What’s New in the 2021 Release Wave 1 for Dynamics 365 for Sales

May 26, 2021

June 25, 2021

Shalu Malik

What’s New in the 2021 Release Wave 1 for Dynamics 365 for Sales

As we all know that every year, Microsoft releases new innovations that provide us with significant capabilities to transform our or our customer business. The release contains new features across Dynamics 365 applications. 

We will be releasing a series of blogs and will try to give a brief overview of these new features. The first blog in the series is focused on Sales.

Dynamics 365 Sales 

This application enables sales teams to build strong relationships with customers, take actions based on the customer insights, and close sales deals faster. It assists the sales teams to keep track of their accounts and contacts, nurture their sales from lead to order, and create sales collateral. Microsoft with this 2021 release wave 1 of Dynamics 365 Sales, brings some exciting new functionality, making some optimizations and updates based on valuable customer feedbacks.

The focus areas included are: 

1. Saves you time: Get tasks completed more easily and efficiently to set the focus on selling. Sellers need to take several steps to identify the right customers and the next actions to take. This release introduces more automation and sequences that will adapt to the changing needs and behaviors of customers. Ability to customize the workspace to each user’s unique business requirements and trigger key actions, all in the same place. This deal manager workspace allows sellers to instantly view the accurate deals, get the appropriate context, and take actions with a single click.

2. Intelligence at your fingertips: Facilitate decision-making by providing data-driven insights. Sellers require data to help them make informed decisions, and also need important insights. Conversation intelligence provides insights on top of calls and video calls with several participants. New filters inside the deal manager workspace will let sellers easily discover opportunities by searching, picking a time-based slicer, or quickly setting a column filter.  

3. Helps you on the go: Enhancing the mobile experience for sellers on the go. Field sellers need the ability to manage their work from their mobile devices. With the Dynamics 365 Sales mobile experience, sellers can get up-to-date LinkedIn information on meeting participants, insights about a deal, account and contacts integrated with AI, and easy access to files, notes, emails, and more. Sellers can now also easily manage their activities and take follow-up actions promptly.  

Also, read: Microsoft Dynamics implementation cost – what to expect in 2021

Digital Selling 

It helps inside sellers sell smarter by building a strong pipeline, offering context, and surfacing automated recommendations, by guiding and collaborating with customers. 

Below are some features: 

Feature	GA	Business Value	Feature Details
Enhance personal settings	Apr-21	- Option and flexibility to create email templates and email signatures using the new editor.  - Move personal settings to a dedicated area.  - Host both Sales and Sales Insights personal settings	- Access to modern email template and signature editor.  - Move personal settings to a dedicated area switcher in Dynamics 365 Sales hub app.  - Reorganize personal settings items.
Adaptive Sequences and Easy Automation	Apr-21	Automates the execution of next steps based on customer Status.	Sequence automation: Automatically performs activities without demanding seller intervention, actions such as: sending emails automatically, when the next step in the sequence is email activity.  - Adding email automation support.  - Send personalization email template from the seller account.  Sequence forks: Reactive sequences that can smartly choose the next step based on internal or external triggers. Sequence listener:  - Adding listener for email engagement: open email, click the email link, view attachment, and sentiment. - Adding listener for meeting conversation or phone: keyword, sentiment, mentioned, competitor, and more.
Zero-click sequence assignment	Apr-21		- Allow sales enablement managers to automatically allot a sequence to an opportunity or a lead. - This concept of segments is included to allow grouping opportunities and leads based on certain standards and criteria. - Segments are correlated with a sequence, so that prospects falling under a specific segment, criteria can be connected automatically to the sequence.
New previews page	May-21	- To help Dynamics 365 Sales administrators to improve discovery and benefit from preview sales capabilities.  - The previews page provides a simple way for admins to learn about preview features and enable the capabilities from a single place.	- New dedicated previews page that consolidates all Sales preview features.  - Ability to easily enable and disable preview features.  - Clear indication of which preview features can be safely used with the customer’s production data on a production environment and of those that can only be used in sandbox environments.
Consolidate sales settings	Jun-21	- Administrators will have a single point of entry to configure both standard and premium sales settings.  - Will help them to get more organized settings and better visibility to all sales settings in a single location	- Move the Sales Insights settings into the app settings.  - Build a clear distinction between premium and standard features by shifting the standard sales insights feature settings outside the premium menu to the General Settings section. Email engagement and auto-capture are now a part of the Productivity tools subsection, and the Assistant moves to a new subsection underneath the General Settings section.
New premium overview page	Jun-21	A premium overview page that highlights the premium scenarios and guides the admin on how to enable them in their organization	- Highlights main premium scenarios.  - Get started checklist that guides admins on the next recommended step to set up premium capabilities.  - Access to the scenario’s settings and documentation to learn more about the scenario.  - Manage sample data from the home page—ability to add or remove sample data.
Streamline consents handling for standard and premium features	Jun-21	- Administrators will have better visibility to the features that require their consent and greater control over the consent flow.	- Remove the need to consent for data sharing when starting a premium trial.  - Dedicated consents page in the settings provides the status of the consents.  - Ability to opt in or opt out from consents in a single click.

Forecasting and Pipeline Analytics 

Feature	GA	Business Value	Feature Details
Clone an existing forecast	Apr-21	Significantly reduces the pain of starting from the beginning whenever making updates to an existing forecast configuration or building forecasts for a coming period.	- Active, inactive, or draft forecasts can be duplicated by admin users.  - Duplicate forecasts are created in a draft state.
Custom fiscal period support	Apr-21	Forecast managers now have an extended capability to select a custom fiscal period to match that of their business, including broadcast, 4-4-5, and 3-3-3-4.	- Forecast periods according to the following standard templates: Gregorian calendar, broadcast, 4-4-5, 4-5-4, 5-4-4, 3-3-3-4, 3-3-4-3, 3-4-3-3, 4-3-3-3  -Forecast managers can add an extra week at the end of any period to account for leap years.

Mobile 

This being an essential Tool for organizations assisting them with – how to help sellers access what they need, when they need it, wherever they are, and make it easy for them to log and share information in real time. 

Feature	GA	Business Value	Feature Details
Come prepared to customer engagements (Mobile App)	Apr-21		- Meeting from Microsoft Exchange.  - Easy “set regarding” and tracking experience.  - Meeting card augmented with Dynamics 365 lightweight data.  - Assistant cards for regarding record.  - Join Microsoft Teams meeting button.  - Smart lookup (relevant records).
Find, interact, and create customer information easily (Mobile App)	Apr-21		- Push notifications (content is driven by Relationship Assistant cards)  - Streamlined home page  - Bottom navigation bar  - Lightweight forms (view, edit, create)  - Improved search (dependent on Relevant Search enabled)  - Recent records list  - Activity management experience in record's lightweight form
Log and share information effortlessly (Mobile App)	Apr-21		- Take a note-friendly experience plus native keyboard dictation.  - Lightweight create-and-modify forms.  - Native quick create of any selected record including custom activities and entities.  - Native quick create of activities.

Other Features 

Listed below are some other features where the general availability dates are not known yet:

Feature Group	Feature	Business Value	Feature Details
Collaboration with Microsoft Teams
	Teams channel and chats from within Dynamics 365	- Salesperson can access their Teams chats and channels within Dynamics. Chats that are:       - Associated with the Dynamics 365 entity page they are on.       - The most recent chat conversations.  - Able to distinguish the primary channel / chat session associated with the Dynamics 365 entity.  - Quick and transparent access to primary stakeholder group.   - Users will know where to find collaboration activity for a given entity.	- Access to linked Microsoft Teams chats.  - Access to linked Microsoft Teams channels.  - Access to recent teams chat list.  - Ability to link and unlink chats to record.  - Ability to link and unlink channels to record.  - Message preview.  - Message avatar and presence.  - Context of chat and channel list changes as user navigates around Dynamics 365.
	Create activities or notes on a Dynamics 365 record from the context of a Microsoft Teams message		- Add a note or task to a record's timeline from the context of a Microsoft Teams message in a chat or channel.  - Support customized forms and business rules specific to an organization.  - Ensure only those with required security permissions have write access.
	Edit a Dynamics 365 record within a Microsoft Teams conversation	- Enables quick editing of records from a form within a Teams conversation and works from the perspective of the seller or the recipient.  - Allow sellers to quickly edit a record from a Teams conversation to ensure the information is up to date before sending to teammates, customers, and other stakeholders.	- Conversation participants can quickly update or edit a record from within a Microsoft Teams conversation.  - Conversation participants can change the state of a record from within a Microsoft Teams conversation.  - Support customized forms and business rules specific to an organization.  - Ensure only those with required security permissions have write access.
	Engage in a Microsoft Teams chat from within Dynamics 365	- Time savings:   - App switching:   - Bringing structure and organization to sales collaboration:	- Full Microsoft Teams chat experience.  - Rich text editor, emojis, message importance, and GIFs. - Add participants to chat.  - Post actions.  - Simultaneously open multiple chat windows.  - Chat window persists as the user navigates across Dynamics 365.
	Setup and security enhancements to Dynamics 365 app for Microsoft Teams	- Increases the efficiency for the user by optimizing the current process for sellers.   - The improved user interface, security updates, and privacy, ensure parity with Microsoft Teams client experiences as well as with the Unified Interface of Dynamics 365.	- Intuitive user experience to allow for quicker configuration, navigation, and error handling.  - Ability to set MIP and AIP labels (based on occupant permissions). - Option to set Microsoft Teams built from Dynamics 365 as private or public to maintain security.
	Share CRM records in a Microsoft Teams message	Will let users search for information in Dynamics 365 and share with other participants in their channels or chats, and will also enable them to accomplish tasks from within the conversation.	- Send a quick summary of a record in a Microsoft Teams chat or channel as an interactable card.  - Search for Dynamics 365 records organized by relevance.  - Search and filter for Dynamics 365 records to share with your conversation participants.  - Allow conversation participants to add an activity or note to a record through interactable cards.  - Ensure only those with proper security permissions can view details of the record.
Digital selling
	Enable automatic intelligent assignment for leads		Adding a lead distribution engine will decrease the manual assignment work of the sales manager, this will prevent the loss of unassigned leads and balance sales capacity among sellers.
	Personalize work queue	Enable Sales users to complete tasks quickly.	-User personalization:       - User-defined advanced settings and views for the work queue.  - Upcoming meetings:       - Integrated view into Outlook meetings.       - Start new Microsoft Teams meeting from within the accelerator.
	Seller KPIs and manager dashboards to encourage productivity	KPIs and dashboards will effectively assist in keeping the organization's sales goals organized and continuously updated for the sellers and their managers	- Manager dashboard: Allow managers to view their team's performance and coach and guide sellers:        - Number of active leads in the org versus previous periods.        - The conversion ratio between leads and opportunity.        - Leads by source types.        - Leads per sellers.  - Real-time seller KPIs: The ability for organizations to define key performance indicators for sellers and allow them to see progress in real time:         - Number of qualified leads.         - Number of calls.         - Number of meetings.        - Estimated value.
Engagement platform
	Easily integrate your telephony provider with out-of-the-box functionalities		- Dial-record playback: Customers utilizing Dynamics 365 Channel Integration Framework for their computer telephony integration (CTI) requirements can now record these calls and use conversation intelligence within Sales Insights Add-in for Sales.  - Extend strategic partnership to more recording platforms: Continue to work with recording players and telephony systems to create easy-to-deploy integrations.
	Provide business insights on top of any type of sales call	Assist in extracting business-critical insights from all of these interactions.	- Provide insights on top of video calls.  - Analyze and extract business insights for multiple-participant calls.  - Support online meetings and the ability to add participants (escalations, domain experts).  - Support answering calls within Dynamics 365 and provide insights on top.
Mobile
	Never miss a detail in your customer engagements		- Automatic transcription for each call and online meeting.  - Automatic assignment of each call to its relevant Dynamics 365 entity and populating the data within Dynamics 365.  - Conversation insights and action item extractions.
Pipeline manager workspace
	Ability to customize and configure deal manager		- A new sitemap entry in the Sales hub pointing users to the deal manager.  - Workspace container shipped out of the box with all components. - Support workspace for organizations with the help of custom apps.
	Advanced editable grid to update deals with ability to personalize columns		- Edit fields inline.  - Filter, sort, search, and reorder data in the grid.  - Show or hide columns in the grid.  - Add columns in the grid.  - See aggregations for numeric columns.  Run business logic on grid actions.
	Enhanced productivity with new record side panel form		- New record side panelform layout loaded through the side panel. - Quick edit capabilities.  - Access to key activities and actions (notes and tasks). -Drill into account or contact within the record side panel.
	Enhanced workspace experience with Sales Insights		- Sales Insights score in the record side panel. - Relationship insights and score inside the grid. - Predictive opportunity score and opportunity score now accessible from the record side panel view. - Health grade and predictive opportunity score in the bubble chart.
	Interactive visual charts that can be personalized by sellers		- Three out-of-the-box charts (funnel, bar chart, and bubble). - Charts are interactive and when selected serve as filters. - Chart fields can now be configured by sellers to meet their requirements.
	New workspace experience that is engaging, intuitive, and accessible from Sales hub and other custom apps		- A new sitemap entry in the Sales hub pointing users to the deal manager.  - Workspace container with all components shipped out of the box.  - Support workspace for organizations using custom apps.
	Speedily filter data within workspaces by the help of data slicers		- Data slicers based on grid column.  - Time slicers to filter data based on different time parameters.  - Quickly find a record with a search filter.
	Track the most relevant metrics with stats		- Predefined stats (metrics from opportunity management).  - Ability to select metrics from a predefined set.  - Ability to configure stats.
	Trigger key actions and activities directly from the grid and the record side panel		- New optimized experience for managing notes and tasks.  - Quick access to notes, tasks, and appointments either from the grid or from the record side panel.
Quote to cash
	Enhanced experience for adding product lines		- Browse hierarchical catalog: Use the family hierarchy to browse the product catalog to find products in specific categories.  - Choose multiple products easily: Intuitive experience to add multiple product lines instantly.  - Easily customize and discover the experience: Customization options for the experience are made more visible in the app settings.

Also, read: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Insights add-on & How to Configure

Conclusion

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central presents a connected cloud business management solution for developing small to medium-sized businesses, bringing together sales, finance, service, and operations teams inside a single application. Updates in this new release wave help you work smarter, adapt faster, and perform better than earlier.

New consumer onboarding abilities provide getting started in-app contextual guidance and checklists to improve speed and time to productivity for employees. This release wave is also available in more countries, including India, Romania, Turkey, and Greece.

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