2025 Release Wave 1: Most anticipated Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys features
Microsoft is continually developing and improving its applications to stay current with the latest technology advances and customer needs. These new or updated features are announced twice a year and then released over the next several months. The easiest way to review and track individual feature plans is the infinitely helpful Release Wave Planner tool or the full release wave documentation. We encourage you to use the release wave planner, where you can sign in, save features you’re interested in, and keep track of general availability.
Read more about release wave timelines and the planning tool→
As is always the case, some new features are expected to be exceptionally useful for a wide scope of app users. Our consultants have reviewed the 2025 Release Wave 1 plans to highlight the most anticipated features for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys.
Collect extra info on forms without updating data fields
Here’s something many Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys users have been wanting for a while! Now you can gather additional info on your forms—no need to create a new field to store that information or associate it with a field on your lead or contact record. Extra form fields are easy to create! Just drag and drop it from the toolbox where all your other form fields are located, change the label, customize the properties, and presto! You’ve now collected that temporary data you need.
Adding fields to a form is a breeze, just drag and drop!
These answers are stored in the form submission itself in the associated contact or lead record (in the timeline and under the Insights tab) and on the form page itself, under the Form Submissions tab.
Read more about extra form fields→
Automate handoffs between mkt and sales
Every business struggles with siloed data and processes to some degree, and Microsoft apps are continually striving to reduce those unnecessary silos. A key moment to ensure a smooth and timely transfer of your lead nurturing process is when you’ve qualified a lead as sales-ready. As a marketer, what is the most efficient way to alert your sales team that the ball is now in their court? Trigger the creation of sales activities via your customer journeys at the precise moment the lead is ready for that individualized attention.
Embedded in this new feature is the ability to also create a lead or opportunity record when a customer interacts with your campaign. No more communication lapses in the marketing-to-sales handoff.
Read more about automating handoffs→
Setup and execute pre-and post-event comms
One of the benefits of real-time journeys, specifically for event management purposes, is the ability to use email and journey templates, in tandem with conditional and dynamic content, to create engaging, personalized experiences across the entire event, from invitation to registration, attendance, and follow-up. The goal is to deliver better experiences while exerting less time and effort.
To facilitate that, the app now includes out-of-the-box journeys tailored for events. Create and manage your event and all event communication in the same place!
Read more about this event communications feature→
Pause and resume your journeys
We’ve all had moments where we want to pause our journeys—not stop them, not restart them, not delete them entirely, but just pause them for a while. There are a lot of reasons a marketing team may want to do this. Up until now, however, journeys could be stopped, but they could not simply be paused until further notice. This causes mayhem when you do want to continue with the journey, and you may have to recreate the journey, start it over, and sometimes even adjust the audience to exclude those customers you already reached out to.
But now journeys can be manually paused and restarted to pick back up where they left off when the time comes. A paused journey can also be stopped altogether.
Manually pause and restart your journey at any time
Microsoft is continually updating their business app ecosystem, including the full Dynamics 365 CRM suite, with user-friendly, innovation-forward features and tools with no additional cost for these changes. The updates are also applied automatically to SaaS environments, but you may need to enable a feature if it requires activation or configuration before use.
If you’re looking for update testing or one-on-one training for either new features or base functionality, reach out to Syvantis. We’re happy to help!