D365 Customer Engagement and Power Platform 2022 Wave 2 Release Highlights

Every six months, Microsoft announces new features and updates across Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. As a trusted partner, we’ve picked out a few highlights from the upcoming Wave 2 Release 2022 that we think you should be looking out for.

But before we dive into the details, it’s important to know the dates. Early access of the release launches today (Monday 1^stAugust) to allow for testing and validation of the new features in your sandbox before they are automatically enabled for your users.

General availability deployment is based on where the environments are created; for Great Britain, it’s scheduled for Friday 7^thOctober to Sunday 9^th October.

You can, of course, choose to opt in ahead of the deployment schedule, providing you’ve been able to validate and embed the new functionality and regression test your current functionality.

Now, on to the fun bit – here are some upcoming Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (we’ll be covering Dynamics 365 ERP in a separate post) and Power Platform features to watch out for:

Connect to external data from Microsoft Dataverse

Virtual tables may have been around a while, but with this new feature you can connect to existing data sources such as SQL servers or Excel files and interact with that external data as if it’s part of Dataverse through a simple wizard. Dependent on the connection, a table and correct schema will automatically create.

Enable Power Fx in business rules

Business rules provide a simple drag and drop interface to implement commonly used business scenarios. In the past, these would require custom coding like JavaScript; this Wave will see business rules expand in definition to use Power Fx (Microsoft’s programming language) as the universal, low-code language used across the Power Platform, helping take business rules one step further.

Virtual tables between instances

With new functionality, users can create a virtual table in one Dataverse environment that can provide access to data in a different Dataverse environment. This allows users who may have multiple Dataverse organisations to use existing data and avoid duplicate content across organisations.

Sequential approvals in Power Automate

In the world of Customer Insights, Microsoft is introducing B2B scenarios, expanding the use cases from individual consumers and clients to businesses that you may deal with. This new feature opens up the tool to a whole new audience looking to solve disparate data problems in order to better understand their business customers.

Power BI quick reports in Power Apps

Creating Power BI quick reports with one click has been in preview for a while, but now comes with extra functionality, including the ability to save the Power BI report to a workspace of your choice, making it easier to access and customise further.

Customer support swarming

Announced at the recent Business Applications launch event, D365 Customer Service’s customer support swarming sees enhancements in this year’s Wave 2, including a richer agent experience, streamlined admin experience for faster set up and the ability to define which CRM users can automatically be added as participants to specific swarms. Be prepared to swarm cases in apps you’re used to, including Microsoft Teams!

Track linked Microsoft Teams chat as activity in timeline

Collaboration across different sales teams happens primarily on Teams chat. This new feature in Dynamics 365 Sales helps business users keep track of the latest in their conversations associated with a record. You can now track a linked chat in the activity timeline, search the timeline for specific chat activities and get notified when a conversation is updated, or a document uploaded.

Scale multi-brand businesses

With Dynamics 365 Marketing – and specifically with real-time marketing – you can now effortlessly organise your digital assets, content and journeys to match your organisational structures by separating business and customer data. This will also allow for insights into a specific brand’s marketing performance, without losing the view of the bigger picture.