Dynamics 365 Wave 1 2023: highlights you need to know!
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The AI wave is washing over the internet, social media – and Dynamics 365. It comes as no surprise that Microsoft’s first feature update in 2023 (Release Wave 1 2023) includes plenty of AI features, too, particularly for Dynamics 365 Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service. Although we’ll have to wait a few more weeks or months until these latest novelties will move from preview to generally available, it’s worth taking a look at them anyway!
Let’s break down Microsoft first release wave for 2023 (launching each year in January) to its most exciting highlights!
Highlights: Dynamics 365 Marketing
Automatic UTM tagging
- Public preview: From 1 February, 2023
- Generally available: April 2023 (not yet)
If you work with Dynamics 365 Marketing, you’ve probably been waiting for this feature for a while: automatic tracking of UTM parameters. They help you track the source from which users visited on your website, e.g. via an email campaign.
Message frequency cap
- Public preview: From 1 March, 2023
- Generally available: April 2023 (not yet)
If you have more than one campaign running at once, users may receive a lot of messages from you over a short period of time. At worst, your messages end up in your users’ spam folders or they unsubscribe from your communication altogether. With the new frequency cap feature, you can take action by limiting your number of emails, text messages, push notifications and more.
Highlights: Dynamics 365 Sales
Cross-sell and upsell suggestions
- Public preview: August 2023
- Generally available: unknown
The first new AI feature in our list considers historically successful deals and proposes products with upsell and cross-sell opportunities for creating new opportunities and increasing their deal size.
Tips while on a customer call
- Public preview: July 2023
- Generally available: September 2023
If the sales conversation takes place over the phone, artificial intelligence provides support with tips for the conversation in real time if it does get bogged down or the salesperson is unable to answer questions about the product, prices or company off the cuff.
More seller effectiveness
- Public preview: June 2023
- Generally available: unknown
The third AI feature of the bunch saves sellers time by taking over their research: It creates an automated list of accounts and prioritizes which ones should be worked on next.
Capture crucial sales call details
- Public preview: August 2023
- Generally available: September 2023
Neat documentation of sales calls is crucial. That is why voice AI supports you in making sure you collected all information important for qualification of leads, and automatically takes notes for you.
Highlights: Dynamics 365 Customer Service
AI suggested replies
- Public preview: April 2023
- Generally available: unknown
If you use Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or any other messenger service, you may already be familiar with the suggestions feature for replies. Now this functionality is also available to users of Dynamics 365 Customer Service!
New e-mail designer
- Public preview: January 2023
- Generally available: April 2023 (not yet)
The new e-mail designer allows service teams to choose from a variety of neat templates for their customer communication, and lets them add and combine elements such as text, buttons, and images easily!
Highlights: Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Project budget management and forecasting
- Public preview: September 2023
- Generally available: unknown
A feature made for project managers: It helps them keep track of costs and work progress, and makes forecasts about how long the project will take. All monitoring of costs and resources is done against a recent project snapshot. This way, project managers always know if they can meet targets for expenses and progress.
Improved user experience for time entries
- Public preview: June 2023
- Generally available: September 2023
Don’t underestimate user experience! That’s why it will soon take fewer clicks for consultants to customize time tracking in Project Operations. Editing headers and time entries will be possible via inline editing, creating new records much easier and more.
Resources
If you’d like dive deeper into Microsoft’s Release Wave 1 2023, there are several ways for you to navigate through:
- Overview site: From here, you can click from subpage to subpage in your browser through all the new features for Dynamics 365.
- Release planner: The interactive portal offers individual filter options for sorting all new features for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
- PDF file: A comprehensive PDF with all the new features for Dynamics 365.