shift-F12 keyboard shortcut, and then start typing what they are
looking for.
The Role Explorer does not filter the results but instead highlights the hits, as shown in the next
image. Also, when a result is contained in a collapsed group, the Find function annotates that
group using a teal-colored circle. Users can browse through the results using arrows or
Ctrl+Up/Down keyboard keys. The Esc key closes the Find box and removes the value typed, so
that new searching or browsing can be started. Note also that switching to the Explore all view
retains the find value making it easy to navigate.
Find function in the Business Central Role Explorer
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Business Central documentation (docs)
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Use filters and views more easily
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
As the business grows, so does table data in the database, making quick analysis of the data or
even finding records more challenging without the right tools. Defining the perfect set of filters
can be a time-consuming, iterative process where the ability to persist filters will save having to
recreate them the next time they are needed.
Feature details
The 2019 release wave 2 eliminated the need to recreate commonly used filters by allowing
users to permanently save filters as a view in the web client. Based on community feedback,
we're now improving the filter experience further:
• When authoring filters that use expressions, such as date ranges or filter tokens, you can
toggle the filter field to display either the expression or the corresponding value. To view the
expression, simply set the focus to the filter field using a keyboard or mouse. This is
particularly useful when saving list views so that date- or time-sensitive expressions can
easily be modified when needed.
• While on a list page, saving the URL as a browser favorite will include the current view,
allowing you to link directly to the view when you navigate to that favorite. Note that the
web client URL will only include views and filters that have been saved.
• When working with lists, Business Central will help you pick up where you left off if you are
disconnected or you reload the web page by trying to return to the last view you visited.
See also
Save and Personalize List Views (docs)
Modern developer tools
Overview
As we have made the move entirely to Visual Studio Code, we continue to invest in areas that
enhance productivity for developers. Specifically, we are enhancing the troubleshooting and
debugging experiences, improving performance and usability when you work on multiple and
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large projects, empowering code insights and telemetry for ourselves and our partners, and
extending capabilities in the AL language with, for example, profile extensibility.
AL interfaces
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
An interface is used when you want to decide which capabilities need to be available for an
object, while allowing actual implementations to differ, as long as they comply with the defined
interface.
This allows for writing code that reduces the dependency on implementation details, makes it
easier to reuse code, and supports a polymorphing way of calling object methods, which again
can be used for substituting business logic.
Feature details
Use the new interface object to declare an interface name along with its methods, and apply the
implements keyword along with the interface names on objects that implement the interface
methods.
The interface object itself does not contain any code, only signatures, and cannot itself be called
from code, but must be implemented by other objects.
The compiler checks to ensure implementations adhere to assigned interfaces.
A new QuickFix CodeAction can be used to insert interface stubs, if the compiler errors on one
or more interface implementations are missing.
You can declare variables as a given interface to allow passing objects that implement the
interface, and then call interface implementations on the passed object in a po lymorphic
manner.
See also
AL Development Environment (docs)
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Application version for aliasing base application
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Embed applications as well as customized on-premises applications should be able to modify
the app.json file of the base application and change the identity of the application extensions.
However, by doing so, solutions on top pointing to the Microsoft base identity will not resolve
against the embed application or on-premises code customizations, if these are using explicit
dependencies.
Therefore, to support a way for embed applications to specify that they are aliasing Microsoft's
Base Application so that any extension built on top of Microsoft's Base Application can compile
against their solutions, there needs to be a level of indirection through the application alias.
Feature details
Embed partners and on-premises solutions can create a parent extension named Application,
versioned according to base version, and with an appropriate, unique publisher. This parent
extension is mainly used as an indirection proxy, and should contain explicit dependencies to
the extensions actually implementing the application. In addition, the propagateDependencies
property in the app.json file should be set to true. This will expose the dependencies to any
extension taking dependency on the proxy Application version.
Partners will use the Application version property in their extension's app.json file to specify the
expected application version.
In Visual Studio Code, the full set of symbol packages that make up t he "application" will be
pulled in when specifying an Application version in the app.json file.
An explicit dependency to Microsoft's Base Application will take priority over the Application
version, but is redirected to "application" if the Base Application is not present on the system.
NOTE ApplicationVersion only allows resolving dependencies on compile. Whether the
extension is in fact compatible with the provided alias is up to the embed extension authors to
ensure and test.
See also
AL Development Environment (docs)
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Camera/location AL API available in the browser
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Users expect modern apps to take full advantage of their device hardware, such as taking
pictures with their camera. Not only does this modernize the experience, but when applied to
the right scenarios, it can also reduce time and effort of data entry and help capture information
closer to the source.
Feature details
Developers will be able to programmatically activate the camera or get the current location
through an AL-based API when Business Central is accessed through the browser. With support
for both browser and apps, developers can rest assured that their scenarios light up on any form
factor, as long as the user's device and browser support those capabilities.
Users remain in control of their privacy settings and can choose to grant or deny access to
camera and location.
See also
Incoming Documents (docs)
Look up events and insert event subscriber in code
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
A core part of extension-based "customization" is the use of events and event subscribers.
To identify an event and generate an event subscriber code template, we added the Event
Recorder in the client some time ago, allowing recording and inspecting of thrown events.
However, in many cases, developers are either aware of the event they want to subscribe to or
want to have a fast way to search for the event (with type ahead/completion) and then insert
event subscriber in code context.
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Feature details
Use the new Shift+Alt+E shortcut in the AL code editor to invoke a list of all events. You can use
type ahead to dynamically search and filter the event list, and when pressing return to select an
event entry, an event subscriber for the event will be inserted at the cursor position in the active
AL code editor window.
See also
Al Development Environment (docs)
Multiple variable declarations of the same type in the same line
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Until now, each variable had to be declared on its own line. In larger objects, this led to pages of
variable declarations, even if most of these were of the same type.
To reduce scrolling, improve readability, and make it easier to see and declare related types, it is
now possible to add multiple variable declarations of the same type in a singular line.
Feature details
Declare multiple variables of the same type in the same line, using a comma to separate variable
names. For example, "foo, bar : Integer;"
See also
AL Development Environment (docs)
Obsolete tag property
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Adding a free-form ObsoleteTag allows partners, for example, to provide contextual data
around obsoleting objects—such as branches and build numbers—to track and plan a final
removal of obsoleted objects.
The ObsoleteUrl allows providing a URI with additional information on how to handle and
rewrite code due to obsolete pending objects.
Feature details
Objects that support the ObsoleteState property or Obsolete attribute today will get additional
ObsoleteTag property for tracking processes and provide additional information on obsoleted
objects. Partners can choose their own scheme for what to track in ObsoleteTag, such as date or
build, and it could be provided during development.
See also
AL Development Environment (docs)
Ability to refactor a field from a table to a table extension
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Together with other refactoring features, this feature will unblock the transition to Business
Central online for customers who have customizations to the Microsoft base application.
Feature details
Using Sync-NAVApp, a developer can move a field from a table to a table extension without the
need to write upgrade code.
Onboarding
Overview
With 2020 release wave 1, we improve the onboarding experience to get new users acquainted
with Business Central faster.
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Improved onboarding experience
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 2, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
With 2020 release wave 1, we improve the onboarding experience to get new users acquainted
with Business Central faster.
Feature details
We add discoverable paths to walk new users through the startup process for better discovery
of the capabilities as well as accelerate the setup of critical business processes.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
See also
Setting up Business Central (docs)
Partner acceleration
Overview
The Dynamics NAV business has been driven by strong vertical solutions, complemented by
add-on solutions. For the 2020 release wave 1 update, our focus will be on streamlining the path
for partners to bring their vertical solutions—and in turn their customers—to Business Central
online. The 2020 release wave 1 update delivers a set of features designed to simplify
development for new solutions and, specifically, for helping partners on their journey of
migrating from the source code customization model of Dynamics NAV to the extensions model
of Business Central.
API for continuous delivery of the AppSource apps via Azure DevOps services
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Jul 2020
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Business value
Partners of Business Central can use Azure DevOps to orchestrate their build processes and
deployments to Business Central online.
Feature details
The global partner community in general and Business Central partner community in particular
are growing passion for the continuous integration/continuous delivery and DevOps principles.
Azure DevOps services already provide a wealth of functionality for Business Central developers
to manage their code following continuous integration practice. The code is written in Visual
Studio Code; stored, reviewed, branched, and merged in a source control repository; then built
and tested using build pipelines, targeting Business Central Docker containers.
The next step is to enable partners building Dynamics 365 Business Central apps to implement
continuous delivery of their apps to the customers, running in the Business Central online
service.
The partners will use a new API (fixed app management endpoint, of FAME) and Azure DevOps
services to manage their apps and orchestrate the steps of the release (release pipeline).
We expect the following flow to be enabled for the Business Central 2020 release wave 1: Once
a partner app has been tested in a Docker container and has passed automated AppSource
validation checks, the production-ready app will be submitted for the AppSource automatic and
additional manual validation via the Microsoft Partner Center portal as usual. When the app is
approved, the ISV will proceed with a phased rollout of the app to all of their customers, using
the previous version of the ISV app, across multiple countries.
New versions of the partner apps will be made available to the customers to upgrade to on the
Extension Management page, so that customers can install or upgrade to those when they see
fit.
With Business Central 2020 release wave 1, the first version of the API will be made available as a
private preview to a limited audience of our AppSource ISVs with a plan to roll out to all
Business Central AppSource ISVs soon after that.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
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Power Platform
Overview
With 2020 release wave 1, we increase integration with Microsoft Power Platform.
Business Central integration with Common Data Service
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 1, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
A new Common Data Service onboarding experience will be provided, where users will be able
to connect to a Common Data Service environment and associate a Business Central company
with a Common Data Service business unit. This will allow for multiple companies to connect to
a Common Data Service instance. During setup, the Common Data Service connection entities
from the default Common Data Service database will be synchronized.
This provides extensibility support for developers developing integrations for Common Data
Service.
Feature details
Common Data Service is at the center of the Dynamics 365 suite. Common Data Service enables
users to have a 360-degree view of their business as data is available in Common Data Service.
Once data is in Common Data Service, users will have a shared, consistent view of data across
the Dynamics 365 solution. Dynamics 365 Business Central will support a set of entities in the
Common Data Service default database provided in a "Business Central CDS Base Solution,"
which other integrations will depend on. The base solution will bring the capability to map a
Company entity to a Business Unit entity in Common Data Service.
When developing extensions that integrate with Common Data Service, Business Central 2020
release wave 1 will bring extensibility capabilities, where Common Data Service tables and
Common Data Service table extensions can be created. This will allow for any custom attribute
to be synchronized.
Tell us what you think
Help us improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and
giving feedback. Use the forum at https://aka.ms/bcideas.
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See also
Integrating with Dynamics 365 Sales (docs)
Service fundamentals
Overview
No matter the industry type of a small or medium-sized business (SMB), business users expect a
dependable service and platform on which to run their business, collaborate, and get work done.
Along with our wave of innovative new features, we've invested heavily in boosting
performance, reliability, and scalability of Business Central, across the platform and business
application.
Business Central runs much faster with a focus on typical business scenarios and usage patterns.
The experience in the browser is more responsive thanks to on-demand loading of page
elements, server resources that are optimized for fast user interaction, and the database being
tuned to handle more data and faster load times. We will continue to improve the application
performance and are prioritizing common usage scenarios.
Users experience an even more stable service with scheduled upgrades that suit the individual
business, maintenance during non-working hours, and matured service health practices to
ensure maximum uptime. Users requiring assistance now have a single screen through which to
find self-help material, share ideas with the community, and request support with streamlined
response time.
The Business Central security team works behind the scenes to safeguard the security of your
data. In addition to continual improvements of our security infrastructure and processes, we
ensure Business Central continues to meet ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1 and 2 Type
2, HIPPA BAA, and FERPA industry security and privacy compliance standards. For more details
and a list of all certificates, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cloud services compliance.
Ability to see current database locks
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
To locate a locking issue, it is sometimes important for an administrator to see the current
database locks in the system.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Feature details
A new page called Database Locks is available in the client.
The page shows a snapshot of all database locks. Where possible, it displays details on the AL
session that is causing the database lock.
Ability to see table sizes
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
When troubleshooting performance issues, sometimes it is necessary to see the distribution of
data size across tables. This feature makes it easy for an administrator to look up this
information.
Feature details
A new page called Table Information shows the following:
• Company Name
• Table Name
• Table No.
• No. of Records
• Record Size
• Size (KB)
Information is shown for all companies for which the user has SUPER permissions.
Ability to view a list of sessions and cancel one or more of them
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Sometimes, canceling a session is the only way to unblock a customer. For example, a longrunning report is locking data in a table, preventing warehouse employees from working.
Prior to this feature, partners would need to contact support to locate and terminate the session.
Feature details
In the Business Central administration center, an administrator can see a list of active sessions
on an environment and cancel one or more of them. All existing resources consumed by a
session will also be canceled.
Performance of web service requests and reports added to Application Insights
telemetry for partners
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Partners can monitor performance of web service requests and reports.
Feature details
The Business Central server will emit telemetry about the execution time and timeouts of web
service requests and reports.
Partners and customers can use this to monitor their environments for performance issues
caused by web service requests and reports and be more proactive in preventing these issues
from occurring.
Read scale-out
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Customers can choose to run selected reports, queries, and web service calls on a read-only
replica of the database. This way, analytical workloads will not have any impact on the primary
database.
Feature details
Business Central artifacts (Reports, API Pages, and Queries) now can get access to a read-only
replica of the database.
The Page, Report, and Query objects have a new property called “DataAccessIntent” that can
take values ReadOnly or ReadWrite. This property works as a hint for the server, which will
connect to the secondary replica if possible. When a workload is executed against the replica,
insert/delete/modify operations are not possible, so a new validation is introduced for ReadOnly
objects. Any of these operations will throw an exception at runtime (new compile-time
validation will be added in the future).
Resource limits for reports and web service calls
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Apr 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
To make sure that other users can work even if a misconfigured web service method is running
or a user started a report with no filters by mistake.
Feature details
The Business Central server will have new settings where an administrator can set limits on the
execution time for reports and SOAP web service calls. When the limit is reached, the server
cancels the operation.
In Business Central online (software as a service), the default values are set by the Business
Central operations team and cannot be overridden by customers or partners. In the 2020 release
wave 1, the default values will be set to hours (actual values are to be determined).
For Business Central (on-premises), an administrator can control the settings in the server.
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Customer Data Platform
Overview of Dynamics 365 Market Insights 2020 release
wave 1
Features will be updated soon.
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Overview of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights 2020 release
wave 1
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables every organization to unify disparate data—be it
transactional, observational, or behavioral sources—to gain a single view of customers and
derive intelligent insights that drive key business processes. With Dynamics 365 Customer
Insights, organizations can:
• Eliminate data silos and unify customer data.
o Connect and unify data with ease, bringing in transactional, observational, and
behavioral data from data sources by leveraging a prebuilt connector.
o Transform customer data intelligently to build a unified customer profile conforming to
the Common Data Model.
• Enrich customer profiles with audience intelligence contained within the Microsoft
Graph.
Build richer customer profiles by incorporating aggregated audience intelligence contained
within the Microsoft Graph.
• Enable powerful AI and insights.
o Leverage the data gravity around customer entity for AI, insights, and KPIs atop the
single view of the customer.
o Accelerate the process through quick-start AI and machine learning templates or custom
algorithms using Azure Machine Learning.
• Power business processes and personalize customer experiences.
o Empower marketing, sales, and service professionals to drive personalized engagement
across channels. Leverage out-of-the-box, contextual customer insights and tailored
customer profile cards that are infused in the everyday business applications.
o Leverage rich APIs and the Microsoft Power Platform to enable and extend line-ofbusiness experiences. This includes the ability to gain deeper customer insights with
Microsoft Power BI, build custom apps with Microsoft Power Apps, and trigger workflows
based on customer actions and signals using Power Automate.
What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
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In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Additional predictive insights Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020
Extensibility enhancements with new
Power Automate connectors and Microsoft
Teams add-in
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
Support for incremental and near real-time
data ingestion
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020
Data profiling capabilities End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Data unification improvements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Enhancements to segments and measures End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
System administration enhancements End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Customer Insights available in Microsoft
Dynamics 365 Online Government
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- May 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
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• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Additional predictive insights
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Feature details
Easily generate predictions based on unified profiles in Customer Insights to get a deeper
understanding of customer patterns.
Extensibility enhancements with new Power Automate connectors and
Microsoft Teams add-in
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -Feature details
This release includes enhancements to support extensibility scenarios with Microsoft Power
Platform:
• Enhanced Power Automate connectors include additional actions.
• Microsoft Teams add-in allows you to view profile and insights data directly in Microsoft
Teams.
Support for incremental and near real-time data ingestion
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 -
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Feature details
Customer Insights now supports incremental and near real-time data ingestion.
Data profiling capabilities
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Customer Insights now includes data profiling capabilities to help you understand more about
your customer data.
Data unification improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Advanced configuration options provide:
• Ability to reset unification settings.
• URL support for unified customer activity timelines.
Enhancements to segments and measures
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Segment enhancements include:
• New segment insights such as segment membership trends.
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• Ability to quickly create segments by clustering customer data based on customer profile
attributes.
Measures improvements include support for additional operators, filters, and enhancements to
advanced mode.
System administration enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Administration enhancements include:
• Support for configuration import and export.
• Ability to reset Customer Insights environments with the option to retain ingested data.
Customer Insights available in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online
Government
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - May 2020
Feature details
With this release, Customer Insights is available for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online Government.
With more and more channels for interactions, citizen data is scattered across myriad systems,
leading to siloed data and a fragmented view of information about citizen interactions. Without
a complete view of each citizen's interactions across channels, it's impossible for governments to
modernize at scale. Microsoft is committed to supporting the technology needs of government
to keep up with citizen expectations for consistent and responsive experiences.
With 2020 release wave 1, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will be available for the Government
Community Cloud (GCC), an environment built to meet the higher compliance needs of United
States government agencies. Agencies gain a unified view of citizens and use prebuilt AI to
derive insights that improve interactions, empower employees, and transform communities,
while reducing IT complexity and meeting United States compliance and security standards.
Dynamics 365 Government meets the demanding requirements of the US Federal Risk and
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), enabling United States federal agencies to
benefit from the cost savings and rigorous security of the Microsoft Cloud.
Back to Contents Dynamics 365 Product Insights 360
Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Overview of Dynamics 365 Product Insights 2020 release
wave 1
Dynamics 365 Product Insights enables companies to understand their customers’ usage,
experiences, and journey across all channels of their products (web, mobile, and connected
devices). With Product Insights, companies can easily, with little to no code, collect signals from
all their products and services and gain actionable insights tailored to their industry and
strategy.
Product Insights provides out-of-the-box insights and canned reports about the customer
journey, usage, and experiences so businesses get value right away. Businesses want signals and
insights tailored to their specific products and strategy. Product Insights makes it easy for
business users to gain holistic insights about their business and customers’ usage from custom
signals on web, mobile, and connected devices.
Product Insights integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and the rest of the
Dynamics 365 suite providing users the full understanding of their customers, their interests, and
their activities.
Product Insights will be in Public Preview soon. Please stay tuned!
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Microsoft Forms Pro
Overview of Microsoft Forms Pro 2020 release wave 1
Microsoft Forms Pro was released July 1, 2019, as an enterprise survey solution that empowers
everyone in an organization to develop enterprise-grade surveys to collect timely feedback from
customers and employees. With the point-and-click simplicity and AI-assisted features of Forms
Pro, everyone has the tools to create, send, and analyze custom surveys that integrate directly
into an organization's workflows and business system.
For the 2020 release wave 1, our goal is to make it easier for organizations to implement an
end-to-end, "voice of the customer" feedback solution. We're introducing a Forms Pro template
solution that bundles the survey questions and business process workflows.
Using the customer service feedback template, you can automate sending surveys when a case
is resolved in Dynamics 365. You can then use Power BI to get customer satisfaction insights
that integrate survey results with product and customer service agent performance.
What's new and planned for Microsoft Forms Pro
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Customer service template app
Measuring and maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction have become a competitive
differentiator in today's commoditized market. Organizations need to manage customer
satisfaction and understand key drivers that affect it.
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Customer feedback management
solution template
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
- Jul 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
Customer service template app
Overview
Measuring and maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction have become a competitive
differentiator in today's commoditized market. Organizations need to manage customer
satisfaction and understand key drivers that affect it. CSM magazine cited a study to highlight
the importance of customer satisfaction.
Customer feedback management solution template
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jul 2020
Business value
Customer experience is one of the primary differentiators that businesses can exert control over.
Some analysts predict that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as a
key brand differentiator.
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Forms Pro enables organizations to measure customer experience across channels, analyze
customer feedback, share the insights with relevant people in the organization, and take timely
action to close the loop with customers.
Feature details
• Survey templates: Forms Pro now includes survey templates that you can customize to
meet your specific business needs.
• Integrated customer satisfaction insights dashboard : The template includes a full
dashboard that integrates survey results with customer records in Common Data Service.
• Timely follow-up actions: The template includes a follow-up workflow that automatically
notifies you of customers' negative sentiments or detractor Net Promotor Scores, so you can
follow up on the feedback in a timely manner.
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Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Customer satisfaction daily report
Back to Contents Microsoft Forms Pro 365
Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Customer satisfaction dashboard
Customer satisfaction survey
Back to Contents Microsoft Forms Pro 366
Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Customer satisfaction workflow
Template for customer service feedback survey questions
Back to Contents Microsoft Forms Pro 367
Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Template for customer service feedback workflows
Template for customer service feedback reports
Back to Contents Dynamics 365 Layout 368
Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan Version 20.1.2
Dynamics 365 Layout
Overview of Dynamics 365 Layout 2020 release wave 1
Dynamics 365 Layout will no longer be updated with new features. In future releases, core
features of Dynamics 365 Layout will migrate to the Dynamics 365 Guides application. Dynamics
365 Layout will remain a supported application until December 31, 2021, but you won't be able
to purchase new subscriptions or additional seats after April 1, 2020. If you're an existing
Dynamics 365 Layout customer or partner, please contact us at LayoutAppEoS to request
support for migrating your solution to Dynamics 365 Guides. Learn more about Dynamics 365
Guides at https://dynamics.microsoft.com/mixed-reality/guides/.
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Industry accelerators
Overview of Nonprofit 2020 release wave 1
The Nonprofit Accelerator enables you to develop nonprofit solutions based on entities and
attributes that nonprofits commonly leverage for constituent management, fundraising, awards,
program delivery, and impact tracking. These entities include donor commitments, designations,
transactions, awards, disbursements, delivery frameworks, results, indicators, benefit recipients,
and more. The Nonprofit Accelerator includes the Common Data Model for Nonprofits, sample
apps, sample data, dashboards, and documentation.
What's new and planned for Nonprofit
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for General availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General availability
Nonprofit Accelerator End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Nonprofit Accelerator
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Feature details
The Nonprofit Accelerator continues to evolve at a rapid pace and includes the most
comprehensive and inter-operable nonprofit data model available. This allows nonprofits to
manage program delivery, beneficiary management, fundraising, volunteer management, and
finance and operations while building to included standards like IATI (Global International Aid
Transparency Initiative) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This release will focus on program delivery lifecycle management from proposal development to
case management to monitoring, learning and evaluation. We will deliver further refined
Volunteer Management and Nonprofit Operations Toolkit Template Apps while extending the
nonprofit common data model to include the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HXL) standard. To
advance partner enablement and nonprofit customer adoption, we will deliver a program
delivery connected scenario and end-to-end test drive experience.
See also
Nonprofit Accelerator (docs)
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Overview of Financial services 2020 release wave 1
The Financial Services Accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions based on entities
and attributes that banks commonly leverage for customer experience and other business
processes. These entities include banks, branches, financial products, loans, referrals, limits,
requested facilities, and more. The accelerator includes a banking data model, sample apps,
dashboards, and connected experiences which showcase popular scenarios in the financial
services industry.
What's new and planned for Financial services
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
General
availability
Financial Services
Accelerator
End users by admins, makers, or
analysts
- Apr 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
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Financial Services Accelerator
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Our initial Financial Services Accelerator release was focused on both Retail & Commercial
Banking and optimizing the customer experience, improving collaboration within a bank and
being able to gain customer insights from analytics. This data model supported common
banking activities as well as flexibility for other use cases in financial services and was developed
in collaboration with BIAN and other open API initiatives to ensure interoperability to help
unlock new Open Banking opportunities.
With this release, we have included additional out-of-the-box entity mappings to support
insurance and wealth planning. This release will target new scenarios supporting claims, policies,
and life events as well as new use cases for wealth management to service the needs of private
banking and wealth planning.
See also
Financial Services Accelerator (docs)
Back to Contents Healthcare Accelerator 373
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Overview of Health 2020 release wave 1
The Healthcare Accelerator allows you to build solutions and create new use cases and
workflows with entities focused on enhanced care coordination. It also gives you the ability to
segment patients and providers based on Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data. We have
developed the data model based on the HL7/FHIR specification to provide interoperability with
EMR Systems. The Accelerator includes the patient care data model, customer engagement
forms, sample apps, dashboards, and a connected experience related to holistic patient care.
What's new and planned for Health
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General availability
Healthcare Accelerator End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
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Healthcare Accelerator
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
In the October 2019 release of the Healthcare Accelerator, we enhanced the model -driven app
with an updated look and included new forms and controls to add functionality for care
coordination. We also began a formal feedback process with partners and customers to ensure
we are taking input in a consistent manner to drive increased innovation and usability for the
upcoming releases.
The April 2020 release will include end-to-end scenarios covering Customer Service or Provider
Call Center, Customer (Patient) Insights, Home Health, Physician Referrals, and Patient
Segmentation and Outreach. Each facet of these scenarios will be dependent upon the
corresponding Dynamics 365 app, and we also provide the baseline data model that will not rely
on any dependencies and can be installed directly into a base Common Data Service
environment.
See also
Healthcare Accelerator (docs)
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Overview of Automotive 2020 release wave 1
The Automotive Accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions based on entities and
attributes that dealerships and OEMs commonly leverage for customer experience and other
business processes. These entities include deals, sales contracts, specifications, fleet, warranties,
inspection, test drives, branding, business, customer-vehicle relationship, vehicle and equipment,
lead, service and after-sales management, and more. The accelerator includes an automotive
data model, Power BI apps, canvas and model-driven sample apps based on connected
customer experience.
What's new and planned for Automotive
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Automotive
Accelerator
End users by admins, makers, or
analysts
- May 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
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For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
Automotive Accelerator
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - May 2020
Feature details
The initial release of the Automotive Accelerator has focused on optimizing the customer
experience and business processes commonly related to dealerships and OEMs. With this
release, we have included out-of-the-box entity mappings to support integration with asset
management, telematics, campaigns, update to the Device entity to support Connected Field
Service, and predictive maintenance use cases.
This release targets end-to-end scenarios covering digital marketing, and personalized
experiences with customer 360 insights, as well as a customer journey template to automate key
pre and post sales activities.
See also
Automotive Accelerator (docs)
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Change history
This topic is updated when a feature's release date changes or when a feature is added or
removed. You can see the full topic in the Power Platform Change history online.
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2020 release wave 1 features
available for early access
This topic lists Power Platform features that can be enabled for testing in your environment
beginning February 3, 2020. Features from the following apps are available as part of early
access:
• Power Apps
The features from these apps update the existing user experiences. You can opt in early to
enable these features in your environment. This will allow you to test these features and then
adopt them across your environments. For information on how to enable these features, see Opt
in to 2020 release wave 1 updates .
IMPORTANT If you are using Dynamics 365 apps, such as Sales, Service, Marketing, Finance,
Supply Chain Management, Business Central, and Commerce, there are early access features that
could impact your users. For Dynamics 365 early access features, see 2020 release wave 1
features available for early access.
Power Apps
For a complete list of the Power Apps features, see What's new and planned for Power Apps.
Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Chart and dashboard styling
improvements for model-driven apps
End users,
automatically
Jan 29, 2020 Apr 2020
Improved grid column filtering in Power
Apps
End users,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Improvements to model-driven apps End users,
automatically
Jan 29, 2020 Apr 2020
Improvements to quick find search
experience on a grid
End users,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Early access General
availability
Save is always visible in the command
bar on edit forms
End users,
automatically
Jan 29, 2020 Apr 2020
Usability enhancements to editable grid End users,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
View selector usability enhancements End users,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
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Power Apps
Overview of Power Apps 2020 release wave 1
Power Apps is the industry-leading low-code application development platform that underpins
Dynamics 365 extensibility, Office 365 customization, and standalone custom line of business
applications for customers around the world. Power Apps dramatically lowers the cost,
complexity, and time of software development through a range of powerful low-code
development tools, and deep data platform in the Common Data Service, and hundreds of
connectors to common business data sources.
Use Power Apps documentation to get expert information and answers to address your needs,
regardless of how you use Power Apps.
The 2020 release wave 1 provides significant improvements for Power Apps developers of all
skill levels, improving the sophistication and usability of apps that are created across the web
and mobile devices.
What's new and planned for Power Apps
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Deep integration from Azure to Microsoft Teams
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early
access*
General
availability
Start creating apps directly
from Microsoft Teams using
your existing SharePoint data
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - May 2020
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Excellent mobile, including offline
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Enhanced capabilities and
experience in offline mode
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Canvas and model-driven apps
run on a single mobile
application
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Mar 2020 Apr 2020
High velocity developers of all skill levels
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Instrument your canvas apps
with Azure Application Insights
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Modern solution import
experience
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020 -Canvas app Monitor tool is now
generally available
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - May 2020
Modern solution explorer gets
a makeover
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jun 2020
Power Apps Test Studio for
canvas apps is now generally
available
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jun 2020
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Power Apps portals improvements
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Web APIs for CRUD operations
on Common Data Service
entities
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020 -Portal Checker enhancements Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Power BI Embedded
component in portal designer
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Support for additional entities
in global search
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Simplified themes in portals
Studio
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Apr 2020 - May 2020
Support for Authorization Code
flow for OpenID Connect based
authentication providers
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Jun 2020
Simplified portal identity
provider configuration
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 - Jun 2020
Simplified web page and entity
permissions for Power Apps
portals
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 - Jun 2020
Sophisticated apps on a unified platform
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Build responsive, reflowing
canvas app pages
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jun 2020 -
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Enabling printable pages in
canvas apps
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Jul 2020 -Auto generate web app on top
of your existing data
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Large file and image support in
model-driven forms
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- - Apr 2020
Chart and dashboard styling
improvements for model-driven
apps
End users,
automatically
- Jan 29,
2020
Apr 2020
Enable creating and editing
data in forms displayed as a
modal dialog without
navigating away
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jan 29,
2020
- Apr 2020
Improvements to model-driven
apps
End users,
automatically
- Jan 29,
2020
Apr 2020
Save is always visible in the
command bar on edit forms
End users,
automatically
- Jan 29,
2020
Apr 2020
Improved grid column filtering
in Power Apps
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3,
2020
Apr 2020
Improvements to quick find
search experience on a grid
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3,
2020
Apr 2020
Usability enhancements to
editable grid
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3,
2020
Apr 2020
View selector usability
enhancements
End users,
automatically
- Feb 3,
2020
Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early access* General
availability
Improved themes in Power
Apps
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Mar 2020 - Apr 2020
Improved data source
experience and Common Data
Service view are generally
available
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Aug 14,
2019
- Apr 2020
Canvas components are
generally available
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Feb 26,
2020
- Apr 2020
Build apps on top of your
existing data in SharePoint
more easily
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - May 2020
Easily access and search for
help while building apps
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - May 2020
* Some features are available for you to opt-in as part of early access on February 3, 2020,
including all mandatory changes that impact end users. Learn more about early access.
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
Deep integration from Azure to Microsoft Teams
Overview
A core strength of Power Platform is our deep integration from productivity applications to
advanced capabilities in Azure. We're continuing to invest in better Microsoft Teams integration
as well as improving the experience of Azure developers on the platform.
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Start creating apps directly from Microsoft Teams using your existing SharePoint
data
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - May 2020
Business value
By making it easier to create apps for Microsoft Teams with existing data, your business can
augment Microsoft Teams more quickly so that your employees always have the information
they need while collaborating with others.
Feature details
If you are using Microsoft Teams, you can now easily create a new app within one of your
channels. While creating your new app, you have the opportunity to automatically generate the
first few screens using data already existing in your Microsoft Team's SharePoint site.
Create Microsoft Teams app from SharePoint data
Back to Contents Power Apps 386
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Excellent mobile, including offline
Overview
Power Apps is investing heavily in our mobile platform. We're combining canvas and model
apps into a single front door, enhancing offline support and improving mobile-specific user
experiences across the board.
Enhanced capabilities and experience in offline mode
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Feature details
Ability to work in offline mode is critical for front line workers to perform their jobs because they
usually work in an area of poor or no internet connectivity. We are continuously working
towards improving this capability to ensure that users have a great experience in offline mode.
These improvements are aimed at model-driven apps only.
Some of the improvements coming in April are:
• Model-driven apps are faster and more reliable in offline mode, enhancing the productivity
of users.
• Seamless experience in offline mode through better communication and more actionable
error messages.
• Entities, such as Currency, will be available in offline mode.
• The barcode scanner control will also be available in offline mode.
Canvas and model-driven apps run on a single mobile application
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Mar 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Canvas apps and model-driven apps are two rich ecosystems of Power Apps that bring different
sets of capabilities to users. Today, there is no way for users to access both these applications
using a single mobile app.
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With this feature, users will be able to access all of their favorite apps in a single mobile
application, Power Apps mobile app, without the need to switch. App Makers can deliver
targeted experiences to users on a single mobile application; either through a pixel-perfect,
task-based, canvas app or through a declarative, metadata-driven model-driven app. Both
canvas and model-driven applications will appear together in a single list of apps in the current
Power Apps mobile app.
Canvas and model applications (highlighted) running side-by-side in a single mobile app
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High velocity developers of all skill levels
Overview
Power Apps empowers every developer. We're adding "full stack" low code capabilities that help
makers of all backgrounds test their features, ensure performance, and monitor usage.
Instrument your canvas apps with Azure Application Insights
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020 -Feature details
With telemetry now available, admins and app makers can learn how many people are using the
app or features and how many sessions, and they can segment the data by country, browser, or
other telemetry properties. Makers are also able to write custom traces from their app to
Application Insights and build custom queries, reporting, and alerting on top of their telemetry
data.
Azure Application Insights
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Enable app insights
Modern solution import experience
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 - -Business value
We've reimagined the solution import interface to remove complex decision making and ensure
solution health. The new experience is more streamlined and allows for configuring inputs that
change from environment to environment.
Feature details
In addition to supporting capabilities of classic solution import, the modern experience offers
the following enhancements:
• You're now able to create and authorize the connections required by your flows so that
they're created in a working state.
• Set environment variable values required by other components in your solution.
• Reduced complexity when choosing from import actions.
• Accessibility.
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Import
Canvas app Monitor tool is now generally available
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - May 2020
Business value
The canvas app Monitor tool is now generally available allowing makers to diagnose and
troubleshoot their applications quicker.
Feature details
With improved capabilities to import/export log files, share diagnostic sessions, inspect,
interpret, filter the results, and visualize event timelines, makers can easily identify problem areas
and fix them in their apps.
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Canvas app Monitor
Modern solution explorer gets a makeover
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jun 2020
Business value
Spend less time searching and transitioning between designers and more time on making apps.
Feature details
We've added a secondary navigation for easier transitions between solution components.
Additionally, now your recent items are just one click away. If you leave and come back, we'll
remember your settings so you can pick up right where you left off.
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Solution updates
See also
Solutions overview (docs)
Power Apps Test Studio for canvas apps is now generally available
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jun 2020
Business value
Building on the preview release, the Power Apps Test Studio for canvas apps is now generally
available with support for all controls and integration into your build and release pipelines.
Feature details
• Full support for all Power Apps native controls and custom components.
• New capabilities to run tests automatically from release pipelines.
• Ability for makers to establish key quality gates for apps via efficient test automation.
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Test Studio
Power Apps portals improvements
Overview
Power Apps portals are enabling low-code makers to roll out experiences to broad external
audiences. We're continuing to advance portals capabilities as usage grows.
Web APIs for CRUD operations on Common Data Service entities
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 - -Feature details
The liquid tags in portals today provide read-only capability. Creating, updating, and deleting
operations require using UI components like entity list and entity forms. This feature adds Web
APIs for portals that allow users to create, read, update, and delete operations across all
Common Data Service entities.
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Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Portal Checker enhancements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Feature details
The Portal Checker tool (released in the October '18 wave) checks portal configuration, identifies
potential configuration problems, and provides solutions that help resolve portal issues. Portal
customizers and administrators can use this tool to quickly resolve common issues and reduce
the amount of time spent on diagnosing issues. As part of this feature enhancement, we add the
ability to identify more scenarios that help resolve common portal issues.
Power BI Embedded component in portal designer
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Business value
Portal provides the first party integration with Power BI by using the liquid tags. With Power BI
Embedded component in portal designer experience we aim to simplify integration and abstract
the liquid tag complexity.
Feature details
Embedding the Power BI in portal using liquid tag is quite cumbersome work, as maker has to
get require data from Power BI and pass these values to appropriate parameter in liquid code.
With this feature we aimed at enabling Power BI Embedded as a first-class component in portal
designer experience similar to Forms and List. So, maker can add require Power BI report or
dashboard in portal by using the portal designer property panel, without worrying about the
liquid code.
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Power BI Embedded as component
Support for additional entities in global search
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
Global search helps users quickly search information across multiple record types. Users can
already search across webpages and files, knowledge articles, blog and forum posts, ideas, and
cases. Supporting additional entities, including custom ones, helps customers extend global
search to more record types for their users. This especially helps customers derive more value
from global search in Power Apps portals built from blank using starter portal template.
Feature details
This feature aims at adding support for additional entities that can be searched within a portal in
a configurable way.
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The capability to enable search is controlled via settings:
EnableAdditionalEntities search site setting
Records of a particular type that are to be made in global search and the fields that are indexed
for search can be configured via a view for each entity individually.
Portal Search view
Record types can be secured and made available in search results via explicit Read entity
permissions. Makers can specify the page that opens from their search results for each record
type that they enable the search on.
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Feedback_SearchResultPage result page value
Global search is based on Lucene.Net, and its current capabilities, such as specifying additional
weights and filters, support for terms, and wildcards are available. Also, the configuration of
entity filters, support for searchindex liquid tag are available for additional entities.
Search query site setting
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Back to Contents Power Apps 398
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Simplified themes in portals Studio
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Apr 2020 - May 2020
Feature details
This feature provides simplified themes in portals Studio. Portal makers can use themes for
common website properties using a simple and easy configuration experience.
Starter Blue theme
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Custom Purple theme
Support for Authorization Code flow for OpenID Connect based authentication
providers
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Jun 2020
Feature details
Authorization Code flow is one of the major authentication flows supported by OpenID Connect
protocol for user authentication in applications. As part of this feature, we are adding support
for Authorization Code flow.
Simplified portal identity provider configuration
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 - Jun 2020
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Business value
Setting up authentication provider is a core customization in any portal. With simplified portal
identity provider configuration, we aim at providing in-app guidance for identity provider setup
and abstract setup complexities. This helps makers and administrators quickly and easily
perform setup for supported identity providers and also reduce usual configuration errors.
Feature details
The authentication setup experience today is complex and involves multiple steps. With the
Azure Active Directory B2C as a provider, we make the experience easier with a step-by-step
wizard and automate as much as possible so a user does not have to follow long documentation
steps configuring all of this manually.
Identity providers for portals
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Identity provider wizard
With other identity providers the feature provides guidance and an intuitive configuration
experience. For example, for oAuth 2.0 based login providers, the setup provides links to
provider documentation, easy-to-copy portal redirect URLs, and instructions to obtain and
configure Client ID and Client Secret settings.
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Configure oAuth 2.0 login provider
Simplified web page and entity permissions for Power Apps portals
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 - Jun 2020
Business value
This feature makes the experience to create security model for portals quicker and less error
prone. It also reduces the complexity of defining the security model in Portal Management app.
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Feature details
This feature enables makers to efficiently configure and manage portal web roles and entity
permissions outside the Portal Management app. It also enables the web page access to be
configured based on web roles right from portals Studio.
Role management
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Add new permission
Sophisticated apps on a unified platform
Overview
Power Apps combines the flexibility of a blank canvas that can connect to any data source with
the power of rich forms, views, and dashboards modeled over data in the Common Data Service.
As we continue to combine the strengths of both canvas and model-driven applications, users of
both app types will benefit with greater control and flexibility.
Build responsive, reflowing canvas app pages
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jun 2020 - -Feature details
In Power Apps Studio, app makers can build pages that are fully responsive to changes in screen
size and orientation and offer the same flexibility for custom UI and data binding as standard
canvas app screens. These pages contain pre-built layouts with regions that automatically reflow as the available real estate on the screen changes, and they also support all existing canvas
concepts, such as reusable custom components. App makers can build these components in
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Power Apps Studio, or a professional developer can build them by using Power Apps
component framework.
All app developers, including implementers of Common Data Service, can build fully custom and
responsive experiences into their applications, thus improving experiences that are tailored to
the needs of users and increasing their satisfaction. Many people in the Power Apps community
have requested this important step on the journey toward unifying app types.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Enabling printable pages in canvas apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Jul 2020 - -Business value
This has been a top requested item from the Power Apps community and enables field service
like scenarios.
Feature details
Makers are able to configure a printable page in their canvas apps, taking the content on the
screen and turning it into a printable format (PDF). This enables users to use components and
concepts they already know to be able to create and capture a page to print. This has been a
top requested item from the Power Apps community to enable scenarios that require a
document or file which can be printed or emailed.
Thank you for your idea
Thank you for submitting this idea. We listened to your idea, along with comments and votes, to
help us decide what to add to our product roadmap.
Auto generate web app on top of your existing data
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
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Business value
As a maker, you can now create an app from data in a landscape format instead of just a phone
layout. This makes it easier to build a canvas app for both web and tablet scenarios on top of
your existing SharePoint, Excel, SQL, and Common Data Service data without having to build it
from scratch.
Feature details
The app from data templates we provide will now be responsive, so as a maker, you can
generate the app once for both tablet and mobile form factors. For example, in the tablet layout,
you will have a master-detail view so that you can easily switch between records without having
to leave your current screen. On mobile, you can use the entire screen for the list and detail
view.
Responsive app from data template
Large file and image support in model-driven forms
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - - Apr 2020
Business value
• File and image entity attribute can be added to any part of the form
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• Files can be uploaded up to 128 MB
• Images can be uploaded up to 30 MB
Feature details
Attachments in forms used to be limited to 5 MB, which limit the ability to add large files, such
as PDF, images, and videos to items. New large file and image support in model-driven forms
will allow users the ability to have large attachments in their apps—up to 128 MB for files and 30
MB for images.
Large file control
Chart and dashboard styling improvements for model-driven apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Jan 29, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
UI improvements for better user experience and promote transition to Unified Interface.
Feature details
Dashboards and charts are updated in model-driven apps to improve visibility and provide a
simpler interface. This includes updated dashboard selection with the user dashboards
appearing above system dashboards and minor styling changes. In addition to dashboard
updates the related entity grid on forms now includes a Show Chart button to match the main
grid page.
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Chart control next to the associated grid in the form page
Enable creating and editing data in forms displayed as a modal dialog without
navigating away
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jan 29, 2020
- Apr 2020
Business value
Users do not have to navigate away from a form to create or edit a related record. This greatly
improves productivity by reducing clicks and eliminating the need to do unnecessary navigation
back and forth across forms.
Feature details
Users no longer have to navigate away to add or edit a related record. Makers will be able to
open a main form in a dialog directly from another main form. This greatly improves overall
productivity by reducing clicks and unnecessary navigation when working with related records.
This feature will be available with the 'navigateTo' api and can be used from a command bar,
event, or plugin to open a main form record in a dialog experience.
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Main form dialog
See also
Open a main record in a dialog in a model driven app (blog)
Open main form in a dialog using client API (docs)
Improvements to model-driven apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Jan 29, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Remember the last used app
Model-driven apps have been updated to remember the last app used thereby reducing the
need to choose one in the apps list. The last app will be used if an app isn't specified in the URL.
For example, use of the last app can happen when opening the organization URL or when
opening a generated URL to a specific entity record. The first time opening the URL without
specifying an app will still prompt the user, but subsequent opens will use the last app if an app
has not been provided. If a user has only one app then that app becomes the last app, which
results in no user prompt. This will improve user productivity by removing clicks when getting
started with a session.
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Updated app message bar visuals and new API
Visuals for the existing app message bar where updated to align with the form message bar
appearance. Model-driven apps now have new APIs to show app level messages which remain
visible while navigating. The API allows flexibility for the type of message. For example, an app
can set a message to be user dismiss-able for information messages or set a message to be not
dismiss-able for more permanent messages. The API also supports removing specific messages
if they don't apply.
Global notification with information message bar
Save is always visible in the command bar on edit forms
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Jan 29, 2020 Apr 2020
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Business value
Improve usability and NSat based on direct feedback from customers, partners, and first -party
app teams.
Feature details
Customers using model-driven Power Apps will see the Save and Save & Close option on the
out-of-box entity command bar when editing a record. Before this release, if the auto save
option was turned on, both options were hidden and not available in the command bar. The
save option was only visible in the footer.
Save on command bar
See also
Save and Save and Close options are always visible (blog)
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Improved grid column filtering in Power Apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Tabular data manipulation is now easier with a whole range of advanced grid column filtering
capabilities.
• String and numeric fields have operators to filters like: begins with, ends with, and contains
data.
• Activity management is vastly improved with a new set of date filters. Absolute (before, after,
on, etc.) and relative (last week, next year, older than X months, etc.) filters put powerful
slicers at your fingertips.
• Filtering on option set columns is as easy as checking items off a list.
• Lookup columns also have an enhanced inline lookup experience for quick filtering.
• Filtering a grid on columns not present in the view is easy and intuitive with the advanced
filtering pane.
• Add multiple filter conditions, including grouping and use of logical operators to create
more complex condition expressions.
• Legacy advanced find capabilities like building view filter expressions is now on the Unified
Interface.
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Grid filtering
Grid filters option set
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Grid filter lookup
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Grid filter date
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Advanced filtering
See also
Use grid filters (docs)
Improvements to quick find search experience on a grid
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Searching for records on a grid is more intuitive with the current view definition honored when
performing search. The Search this view capability on the grid now applies the current view
conditions and then searches on the fields that are configured in the quick find view definition.
Enabled by default, administrators can switch back to quick find search experience easily, which
targets an entity's quick find view definition for searching against and for displaying results.
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Search
See also
Use search on a grid (docs)
Usability enhancements to editable grid
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
Targeted usability improvements to editable grid allows users to be more productive in editing
grid-based data sets.
• Editable grid now displays up to 100 records on a lookup column, up from 20.
• Editable grids now also display rich text content with HTML tags stripped out for better
readability of fields like email body.
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Editable grid
View selector usability enhancements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users, automatically - Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Feature details
The view selector dropdown is enhanced with the following capabilities:
1. The dropdown is longer and wider to show more views, that aid browse and selection
experiences.
2. Personal views are separated from system views and shown higher in the list.
3. View header and label highlighting styles promote quick discovery of views.
4. Pinning is made easier with better icon alignment.
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View selector
Improved themes in Power Apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Mar 2020 - Apr 2020
Feature details
Introducing improved themes for both canvas and model-driven apps that reflect modern
Microsoft Fluent themes. Canvas apps also have new control sizing introduced to allow makers
to build apps with controls sized for web-based and mobile scenarios. New themes made
available for model-driven app as a preview.
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Power Apps studio with new control styles and theme dropdown
Improved data source experience and Common Data Service view are generally
available
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Aug 14, 2019
- Apr 2020
Business value
This feature provides a number of usability enhancements for accessing all data sources.
Common Data Service entities are prominent. Speed of access to Common Data Service is now
greater than 50% along with greater stability than previous releases. Makers can now work with
Common Data Service views. The features and speed improvements make this way of
connecting to Common Data Service preferable over the Dynamics 365 connector.
Feature details
This update includes the following features:
New data sources pane: The sidebar now includes a Data sources panel icon and pane, which
replaces many of the data panels that open over the right edge of the canvas area. This panel
allows adding data sources into the app or creating new connections without inserting a control.
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It provides an easy way to see the data source in your app and perform actions like refresh or
delete.
Entity view selection: When a Common Data Service entity is used as a data source, a view can
be selected in the property pane, and the Items property is updated. The property pane will
update the Items property to add the Filter function taking the view name as the filter.
A big benefit of working with Common Data Service views is that the query for the view is run
on the server - not locally on your device. This means you avoid delegation issues with the core
query. In addition, you have the flexibility to append other filter conditions that are delegated, if
supported. For more advanced queries, just nest the Filter function within other functions using
the formula bar.
Combo box data source selection: The combo box control also supports the data source
selection call out and view selection. This is the same as the gallery and data table controls.
Change Common Data Service environment: Data source selection call out can change the
environment to get a Common Data Service entity from another environment. This works within
the same tenant. The current environment is the app's environment and changes when the app
moves to a new environment. Other environment selections stay the same when the app moves
to a new environment.
Improved data field defaulting: When a gallery or data table control is bound to an entity, the
fields are defaulted using the default public view. This improves the initial fields used and can be
controlled by editing that view. Field defaulting only happens when the entity is set as the data
source and after that fields are managed with the data panel.
Improved speed and reliability for connecting to Common Data Service: Performance
testing indicates a 2x (and better) speed improvement for connecting to Common Data Service.
Reliability has significantly increased as well.
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Improved data experience
See also
Preview for Improve data source experience and Common Data Service views (blog)
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Canvas components are generally available
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 26, 2020
- Apr 2020
Feature details
Canvas components are generally available for app makers to use in production apps with
improved experiences and quality. App makers can share and update components with other
makers by creating component libraries. Libraries are containers of component definitions that
make it easy to discover and search for components, publish updates across environments, and
notify app makers of available component updates. Data source references are also supported in
components and several limitations of components, such as using components in gallery
controls and forms, using collections in components, and exporting with related media files that
have been removed.
Solution awareness of canvas components and apps that use them is also enabled through
component libraries. Migrating an app and its dependencies across environments is now
possible through Common Data Service solutions. Canvas apps and component libraries are
handled very similarly and modeled under the same 'CanvasApp' entity.
Add new components from libraries
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See also
Canvas components are generally available (blog)
Build apps on top of your existing data in SharePoint more easily
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - May 2020
Business value
This feature improves the app from data funnel and encourages more users to get started.
Feature details
As a maker, you can create a new app from SharePoint data using our more streamlined wizard
within the maker portal. It's both faster and easier to use so that you can more quickly get
started building an app on top of your existing tabular data.
Streamlined data connection selection
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Easily access and search for help while building apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - May 2020
Business value
As a maker you no longer have to leave Power Apps in order to find the help you need. By
opening the help pane, you can have instant access to all of our existing guides and docs.
Feature details
With a new inline help experience, makers will be able to easily find relevant guides and docs for
maker experiences within Power Apps. Makers can even search across all of our existing help
materials within this inline experience so that they can easily answer their Power Apps questions
without ever having to leave Power Apps.
Inline help in the maker portal
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Power Automate
Overview of Power Automate 2020 release wave 1
Microsoft Power Automate makes it possible to grow your business productivity by automating
repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Power Automate provides a better way to get things done
across your organization through digital and robotic process automation. There are three major
investment areas for the 2020 release wave 1 (April-September 2020).
First, it's easier than ever for citizen developers to build powerful automation across the 300+
connectors in Power Automate. This includes new, intelligent experiences that build on AI
Builder and integrated experiences in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Azure, and the other services
in Microsoft Power Platform.
Second, UI flows, a robotic process automation (RPA) feature, will be released to general
availability in this release wave. UI flows automate mundane, rules-based tasks with point-andclick simplicity—whether the app is old or new, on-premises or in the cloud. This now includes
both attended (where you're logged in to the machine) and unattended scenarios (where the
flow runs in the background on a virtual machine).
Third, Power Automate enables modelling and running human-driven business process with the
modern approval and business process flow features. There are new capabilities in this area,
including an easier way to connect your business process flows with automated flows.
Use Power Automate documentation to get expert information and answers to address your
needs, regardless of how you use Power Automate.
What's new and planned for Power Automate
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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More intelligent and powerful capabilities for Power Automate makers
The citizen developers of Power Platform now have richer capabilities when they are building
out business processes inside of Power Automate.
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early
access*
General
availability
Common expressions
simplified
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Discover, learn, and create
flows with seamless new
experiences
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Power Automate and
Microsoft Teams productivity
enhancements
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Azure integration with Power
Automate
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Building AI-infused workflows Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jul 2020
Certified datasets in Power
Automate
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jul 2020
Copy and paste in Power
Automate is generally
available
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jul 2020
Interactive adaptive cards Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Sep 2020
Power Automate is more
accessible
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Sep 2020
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UI automation for applications and websites
Automate repetitive tasks across services and applications using UI flows in Power Automate
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early
access*
General
availability
Run UI automation scripts on
virtual machines
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 - -Native support for commonly
used applications
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020 - -Advanced error handling for
UI flows
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jun 2020
Solutioning support for UI
flows
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jun 2020
Automate web-based
applications
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Nov 4,
2019
- Jun 2020
Automate Windows
applications
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Nov 4,
2019
- Jun 2020
IME support for UI flows Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Mar 2020 - Jun 2020
Retry for desktop UI flows Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Mar 2020 - Jun 2020
Unattended automation in UI
flows
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Mar 2020 - Jun 2020
Secrets management Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Sep 2020
Advanced editor capabilities Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020 - Sep 2020
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World-class business process capabilities
Power Automate provides world-class business process capabilities for its users that span
endpoints and experiences
Feature Enabled for Public
preview
Early
access*
General
availability
Contextual automations in
Power BI
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Apr 2020
Cohesive Microsoft Teams file
experiences
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jul 2020
Use business process flows in
Office 365 apps
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- - Jul 2020
Flow steps in business process
flows are now generally
available
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 7,
2019
- Jul 2020
* Some features are available for you to opt-in as part of early access on February 3, 2020,
including all mandatory changes that impact end users. Learn more about early access.
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
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More intelligent and powerful capabilities for Power Automate makers
Overview
The citizen developers of Power Platform now have richer capabilities when they are building
out business processes inside of Power Automate.
Common expressions simplified
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Feature details
In order to enable all personas to leverage the value of Logic Apps advanced expressions,
complexity at every level needs to be removed. During 2020 release wave 1, we will be adding
five new text expression actions, making text manipulations and formats significantly easier to
configure.
List of expression actions
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Expressions card
Discover, learn, and create flows with seamless new experiences
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Feature details
In 2020 release wave 1, we are creating entirely new experiences that will make it easier for you
to discover everything you can do with Power Automate. Whether you’re searching for a flow
across environments, help for building your first approval flow, or guided learning tutorials to
get started, universal search will help you get there in a few steps.
We are also revamping the Power Automate designer by adding:
• Discovery experiences to help users find and use new features, templates, and connectors.
• In-product help and guided learning.
• Improved creation experiences for template-based flows as well as flows created from
scratch.
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Search experience
Power Automate and Microsoft Teams productivity enhancements
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Business value
Extends services available out of the box, reduces learning curve, and encourages early adoption
of Microsoft Teams and Office 365. Results in consistently better outcomes in alignment with
digital transformation goals.
Feature details
Embedded workflow scenarios for collaboration and productivity within Microsoft Teams
continues to be a priority. Power Automate is working behind the scenes of everyday activities
to offer process assistance without requiring you to learn Power Automate.
Here are some examples:
• Remind me about a message.
• Notify me when a file is modified.
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• Notify me when I get a new meeting invitation.
• Notify me when a keyword is mentioned in a channel message.
• Notify me when someone’s presence information changes.
Azure integration with Power Automate
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Feature details
In our continuous effort to improve the experience for Azure developers on the Power Platform,
we've streamlined the experience for creating flows by using a template from the Azure portal.
We also added templates to support common enterprise scenarios. For example, one of these
templates gives the ability for someone to receive a notification when their costs increase by
10% day over day.
Building AI-infused workflows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jul 2020
Feature details
Last year, we introduced two new technologies to Power Automate; AI Builder being one of
them. This year, we are making it easier to use the power of AI in workflows. For instance, you
can now create a workflow that processes invoices, forms, or images with the power of AI that
you helped trained in few steps. This new turnkey experience will help you get your job done
without the complexity of training and modeling your data. With just a few clicks, you can have
a workflow running against a trained AI model that processes forms and invoices.
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AI Builder flows
Certified datasets in Power Automate
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jul 2020
Business value
Creates collaboration between Power Automate and Power BI to ensure security policies for
data usage are respected, and risks are mitigated. Providing a cohesive platform for better
process outcomes in Power Platform.
Feature details
To support enterprise security policies around data usage, Power BI offers certified datasets
which are used to classify sensitive content within promoted datasets. In order to enable Power
Automate makers to integrate certified datasets within process definitions, Power Automate will
be adding a new trigger and actions in support of these datasets.
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Certified datasets
Copy and paste in Power Automate is generally available
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jul 2020
Feature details
If you want to duplicate actions in the Power Automate designer, you can now copy and paste
them. For example, if you are building a condition and want similar actions in the If yes side and
the If no side, instead of creating both actions from scratch, you can build the first action in one
side and then copy it to the other side. This feature is now generally available.
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Clipboard
Interactive adaptive cards
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Sep 2020
Business value
Extended capabilities for contextual process-driven information share and facilitated input
collection for Power Automate flow makers in business, developer, or IT pro scenarios.
Feature details
Adaptive cards are a developer favorite for building beautiful card scenarios that work in context
and adapt to user configurations, such as dark or light chrome. Power Automate opens this
opportunity to citizen developers by providing an embedded WYSIWYG designer action within
Power Automate for Microsoft Teams. This feature significantly extends frontline worker
scenarios within a Microsoft Teams channel, as it further enables flow makers to target data
interactions based on the business process and in context wit h the Microsoft Teams channel or
member. Adaptive cards will expedite knowledge share and collaboration by removing the need
for interface design skills.
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Power Automate is more accessible
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Sep 2020
Feature details
Power Automate is now fully compliant with the latest WCAG 2.1 requirements. This means that
users with a diverse set of abilities can now leverage Power Automate for their workflow
automation needs.
UI automation for applications and websites
Overview
We are introducing UI flows, a new feature that helps you automate applications that can only
be automated from their front end and do not have APIs. With this release, we are supporting UI
automation across services and applications running on-premises and in the cloud.
With UI flows in Power Automate, you can record mouse clicks, keyboard use, and data entry to
automate manual, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks to improve workplace productivity. UI
flows enable you to create, manage, and execute UI automation scripts in a secure, centralized
environment.
Run UI automation scripts on virtual machines
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 - -Feature details
This feature enables you to use the UI flows record and playback feature to automate
applications that run on virtual machines including Microsoft Remote Desktop.
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Native support for commonly used applications
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 - -Feature details
We are adding built-in automation support for some Windows applications. This feature enables
users to use libraries for commonly used applications in frequently used scenarios, making
automation faster and more robust.
Advanced error handling for UI flows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jun 2020
Feature details
Users can enable error handling capabilities within UI automation scripts to prevent the flow run
from failing if a particular step fails. The editor will have the capability to handle such expected
errors and let the automation finish its execution. This can be done by selecting the Configure
Run After option.
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Configure run after
The user can then select an alternate condition to start the next step, instead of the default case.
Error handling
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Solutioning support for UI flows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jun 2020
Business value
Makers are now able to import and export their UI flows. This feature will help you better
manage the application lifecycle of your UI flows and its dependencies through a seamless and
user-friendly experience.
Feature details
With this feature, you can create your UI flows in solutions, easily export them into a package,
and then import them across different environments for your ALM needs.
Automate web-based applications
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Nov 4, 2019
- Jun 2020
Feature details
Power Automate customers can use the Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to
automate web-based applications.
NOTE UI flows for web apps supports the latest version of Google Chrome and the beta release
of Microsoft Edge (Chromium) browsers.
See also
Create and test your web UI flows (docs)
Automate Windows applications
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Nov 4, 2019
- Jun 2020
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Feature details
Users can automate many Windows desktop applications with a no-code, point-and-click
approach. Users can easily record actions on a Windows desktop and turn manual, repetitive
steps into automated workflows.
Follow these steps to automate a Windows desktop application:
1. Select My flows.
2. Select the UI flows (preview) tab.
3. Select New > Desktop app > Next.
4. Give your app a name and then select Next.
5. Select the Recording card and then select Launch recorder.
6. Select Record and then perform the steps you want to automate.
7. Select Done.
The UI flows recorder captures mouse clicks and the keyboard input while the recorder runs.
You can then test your UI flow and use it instead of performing the recorded steps manually.
See also
Create and test desktop UI flows (docs)
IME support for UI flows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Mar 2020 - Jun 2020
Feature details
UI flows will support recording and playback actions that use Input Method Editors (IMEs). A Set
text mode is added into the UI flows recorder. When users need to record an action that
contains strings in any language, they select the Set text button to bring up an input box and
then enter string values into the box. The value will be recorded and played back accordingly,
independent of the keyboard layout or IME used during recording time.
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Use IME through 'Set text' option during recording
Retry for desktop UI flows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Mar 2020 - Jun 2020
Feature details
In UI automation, there could be delays before some elements display. This delay can cause
intermittent automation failures. Retry logic can help improve the reliability of UI automation;
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however, retrying slows performance. With this release, we're giving users more granular
controls to perform retry at different levels (including per machine or agent and per individual
step). This will allow users to properly apply retry logic where the automation will most likely fail,
without sacrificing the overall performance.
Unattended automation in UI flows
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Mar 2020 - Jun 2020
Feature details
With this release, we are adding a feature that allows UI flows to run without user supervision
(unattended). Unattended UI flows is the best option for application and website automations
that do not need human intervention before or after the UI flow runs. Here are a few usage
scenarios for unattended mode:
• Use AI Builder and UI flows to insert PDF invoices or purchase orders that you receive via
email into legacy systems.
• Onboard new employees across multiple legacy systems in finance, HR, and business tools.
• Perform custom reconciliations across different finance systems.
• Build weekly reports from data sources only available within legacy applications and then
send a notification based on threshold values.
When running unattended, UI flows automatically signs into target devices running Windows 10,
Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2019. Once the automation completes, UI flows signs
out from the device and reports its activity in Power Automate.
Users can then view the flow run history with the associated target device. If there are runtime
errors, screenshots allow users to analyze what went wrong to improve their flows.
Secrets management
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Sep 2020
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Feature details
Users need secure strings, such as passwords or connection information, to sign into
applications that they automate with UI flows. This is useful when applications require user
names and passwords to authenticate users. With secret strings, you can securely save your
secure string and reuse it to automate applications with UI flows. You can also share secure
strings without revealing them to other users. This is convenient when multiple users need to
automate the same application without revealing the credentials.
Advanced editor capabilities
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 - Sep 2020
Feature details
We’ll improve the experience when building UI flows by including support to embed advanced
business logic directly into the UI automation script. Users would be able to add scopes,
conditions, loops, etc. to make their UI automation scripts resilient and sophisticated. The design
experience for these new features would be similar to the control actions available within Power
Automate for makers.
World-class business process capabilities
Overview
Power Automate provides world-class business process capabilities for its users that span
endpoints and experiences. These include significant experience improvements for users so that
they can now accomplish basic scenarios with business processes offline.
Contextual automations in Power BI
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Apr 2020
Business value
Improves discovery and ideation for data-driven process refinements, both in context of
templates, reports, and dashboards as well as via external connections to datasets in Power BI.
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Feature details
Power Automate is progressively extending its integrations with Power BI scenarios, which will
enable users to discover and to quickly adopt workflow and automation services for businessrelevant datasets, reports, and dashboards.
First, the user will choose a template:
Templates
Then they can run the flow from their dashboard:
Run panel
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Cohesive Microsoft Teams file experiences
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jul 2020
Business value
Ensures consistency across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams for file experiences and
supports common patterns in document management and collaboration.
Feature details
OneDrive and SharePoint Online integrations are coming to Microsoft Teams to provide a
consistent experience for business scenarios that involve files. These scenarios include
embedded workflows, such as Request sign off, approval templates, and other enhancements
that are driven by customer ideas for embedded workflows in Microsoft Teams.
Cohesive files
Use business process flows in Office 365 apps
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - - Jul 2020
Feature details
With business process flows available in Office 365 apps, Power Automate makes it easier to
adopt best practices when working with documents.
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Flow steps in business process flows are now generally available
Enabled for Public preview Early access General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 7, 2019
- Jul 2020
Feature details
In the previous release, we previewed instant flow steps in business process flows to automate
tasks and approvals right from inside a stage of a business process. You can even mark instant
flow steps as complete/incomplete right from your flow!
See also
Power Automate (blog)
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Power Virtual Agents
Overview of Power Virtual Agents 2020 release wave 1
Power Virtual Agents enables anyone in your organization to create AI-powered bots that can
chat with users about specific topics. They can answer routine questions, resolve common issues,
or automate tasks that take up valuable customer or employee time.
Creating a bot is typically a complex and time-intensive process, requiring long content update
cycles and a team of experts. Power Virtual Agents gives anyone in your organization the ability
to create powerful custom bots using an easy, code-free graphical interface, without the need
for AI experts, data scientists, or teams of developers. A bot can interact with users, ask for
clarifying information, and ultimately answer a user's questions.
With deep integration with Power Automate and the Microsoft Bot Framework, authors can
extend their bots to integrate with API back ends, which will enable the bots to handle
additional topics, limited only by the author’s imagination. You can deploy bots to many
channels including websites, Microsoft Teams, and Facebook. As users interact with a bot, the
author can see which topics are performing well, and which need improvement.
What's new and planned for Power Virtual Agents
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
Bot configuration
Configure the bot to suit business needs.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Addition of a new data location
Canada
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
- Apr 2020
Create and manage Power Virtual
Agents directly from Power Apps
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Customizable bot behavior when no
topic is triggered
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Single Sign-On Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Jun 2020
Add a Power Virtual Agents bot into
Power Apps canvas app
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Aug 2020
Core authoring
Utilize the Power Virtual Agents conversational editor to construct your dialogs, add variables or
synonyms, and incorporate Power Automate flows that enable you to connect to other systems.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Export and import bots using
solutions
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Apr 2020 -Improved Power Automate flow
integration in Power Virtual Agents
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Pass context to a bot from the calling
site
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Use global variables across topics
within a bot
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Multiple users can edit topics at the
same time within a bot
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
May 2020 Jun 2020
Add images and videos to topics Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Jul 2020
Support for additional languages Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
May 2020 Jul 2020
Enable voice interactions
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Connect bots to voice and phone call
interactions
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jul 2020 Sep 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
Bot configuration
Overview
The bot can be configured to suit the individual needs of an organization and to provide further
extensibility with other services and features. This includes authentication provider support, the
use of Microsoft Bot Framework Skills to augment the bot’s capabilities, integration with
Microsoft Teams and Facebook channels, and direct embedding a bot in web-based mobile
apps.
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Addition of a new data location: Canada
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts - Apr 2020
Feature details
Many enterprise organizations need to store their data in a specific geographic location. With
this release, we are expanding the list of data locations to include an eighth location: Canada.
Organizations will be able to store data for their bots in a Canadian-specific data location.
Create and manage Power Virtual Agents directly from Power Apps
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
Power Apps app makers will be able to create and manage their bots directly from the Power
Apps maker portal. They'll be able to see a list of all the bots t hey have access to in the selected
environment, see basic information about the bots, and quickly go to Power Virtual Agents to
make changes to their bot.
Customizable bot behavior when no topic is triggered
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
When a topic can't be matched or triggered based on what the user types, bot authors will be
able to customize how the bot behaves (such as what it says or what actions it should take) by
using a dedicated system topic.
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Single Sign-On
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jun 2020
Feature details
When using User authentication with Single Sign-On, users will be automatically signed into
the bot if they are signed into the hosting website. This removes the need for users to type their
username and password multiple times.
See also
User authentication (docs)
Add a Power Virtual Agents bot into Power Apps canvas app
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Aug 2020
Feature details
Power Apps app makers will be able to add a Power Virtual Agents bot into their existing canvas
app. They can select which bot should be included in the app and theme or customize the chat
canvas.
Core authoring
Overview
Use the authoring canvas in Power Virtual Agents to create and edit topics and add trigger
phrases and variables. Extend your bot's conversational capabilities with Power Automate.
Export and import bots using solutions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -
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Feature details
Enterprise organizations set up different environments (for example, for testing or production)
for their bots to manage change control, governance, data residency, and latency requirements.
With the ability to export or import bots using solutions, admins will be able to move their bots
across multiple environments.
Improved Power Automate flow integration in Power Virtual Agents
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
Bot authors will be able to refresh and replace flows in a Call an action node.
They’ll also be able to see changes made in Power Automate being reflected in the Power
Virtual Agents authoring canvas. Additionally, from within Power Automate, they’ll see
notifications on changes like flows being turned off or deleted and changes to input and output
parameters.
See also
Call an action node (docs)
Pass context to a bot from the calling site
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
Bot authors will be able to specify parameters using the URL query string from the host website
so that the bot can take in extra context information.
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Use global variables across topics within a bot
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
Bot authors will be able to pass variables from one topic to another and use bot-level variables
across all topics. This allows authors to keep the conversation context within an entire bot
conversation rather than just within a single topic. It will also help the bot avoid asking
unnecessary questions.
Multiple users can edit topics at the same time within a bot
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 2020 Jun 2020
Feature details
Multiple users will be able to edit different conversation topics within a bot, which helps
organizations ensure that employees with the right domain expertise implement conversation
improvements.
For example, one author can be editing a topic about networking issues while another author is
editing a topic about store hours.
Add images and videos to topics
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jul 2020
Feature details
Enhance bot conversations by adding images and online-hosted videos to your topics. By
including an image or video in a bot's response, instead of a long textual description, you can
handle complex scenarios while also keeping messages concise.
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Support for additional languages
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 2020 Jul 2020
Feature details
Power Virtual Agents is scaling up to support a larger set of languages. In addition to English,
bots will be able to understand and converse in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,
and Chinese (a bot will only support one language). We will continue to increase support for
additional languages over time. Note that the exact order and timing of language availability
remain subject to change.
Enable voice interactions
Overview
Use Power Virtual Agents voice capabilities to connect your bot to a phone line and enable
voice interactions for your users. Expand your bot's conversational capabilities with Microsoft
Cognitive Services.
Connect bots to voice and phone call interactions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jul 2020 Sep 2020
Feature details
Bot authors will be able to add voice-based interactions by connecting bots to a phone line or
integrating them with call centers. Bots will be able to use Microsoft Cognitive Services (such as
text-to-speech and speech recognition) when calling a phone number, and the bot can pass
along what it has learned from the conversation so that a human agent will not need to repeat
questions the bot has already asked.
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Power Platform governance and
administration
Overview of Power Platform governance and administration
2020 release wave 1
Microsoft Power Platform offers a range of governance and administration capabilities that span
across Power Apps, Power Automate, and Common Data Service. These capabilities are
designed to help the administrators and IT Professionals in the organization set up, secure,
manage, govern, and monitor the use and adoption of the platform and its components across
the enterprise.
In addition to the Power Platform admin center, which is the unified user experience we aim to
provide for administrators of Power Platform, rich tooling experiences, such as PowerShell
cmdlets and Management Connectors, are also available to provide additional, fullyautomatable management capabilities for use beyond the out-of-the-box portal experiences.
What's new and planned for Power Platform governance and
administration
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
An enhanced, unified Power Platform admin center
The Power Platform admin center is now offering a unified experience to manage environments,
deployments, users, and capacity as well as to analyze usage and performance of your apps and
components
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Environment lifecycle supports
Power Apps, Power Automate,
Common Data Service, and more
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
Provisioning new environments will
only be handled in the Power
Platform admin center
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
Storage reporting will be based on
customer licenses and capacity addons
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
User access diagnostic experience Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Apr 2020
Certain admin operations
unavailable when tenant exceeds
storage capacity entitlements
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Jun 2020
Retry experience for early access
opt-in updates
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Early access updates End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Unified service health experience in
Power Platform admin center
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
- Sep 2020
Service health in the Power Platform
admin center
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Sep 2020 To be
announced
Automation and tooling for administrators
Rich tooling experiences providing additional management capabilities for administrators and IT
professionals for a fully automatable management experience.
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Admin connectors for Power
Automate are generally available
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
- Jul 2020
PowerShell cmdlets for Power
Automate admins are generally
available
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
- Jul 2020
PowerShell cmdlets for Power Apps
admins are generally available
Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
May 21, 2018 Jul 2020
Admin connectors for Power Apps Admins, makers, or analysts,
automatically
Aug 30, 2018 Jul 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
For a list of the countries or regions where Dynamics 365 business applications are available, see
the International availability guide.
For more information about geographic areas, data centers (regions), data storage, and
replication, click expand all on the Where your data is located page and find the Microsoft
cloud service for this feature.
An enhanced, unified Power Platform admin center
Overview
The Power Platform admin center is now the single admin experience for Power Apps and Power
Automate. It is offering unified experience to manage environments, deployments, users,
capacity, and usage. Powerful analytics helps admins to investigate and diagnose issues with
their deployments, and the integrated help and support experience allows them to find the help
they need and escalate to Microsoft Support when necessary.
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Environment lifecycle supports Power Apps, Power Automate, Common Data
Service, and more
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Feature details
Environments support lifecycle operations, such as copy, restore, and backup. These operations
will now support various resources present in the environment. For example, when you copy an
environment, the apps and flows present will also get copied over to the target environment.
Provisioning new environments will only be handled in the Power Platform admin
center
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Feature details
Today, there are two different entry points for provisioning new environments: Dynamics 365
admin center and Power Platform admin center. This has caused some confusion, and we are
working diligently to move to a single provisioning experience in the Power Platform admin
center.
In the coming months, all customers can provision environments from Power Platform admin
center. An available database capacity of 1GB is a pre-requisite for being able to provision an
environment.
Storage reporting will be based on customer licenses and capacity add-ons
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -
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Feature details
In April 2019, we introduced Common Data Service capacity storage that is optimized for
relational data, attachments, and audit logs. New Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and
Power Apps customers receive a tenant wide default entitlement for each of these three storage
types and additional per user subscription license entitlements. Additional storage can be
purchased in 1GB increments, if needed. Existing customers are not impacted by this change
until the end of their current Power Apps or Dynamics 365 subscription, when renewal is
required. This means that two licensing models will be in market.
Following the introduction of Common Data Service capacity, we updated our capacity reporting
to show database, log, and file entitlement for all our customers. This change in reporting has
caused some confusion to customers who are still on the previous licensing model. We are now
addressing this.
If you are a customer who is still on the previous licensing model for storage, you will see one
single capacity for entitlement. If you are a customer who transitioned to the licensing model
introduced on April 1, 2019, you will see your storage capacity entitlement and usage by
database, log, and file as it appears in the Power Platform admin center today.
User access diagnostic experience
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Apr 2020 -Business value
Managing user access often requires troubleshooting across the Dynamics 365 portal, Microsoft
365 admin portal, and the Power Platform admin center with information on users' access
statuses. New features enable the administrator to determine an access issue and take required
action across the various portals.
Feature details
The set of features to help an administrator troubleshoot user access issues will include the
following:
• Sign-in and in-app access issue error screens with more context on the cause of the issue
will be surfaced to the user.
• One-click "Send Error Report" functionality from error screens to inform admins about the
user’s access issue.
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• Admins can view the details of the error that the user encountered with the context of the
error including: user’s email, environment URL, error code, error string, and a link to
troubleshooting instructions.
• Improved deflection to cover more scenarios, including an option to on-demand sync a user
for any access issue.
• Ability to on-demand sync users in an environment, see results, and see information on how
to troubleshoot any failure.
• Ability to prioritize adding users to an environment and see results.
• A consolidated view in Power Platform admin center showing the set of users present in an
environment, their enablement status, and diagnosis information.
• Power Platform admin center will also list any environment-wide user sync failures due to
plug-ins owned by customers with troubleshooting guidance.
Certain admin operations unavailable when tenant exceeds storage capacity
entitlements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Feature details
When an organization’s storage capacity usage is greater than the capacity entitled or
purchased via add-ons, the following admin operations will be blocked:
• Create new environment (requires minimum 1 GB capacity available)
• Copy an environment
• Restore an environment
To be compliant with storage usage requirements, you can always clean up storage, delete
unwanted environments, or buy more capacity. To learn more about capacity add-ons, see the
Add-ons section in the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide or the Power Apps and Power Automate
Licensing Guide. You can work through your organization’s standard procurement process to
purchase capacity add-ons.
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Retry experience for early access opt-in updates
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Admins can try to restart a failed update for an app on their own before reaching out to
Microsoft Support.
Feature details
During early access of a release, admins can opt in to updates to preview early access features. If
an update fails for an app, there will be a retry button available to restart the update process for
the failed apps. This will allow admins to restart the update process for the failed app without
being stuck in the failed state.
See also
Updates status and Retry (docs)
Early access updates
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Feb 3, 2020 Apr 2020
Business value
Try to validate these new features before they are automatically enabled to your users.
Feature details
Customers and partners can validate the upcoming features and capabilities months in advance
before they’re enabled automatically during major releases. From the Power Platform admin
center, admins can enable the early access update that allows you to try to validate these new
features in a non-production environment and get ready to roll out the changes to users.
See also
Opt in to early access updates (docs)
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Unified service health experience in Power Platform admin center
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Power Platform admins can view a unified service health experience for model-driven apps in
Dynamics 365 (such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service), Power Apps,
and Power Automate in the Power Platform admin center. Admins can also set up alerts to stay
on top of the status of service outages.
Service health in the Power Platform admin center
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 To be announced
Business value
Enabling the Power Platform administrators to stay on top of the service status and information
to help support their users.
Feature details
The Power Platform admin center now provides a dedicated page for administrators to assess
the health of the products and services that are available to them. In the event an incident
occurs, administrators will be able to see a detailed description and updates on how the incident
is being mitigated by Microsoft. Any modification to an incident will, by default, trigger a
notification to the Power Platform administrators. Administrators could further configure the
notification experience by subscribing to incidents and directing communications to their
preferred destination.
Automation and tooling for administrators
Overview
Rich tooling experiences, such as PowerShell cmdlets and Management Connectors, are
available for administrators and IT professionals to provide additional management capabilities
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for use beyond the out-of-the-box portal experiences and to allow for a fully-automatable
management experience.
Admin connectors for Power Automate are generally available
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jul 2020
Feature details
With the preview launch of the Admin connectors for Power Apps and Power Automate last
year, Power Platform admins found new and powerful ways to improve their productivity by
using the same tools that they manage.
We are now announcing the General availability of these connectors and the addition of some
templates and samples that outline common use cases for canvas apps and flows that are built
with these connectors:
• Power Platform for Admins
• Power Automate for Admins
PowerShell cmdlets for Power Automate admins are generally available
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jul 2020
Feature details
With the preview launch of the PowerShell cmdlets for administrators last year, admins are able
to automate many of the monitoring and management tasks that were only possible through
the Power Automate admin center.
We are now announcing the General availability of these cmdlets, as well as the addition of new
cmdlets around:
• Capacity management
• Permission and user management
• Environment lifecycle management
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PowerShell cmdlets for Power Apps admins are generally available
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically May 21, 2018 Jul 2020
Feature details
With the preview launch of the PowerShell cmdlets for administrators last year, admins are able
to automate many of the monitoring and management tasks that were previously only possible
through the Power Apps admin center.
In 2020 release wave 1, we will be announcing the General availability of these cmdlets.
See also
PowerShell support for Power Apps (docs)
Admin connectors for Power Apps
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Aug 30, 2018 Jul 2020
Feature details
With the preview launch of the Admin connectors for Power Apps and Power Automate last
year, Power Platform admins found new and powerful ways to improve their own productivity by
using the same tools that they manage.
In April 2020, we will be announcing the General availability of these connectors, as well as the
addition of a series of templates and samples outlining common user cases for canvas apps and
flows built for these connectors:
• Power Platform for Admins
• Power Apps for Admins
See also
Announcing new Admin and Maker Connectors for PowerApps and Flow (blog)
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Common Data Model and data
integration
Overview of Common Data Model and data integration 2020
release wave 1
Citizen Data Integration team’s vision is to democratize data integration for business users so it
is seamless to extract, transform and load data into Common Data Service and Azure Data Lake
Storage from any data source, and to provide structure and meaning to that data through the
Common Data Model. We are investing in three key pillars:
• Common Data Model establishes industry wide structure and semantics of underlying data
so that customers can then reason about that data through various business application
solutions, analytics & ML algorithms. In this milestone we will extend the reach of Common
Data Model through SDKs and language-specific object models to support developers and
partners, better in-product experiences and beyond.
• Power Platform Dataflows. Power Query is the industry leading smart data prep tool and
evolves by infusing AI/ML into data transformations and by extending dataflows to all of
Power Platform.
• Enhanced Data Integration by enabling analytics on Common Data Service data, Office data
integration to enable new insights, new and enhanced connectors, improvements in
connectivity platform, extending dual-write, improving Data Export Service, and enhancing
Gateway for enterprises and Robotics Process Automation (RPA).
What's new and planned for Common Data Model and data integration
This topic lists features that are planned to release from April 2020 through September 2020.
Because this topic lists features that may not have released yet, delivery timelines may change
and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy).
In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The
delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including
the day of release.
This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access
and for general availability.
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Common Data Model
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
New Common Data Model entity
definitions for analytics
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
New Common Data Model standard
entity definitions
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Enhanced Common Data Model SDK
functionality
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020 Sep 2020
Empower out-of-the-box analytics Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020 To be
announced
Common Data Model visualization
experience
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jul 2020 To be
announced
Dual-write
Dual-write provides a tightly coupled near-real time and bi-directional integration between the
Finance and Operations apps and Common Data Service.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Ability to add a company after linking
your environment with pre-existing
data
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020
Ability to bulk handle entity maps
across environments
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020
Confidently create solutions based on
performance guidance
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Removal of tenant admin-level
consent requirement
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020
Resiliency across planned and
unplanned maintenance without
admin intervention
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020
Automated data movement operations
between connected environments
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Conflict resolution review Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Dual-write support for Microsoft
Government Cloud
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
One-click to unlink dual-write
environment
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Support copying pre-existing data for
existing environments provisioned via
the initial sync
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Export to data lake
The Export to data lake service enables continuous replication of Common Data Service entity
data to Azure Data Lake gen 2 which can then be used to run analytics, such as Power BI
reporting and ML.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Export to data lake supported in
additional regions
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Support for entities with attachments Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Time series data Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Power Platform connectors
A critical part of data integration and the suite of products it supports—Power Apps and Power
Automate—is connectivity to external data sources. The connector platform has two key
objectives—providing a platform that allows partners and customers to develop connectors.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Better enterprise connectivity to SQL
Server with support for Windows
authentication
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Improvements in the Marketo
connector
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Improvements in the Planner
connector
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Multi-region support for Azure
services
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Office 365 Groups Mail connector for
Power Apps and Power Automate
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Telemetry for certified connectors Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020 -
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Give feedback directly from the
documentation pages
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
Provide documentation guidance for
next steps when connectors and
operators are deprecated
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Apr 2020
FAQs for the certification process Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Jun 2020
SAP ERP connector for Power Apps
and Power Automate
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Jun 2020
Submit documentation during the
certification process
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Jun 2020
Support for multiple account owners in
the connector certification portal
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Jun 2020
Improved certification experience for
open sourced connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Improved connector metadata within
connectors documentation
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Improved experience downloading
connector artifacts
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Improved landing page experience for
connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Improved partner story and experience
in our connector certification program
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Informative and consistent experience
verifying the quality of connector
artifacts
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
More certified and custom connectors
in our open source repository
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Stronger documentation, tutorials, and
guidelines for contributors to the open
source repository
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Stronger integration of the open
source repository with custom
connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Summary page with connectors and
their metadata
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Support for connection parameters
when building custom connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Support for multi-auth when building
custom connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Support for ordering operation
parameters when building connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Support for testing OAuth connections
in the custom connector building
experience
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jun 2020 Sep 2020
Support for smart polling triggers Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Jul 2020 Sep 2020
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Power Platform dataflows
Power Platform dataflows provide a no-code experience based on Power Query Online for nontechnical users to connect, transform, and enrich data from a wide variety of data sources into
the Common Data Service and Azure Data Lake storage in CDM format.
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Generate a new dataflow from Power
Query queries in an existing Excel or
Power BI Desktop file
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Onetime upload file support for file
connectors
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Support for mapping to Common Data
Service option sets
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Support for mapping to system fields
within Common Data Service entities
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Dataflow scheduling enhancements Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Dataflows actions and triggers for
Power Automate
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Improved dataflow load performance
and reliability
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Power Platform gateway
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Data source management
enhancements
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
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Power Query Desktop
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
New modern ribbon in Power Query
Editor
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
SharePoint Online List connector End users, automatically Sep 2020
Smart data extraction from text and
CSV files in Power Query Desktop
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020 -Hive LLAP End users, automatically Mar 9, 2020 Sep 2020
Power Query Online
Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Add column from examples Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Copy and paste queries from Power
Query Desktop into Power Query
Online
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020
Power Query Online Query Editor:
Schema-only view
End users by admins,
makers, or analysts
Sep 2020
Smart data extraction from text and
CSV files
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020 -Smart data extraction from web pages
using Web by example
Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
Sep 2020 -Active Directory connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
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Feature Enabled for Public preview General
availability
Azure China region support End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Essbase connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Exchange Online connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Hadoop File and Azure HDInsight
connectors
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Hive LLAP connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
IBM Netezza connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Power Query connector improvements End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Query diagnostics improvements Admins, makers, or
analysts, automatically
- Sep 2020
Snowflake connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Support for beta tags for connectors End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Sybase connector End users, automatically - Sep 2020
View native query for supported
connectors
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Description of Enabled for column values:
• End users, automatically: These features include change(s) to the user experience for end
users and are enabled automatically.
• Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by
administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
• End users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured
by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their end users.
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Common Data Model
Overview
Common Data Model is the shared data language used by applications to enable consistency of
the meaning of data across applications. It provides modular and extensible business entities
(account, lead, opportunity, and so on) and also observational data concepts (such as link clicks
and email opens). It unifies data in a well-known schema across data silos, applications, and
deployments. Although Common Data Model started in Common Data Service and Dynamics
365, it is bringing the same semantic consistency to Azure Data Lake Storage with Common
Data Model folders, allowing an organization to take advantage of AI and machine learning on a
scale that wasn't previously possible. Common Data Model enables business and analytics
applications to interoperate over a variety of areas, including sales, service, healthcare, higher
education, and more. The span of products, platforms, and services that implement, produce,
and consume data in Common Data Model form continues to grow both inside and outside of
Microsoft.
New Common Data Model entity definitions for analytics
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
With an increased focus on analytics, Common Data Model standard definitions are being
extended to include subject area and core analytical entities. These new Common Data Model
entities are not rooted in any specific business application or solution. They are subject matter
and area specific entities targeted at enabling analytics at scale.
New Common Data Model standard entity definitions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
The set of Common Data Model standard entities that is published and open sourced on GitHub
continues to grow as more applications and data producers contribute to the standard. New
concepts submitted by subject matter experts are diligently reviewed before being publicly
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released. Similarly, extensions to existing concepts (like Account and Contact) are done with a
careful review of the current semantics, which ensures alignment. With this release, we are
extending the standard entity definitions to include observation and perception models as well
as Industry Accelerators standard entities.
Enhanced Common Data Model SDK functionality
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 Sep 2020
Feature details
The Common Data Model SDK continues to be delivered as open source via GitHub. We plan to
accelerate adoption of Common Data Model by having first and third parties build out-of-thebox and custom solutions. The plan is to add new functionality to the Common Data Model SDK,
such as robust telemetry, the ability to use a customer’s own Common Data Model entity
definitions, and making Common Data Model semantic traits usable for Power BI and Power
Query out of the box.
Empower out-of-the-box analytics
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 To be announced
Feature details
Common Data Model will continue to grow its semantic ontology to support out-of-the-box
machine learning and AI models, such as the customer churn prediction model. This
functionality will allow users to have a guided experience that provides an expected data source
for machine learning and AI models and increases the accuracy of their results. It will also enable
the preservation of valuable metadata and the capture of new semantics for data enrichment
and insights scenarios.
Common Data Model visualization experience
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jul 2020 To be announced
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Feature details
Increased focus on growing the Common Data Model ecosystem requires enabling users to
work with Common Data Model in their native data environments, such as Power Query, Insights
Apps, Synapse, and Power BI. Having a standardized way to visualize Common Data Model
across relevant products will increase adoption, lower barriers to entry, reduce support cost, and
encourage contributions to the growing ontology of Common Data Model.
Dual-write
Overview
Customers use and monitor their sales processes with Common Data Service while all aspects of
fulfillment and invoicing use the rich functionality of Finance and Operations apps.
Dual-write allows our customers to think about these applications as a system to which they can
write simultaneously. It provides a tightly coupled near real time and bi-directional integration
between the Finance and Operations apps and Common Data Service. Once an entity map, for
example Account – Customer, is enabled for dual-write, any create, update change in the
Customer entity in Finance and Operations apps results in writes, in near-real time, to the
Account entity in Common Data Service and vice versa.
Ability to add a company after linking your environment with pre-existing data
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Feature details
The company or legal entity list doesn’t remain static and is constantly changing. There may be
a need to add new companies especially during a phased rollout or acquisitions. Up until now,
you were unable to add a company or legal entity without system down-time where you have to
unlink and relink your environment, which can be expensive, especially due to pre-existing data.
With this feature, you will be able to add a company in a live environment without the need for
unlinking.
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Ability to bulk handle entity maps across environments
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Feature details
Currently, you have the ability to move dual-write artifacts, such as entity maps across
environments. With this feature, you’ll be able to bulk enable these entity maps so that you can
replicate the state of entity maps with little effort.
Confidently create solutions based on performance guidance
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Feature details
Dual-write developers can confidently create solutions based on performance guidance, and
they can be assured of optimized performance for dual-write entity maps (e.g., being able to
predict the flow of Project actuals data between Project Operations and Finance and Operations
apps under different transaction loads).
Removal of tenant admin-level consent requirement
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Feature details
In order for the Common Data Service and the Finance and Operations apps to communicate, a
tenant admin needed to explicitly give consent to the applications. This is not always practical
(e.g., the persona provisioning Project Operations will require additional approval and involve
more staff which can be time consuming). With this feature, we will remove this prerequisite and
the need for explicitly giving consent to the applications.
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Resiliency across planned and unplanned maintenance without admin intervention
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 -Feature details
Dual-write provides out-of-the-box knobs for admins to make their environment resilient to
planned or unplanned maintenance; however, this also means that an admin is required for
most of these operations, which may not be practical or feasible in all scenarios. With this
feature, agents working on dual-write enabled apps, such as Project Operations, are assured that
it will be resilient across maintenance and can seamlessly conduct their day-to-day activities like
uploading bulk data without the need for an admin.
Automated data movement operations between connected environments
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Our customers need to create daily copies of their dual-write enabled production environment
to a sandbox. While doing this, they also want to minimize downtime related to manually
connecting the dual-write enabled sandbox environments. With this feature, you will be able to
automate these operations without the need to manually link the environments.
Conflict resolution review
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
When conflicts occur while copying pre-existing data between Finance and Operations apps and
Common Data Service applications, administrators will now have an intuitive user interface that
lets them easily review and resolve these conflicts.
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Dual-write support for Microsoft Government Cloud
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We are making investments in dual-write compliance to support Microsoft Government Cloud
(GCC - Level 2).
One-click to unlink dual-write environment
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Our customers are regularly testing dual-write in their sandbox or test environments and need
to quickly unlink their environments and start again. Previously, customers had to disable all
entity maps before unlinking an environment. This may seem cumbersome and sometimes not
possible as one of the environments may not be available. This new feature provides a quick way
to unlink your environments.
Support copying pre-existing data for existing environments provisioned via
lifecycle services
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
With this feature, we will support copying pre-existing data while linking existing Finance and
Operations apps that are provisioned via lifecycle services (LCS) with a new Common Data
Service environment.
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Export to data lake
Overview
The Export to data lake service enables continuous replication of Common Data Service entity
data to Azure Data Lake gen 2, which can then be used to run analytics, such as Power BI
reporting, ML, data warehousing, or other downstream integration purposes. It simplifies the
technical and administrative complexity of operationalizing entities for analytics and managing
schema and data. Within a matter of minutes, you will be able to link a Common Data Service
environment to a data lake in your Azure subscription, select standard or custom entities, and
export it to data lake. Any data or metadata changes (initial and incremental) in the Common
Data Service is automatically pushed to the lake without any additional actions.
This service also empowers our first party AI apps (Customer Insights, Sales Insights, CCA, and AI
Builder, etc.) by continuously pushing Common Data Service data to the Azure Data Lake gen 2.
In this release, we are making additional investments to increase Enterprise adoption.
Export to data lake supported in additional regions
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
With this release, Export to data lake is now available in France and the UAE regions.
Support for entities with attachments
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
This feature supports entities with attachments. For example, we support the Annotation entity
with documentbody, which can be used to attach notes, and the data from notes can be used for
analytics.
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Time series data
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
With this feature, you can get historical data for a given entity. You will get the full history of
changes for entity records. This feature enables several AI scenarios that require a lifetime view
of the data.
Power Platform connectors
Overview
A critical part of data integration and the suite of products it supports—Power Apps and Power
Automate—is connectivity to external data sources. The connector platform has two key
objectives—providing a platform that allows partners and customers to develop connectors
efficiently and providing a rich set of connectors for customers.
As part of platform investments, we provide a rich set of tools, samples, and documentation to
help partners and customers build connectors. We also invest in our certification processes and
tools for connectors so that partners can get their connectors certified and make it available on
the platform. A key investment here is also geared towards leveraging the larger community by
open sourcing connectors.
Along with strengthening the ISV community's ability to create their own connectors, we plan to
continue to invest in enterprise-grade data connectors like SQL Server, SAP, Oracle Database,
Outlook, and more.
Better enterprise connectivity to SQL Server with support for Windows
authentication
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
The SQL Server connector now supports connecting to an on-premises SQL Server database
with Windows authentication without having to share the SQL Server connection when an app is
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shared. Previously, makers using Windows authentication had to share their connections when
they shared their flows. Now, makers can select a non-shared Windows authentication. In this
case, every user will now be able to connect to the SQL Server database with their own
credentials. This feature improves the security in the flow since every user will be authenticated
with the SQL Server directly.
Improvements in the Marketo connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
Marketo is a marketing automation platform that enables marketers to manage personalized
multi-channel programs and campaigns to prospects and customers. This connector provides
users the ability to read and query data from Marketo.
With this release, the connector now supports writing data to Marketo. Users can now create,
modify, or delete records.
Improvements in the Planner connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
With Microsoft Planner, users can easily bring together teams, tasks, documents, and
conversations for better results. The Planner connector enables makers and users to automate
important processes. In this release, users can now do much more with the Planner c onnector.
This includes support for adding, removing, or updating checklists in a task.
Multi-region support for Azure services
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -
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Feature details
Azure services are provided in many sovereign regions and in various commercial data centers.
Previously, Power Platform users could only connect to either one of the commercial Azure
offerings or one of the sovereign regions. This mapping is based on the data center region for
their Power Platform environment.
With this release, users can now select whether they want to connect to commercial Azure
services or to sovereign regions. This will allow customers like local city offices on a sovereign
Power Platform environment to use commercial Azure services.
Office 365 Groups Mail connector for Power Apps and Power Automate
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
The Office 365 Groups Mail connector for Power Apps and Power Automate provides users the
ability to connect with their Office 365 Groups mail. The connector allows the user to send email
conversations to the group, responds to mail sent to a group, and automates based on mail in a
group. Customers have frequently requested this connector.
Telemetry for certified connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
We often receive requests from partners regarding telemetry of their certified connectors.
Currently, we provide this information only after a partner asks. With this new feature, we'll have
a process to proactively provide telemetry to owners through the connector certification portal.
Give feedback directly from the documentation pages
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
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Feature details
Currently, there is no easy procedure for users to provide feedback and raise issues regarding
documentation. With this release, we will provide a way to provide feedback and report issues
directly from the documentation page.
Provide documentation guidance for next steps when connectors and operators
are deprecated
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Apr 2020
Feature details
When an owner deprecates a connector or operation, we want to provide a clean transition
experience for users to move to the new version with minimal effort. To do this, we will provide
documentation that clearly warns users that the connector or operation is deprecated.
Additionally, we will recommend a supported connector or operation to replace the deprecated
features.
FAQs for the certification process
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jun 2020
Feature details
We see many frequently asked questions (FAQs) during and after the connector certification
process. With this release, we will provide more helpful documentation in the form of a list of
FAQs that partners ask. These FAQs cover topics, such as the requirements to make a connector
generally available, marketing benefits, and more.
SAP ERP connector for Power Apps and Power Automate
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jun 2020
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Feature details
SAP is one of the largest providers of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in the market
today. SAP’s ERP software handles an enterprise’s business applications like accounting, sales,
payroll, finance, production, human resources, etc. It serves as a system of records for many
critical transactions for an enterprise. As such, when enterprises develop any LoB (Line of
Business) apps, they often need to connect to SAP’s applications.
The SAP ERP connector for Power Automate and Power Apps allows you to connect your flows
and apps to an SAP ERP system – either SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA. By providing a first-class
connector for SAP ERP systems, users can now leverage Power Platform to develop modern
apps and automate their business processes over data in SAP. The SAP ERP connector provides
the following out-of-the-box functionality:
• Allows connection to an SAP ECC or S/4HANA system.
• Supports common authentication mechanism of connecting to SAP.
• Allows invocation of any standard BAPI and custom RFCs.
• Provides dynamic schemas for the input and output parameters for an RFC or BAPI.
In this release, the connector is enhanced to support production workload (GA) and will also
provide additional functionality to connect to SAP ERP using ODATA services.
Submit documentation during the certification process
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jun 2020
Feature details
As part of an effort to improve the documentation for connectors, partners can now use the
connector certification portal to submit documentation. Partners will be able to use this process
to submit connector documentation in markdown and relevant files, including images. This will
improve the user's experience, and they can now find better documentation for custom
connectors.
Support for multiple account owners in the connector certification portal
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Jun 2020
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Feature details
Currently, only one account can manage a connector submission, so communication between a
partner and our certification team depends on a single point of contact. We also do not support
notifying multiple stakeholders of communication.
With this release, partners can now add other account owners to help manage a connector
submission. All account owners will receive notifications and updates on the connectors and will
be able to manage the connector certification process.
Improved certification experience for open sourced connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Per feedback from partners looking for an improved certification experience after open sourcing,
we are allowing partners to designate an open sourced connector they own to be certified from
the certification portal experience. The portal will retrieve the files from the open source
repository so the partner does not have to provide and upload a local copy.
Improved connector metadata within connectors documentation
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We will be expanding our connectors documentation to support our users. We will add more
public metadata, such as Publisher, service owner, support contact, and links to end service
privacy policy documentation.
Improved experience downloading connector artifacts
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
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Feature details
We will provide an easier and quicker experience when you download connector artifacts in
addition to our command line interface tool. These artifacts can then be easily edited, shared, or
submitted for certification.
Improved landing page experience for connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, the landing page experience for our connectors' documentation is a summary article.
We will provide an improved landing page experience for the connectors' documentation to
help users quickly and efficiently get to the information they want.
Improved partner story and experience in our connector certification program
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
A more structured program for partners looking to certify a connector with us. We will be
offering clearer partner benefits and a more structured story through the certification and
beyond.
Informative and consistent experience verifying the quality of connector artifacts
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We will provide a cleaner experience in our validation tools to help connector developers verify
the quality of their connectors. This will include clearly communicated requirements, clear error
messages, and consistency across standards.
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More certified and custom connectors in our open source repository
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We will create and set up more connectors in our open source repository for developers to use,
build on top of, and contribute to. The specific connectors to be added will be determined by
high priority requests from our community and other stakeholders.
Stronger documentation, tutorials, and guidelines for contributors to the open
source repository
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We are adding more README.md files, process documentation, and tutorials to assist
contributors to the open source repository for connectors so that they can better understand
the process of deploying and contributing to connectors.
Stronger integration of the open source repository with custom connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We want to further develop and leverage the benefits of our open-source repository. Currently,
the repository of open-sourced certified connectors and custom connectors is disconnected
from the connector experience in Power Platform. We want to bring the experiences closer for a
more cohesive and unified connector experience.
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Summary page with connectors and their metadata
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, you must go to each connector's documentation page to see metadata, such as
whether the connector is in Preview or General availability and whether it's a premium or
standard connector. To provide a friendlier, more efficient experience, we will have an easy-toview summary page of connectors with key metadata for each connector.
Support for connection parameters when building custom connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, the addition and management of connection parameters can only be done by editing
the connector artifacts after you download them with the command line interface tool. This
feature will enable you to manage connection parameters within the custom connector building
experience.
Support for multi-auth when building custom connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
With this feature, you will be able to configure multi-auth while building custom connectors.
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Support for ordering operation parameters when building connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, there is no way to enforce the order of the parameters for an operation. With this
feature, we will provide a way for connector builders to set and enforce the order in which
operation parameters appear to the user when using a connector. This new feature will give a
more consistent and reliable user experience.
Support for testing OAuth connections in the custom connector building
experience
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jun 2020 Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, we allow users to test a basic auth connection in the custom connector building
experience; however, OAuth connectors are not tested until the first connection is made. With
this feature, you will be able to test your OAuth connection while building your custom
connector.
Support for smart polling triggers
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Jul 2020 Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, there are limitations and tradeoffs in selecting the type of trigger to use. Polling
triggers can be costly and noisy, and webhook triggers rely on a single point of communication.
We will provide a smart polling trigger that leverages the best of the polling and webhook
triggers. The smart polling trigger will provide a less costly and more simplistic experience
without sacrificing reliability. This feature will enable custom connector developers to start with
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a polling trigger but provide the ability to include webhook functionality to optimize the polling
frequency.
Power Platform dataflows
Overview
Power Platform dataflows provide a no-code experience based on Power Query Online for nontechnical users to connect, transform and enrich data from a wide variety of data sources into
the Common Data Service and Azure Data Lake storage in CDM format.
Dataflows provide the building blocks that allow Microsoft to enable out-of-box analytics and AI
insights to its users, such as the analytic and insights provided by AI Builder or Dynamics 365
Customer Insights, making them a huge differentiator for the company's Dynamics 365
offerings.
Generate a new dataflow from Power Query queries in an existing Excel or Power
BI Desktop file
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
With Power Platform dataflows, you can easily convert Excel workbooks or Power BI Desktop
files that contain Power Query queries into dataflows and keep your data updated in the cloud.
Once imported, they become a regular dataflows that you can continue to improve and refine
your queries, schedule automatic refresh, and share the resulting data with people in your
organization.
Onetime upload file support for file connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -
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Feature details
With this feature, users creating dataflows can perform a onetime upload of a local file as the
source for a dataflow, including support for Excel, Text/CSV, and other file types supported
within Power Platform dataflows.
Support for mapping to Common Data Service option sets
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
This feature provides native support for mapping query output columns from a dataflow to
Common Data Service option set fields.
Support for mapping to system fields within Common Data Service entities
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
This feature enables users creating dataflows to map output fields from their queries to system
fields within Common Data Service entities.
Dataflow scheduling enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Power Platform dataflows allow any Power Platform customer to easily define ETL pipelines
(dataflows) to ingest data into Common Data Service or their company's Business data lake
(Azure Data Lake storage). Dataflows run in the cloud and are either manually triggered or can
be scheduled to trigger automatically. With this set of enhancements, customers will be able to
schedule dataflows to run either on a frequency, specific times, opt-in to receive email
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notifications in the event of run failures, and enjoy overall performance improvements in the
experience to configure refresh settings and view run results.
Dataflows actions and triggers for Power Automate
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Power Automate creators will now be able to author flows using dataflows actions and triggers.
For example, when a business critical dataflow completes its scheduled run successfully, the flow
can use dataflow actions to determine the run's status. It can then trigger an Azure Data Factory
pipeline run that consumes data created in the organization's lake. If the dataflow fails, the flow
can trigger a notification to alert the dataflow owner to take action.
Improved dataflow load performance and reliability
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Through telemetry and customer feedback on dataflow performance when loading data into
Common Data Service, we have identified key improvements that can help customers who work
with large volumes of data.
These improvements help in three key areas of ingestion:
1. Velocity: We've reduced the end-to-end dataflow run time.
2. Size: We've increased the size limits for ingestion.
3. Reliability: We respect Common Data Service throttling limits.
Power Platform gateway
Overview
The On-premises data gateway is a well-established product that is widely used by enterprises
to access on-premises data sources and transfer petabytes of data weekly. Today, gateways are
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used with either one or a combination of services and applications, such as Power BI, Power
Apps, Power Automate, Logic Apps, and others. Based on Enterprise requests, we plan to
continue focusing on making on-premises data gateways an enterprise-grade product with
features like enhancements to load balancing, monitoring, and integration with additional
services in the current milestone.
Data source management enhancements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We have been working on centralizing gateway management in the admin center. We will
continue this effort by introducing data source management for Power BI to the admin center in
2020 release wave 1. This new feature will include management of both cloud and on-premises
Power BI data sources, including features like status check, sort, search, and others.
Power Query Desktop
Overview
Power Query provides a no-code experience for non-technical users to seamlessly connect,
transform, and combine data from hundreds of data sources. Power Query is natively integrated
into several Microsoft offerings, both in the desktop experience and through a web -based
experience built on Microsoft Azure.
New modern ribbon in Power Query Editor
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
The ribbon control within the query editor in Power Query Desktop will be replaced with a
modern ribbon control. This new control provides enhanced and more accessible ribbon
capabilities as well as a modern look and feel.
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SharePoint Online List connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
A new SharePoint Online List connector will be previewed in Power BI Desktop. Compared to the
existing connector, this new connector will have improved performance around column
expansions and table joins, improved paging, and a better user experience overall.
Smart data extraction from text and CSV files in Power Query Desktop
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
Text/CSV by example will become available within Power Query Desktop. This feature allows
users to extract data from semi-structured text and CSV files by providing sample output values
based on file contents from which Power Query will infer the extraction rules. The overall user
paradigm for this feature is similar to Web by example. You can read more about Web by
example here.
Hive LLAP
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically Mar 9, 2020 Sep 2020
Feature details
One of the new features being added is the ability to configure HTTPSource. You can read more
about the beta connector here.
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Power Query Online
Overview
Power Query provides a no-code experience for non-technical users to seamlessly connect,
transform, and combine data from hundreds of data sources. Power Query is natively integrated
into several Microsoft offerings, both in the desktop experience and through a web-based
experience built on Microsoft Azure.
Add column from examples
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
Add column from examples will become available in Power Query Online.
With Add column from examples in the Power Query Editor, you can add new columns to your
data simply by providing one or more example values for the new columns. You can create the
new column examples from a selection or provide input based on all existing columns in the
table.
This feature is already available in Power Query Desktop. You can learn more about it in this
documentation article.
Copy and paste queries from Power Query Desktop into Power Query Online
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
Users will be able to right-click on items within the queries pane in Power Query Desktop and
then paste those items into Power Query Online. This will take care of copying all selected
queries as well as any other queries that are being referenced.
This feature is already available within Power Query Desktop and allows users to easily move
their queries between Power BI Desktop and Excel Workbook. With these planned
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enhancements, users will also be able to seamlessly move their queries into Power Query Online
projects, such as dataflows within Power Apps, Customer Insights, Power BI, and others.
Power Query Online Query Editor: Schema-only view
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts Sep 2020 -Feature details
A new Schema-only view will be introduced within the Power Query Online Query Editor. This
view will allow customers to apply schema-only transformations (e.g., Remove/Rename/Reorder
Columns, Change Column Data Types, and others) more efficiently when working against tables
with a large number of columns.
Smart data extraction from text and CSV files
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
Text/CSV by example will become available within Power Query Online. This feature allows
users to extract data from semi-structured text and CSV files by providing sample output values
based on file contents from which Power Query will infer the extraction rules. The overall user
paradigm for this feature is similar to Web by example. You can read more about Web by
example here.
Smart data extraction from web pages using Web by example
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically Sep 2020 -Feature details
Web by example will become available within Power Query Online. This feature allows users to
extract data from semi-structured web pages by providing sample output values based on web
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page content from which Power Query infers the extraction rules. You can find more details
about existing Power Query Desktop Web by example capabilities here.
Active Directory connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the Active Directory connector for Power
Query Online to allow users to connect to Active Directory.
Azure China region support
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We will be bringing Power Query Online support to Azure China. This will enable products that
incorporate Power Query Online (such as Power BI Dataflows, Power Apps Dataflows, or
Customer Insights) to enable dataflow capabilities in Azure China as part of their overall
support/roll-out plans for that region.
Essbase connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently, available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the Essbase connector for Power Query
Online. This connector will allow users to connect to Essbase. You can read more about the
existing connector in Power BI Desktop here.
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Exchange Online connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the Exchange Online connector for Power
Query Online. This connector will allow users to connect to Exchange Online. You can read more
about the existing connector in Power Query here.
Hadoop File and Azure HDInsight connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the Hadoop File (HDFS) and the Azure
HDInsight (HDFS) connectors for Power Query Online. These connectors allow users to connect
to HDFS. You can read more about the existing connectors in Power Query here.
Hive LLAP connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
This connector will allow users to connect to Hive LLAP. You can read more about capabilities of
the existing connector in Power BI here.
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IBM Netezza connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the IBM Netezza connector for Power
Query Online. This connector will allow users to connect to IBM Netezza. You can read more
about capabilities of the existing connector in Power BI here.
Power Query connector improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
There are many Power Query connectors that offer advanced options. These options extend the
capabilities of the connectors to add more versatility and address more use cases beyond the
default, which can be important to appropriately work with your architecture.
Advanced options, including native database queries, timeout, and others, will be enabled for
parity with how customers use these connectors in Power Query Desktop today.
Query diagnostics improvements
Enabled for Public preview General availability
Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Often, customers connect to slow data sources and then create queries with many or complex
transformation steps, resulting in slow queries. To debug issues with queries, customers need to
analyze their Power Query traces to understand whether their queries are pushed to the data
source (if the data source supports the transformations being used) or Power Query
compensated and ran those queries locally within the Mashup Engine.
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We'll bring feature parity with the Power Query Desktop query diagnostics feature to Power
Query Online, including:
• Knowledge of what data source queries are being generated to run their M queries
• Knowledge of what data source queries are being generated to retrieve schema and
metadata
• The amount of time queries run within the data source versus locally in the Mashup Engine
Query Diagnostics will allow customers to troubleshoot issues with their queries and identify
potential optimizations more easily.
As part of this enhancement, we will also provide step-level indicators regarding whether a
given step execution was folded to the underlying data source backend or not. This allows users
to get immediate feedback as they add new steps to their queries without having to go into the
full Query Diagnostics experience.
Snowflake connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the Snowflake connector for Power
Query Online. This connector will allow users to connect to Snowflake. You can read more about
the existing connector in Power BI Desktop here.
Support for beta tags for connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
We will add the ability to indicate if a connector is in beta within the Power Query Online Get
Data experiences, allowing users to make an informed choice of their use of the connector. This
is a capability that already exists in Power Query Desktop.
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Sybase connector
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Currently available in Power BI Desktop, we will enable the Sybase connector for Power Query
Online. This connector will allow users to connect to Sybase. You can read more about
capabilities of the existing connector in Power BI here.
View native query for supported connectors
Enabled for Public preview General availability
End users, automatically - Sep 2020
Feature details
Today in Power Query Desktop, users have the capability to view the native query emitted by
certain connectors, such as the SQL connector. This capability allows users to easily see what
query they're emitting as a result of operations in Power Query, and it can be used to tell when
something has stopped folding.
This feature will be lighting up in Power Query Online, bringing additional self-diagnostic
capabilities to users. Alongside query diagnostics, it will allow users to have a much better
understanding of what is being retrieved from their data sources.
Got feedback?
Share your feedback on a community forum for Dynamics 365 or Power Platform. We’ll use your
feedback to make improvements. To find out about updates to these release notes, follow us on
Twitter @MSFTDynamics365.
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