2025 Release Wave 1: Dynamics 365 Sales features we’re looking forward to
Microsoft’s twice-yearly release waves are highly anticipated. They include features across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications, and they are packed with improvements and brand new features, some of which are requested from app users themselves.
If you’ve found these release waves announcements and rollout dates a tad confusing, you’re not the only one. To briefly summarize, the first release wave of the year is usually announced in February, rolling out between April and September. Expect the second release wave to be announced in August and released between October and March of the following year. Check out our other blog that includes an illustration of that release wave schedule and an introduction to the Release Wave Planner, a useful way to review and track plans you’re interested in.
On that note, though you can search through all the release wave documentation to see what’s coming, we encourage you to use the planner. It makes feature review a lot easier, and even fun.
Below, we’ve pulled a couple of the features that our consultants think are going to make the biggest splash for the widest group of Dynamics 365 Sales users.
Automate follow-up lead outreach
We’re all busy, and it’s easy to lose track of lead outreach status when you’re inundated with leads at various stages of contact. But losing track means we might miss the crucial communication window and lose the lead. With the sales qualification agent, outreach emails can be set up to continue the lead outreach process after the salesperson sends the first email. These follow-up emails adjust dynamically based on the lead’s response—aka if/when the lead replies, what they say in that response, and the perceived sentiment of the response. Say they don’t respond within a few days—the system may send out a gentle reminder email. Or if you receive an out-of-office reply, the follow-up schedule will adjust to resume after they return. And if the lead sounds exceptionally interested, the follow-ups can even adapt accordingly in frequency and content.
To save your salespeople even more time and administrative time, the lead will also be able to select a meeting time based on the salesperson’s up-to-date calendar. Read more about the sales qualification agent and the feature’s timeline.
Lead suggestions from Customer Service
For all the interconnectivity the Dynamics 365 CRM suite provides right now, there is always room for even more connections to be made. This next feature uses the sales qualification agent again, this time to analyze customer service interactions to suggest additional cross-sell or upsell opportunities. What begins as a help ticket could turn into a sale—under the right circumstances, with the right insight, and using a tailored approach. This is a true way to break down the walls between the sales and customer service departments by making info that has historically been available to just one department accessible by both.
This feature will need to be enabled by admin. Read more about this feature in Microsoft’s release wave plans.
Natural language search, sort, and filter
One of the strengths of Copilot, Microsoft’s AI tool embedded in many of their applications (including Dynamics 365 CRM apps), is its ability to take a prompt and sift through the available data within the system to populate results. For instance, features like record summaries take the data within a lead, opportunity, or account to provide a brief, easy-to-consume recap of the content within the record, allowing a salesperson to understand the pertinent information regarding an account or prospect without needing to review the full record.
This same concept has been extended to the search, sort, and filter functions in list views. Instead of the usual way we navigate lists, which includes adding potentially complex filtering, sorting, and even specific searches, you can now identify what you’re searching for via the language in which you’d normally speak, and the system will create the view for you. For instance, you can search for leads assigned to you, opportunities in a certain stage of the business process flow, or cases that need to be followed up on by a certain date.
The natural language feature is in public preview, and you can review more details, like its estimated general availability, in the release wave plans.
Prompt Copilot using natural language to search, sort, and filter. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Remember to allocate some time to testing any features you’re interested in integrating into your processes. Also keep in mind that some features need to be enabled and configured, while others are automatically pushed into your production environment when they become generally available. Testing features should be completed in a sandbox (test) environment, and if you don’t have time to test anticipated features, your Syvantis consultants are happy to help you out. We can tell you which features could impact your processes, integrations, or customizations, and we can even test them for you. For help with release wave testing, just reach out to Syvantis!