Introduction:
The Dynamics 365 and industry clouds release plan for the 2022 release wave 2 describes new features releasing from October 2022 through March 2023. The 2022 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 and industry clouds brings new innovations that provide you 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, Intelligent Order Management, Project Operations, Human Resources, Commerce, Fraud Protection, Business Central, Connected Spaces, Guides, Customer Insights, and Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Financial Services, Nonprofit, Sustainability, and Retail (Download the release plan document as a PDF file.)
List of features
Model-Driven Apps
- Work on related records in multi-entity forms
- Improved record link copying
- Power BI quick reports in model-driven apps
- Modern advanced find enabled by default
- View colleagues’ presence
- Use Teams chat in apps
Work on related records in multi-entity forms
Multi-entity forms allow model-driven app forms to be rendered on another form so users can work on related records in these form components without navigating away from the main record. Microsoft shows an example of a contact form rendered within the main account form in its release plans. (Public preview from August. General Availability from October)
Improved record link copying
A new share button allowing users to copy record links and quickly email these will be auto enabled across all records. (Early access from August)
Power BI quick reports in model-driven apps
Prior to this release wave, Microsoft has brought forward the general availability of Power BI quick reports. Using quick reports, Dynamics 365 and other model-driven app users can create interactive reports in a single click from a list view to easily explore data on grids without the effort of creating a Power BI report from scratch. You can enable this feature from the app setting.
It will be enabled in Power Apps as shown below:
Clicking it will open the Power BI dashboard:
Change filters and apply any conditions and based on the same, chats will be on display (as below):
Modern advanced find enabled by default
The modern advanced find experience was introduced in the 2022 Release Wave 1, featuring new controls to run queries and manage personalised views. By default, modern advanced find is enabled in the upcoming release wave to replace the legacy experience.
View colleagues’ presence
By default, user profile photos will be displayed in the online presence for record owner fields, and all grids where usernames are displayed. (Public preview from August 2022; General Availability from October 2022)
Use Teams chat in apps
Recent releases have added embedded Teams chat to Dynamics 365 apps enabling users to start chats without needing to navigate away from the Dynamics interface. This functionality will also be available for all model-driven apps in the upcoming wave. (Public preview from October 2022; General Availability from March 2023)
Dynamics 365 Sales
- Deal Room Teams dashboard
- Sharing records in emails & chats
- Sales Accelerator Updates
- Teams collab spaces around sales processes
- Seller Dashboard
- Track linked Teams chat as activities in the timeline
Deal Room Teams dashboard
A new deal room dashboard in Microsoft Teams provides a single pane of customer insights, activity coordination, and activity recommendations for specific deals.
Using this collaboration spaces dashboard, everyone working on a deal can check the activity, featuring the latest account and opportunity information, access associated documents, check intelligent insights about the relationship health, and see the next best actions. (Public preview from November 2022; General Availability from March 2023)
Sharing records in emails & chats
Release Wave 2 includes a series of updates to share records and surface CRM data in Outlook emails and Teams chats.
Use @mention to insert Dynamics 365 data in emails and chats the same way you insert people references. Use @mention to search and insert sales data into Outlook emails and Teams conversations. (Public preview from November. General Availability from February 2023)
Insert Dynamics 365 records into Outlook emails as information cards that display preview information in the email body. Using the messaging extensions add-on for Outlook, users can insert adaptive cards for desktop and web access emails to let recipients view the summary detail within the message. (Public preview from October)
Securely collaborate on live data in chats and emails by typing @dynamics to add records as info cards and take quick action on these within these communications. (Public preview from November)
Preview shared records when pasting URLs enabling recipients to access summary information about records within the chat or email content without needing to install any messaging extensions. (Public preview from November)
Sales Accelerator Updates
The Sales accelerator platform was recently extended to Sales Enterprise customers to support sales teams and streamline workflows. In 2022 Release Wave 2, updates to the accelerator include.
New sequence designer – to provide a consistent design experience across D365 Marketing real-time journeys and D365 Sales sequences. (Early access from August)
Guide sellers to work simultaneously – allowing multiple sellers to work on different sequences for a specific record simultaneously and use segments to define rules that connect sequences to sellers. (General Availability from November)
Enable sellers to create sequences – removing the current restriction where only managers and administrators can add or update sequences. (General Availability from January)
Teams collab spaces around sales processes
Teams collab spaces around sales processes
Collaboration spaces in Teams are an organised workspace created by Dynamics templates to support effective collaboration in Teams. This initial preview release will include scenario-based templates and customisable triggers to control the channel and folder structure to consistently organise this information across Teams. (Public preview from November 2022; General Availability from March 2023)
Seller Dashboard
Using a new seller dashboard, sellers can better track their daily progress and access insights based on the activities across their contacts, accounts, leads and opportunities. (Public preview from October 2022; General Availability from December 2022)
Track linked Teams chat as activities in the timeline
Team’s chats associated with a particular record can be linked as activities that appear in the timeline. With each chat connected as an activity entry in the timeline, recent chat events, such as new conversations or uploading documents, are easily discovered. (General Availability from October 2022)
Additional Power Platform Updates in 2022 Release Wave 2
New grid controls
In the previous release wave, a new model-driven app grid control entered public preview featuring infinite scrolling and inline editing within views and sub-grids. A date for general availability has yet to be announced, but Microsoft is adding more grid control capabilities to the preview.
- Nested grids to see related records by expanding rows
- Grouping data based on grid columns to expand and collapse
- Aggregating data on numerical grid columns to see averages, totals, minimum/maximum values
Create & join Teams meetings in-app or from appointments
The ability to create and join Teams meetings from appointment records was recently added to Dynamics 365 Sales. In the 2022 Release Wave 2, this will be available for all model-driven app users. (Early access from August 2022)
Manage business units & teams in the Power Platform admin Broyles
To manage business units and Dataverse teams, reliance on the legacy web client is finally being replaced by a new experience within the Power Platform admin center. (Public preview from October 2022)
Sequential approvals in Power Automate
There is often a need for complex approval processes where multiple individuals must grant approval at various stages. Power Automate will now enable multiple levels/stages to be defined within an approval flow to advance requests through this chain unless an individual rejects the flow at any stage. (General availability from October 2022)
Connect to external data from Dataverse
Virtual tables have been around for a while but are complex to set up. In Release Wave 2, Microsoft says it will introduce new capabilities to create tables in Dataverse that use simple connections to find and interact with external data. The release plans cite examples of Dataverse tables using data from an Excel workbook in OneDrive or SQL Server in Azure. (Public preview from December 2022; General Availability from March 2023)
Virtual tables between Dataverse instances
For organisations with multiple environments, this update will enable users to create a virtual table in one Dataverse environment and provide access to this data across other instances without duplication. (Public preview from January 2023)
Modern security role editor experience
A new experience will be provided in the Power Platform admin centre to manage security roles and privileges. (Public preview from October 2022)
Enable Power Fix in Dataverse business rules
Power Fix is the low-code language for the Microsoft Power Platform. This will provide a new low-code solution to enable business rules beyond basic conditions, without the complexity of rules that require custom development. (Public preview from September. General availability from November 2022)
Power BI Mobile Visual Formatting
General availability of mobile visual reporting for Power BI will provide more flexibility and extra options to design reports optimised for mobile devices, making the visual format pane available in the mobile layout view. (General availability from October 2022)
Power Pages
Microsoft Power Pages was recently announced as a new pillar of the Power Platform, an enterprise-grade, low-code solution to create, host and administer portals. This provides a new design and design templates to deploy process-driven websites. Eventually, Power Apps Portals will move to this new design experience.
Microsoft has not yet confirmed when Power Pages will reach general availability, but during this release wave, it will release new site templates to handle processes for employee onboarding and permit applications.
We hope you found this blog useful in understanding the features and capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 2022 Release Wave 2. Please reach out to us so that we can put our decades of experience and expertise in Microsoft technologies and Dynamics 365 to help you in your organization’s Digital Transformation journey.
