Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Wave 2 2024 update is here and introduces a range of exciting features across all modules within Dynamics 365, including Sales, Customer Service, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain Management, and more.
As businesses continually look for ways to drive efficiency, optimise customer experiences, and streamline operations, these updates deliver powerful tools to help you stay ahead of the competition.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the key changes and enhancements across various Dynamics 365 applications.
Sales and Marketing: Smarter, More Personalised Interactions
Sales and Marketing teams are set to benefit from new AI-driven insights and automation enhancements. These updates will help teams work smarter, not harder, by providing real-time recommendations on how best to engage with prospects and existing customers.
- AI-Powered Insights
The integration of Copilot AI enables sales teams to receive real-time recommendations on customer engagement, helping to prioritise leads and suggest relevant follow-ups.
- Marketing Automation
Enhanced AI features help marketers orchestrate more personalised customer journeys, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience at the perfect time.
- Content Ideas
AI-powered content suggestions make it easier to generate marketing content tailored to specific audiences, improving the impact of email campaigns, social posts, and other communications.
Customer Service: Improving Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction
The Customer Service module continues its transformation into a powerhouse for delivering seamless customer experiences, with several updates designed to improve both efficiency and satisfaction.
- Improved Email Attachment Experience
Agents can now drag and drop attachments directly into emails, with reminders if they forget to include an attachment mentioned in the email body. This enhancement saves time and minimises errors in communication.
- Enhanced Email Recipient Handling
Composing emails is now more intuitive, with features such as drag-and-drop recipient management (between ‘To’, ‘CC’, and ‘BCC’), displaying email addresses alongside names, and blocking the resolution of unresolved email addresses.
- Extend Copilot with Plugins
Agents can now use Copilot more effectively by leveraging plugins. These extensions reduce the need for switching between tabs or tools, thus improving resolution times and customer satisfaction.
Notably, the new authentication plugin can be set at the agent level, allowing businesses to secure external data as it enters the system so only authorised users have access.
- Proactive Copilot Prompts
With Wave 2, agents will see contextual prompts and insights automatically generated at the start of a conversation with Copilot. This AI-powered feature helps agents discover Copilot’s skills faster and provides proactive insights to speed up case resolutions.
- Case Resolution Automation
AI-driven case management enhancements automate much of the repetitive work involved in resolving customer queries. This reduces resolution times and frees up support staff to focus on more complex tasks.
- Real-Time Queue Membership Updates
Admins can now redistribute the workforce more quickly during surges in conversation traffic. Updates to queue memberships happen in real-time, ensuring agents can take up work in new queues instantly without delays or mistakes.
- Chatbots and Virtual Agents
Enhancements to virtual agents allow for better self-service options, with chatbots becoming more capable of resolving issues without human intervention.
- Omnichannel Enhancements
The ability to handle customer queries across multiple channels – email, chat, social media, and phone – has been further streamlined, improving the overall customer experience.
Field Service: Smarter Scheduling and Resource Management
For businesses using Dynamics 365 Field Service, the Wave 2 update brings several key enhancements that will optimise how resources are scheduled and utilised.
- Remote Assist via Teams
Frontline workers can now initiate a video call with 3D spatial annotations directly within Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need to switch between apps. This feature improves first-time fix rates by allowing real-time support on the go.
- Copilot Integration
Field Service now benefits from Copilot’s capabilities, allowing technicians and back-office teams to access contextual information more quickly and efficiently. Summarised work orders, including insights from Copilot, are now available directly within Outlook, improving workflow efficiency.
- Mobile Sync Customisation
Makers can now select specific table columns to sync for offline use, making mobile app usage faster by limiting the data downloaded.
- Transition to the New Schedule Board
The legacy schedule board has been deprecated, and all users will transition to the improved version by 1 October 2024. The new board brings improved usability, accessibility, and multi-day scheduling features.
Finance and Operations: Enhanced Visibility and Control
Finance and Supply Chain Management within Dynamics 365 Wave 2 gets significant upgrades that improve forecasting, financial analysis, and overall operational control.
- Improved Financial Insights
Enhanced reporting tools provide finance teams with deeper insights into their organisation’s financial health, making it easier to track performance and plan for the future.
- AI-Powered Forecasting
For supply chain operations, AI helps to predict inventory needs more accurately, reducing both overstocking and stock shortages. This allows businesses to optimise stock levels, reducing operational costs.
- Automated Procurement
Automation improvements streamline the procurement process, making it easier for businesses to manage suppliers, purchase orders, and payments.
Human Resources: Building a Stronger Workforce
In Dynamics 365 Human Resources, Microsoft continues to focus on providing tools that help organisations manage and develop their workforce more effectively.
- Employee Self-Service
The updated HR portal makes it easier for employees to access important documents, update their information, and complete tasks like leave requests or performance reviews.
- Enhanced Onboarding
Improvements to onboarding workflows allow HR teams to tailor the process to specific roles, ensuring new hires are fully integrated into the organisation quickly and efficiently.
- Workforce Analytics
New analytics features provide deeper insights into employee performance and engagement, helping HR teams identify areas for improvement and development.
Customer Insights: Faster, Smarter Data Management
With businesses relying heavily on data, Customer Insights receives key upgrades to improve data processing and personalisation.
- Automation for Segments and Measures
As the volume of customer data grows, system refresh times can slow down. With Wave 2, Customer Insights will automatically deactivate unused segments and measures, allowing admins to manage these elements more effectively while ensuring faster insights.
- Delta Lake Integration
By introducing support for the Delta Lake storage format, Customer Insights now accelerates processing times for large datasets, providing real-time, up-to-date customer insights for better decision-making.
- Unified Data with Microsoft Dataverse
Wave 2 simplifies the process of data ingestion by linking Microsoft Dataverse automatically, allowing businesses to centralise data from multiple sources and access it across various applications.
- Enhanced Marketing Insights
Marketers can now track interaction data from Customer Insights – Journeys, improving segment creation and refining campaign strategies with more accurate data.
Power Platform: More Customisation and Integration Capabilities
For those leveraging the Power Platform alongside Dynamics 365, Wave 2 brings even more opportunities to build, integrate, and automate custom solutions.
- Improved Power Apps
Users can now create more advanced custom apps with fewer technical skills, thanks to enhanced low-code tools and pre-built templates.
- Power Automate Updates
Workflow automation has been improved, allowing businesses to streamline processes with more sophisticated and flexible flows.
- Deeper Integration with Dynamics 365
Integration between Power Platform and Dynamics 365 is now even smoother, enabling users to create more seamless workflows across both platforms.
Microsoft Copilot: AI at the Core of Your Business Operations
Wave 2 greatly enhances Microsoft Copilot, integrating it deeper into various Dynamics 365 applications to deliver real-time insights, automation, and improved decision-making.
- CRM Connectivity with ServiceNow in Outlook and Teams
Agents can now connect to ServiceNow directly from Outlook and Teams, making it easier to leverage CRM data during customer interactions.
- Schedule Meetings from Outlook with Copilot
Copilot for Service automatically suggests scheduling meetings based on email context and generating meeting invites with the appropriate attendees. This feature improves productivity by automating repetitive tasks.
- AI-Powered Document Summaries in Sales
In Dynamics 365 Sales, Copilot now provides a summary of key documents related to contacts, opportunities, and leads. Sellers can review these summaries to better understand the needs and priorities of their clients, streamlining their workflows.
- Enhanced Copilot for Sales
Sales teams benefit from real-time suggestions during customer objections, including objection tracking, sentiment analysis, and access to knowledge bases. Copilot also integrates with CRM systems to update records directly from meeting summaries, ensuring smoother post-meeting workflows.
- Copilot in Power Automate
With the new update, users can ask Copilot to analyse cloud and desktop flow activity. It provides insights into recent runs, flow status, failure rates, and performance trends using natural language queries, making it easier to optimise workflows.
Security and Compliance: Stronger Safeguards for Your Data
Data security and compliance remain a top priority, and the Wave 2 updates bring new tools to help businesses meet regulatory requirements and protect sensitive data.
- Role-Based Access Improvements
Organisations can now fine-tune security permissions with even greater precision, ensuring the right people have access to the right data at the right time.
- Compliance Management Tools
Enhanced compliance features make it easier to manage and report on your organisation’s compliance with regulations like GDPR, ensuring your data handling processes meet the latest standards.
Enhanced User Experience and Interface
Microsoft has continued to focus on making the Dynamics 365 user experience more seamless across devices, whether on desktop or mobile.
- Unified Interface Enhancements
The unified interface is now faster and more intuitive, providing a smoother transition between screens and improving productivity.
- Customisable Dashboards
Users can now personalise their dashboards with greater ease, providing quick access to the most important information and analytics.
Getting ready for Dynamics 365 Wave 2 Updates
The Dynamics 365 Wave 2 2024 updates are designed to help businesses do more. With powerful AI tools, enhanced automation, and a continued focus on user experience, Microsoft is delivering a suite of tools that will help organisations streamline operations, improve customer experiences, and drive growth.
If you haven’t yet explored how these updates can benefit your business, now is the perfect time to dive in and start preparing for the future.
Speak to a member of the team if you’d like to learn more about the Wave 2 2024 updates and how you can maximise the benefits for you and your business.
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