Microsoft just released their plans for updates to all Dynamics 365 applications coming from April 2021 to September 2021 as part of 2021 Release Wave 1. Most of these features will be available for public preview in March with general availability in April. While delivery timelines may change, we now have a good idea of the major updates to Dynamics 365 Business Central that will be coming throughout the middle-part of the year.

Here are some of the biggest changes coming to the application that Business Central users and admins should be aware of.

Microsoft has recently released the preview of the updates coming with the Dynamics 365 2021 Release Wave 1 this spring. There are a variety of features coming to the Dynamics 365 ecosystem with general availability for many beginning in April and continuing to roll out through September. Early access for new features becomes available on February 1st. We have picked out some of the highlights for Dynamics 365 applications that are included in the release.

If your organization uses Dynamics 365 for Sales, you can track emails from clients, vendors, leads, opportunities, etc. right from Outlook and those emails will automatically sync up to the associated record in your Dynamics 365 CRM system.

Dynamics 365 Marketing is a powerful digital marketing application that help users create marking content and distribute it manually or through automated processes. Its wide variety of tools make it effective for most marketing campaigns. Dynamics 365 Marketing has its own insights and analytics tools to help marketers learn what has proved effective and what can be improved.

However, with the use of Microsoft Dataverse and Power BI, interactive, highly customizable reports can be created to boost the visibility of important marketing data. Power BI is also a low-code solution, so, while coding knowledge can be helpful, an extensive background in development is not needed to make effective, good-looking reports.

Dynamics 365 Business Central makes use of a feature called Business Intelligence to assist end-users in data analysis and reporting. This works largely with the help of dimensions. Dimensions in Business Central are custom attributes that can be assigned to a variety of different entry records. These dimensions can then be grouped by similarities such as a region or product and with reporting via account schedules.

If your organization already uses Microsoft Teams for internal or external communication, you’ll be happy to know that Microsoft continues to release monthly updates for the application that greatly advance the collaboration capabilities. If you haven’t used Teams before, it is included in most Microsoft 365 packages and integrates with the Office storage applications like SharePoint and traditional Office applications like Word and Excel. We’ve put together a list of the latest updates to Microsoft Teams that will encourage collaboration among your staff.

Dynamics GP clients have many questions surrounding the future of Microsoft ERP and where Dynamics GP fits into that picture. We’ve put together some FAQs to help organizations understand the context of Microsoft’s messaging and give them the information they need to make informed decisions about their long-term ERP solution.

Dynamics NAV clients have many questions surrounding the future of Microsoft ERP and where Dynamics NAV fits into that picture. We’ve put together some FAQs to help organizations understand the context of Microsoft’s messaging and give them the information they need to make informed decisions about their long-term ERP solution.

Dynamics 365 Customer Voice is Microsoft’s premier solution for customer feedback management. Customer Voice provides organizations with effective solutions to build and analyze customer surveys and identify metrics they need to improve the experience of their customers.

Before making the move to Dynamics 365, Custom Education Solutions kept sales and marketing data in separate systems causing sales and marketing efforts to be slowed and disjointed. With Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing, the sales and marketing teams can work together to reach targeted audiences and focus on the opportunities most likely to close.

The lines between sales and marketing continue to blur. If sales and marketing teams are not on the same page or unaware of what each other are doing to further the sales funnel, valuable time and effort can be wasted. For organizations that are using Dynamics 365 Sales, the Campaigns entity provides an introductory way to create and track marketing campaign performance and activity without a dedicated marketing application.

Recently, as part of Dynamics 365 Business Central’s 2020 Release Wave 2, Microsoft introduced the company hub to Dynamics 365 Business Central. The Company Hub is designed to help users that work within multiple company environments in Business Central by giving them a central location from which they can easily access data across the different environments of each company or region.

Back in August, Microsoft announced the official end of support for Internet Explorer coming in late 2021. This announcement also included a slew of end-of-support dates for Microsoft 365 application support of Internet Explorer. As of November 30, 2020, Microsoft Teams no longer supports Internet Explorer 11.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s champion for mid-market business management solutions. Business Central was built around the foundation of Dynamics NAV and brings business processes together into a single, easy-to-use interface. Better yet, as part of the Dynamics 365 platform, Business Central is easily connected to other Dynamics 365 applications such as Marketing and Sales to fully synchronize a business’ functionality.

For companies currently using other Microsoft solutions such as Dynamics GP or Dynamics NAV, an upgrade to Business Central would provide many benefits from both an operational and cost standpoint.

For salespeople in the field that spend most of their time on the road, it can be difficult to find the time to make sure their CRM data is up to date. Frankly, it is difficult to use most CRM applications on the road. The latest release of Dynamics 365 Sales expands the mobile experience to help salespeople to quickly access and update customer information on the go.

This is an update to a previous blog detailing the default opening behavior of Office 365 app files in OneDrive. The process has largely changed since the original blog post. The purpose of this blog is to show how to set OneDrive up to automatically open Office 365 files in the desktop app, rather than the online app.

Dynamics 365 Marketing is Microsoft’s premiere digital marketing application built directly into the Dynamics 365 ecosystem. For those of you using Dynamics 365 Marketing already, you may see changes here and there as Microsoft pushes out new releases as part of Dynamics 365 2020 Release Wave 2.

Some of these features are not very visible and require additional steps to enable. We’ve put together a list of 5 new features in Dynamics 365 Marketing that can immediately impact your marketing operations and make life easier for your marketing team.

In the work-from-home era, companies like professional service organizations have been forced to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Engaging with audiences without in-person interactions can seem like a daunting task. However, applications like Dynamics 365 Marketing do the work to help companies keep their customers engaged.

Getting ready to close the year for 2020 in Dynamics GP? Watch the recording of our annual webinar to learn everything you need to run an anxiety-free close in Dynamics GP and get your questions answered.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central provides solutions for a wide variety of business needs. It is designed particularly with small and midsized businesses in mind to help them manage and adapt their processes. Business Central is receiving a variety of updates as part of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 release wave 2 plan for its wide range of business.

There are improvements for general app performance, administration tools, handling of growing consumer bases, file storage, business expansion, and an increased integration with Microsoft Teams. Also, included in these updates are many user-requested features.