Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan

Important

This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.

Download the 2020 release wave 1 PDF (last updated September 18, 2020)

The Dynamics 365 release plan (formerly release notes) for the 2020 release wave 1 describes all new features releasing from April 2020 through September 2020. You can either browse the release plan online or download the document as a PDF file. The PDF file also includes information about Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Power Platform governance and administration, and Common Data Model and data integration.

The Microsoft Power Platform features coming in the 2020 release wave 1 have been summarized in a separate release plan as well as a downloadable PDF.

2020 release wave 1 overview

The 2020 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 brings new innovations that provide you with significant capabilities to transform your business. The release contains hundreds of new features across Dynamics 365 applications including Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Commerce, and Business Central, our comprehensive business management solution designed for small to medium-sized businesses.

Marketing

  • Dynamics 365 Marketing is a marketing solution that helps businesses manage customer engagement through rich personalization and automation while leveraging their Microsoft assets.

Sales

  • Dynamics 365 Sales is centered around the customer relationship. It helps organizations understand customer needs, drives more relevant and authentic engagements, and improves selling efficiencies.
  • Dynamics 365 Sales Insights leverages the power of the Microsoft cloud to bring together sales information via Dynamics 365, communications via Office 365, relationships via LinkedIn, and the power of Microsoft AI to transform selling. Sales organizations gain a 360-degree view of their customer engagements to offer agility, adapting to rapid market changes, while adhering to business strategy, accommodating specific business requirements and guidelines.
  • Dynamics 365 Product Visualize, an augmented reality mobile application on iOS, accelerates the sales process by helping buyers and sellers reach a shared understanding faster.

Service

  • Dynamics 365 Customer Service is an end-to-end service for customer support, spanning self and assisted scenarios across multiple channels of customer engagement. It provides comprehensive and efficient case routing and management for agents, and enables authoring and consumption of knowledge management articles.
  • Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights provides an actionable view into critical performance metrics, operational data, and emerging trends using industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI). These insights empower customer service managers to make better decisions to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency with confidence.
  • Dynamics 365 Field Service is an end-to-end solution for on-site service that empowers organizations to move from being reactive to providing proactive or predictive field service, and to embrace new business models such as outcome-based service or “anything-as-a-service.”
  • Dynamics 365 Remote Assist is a mixed-reality solution available on HoloLens for first-line workers to collaborate with remotely located personnel to more effectively and efficiently get their job done.

Finance and Operations

  • Dynamics 365 Finance drives automation and predictive analytics capabilities, paving the way for deep proactive management.
  • Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management empowers employees and organizations with the ability to obtain a unified view of inventory, warehouse, manufacturing, service, and logistics with predictive analytics that turn data into insights to support better strategic decisions.
  • Dynamics 365 Guides is a mixed-reality application that enables employees to learn in the flow of work by providing holographic instructions when and where they need them. Dynamics 365 Guides addresses the needs of three key personas: content authors, operators, and managers/analysts.
  • Dynamics 365 Project Operations unifies operational workflows to provide the visibility, collaboration, and insights needed to drive success across teams—from sales to finance.

Human Resources

  • Dynamics 365 Human Resources helps HR professionals get the workforce insights needed to build data-driven employee experiences across multiple areas including Organization and Personnel management, Compensation, Benefits, Leave and absence, Compliance, Payroll integration, Performance feedback, and Self-service programs.

Commerce

  • Dynamics 365 Commerce is built on the proven Dynamics 365 Retail capabilities—it delivers a comprehensive omnichannel solution that unifies back-office, in-store, call center, and e-commerce experiences to provide a delightful shopping journey for consumers across the different touchpoints.
  • Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection focuses on Payment fraud protection and account creation. It will help enable an e-commerce merchant to drive down fraud loss, increase bank acceptance rates to yield higher revenue, and improve the online shopping experience of its customers. The new set of capabilities called Loss Prevention helps brick-and-mortar retail store operations fight fraud and abuse. This will help retailers reduce shrinkage losses and improve store efficiencies.
  • Dynamics 365 Connected Store delivers insights gathered from observational, location, and other line-of-business systems to improve the performance of their brick-and-mortar stores.

SMB

  • Dynamics 365 Business Central provides a comprehensive business application solution designed and optimized for small and medium-sized business (SMB) organizations.

Customer Data Platform

  • Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables every organization to unify disparate data—be it transactional, observational or behavioral sources—to gain a single view of customers and derive intelligent insights that drive key business processes.

Note

Starting in July 2020, Microsoft Forms Pro is renamed to Dynamics 365 Customer Voice.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice

  • Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is an enterprise survey solution that empowers everyone in the organization to develop enterprise-grade surveys to collect timely feedback from customers and employees. With point-and-click simplicity and AI-assisted features, everyone has the tools to create, send, and analyze custom surveys that integrate directly into the workflows and the organization's business system.

Industry accelerators

In 2020 release wave 1, we are adding industry accelerators as a separate section. The following industry accelerators are included in this wave:

  • Automotive accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions based on entities and attributes that dealerships and OEMs commonly leverage for customer experience and other business processes. These entities include deals, sales contracts, specifications, fleet, warranties, inspection, test drives, branding, business, customer-vehicle relationship, vehicle and equipment, lead, service and after-sales management, and more.

  • Education accelerator includes entities around student engagement and additional entities around internships, scholarships, grants, and accomplishments.

  • Financial services accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions based on entities and attributes that banks commonly leverage for customer experience and other business processes. These entities include banks, branches, financial products, loans, referrals, limits, requested facilities, and more.

  • Health accelerator allows you to build solutions and create new use cases and workflows with entities focused on enhanced care coordination and the ability to segment patients and providers based on Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data.

  • Nonprofit accelerator enables you to develop nonprofit solutions based on entities and attributes that nonprofits commonly leverage for constituent management, fundraising, awards, program delivery, and impact tracking.

    Note

    Starting in May 2020, we will have new industry accelerators:

    Manufacturing accelerator enables you to quickly develop solutions to intelligently onboard and manage your suppliers.

    Media and communications accelerator enables you to more easily build solutions around a variety of use cases that support intelligent audience and fan engagement.

Important

The Microsoft Power Platform features coming in the 2020 release wave 1 have been summarized in a separate release plan.

Key dates for the 2020 release wave 1

This release plan describes functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).

Here are the key dates for the 2020 release wave 1.

Milestone Date Description
Release plans available Jan 27, 2020 Learn about the new capabilities coming in the 2020 release wave 1 (April 2020 – September 2020) across Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
Early access available Feb 3, 2020 Test and validate new features and capabilities that will be a part of the 2020 release wave 1, coming in April, before they get enabled automatically for your end users. You can view the Dynamics 365 2020 release wave 1 early access features now.
Release plans available in additional 11 languages Feb 12, 2020 The Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans are published in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Swedish.
General availability April 1, 2020 Production deployment for the 2020 release wave 1 begins. Regional deployments will start on May 1, 2020.

Continuing from the 2019 release wave 2, we are calling out how each feature will be enabled in your environment:

  • Users, automatically – These features include changes to the user experience for users and are enabled automatically.
  • Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically – These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
  • Users by admins, makers, or analysts – These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.

You can get ready with confidence knowing which features will be enabled automatically.

We’ve done this work to help you—our partners, customers, and users—drive the digital transformation of your business on your terms. We’re looking forward to engaging with you as you put these new services and capabilities to work, and we’re eager to hear your feedback as you dig into the 2020 release wave 1.

Let us know your thoughts. Share your feedback in the Dynamics 365 community forums. We will use your feedback to make improvements.