Top 3 Features in April 2022 Dynamics 365 Release
It’s said that April Showers bring Mayflowers, but what do April Waves bring? Thanks to Microsoft, the April Wave 1 of 2022 feature release for Dynamics 365 has brought a long list of feature enhancements aimed at improving the end user experience. Here’s an overview of a few of my favorite features introduced this release.
Next Generation Field Service Schedule Board
When Microsoft first introduced the schedule board in Field Service, the functionality was a game changer for organizations. As the system has become more widely adopted, there’s been a demand for better performance and usability. In response to those demands and after a lengthy period of living in a preview state, the latest version of the Field Service Schedule Board is now readily available for the general public.
End users interacting with the schedule board will first notice a visual change to the schedule board. The UI changes come with faster loading time and better performance when scheduling and rescheduling. In addition to faster speeds, there is a new full screen mode that eliminates all the fluff a user doesn’t want to see when trying to schedule. Finally, the rendering of the Map on the schedule board gives a better visual of where requirements are and where resources are.
Picture: a view of the next generation schedule board displayed in hourly view, with the map displayed and unscheduled work order views.
Enhanced Experiencing with Email Templates
It’s no surprise that the use of email templates can save time when sending the same content to different recipients. While Microsoft has provided the ability to send emails with templates directly from the application, a new experience to search and find the right template has been introduced. The changes here will make it easier for end users working in an environment with several email templates to find the right content.
This admin enabled feature will provide the end user with the ability to change how email templates are displayed when searching in the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement platform. Previously, users only had a list view, but now the system offers a grid view and a tile view. The actual search capabilities have extended the ability to search for content based on a templates title, description, OR content. The original capability was limited to searching by template title/subject, so now users can type in content that might appear in the body of a template and find results. Finally, a filter option has been provided, so end users can input their own custom filters if searching off key terms isn’t narrowing the list enough.
Picture: The new email template selection window showing templates in a tile view.
Sales Enterprise License Feature Set Expansion
Licensing changes may not seem like a big advantage, but this is actually a big change in favor of enhancing the lives of salespeople everywhere. Previously, features such as Sales Accelerator, Conversation Intelligence, and Predictive scoring were only available with the Sales Premium Licensing. However, with this latest release, Microsoft has extended these capabilities to the Sales Enterprise license.
Use rights with the Sales Enterprise License will give limited capacity access to these features as follows:
- Up to 3 hours of conversation intelligence/user/month
- Conversation intelligence provides call summary and action item extraction with Microsoft’s AI models
- Up to 1500 records connected to a sequence in sales accelerator/environment/month
- Sales Accelerator sequencing allows automatic creation of activities related to Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities to provided recommended next steps to sellers as they build sales.
- Up to 1500 leads or opportunity records scored/environment/month
- Predictive scoring helps end users prioritize the leads/opportunities they target based on configurable record scoring models.
This gives organizations in the Enterprise licensing structure the ability to try out some of the advanced selling tools Microsoft Dynamics provides without paying more for Premium capabilities. As end user adoption of these tools grows, if the organization needs to advance beyond these capacities, the Premium License removes these limitations.
Picture: A view of the Seller Experience using sequences with Sales Accelerator
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More Content by Kayla Rohde
