October 2020 Dynamics 365 Update – The Basics

Microsoft is never satisfied. As leaders in technology, the company is always looking for ways to improve its offerings.

With Dynamics 365, Microsoft updates and enhances the solution every six months. These updates are released in April and October of each year.

With the next update less than a month away we decided to keep our readers in tune with Microsoft’s latest offerings. Stay tuned during the month of September for blogs highlighting a few of the most exciting improvements coming to Dynamics 365, October 1st.

In part 1 of our October 2020 Dynamics 365 update preview, we present an overview of the entire release.

Dynamics 365 Sales

Improvements to the Sales solution include assistance in identifying and flagging potentially duplicate records – a warning prompt will be triggered to help you keep your data clean. Additionally, improvements to the email experience will allow you to easily manage attachments and PDFs.

Also, the public will be able to preview a new Sales mobile app that will help sellers find information, update CRM, and complete tasks with increased AI capabilities.

Dynamics 365 Marketing

Microsoft will introduce a more intuitive Customer Journey Canvas experience that will now also show negative journey paths to allow you to learn from your unsuccessful outcomes. Additionally, the email editor has been improved, there are expanded form entity options, and upgraded Social Media posting scheduling. Other improvements include flexibility for additional email columns and faster loading.

With many organizations now working remotely, increasing Microsoft Teams Integration was a priority in this update, as well.

Dynamics 365 Field Service

This update makes several important changes to give you a better view and understanding of crucial Field Service metrics. 

Workorder completion surveys have been added to get you significant, immediate feedback that you can act on to improve efforts in the future. Additionally, workorder metrics allow you to track delivery insights for each order, to uncover and address inefficiencies.  

To help you better satisfy customers, enhanced skill-based matching allows you to pair the best technician to a work order.

Additionally, there has been improvements to the calendar view to provide you and your staff a better outlook of your entire operation.

Power Apps

In combination with the Unified Interface transition, several changes have been made to Power Apps, making the end user experience more efficient.  

Moreover, a new transition service has been added. This will help you make the switch to the environment before December 1, which is when all environments will be automatically switched.

If you’d like help with this transition, we offer a UI Assessment.  Click here to learn more. 

These are just a sampling of the changes you can expect in the October release. All this month, we expand on these highlights, starting with a deep dive of the D365 Sales components next week.

If you’d like to learn how Dynamics 365 can help drive your organization’s success, give one of our experts a call today, for more information.