What's New in D365 Release Wave 1

An important licensing update, several user experience enhancements, and AI-driven forecasting capabilities round out the contents of Release Wave 1 for Dynamics 365 for Sales.

As Microsoft begins to roll out Release Wave 1 updates to Dynamics 365 Sales users, we’re taking a few minutes to highlight our favorite updates. So, grab your cup of coffee and take a look at what’s ahead.

 Don’t Miss this Update in Release Wave 1

We’ll start with an update about Team Member licenses purchased during or after October 2018. Licensing enforcement for Team Member licenses will begin on January 31, 2021 (previously changed from June 30, 2020 due to COVID-19). What does this mean for you? Well, that depends if you’re using Team Member licenses and how you’re using them. Team Member licenses are typically assigned to users without a particular sales function but require basic Dynamics 365 functionality within a sales hierarchy.

Under this change, Team Members will no longer have access to Service Hub, Sales Hub, or custom app modules, but will have access to designated app modules including Customer Service Team Member, Sales Team Member, and Project Resource Hub.

• The Sales Team Member App Module will provide access to view customer details, view leads and opportunities related to a customer, and create and view activities for a customer or related leads or opportunities.

This change can be previewed now so you can work with your CRM administrator or your TrellisPoint team to assess the impact and make required updates. We’re here to help you navigate this change and the many others listed in this update, so give us a call if you need!

User Interface Updates for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Users

There are a handful of updates included in this wave that will make your day-to-day activities within the sales interface faster, easier, and more intuitive. We’re excited about them, and we think you will be too! You’ll definitely want to share these updates with your team to ensure they are taking advantage of them.

Kanban View for Activities and Opportunities

As a part of Microsoft’s commitment to simplifying experiences across the product, Opportunities and Activities can now be managed using a Kanban board view, similar to software like Trello, which is popular in the agency and freelancer community, or Jira, which is popular in the tech community. The Kanban view allows users to quickly move opportunities between stages, complete activities, and modify dates, all while maintaining stage gating.

> Read more about this feature

Easier PDF Creation for Quotes and Entity Records

To make it even easier to collaborate on PDF-generated documents, Microsoft has introduced the ability to save PDFs directly in Dynamics 365 Sales as a Note attachment or in Microsoft SharePoint.

Enhanced Experience for Adding Products to Opportunities

This feature is currently available for Early Release with a planned launch date is scheduled for July 2020. Even though it’s not production ready just yet – we’re equally excited for this simplified approach to adding products to opportunities. Who doesn’t want to save time searching and adding products to quotes and orders?

> See how it works

Other Release Wave 1 Updates

There are two other exciting changes for you to note that improve email capabilities. We’ll be diving into these in a future blog post, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can read more about them here.

• Easier selection of email templates using an email panel that allows you to search and filter emails by category along with quick view capabilities.
• Easier email composition using a rich text editor and a pop-up, non-blocking window.

Worth Exploring

We’ve classified Microsoft’s updates to sales forecasting as something you will want to take time to explore further internally, or with our team. These updates and insights can significantly improve the predictability of sales modeling and assist in driving sales.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Forecasting

Release Wave 1 Sales Forecasting includes a new set of capabilities that empower organizations to create and manage sales forecasting from the bottom up, including creating custom forecast models, improved forecast accuracy with override capabilities, and improved pipeline management including a Kanban view.

You’ll definitely want to take a look at this 5 minute video from Microsoft to learn more!

That’s all for now…

Contact us if you have any questions about the updates associated with this blog. We’re here to help you assess the changes and ensure you’re taking full advantage of these powerful new features.

For a full list of updates, check out the Microsoft Dynamics Release Wave 1 Plan.

Learn more about Microsoft D365