The Microsoft Dynamics 365 2021 release wave 2 brings hundreds of new features and innovations to the Dynamics 365 platform. In this article we highlight 12 new features that will increase productivity, provide greater data insights and enhance user experience.
These new capabilities will be rolled out from October 2021 to March 2022. The usability and performance across the entire suite of Dynamics 365 apps continue to be enhanced by out-of-the-box machine learning for financial operations and greater automation of daily processes.
For availability dates, please refer to the release wave change history.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance brings greater insight and intelligence to daily finance processes, saving time and facilitating better-informed decisions.
1. Create collections activities based on payment predictions
The customer payment prediction function provides insights into which customers will pay on time, which invoices or sales orders they will pay, and when they will be paid. By assigning a probability of late payment to each invoice, collection processes can be optimised. Collections process automation allows users to set a benchmark or threshold for late-payment probability, which when triggered initiates collections activities for those invoices, reducing the time spent researching customer invoices and automating collection activities that help businesses get paid faster.
2. General ledger year-end enhancements
Improvements to the year-end close functionality will increase the overall performance and efficiency of the process. The year-end closing templates will move to a new, dedicated setup page. When closing a year, users will now be able to specify balance sheet financial dimensions in detail.
3. Intelligent budget proposal
The intelligent budget proposal feature uses historical data from actuals or budgets to automatically generate draft budgets. Users can let the application’s Artificial Intelligence capabilities do the heavy lifting before further refining the budget with their expert knowledge and insight.
4. Treasurer workspace
The new Treasurer workspace makes it easier to manage the organisation’s cash, with payment predictions on open customer and vendor orders and invoices, and the ability to create and edit cash flow forecast snapshots.
5. Tax Calculation service
This configurable Tax Calculation microservice makes it easier for businesses to comply with local tax regulations, such as VAT and GST. The out-of-the-box integration with Dynamics 365 core applications allows the user to make no- or low-code configuration of a tax matrix to automatically determine tax rates and VAT ID. With the flexible calculation designer, users can create formulas and conditions to set up and run complex tax determination rules and calculations.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management provides a robust, comprehensive set of core capabilities to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
6. Enhanced production floor execution interface for process manufacturing
A production floor execution interface for manufacturing operations will help maintain full material traceability. Through the interface, users can report progress on batch orders, including reporting on co-products and by-products and register material consumption, batch numbers, and serial numbers.
7. Planning Optimization support for capability-based resource allocation
Planning Optimization will enable production scheduling with flexible resource allocation based on resource capabilities, such as tools, vendors, machines, people and locations. Scheduling can be optimised to select resources based on a given priority. The required capabilities can be defined for each route operation rather than assigning specific resources or resource groups.
Planning Optimization runs as a separate service with in-memory processing, delivering high performance and scalability while minimising impact on other system processes.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations is a set of comprehensive capabilities, from deal management to financials, for project-centric businesses.
8. Subcontractor Management for projects
The Subcontractor Management features make it easier to manage vendor resource assignments, with capabilities including, time and material and fixed-bid billing agreements; vendor invoice clearing with subcontractor time reconciliation; and pricing for subcontractor resources.
Dynamics 365 Human Resources provides a full-featured HR ecosystem allowing businesses to empower and engage their workforce.
9. Manage employee sick leave
Ensure compliance with company and regulatory policies with enhanced sick leave management features including, full management and approval of sick leave requests; return-to-work notices; sick leave reporting; and open-ended sick leave requests.
Dynamics 365 Commerce is an end-to-end solution delivering seamless commerce across physical and digital channels.
10. Customer segmentation and targeting
Target specific customer segments with different experiences. Use site builder tools to author content variants linked to targeting rules. Rules can be based on customer data including, device, geo-location, market, language, and other browser derived attributes.
11. Enhanced reordering experience in e-commerce
Improve the customer experience with enhanced reordering of previously purchased items. The improved functionality can now add the reordered items directly to the customer’s shopping cart without going to the product details page. Customers can choose whether to add a single item, multiple selected items, or all items in an existing order.
12. Support inventory movement between in-store locations from POS
This new store inventory management operation makes it easier for workers to move products between warehouse inventory locations. The feature includes support for barcode scanning, and entry of serial numbers for serial-controlled products. To ensure accurate and complete data in movement requests users can take advantage of a review function prior to submission.
This was just a small selection of enhancements and new features coming to Dynamics 365 applications over the next few months. For a full list of all changes coming to the platform, see the Release wave 2 homepage.
