March 2023 Edition:
2023 Wave 1 Update Roundup

Release Wave 1 of 2023 is just around the corner. Are you ready? Here is a list of features that are ready for you to test now, with expected release dates.

Marketing

  • Real-time marketing now has the ability to compartmentalise assets, content, journeys etc per area of your organisation, making it easier to manage, maintain and view performance. In preview
     

  • Automatic UTM tracking can be added to all outbound messages. You can optionally override the default values generated by the system. This will make it easier to track, refine and optimise conversions. In preview, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Message fatigue is a big problem! You're now able to configure per business unit the daily, weekly and monthly marketing message limits a per may receive. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

  • Marketers, one big feature you've all been waiting for! Easily create smart forms that can be embedded anywhere. No need for developers, drag and drop editor, configure look and feel, instantly publish. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

  • Quickly send a marketing message without creating a journey. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

Sales

  • Improved opportunity screen by de-cluttering the command bar and wider columns to make it easy to read key information. Early access, go-live Apr 2023

  • Focus mode making it easier to go through leads in a more efficient manner. Update will allow you to configure what fields are displayed on the cards. Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Sensitive personal information such as credit card, bank account numbers will be redacted from transcripts, call summaries, notes and action items. Early access, go-live Sep 2023
     

  • New pipeline view making it easier to get a bird's-eye view of your pipeline. It'll also make it easier to manage opportunities using editable grids, side-panels, add notes + tasks, see total sum of pipeline and much more. Early access, go-live Apr 2023

Customer Voice

Nothing new here for March sorry!

Customer Service

  • New email template creation experience provides an advanced, digital content designer for creating and styling templates. It includes advanced layouts that are responsive and adapt to any screen size. Users can add elements like images, text, buttons or dividers easily while creating email templates. Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Improved and simplified case management screens; priority field is colour coded, case statuses are colour coded, when adding a case to a queue users will see which queue the case belongs to and if it has already been assigned to someone, de-cluttered case resolution screen and much more.
    Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Users will be able to mark knowledge articles as favourites so they can refer to them quickly.
    Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Customer Service Workspace layout enhanced. For example, sessions and tabs are displayed horizontally which reduces number of clicks to navigate certain areas. Early access, go-live Apr 2023

  • Ingest external knowledge articles and allow them to be searchable within Dynamics! Basically you can add multiple knowledge article sources (website, SharePoint etc), Dynamics will then ingest all the content, index and make them available for users within Dynamics. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

  • Contact center managers will be able to view operational performance in near real-time via high level dashboards. You'll need the omni-channel engagement features along with voice routing enabled for this to fully light up. In preview, go-live Sep 2023

Power Apps

  • As mentioned earlier, the new look and feel will be an opt-in feature that will align the UI with the Fluent Design System. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

  • Advanced Find enhancement - You can see more fields per record and search for records within a specific view to choose the right record to filter against with a new "Advanced lookup". Admins will need to enable/disable this feature. Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Offline sync icon has been updated to always display with more contextual information such as, is the connection live, is the data being refreshed, are there pending updates etc. Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Power BI quick reports feature is enabled by default. This feature automatically generates a Power BI report with visuals based on the view so you can start exploring the data quickly. In preview, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Easily share records with other people. New look & feel, behaviour now consistent with OneDrive/SharePoint share option. Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • Cool new collaboration feature. When multiple people are working on the same record, you'll be able to see who else is on it on the top right hand corner of the record. Very similar to how Word, Excel show when multiple people are working on the record. Early access, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • When a new column/field is created, you'll be able to automatically add it to forms and views. No need to go into each form and view manually to update. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

  • PowerFx champs, you'll love this one! Any formula you create can be placed in a function definition with parameters, immediately reused across the app, and abstracted for use across other apps! No more copy pasting, duplicating logic :) Not available
     

  • Users will be able to switch tenants in Power Apps on mobile devices. No need to log out/log in. Shared apps will be available in a drop-down list. Live
     

  • I've been waiting for this one! You can now build complex multi-entity forms that allow users to be highly productive. You'll have full control over the form, including the ability to embed related entities/records with edit and business process flow capability. In preview

Governance & Administration

  • Inactive developer environments are automatically disabled and then deleted to free up resources for improved performance. Not available
     

  • Inactive users can be permanently deleted instead of keeping them in a disabled state. This helps with GDPR and privacy requirements. Please take care with this one, you may still want to keep records associated with disabled users. In preview

Pro Development

  • New capabilities to initialize solutions, packages, and Power Apps component framework controls in Visual Studio Code instead of doing it all through command line. In preview
     

  • Improved CI/CD capabilities for people who use non-Microsoft systems within the deployment lifecycle. In preview
     

  • Right now it's a pain in the butt managing solution export files in source control. Well, good news! this feature will allow you to properly branch and merge solution files correctly! In preview, go-live Jul 2023
     

  • Code-first developers you're now able to use command-line, Azure DevOps & GitHub in your pipelines. In preview, go-live Apr 2023

Power Pages & Power Apps Portals

Nothing noteworthy here. Although a bunch of stuff went live during December and Feb.

Dataverse

  • Azure Synapse Link will notify you the status of the link. At the moment, you need to monitor the status page to see the status. With this update you'll be able to subscribe to notifications and stay informed. In preview, go-live TBC
     

  • Administrators without Global Administrator / Exchange Administrator rights will be able to approve and enable mailboxes for users. In preview, go-live Apr 2023
     

  • New security role called "App Opener" that is pre-configured with the required minimum privileges to open an app. Makes it easier to build security roles. Live
     

  • You can now build/have up to 3000 custom tables in an environment! I don't know why any sane person would do this... Live
     

  • You will be able to encrypt all your Power Platform data at rest using a key that you provide. The key must be provided via Azure Key Vault. In preview
     

  • Real-time contextual notifications to Power Apps users via in-app notifications, external notifications and push notifications. Early access, go-live Apr 2023

Power Automate

A bunch of features from 2022 Release Wave 2 went live in March. One thing I wanted to mention, if you're using the Expression Editor, you're most likely frustrated at the slowness and it's behaviour. Give the experimental expression editor a try. You can enable it by toggling the feature flag in settings.

AI Builder

Nothing new to try. However, give Azure OpenAI services a go (you'll need an invite).

Power Virtual Agents

Biggest announcement here is that OpenAI ChatGPT features are being rolled into Power Virtual Agents. ChatGPT likes to make stuff up so be super careful!

​Power BI

No new features to try. However, checkout the features that was released during November and December.

Data Integration

  • Customer Insights will get a performance enhancement via Azure Synapse. Transforming and refreshing data will be faster. In preview