2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365

Jan 15, 2025

Discover what’s new in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365 2024 release wave 2

Microsoft continues its commitment to innovation with biannual updates to the Dynamics 365 suite, offering new features and improvements to help businesses optimize their customer engagement strategies. The 2024 Release Wave 2 introduces enhancements across various CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications, streamlining workflows, improving analytics, and expanding automation capabilities.

In this blog post, we’ll highlight key features and updates to the following Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications:

Dynamics 365 Field Service

Copilot & AI-enhancements

The 2024 Release Wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces updates to Copilot AI, aimed at improving efficiency and accessibility for service managers and frontline workers. These updates focus on streamlining workflows, customizing data outputs, and enabling seamless access to information across devices.

  • Enhanced Copilot usability: Copilot usability has been improved across web and mobile platforms, enabling technicians, dispatchers, and managers to access work order details more efficiently. Updated prompts and workflows are designed to better integrate with existing tasks.
  • Customizable work order summaries: Organizations can now configure work order summaries generated by Copilot to include data relevant to their specific requirements. These summaries are available in the Field Service app, mobile app, and Outlook, providing consistent information across platforms.
  • Digitized inspection templates: Copilot can convert paper or PDF checklists into editable digital inspection templates. These templates can be linked to work orders and used by technicians to follow protocols and collect data effectively.
  • AI-powered work order recaps: AI-generated recaps offer concise overviews of work order tasks, notes, and activities. This feature helps users quickly access key information without navigating through multiple screens or forms.

These updates aim to provide practical tools for managing field service tasks more effectively, with a focus on integrating AI capabilities into daily workflows.

Copilot & AI-enhancements

Optimized resource scheduling

The 2024 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces a new scheduling experience designed to enhance accessibility, usability, and performance. This release marks the complete transition to the updated schedule board, which replaces the legacy version. Additionally, the new Scheduling Operations Agent leverages Copilot AI to streamline the management of technician schedules, ensuring resources are used efficiently while meeting business objectives.

Key features and capabilities

  • Dynamic schedule optimization: The Scheduling Operations Agent helps dispatchers address real-time scheduling challenges like traffic delays, double bookings, and last-minute cancellations. Copilot can quickly generate updated schedules that align with business priorities, reducing gaps and idle time.
  • Scenarios solved with AI: Dispatchers can resolve common scheduling issues efficiently, including:
    • Filling gaps from unexpected cancellations
    • Adjusting cascading delays caused by overruns
    • Reintegrating technicians returning from unplanned absences
    • Prioritizing higher-value work over low-priority tasks
    • Reducing travel time by reorganizing manual schedules
  • Goal-based scheduling adjustments: Copilot allows users to optimize schedules according to business goals, such as maximizing technician utilization, prioritizing critical work orders, or meeting promised service windows. It evaluates bookings and work orders for optimal alignment with skillsets, territories, and objectives.
  • Accessible optimization tools: The Scheduling Operations Agent integrates seamlessly into the Copilot side pane within the Dynamics 365 Field Service app, giving dispatchers instant access to powerful scheduling tools without disrupting their workflow.
Optimized resource scheduling

Enhancing technician productivity with new tools

The 2024 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Field Service introduces features aimed at improving technician productivity, from real-time collaboration to optimized offline capabilities. These enhancements ensure technicians have the tools they need to resolve issues efficiently, even in challenging environments.

Key features and capabilities

  • Remote Assist annotations in Microsoft Teams: Technicians can now access Remote Assist’s mixed reality annotations directly within Teams mobile. This feature allows frontline workers to collaborate seamlessly with support specialists via video calls, using 3D spatial annotations to resolve issues without needing to switch between apps.
  • Insights into offline sync performance: Field Service mobile offline capabilities now integrate with Application Insights, providing data on offline sync statistics. Organizations can track metrics like sync duration, success rates, and errors, enabling better troubleshooting and performance optimization for offline profiles.
  • Device-specific reporting: Application Insights also captures mobile device details such as make and model, helping organizations identify patterns and tailor solutions to the devices their workforce relies on most.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Copilot and AI innovation

The 2024 release wave 2 introduces powerful AI-driven updates to Dynamics 365 Customer Service, streamlining processes and enhancing customer experiences. These enhancements focus on leveraging AI to optimize workflows, reduce manual tasks, and improve decision-making for service teams.

Key updates

  • Customer knowledge management agent: This feature automatically creates knowledge articles from case data in real time, reducing the time to address emerging issues. It ensures compliance, prevents duplication, and provides actionable insights for supervisors to optimize knowledge use.
  • Copilot studio for customer surveys: Automated survey bots streamline customer feedback collection and actions across multiple channels. Supervisors gain access to summarized feedback insights to drive informed decisions and improvements.
  • Proactive prompts and insights with Copilot: Agents receive contextual prompts and case-related insights without needing to type manually. This saves time and ensures agents have access to relevant plugins and information during customer interactions.
  • Custom summaries for any record type: AI-generated summaries provide quick overviews of custom or standard records, like cases or accounts. Administrators can configure which data fields to include, helping agents access critical information faster.
  • Agent authentication for plugins: Support for agent-level authentication improves security and flexibility when accessing external data sources. This eliminates reliance on administrator credentials and prevents access disruptions.
  • Case management agent: This feature automates case creation, updates, and follow-ups during live chats and emails. It also facilitates expert collaboration with intelligent prompts and streamlines case handling, improving resolution times.
Copilot and AI innovation

Enhanced agent experiences

The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Service focuses on optimizing agent workflows, improving usability, and enhancing productivity. These updates provide tools to streamline case handling, restore sessions seamlessly, and leverage knowledge from various sources for Copilot, empowering agents to deliver efficient and effective service.

Key updates

  • View handling time for a case: Agents can now track and log the time spent on cases with automatic calculations and manual buffer inputs. This feature helps supervisors analyze case handling times for better staffing and operational planning.
  • View recent and pinned records in D365 Customer Service workspace: Agents can access recent and pinned records seamlessly across applications for a consistent and productive user experience. This enhancement simplifies navigation and improves efficiency when switching between apps.
  • Automatically restore sessions after a browser refresh: Agents no longer need to reopen sessions and tabs after refreshing their browser in D365 Customer Service workspace. This usability improvement saves time and ensures productivity by restoring entities, conversations, and focus to their last state.
  • Enhance Copilot responses with knowledge from additional sources: Administrators can now configure Copilot to draw from external knowledge platforms through Knowledge Hub. This expanded knowledge integration improves the quality and relevance of Copilot responses, boosting agent performance.
Enhanced agent experiences

Optimized supervisor experiences

The latest release includes enhancements for supervisors in Dynamics 365 Customer Service that empower them with tools to monitor, analyze, and optimize team performance effectively. These updates improve data visibility, enable actionable insights, and enhance the functionality of real-time and historical analytics, giving supervisors greater control and precision in managing customer support operations.

Key updates

  • Filter chat data by queues in real-time analytics dashboard: Supervisors can now view analytics filtered to the queues they manage, ensuring only relevant data is displayed. This prefiltered view also simplifies agent assignments and conversation transfers based on queue associations.
  • Improve accuracy of conversation time-related metrics: Metrics like average handle time (AHT) are now more reliable, leveraging server signals to track talk time, hold time, wrap time, and active session time. These improvements support more accurate planning and performance analysis.
  • Enable actions in ongoing conversation report for customized reports: Supervisors can now use actions like assign, transfer, monitor, and force close within customized real-time analytics reports. This eliminates the need to toggle between report versions and enhances report usability.
  • View persistent chats in backlog conversation dashboard: Supervisors can differentiate between persistent and non-persistent chats in the backlog view. This allows more accurate performance measurement and better management of unclosed conversations.
  • Enhance analytics by including consult rejection and timeout rates: Historical and real-time analytics now include consult rejection and timeout rates. This data helps supervisors monitor tier 2 agent support and identify areas for training and improvement.

Other top features from the Dynamics 365 Customer Service 2024 release wave 2

Dynamics 365 Sales

Elevating sales efficiency with Copilot and AI

The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Sales includes updates to Copilot and AI that simplify sales processes, boost productivity, and enhance workflows. These features focus on tailoring AI to specific business needs, automating key tasks, and enabling seamless communication across languages.

Key updates

  • Tailor Copilot to your specific business terminology: A new glossary feature allows admins to define business-specific terms for Copilot, ensuring more accurate and context-relevant responses. This enhancement streamlines deal closures by aligning Copilot’s outputs with your organization’s unique language.
  • Stay updated with action items from customer conversations: Copilot now captures follow-up tasks from emails and meetings, creating action items automatically. Sellers can remain organized with timely reminders and suggestions for email content or meeting agendas.
  • Ask questions from sales documents in your preferred language: Copilot can read multilingual documents and provide answers in your preferred language, eliminating language barriers. This update allows sellers to maintain a smooth workflow and engage effectively with diverse customers.
  • Maximize sales performance with the most impactful work: Copilot identifies high-potential leads, explains why they are prioritized, and suggests next best actions. Sellers can focus their efforts on opportunities with the greatest likelihood of success.
Elevating sales efficiency with Copilot and AI

Boost qualified pipeline with sales qualification agent

The Sales Qualification Agent in the 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Sales streamlines the process of building a qualified pipeline, reducing the manual effort typically required. By autonomously gathering data from CRM and public web sources, this agent analyzes leads and offers recommendations on whether they should be qualified. Sellers can now focus on engaging with high-priority leads and meeting customers, while the agent handles lead triage and generates personalized outreach emails.

Key updates

  • Research agent synthesizes key lead and account data: This agent gathers information from CRM and public sources, creating a 360-degree view of each lead. Sellers receive a recommendation on whether to engage, along with key insights like the lead’s company priorities and personal introduction suggestions.
  • Prioritization agent identifies high-potential leads: The prioritization agent evaluates leads based on factors like authority and budget, offering a list of the most promising prospects. Sellers can use the agent’s UI to efficiently focus on the best leads across both lead and opportunity grids.
  • Engagement agent generates personalized outreach: Based on research data, the engagement agent creates a tailored email to engage leads with the highest likelihood of response. Sellers can send highly personalized messages to drive higher engagement rates and move leads through the pipeline.
Boost qualified pipeline with sales qualification agent

Streamline opportunity management and lead qualification

The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Sales introduces enhancements that optimize seller experiences through a more dynamic opportunity pipeline and a streamlined lead qualification process. The new opportunity grouping and aggregation features provide greater clarity in managing your pipeline, allowing for quick assessments of opportunity value and easier prioritization. Additionally, the customizable lead qualification process aligns with your sales strategy, offering deeper insights and smoother collaboration across your team.

Key updates

  • Analyze opportunities with grouping and aggregating: Group opportunities by critical factors like account name or closing date to segment your pipeline and target areas effectively. Aggregate numeric values such as estimated revenue, helping prioritize the highest-value opportunities.
  • Customize lead qualification for a seamless experience: Fine-tune the lead qualification process to match your unique criteria, enabling faster and more informed decision-making. Use Copilot to generate lead summaries, automatically create opportunities from a single lead, and assign tasks to team members for better collaboration.
Streamline opportunity management and lead qualification

Other top features from the Dynamics 365 Sales 2024 release wave 2

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Leverage journey templates to accelerate journey creation

The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights introduces journey templates to simplify and speed up the creation of customer journeys. These templates enable you to kickstart your campaigns with prebuilt scenarios, reduce repetitive tasks, and ensure consistency across your outreach efforts. With the ability to save custom templates based on proven strategies, you can enhance productivity and minimize errors while delivering targeted communications that align with your business goals.

Key updates

  • Leverage prebuilt templates for common scenarios: Start your customer journeys quickly with templates designed for standard outreach efforts, such as event announcements, single email blasts, or communication series like welcome messages or cart abandonment.
  • Save and reuse successful strategies: Convert your effective communication strategies into reusable templates to streamline future campaigns and maintain consistency.
  • Minimize errors and save time: Reduce repetitive work and ensure accuracy by building journeys faster with predefined flows and editable content tailored to your needs.
Leverage journey templates to accelerate journey creation
Deliver common experience to multiple audiences with single journey

Deliver common experience to multiple audiences with single journey

The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights makes it easier to deliver unified experiences to multiple audiences within a single journey. By reusing existing segments, you can efficiently create composite audiences without the need to build new segments or duplicate journeys. This streamlined process reduces maintenance, avoids segment clutter, and allows you to act quickly on your marketing strategies without relying on additional team members or resources.

Key updates

  • Specify up to 15 segments in a single journey: Combine multiple existing segments to define your journey audience, eliminating the need for complex segment creation processes.
  • Promote efficiency and reuse: Save time and reduce errors by leveraging existing segments to form new audiences without duplicating efforts or creating unnecessary segments.
  • Simplify audience creation for marketers: Empower users to independently set up journeys for combined audiences, bypassing the need for specialized roles or additional expertise.

Gain actional insights with Heatmap Email Analytics

Understanding how your audience interacts with email campaigns is key to enhancing engagement and boosting conversions. In the 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights heatmap analytics provide a clear and visual representation of which areas and links within your emails capture the most attention, helping you refine content placement, design, and messaging for maximum impact.

With heatmap analytics, you can:

  • Quickly identify areas of high and low engagement using metrics like click-through rate (CTR), total clicks, and unique clicks
  • Filter the heatmap data by email version, journey version, and date to analyze performance with precision

To enable this feature, navigate to Settings >> Feature switches >> Email editor and activating the Email Clickmap toggle.

Gain actional insights with Heatmap Email Analytics

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Streamline project workflows with enhanced Copilot and AI

The latest Copilot updates in the 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Project Operations revolutionize time, expense, and approval management by integrating intelligent automation into your daily workflow. By leveraging data from Outlook and Teams, these updates reduce manual tasks, improve accuracy, and accelerate invoicing processes—freeing project managers, consultants, and invoice administrators to focus on higher-value activities.

With Copilot and agentic automation, you can:

  • Detect work automatically from Outlook calendars and Teams meetings to simplify time entry and expense report creation.
  • Automate the creation, submission, and policy validation of time entries and expense reports using receipt scans and email data.
  • Reduce errors and administrative burden with automatic invoice preparation and validation, ensuring faster and more accurate billing cycles.
  • Enable project managers to upload rule-based documents to flag critical approvals while automating routine ones.
  • Improve team satisfaction by minimizing frustrating alerts, reminders, and last-minute corrections.

Cost-plus pricing for resource time

Dynamics 365 Project Operations introduces cost-plus pricing support for resource time in the 2024 release wave 2, a game-changer for professional services organizations. Many firms calculate bill rates based on the cost rates of their resources, a process that previously required external tools or manual tracking. With this update, Project Operations empowers organizations to define bill rates directly within the platform, streamlining workflows and reducing errors.

This new feature allows you to configure sales price rate line items as a function of the related cost rate, providing flexibility for contracting models like cost-plus. By enabling this capability, organizations can eliminate reliance on external spreadsheets, enhance pricing accuracy, and better support risk-averse and cost-sensitive engagements—all while saving time and resources.

Cost-plus pricing for resource time

Seamlessly copy quotes and contracts across legal entities

The 2024 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Project Operations introduces the ability to copy quotes and contracts across legal entities, offering greater flexibility and efficiency for businesses managing diverse delivery models. This feature is particularly valuable when shifting quotes or contracts to a different legal entity, customer, or business unit to better align with project requirements or organizational structures.

With this enhancement, you can explicitly define the target legal entity, customer, and business unit during the duplication process, ensuring accuracy and streamlined workflows. This capability reduces the time and effort required to recreate records manually, enabling precise replication and facilitating smoother transitions across legal entities while maintaining control over critical details.

Other top features from the Dynamics 365 Project Operations 2024 release wave 2

Want to learn more?

The updates, enhancements, and new features outlined above are just a glimpse of the innovations Microsoft has introduced in the Dynamics 365 CRM 2024 Release Wave 2. To maximize the benefits of these updates for your organization, we recommend partnering with a trusted Dynamics 365 consulting partner. They can help you evaluate the new features, identify those most relevant to your goals, and provide tailored training to ensure your team is equipped to use them effectively. Additionally, a consulting partner can help maintain your system’s peak performance, ensuring you stay ahead in today’s competitive landscape.