Everything you need to know about the new functionalities in D365 Sales and D365 Customer Service
In August 2020 Microsoft shared the new functionalities and updates for Dynamics 365 in the Dynamics 365: 2020 Release Wave 2 Plan. These new features will be released in the period October 2020 – March 2021. Read here all you should know about new functionalities in Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
What’s Planned?
In Dynamics 365 Sales the emphasis remains on simplified experiences for users, a new mobile experience for quick access to customer information, and enhancements to forecasting. Dynamics 365 Customer Service expands agent productivity capabilities enabling agents to engage in multiple sessions simultaneously.
Email & Attachments Enhancements
Several email enhancements will be made available in the new release. In a previous release composing a new email directly from your timeline, which then opens the email in a pop-up window, was already made available. This experience is now expanded and supported for actions like view, update, and reply from the timeline directly.
Additionally, in this new experience it’s possible to upload multiple attachments at the same time, and preview your attachments directly in the email.
Enhanced PDF Capabilities
The enhanced PDF capabilities within this release wave allows you to select among the different templates available for an entity and immediately see a preview of the PDF. Intuitive navigation is added, but also several email options with minimal clicks. Lastly, this functionality is easily enabled for specific entities in the Productivity Tools.
Forecasting
In the upcoming release improvements were made for forecast modeling. For instance, it is possible to break down the forecast by a specific dimension, such as product family. Also, it supports multicurrency and quantity forecasts, and it is possible to hide managers from their own forecast. Moreover, calculated columns can now be adjustable and underlying grid columns can be enabled and disabled by admins.
These enhancements provide insights in the sales targets and help make accurately informed strategic decisions, based on information which is already present in the system.
Customer Service Workspace App
A great new feature in the upcoming release wave is the Customer Service Workspace App. This app allows agents to handle customer cases efficiently with the help of:
- Management of multiple cases simultaneously
- Management of email and other case-related activities without losing context of the parent case
- Productivity pane for AI-based suggestions of knowledge articles, similar cases, and other productivity tools
Usability Enhancements
Lastly, several general usability enhancements are included in the release. For instance, optimization of duplicate detection and merge functionalities are promised. Merging records can be done without navigating away, but also users will be enabled to easily view and identify matched account and contact records when qualifying a lead with an improved duplicate detection dialog box.
Also, changes are made on the App Switcher. Previously the apps opened in the sidebar on the left in the system, but after the release an App Overview window pops up, providing a better overview than before.
