A Microsoft 365 Reseller’s Perspective on the Latest Microsoft Releases

As businesses navigate the rapidly evolving economy and look at staying ahead with the latest technological advancements, it’s important to be up to date on Microsoft’s latest releases. Microsoft does their updates in what they call a “Release Wave” where they announce what’s coming in advance and then new functionality will be released into their solutions between October 2024 and March 2025. This year’s “Release Wave 2” for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform was recently announced and is set to deliver a range of strong new features and improvements for users. How will they affect you directly though? As a Microsoft 365 reseller, of course our experts jumped on the release notes immediately. Here are our highlights of the new features and updates on Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 ecosystem with the largest and most immediate impact on each application.

Dynamics 365 Business Central:

Copilot Expansion

Our team is happy to hear that Business Central will continue expanding with Copilot rolling it out to more than 170 countries, plus improvements to more than 80 Microsoft Power BI reports.

This will give access to more AI features and reporting tools worldwide as Microsoft continually innovates with Copilot. We dove into Copilot’s great features in our earlier blog, but it allows you to easily: summarize web content, draft emails, recap meetings on Team, and so much more on the Microsoft ecosystem.

Dynamics 365 Sales:

Predictive Forecasting

Using advanced AI models, the predictive forecasting feature will now provide sales teams with more accurate forecasts, enabling better decision-making and strategic planning. With predictive forecasting tools your business can be prepared for an evolving economy and outpace competitors.

Sales Copilot for Calls

New features on Dynamics 365 include an an AI assistant that helps sales reps prioritize tasks, suggesting the next best action. This tool will allow your sales team to be more organized and prioritize leads according to their interest level saving them time and efficiently working at developing strong relationships.

Power Platform:

Data Model Versioning

Data Model Versioning is the process of assigning either unique version names or unique version numbers to different stages of a data model. With data versioning, the old versions of data is saved and kept at the company’s disposal giving you benefit of measuring business performance, compliance and increasing efficiency without losing any working data.

This new feature will allow users to maintain and manage multiple versions of their data models, facilitating better collaboration and version control. If you’re not sure how to set this up, reach out to your Microsoft 365 reseller, or our team is happy to answer any questions.

Power Automate RPA Improvements

Enhanced robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities will allow for more complex workflows and integrations. This form of automation uses rule-based software to perform business process activities at a high-volume, freeing up human resources to prioritize more complex tasks.

Integration with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams will now allow users to trigger and manage automations directly within the Teams interface, giving users the ability to work remotely and gain mobile access.

Industry-Specific Solutions

The 2024 Release Wave 2 includes specialized enhancements for industry sectors such as retail, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Retail

New features in Dynamics 365 Commerce will improve the omnichannel shopping experience, integrating seamlessly with physical and digital touchpoints. This will dynamically optimize the digital shopping experience, now allowing shoppers to compare products across a wide range of categories so that they can make the correct purchase decision for themselves.

Healthcare

Dynamics 365 for Healthcare will offer improved patient engagement tools and advanced analytics to support personalized care. These features include allowing patients access to self service tools like booking appointments and accessing medical history. If you don’t have a Microsoft 365 reseller already, our team would be happy to help you explore these patient tools or features in depth to see how they would help your organization.

Manufacturing

Updates in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management brings better supply chain visibility and predictive maintenance capabilities that include improved forecasting accuracy with AI with your own machine learning models.

Of course, these are just our highlights but there are a lot more updates in this upcoming release, with Microsoft providing a full list of details and updates. With this Wave release there is a range of new feature allowing organizations to drive efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and harness the power of AI to stay ahead of the curve. These updates include user experience enhancements that will be automatically enabled in production environments by October 2024. That said, to get the most out of them you might want to review the details with your Microsoft 365 reseller or reach out to our team.