Highlights of the 2021 Release Wave 2 for
Dynamics 365 & Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft has released the plans for the second major wave of updates for the cloud platform covering Dynamics 365, Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate + much more.

The 2021 Release Wave 2 will roll out between October 2021 and March 2022, bringing new features to the Power Platform. We’ve pulled out the highlights focusing mainly on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, so you don’t have to.

Early Access (Preview): Available Now!

General Availability: October 1, 2021

Download the complete Wave 2 Power Platform release plan

Power Apps | Dataverse | Dynamics 365 |
Power Automate

UX / UI improvements

• Improved PowerApps designer that allows you to build Canvas Apps and Model Driven Apps using the same interface.

• Brand consistency and UI updates are coming to the fore to ensure a consistent brand across multiple applications meaning the ability to impact the look and feel to reflect your organization will become easier. Improvements in UI will also allow greater user experience.

• Modern Search allows you a seamless search function across the dataverse. This means, your search will show suggested results using a personalized experience. You can also use quick action commands to complete a task without needing to ‘click into a contact.’

• This includes utilsing Azure Directory to enable support across Dynamic membership type. This ensures that you are only surfacing the data that you are cleared for.

• Significant user experience enhancements including advanced lookup capability as you type, being able to explore that data without losing context. You can also have one or more side panels open beside the main content. There have been multiple enhancements to cater for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1).

• Microsoft PowerFX allows you to build formulas and is built specifically for citizen developers. The use of AI can enable users to type in what they are aiming to achieve and the system will automatically generate formulas.

Power Automate goodness

• There will be a new version of the Power Automate mobile app coming out for iOS and Android.

• You can also revert back to a previously created cloud flow. This is to help with business continuity, if you need to revert - you can understand which flow you want to revert back to.

• Power Automate now allows interactive comments on flows in their elements similar to the way comments work in Word. This allows collaboration and replying, resolving or deleting comments. You can also now see presence within the flow for those that are working on the flow at that particular time.

• Power Automate now adds flow templates to Teams. You can add flows to teams actions such as automated messages when someone is added to a team or channel notifications plus much more!

• You can now bulk submit failed runs instead of having to do them one by one in Power Automate saving you time.

Artificial Intelligence enhancements

• AI Builder now has signature detection in form processing so the system can automatically detect if a document has been signed. You can also train AI to recognise and pull out unstructured data within a document such as amounts, dates, names etc.

• AI Builder can now detect checkboxes so, where you are still utilizing paper based surveys, it can detect a checked or unchecked textbox.

• New AI Builder templates will help you analyze social media posts, invoice payable processes, order processing and generating leads from business cards amongst others.

SOME OTHER GOODIES

• Power Apps Portals: Modern search (as described above are enabled for Portals - this will ensure the security permissions are adhered to. Developers will now be able to call to WebAPI to perform complex operations extending the Portals functionality. You will also be able to create custom UI elements used within forms and webpages such as PCF controls and liquid tags.

• There are multiple Dataverse and Power Platform improvements including API search enhancements across the Dataverse (mentioned earlier). The main improvement is the ability for citizen data analysts to push prepared data to Microsoft Dataverse or Data Lake. You’ll be able to export output data from queries into excel or csv. so you can make business decisions more easily.

• You can now send SMS messages through Twilio and Telesign. This is now an out of the box function to communicate directly with your contacts and then be able to report on and kick of Power Automate flows.

• There is an improved webinar registration through Microsoft Teams where you can now create webinars and manage participant registrations. Send automated messages based on attendance. Utilise analytics to learn and drive higher registrations for next time.

• You can now use Power Automate with in a Customer Journey. This will enable you to kick off internal flows, communications or business processes not only from data inside of you organization, but also from data garnered outside. It is utilsing the full capability of Power Automate and integrating it with marketing. For Example, let customers know automatically when a product that is back ordered is back in stock - that can kick off a marketing email.

• Utilize Key Driver Analysis in Customer Voice - This allows you to see the importance of other questions in your survey compared to the overall feedback metrics. You can see what questions are the most important for your customers - and can help drive KPI metrics (such as NPS) within your organisation.

• You can now create a segment for leads and custom entities using segmentation builder. Using this builder, you can build dynamics segments for contacts but also includes leads in that segment list to make sure you are always hitting the right people at the right time. Using plain language, you can create segments based on behavioural data for a contact or lead or custom entity.

• Having happy customer service people (or agents) means having happy customers. Agent Experiences are core to Dynamics 365 Customer Service. The agent workspace inbox view is designed to ensure that agents focus on the customer and their issue by integrating across the CS workspace and Omnichannel Engagement hub.

• Other usability enhancements for Agent workspaces include multisession apps to allows agents to work on several cases at once and move through them seamlessly.

• You can also extend the app side pane capability to include agent scripts and macros to increase agent productivity.

• Customer Service team members can collaborate across the organisation (agents, managers, departments, support experts) using Microsoft Teams. You can chat, get access to AI-driven suggestions of who resolved similar cases, link chats to case records, see previous teams chats on similar cases, and see presence of those you need information from.

• Enhancement of AI suggested keywords within Knowledge Management Articles ensures that your people don’t waste time typing in and painstaking making sure keywords need to align to ensure consistency. The new AI suggested keywords provides automatic suggestions of article keywords based on the title, content and existing keywords in an article.