2022 Release Wave 1 | Part 1: Generic Updates

It’s that time of the year again where we all get to feel like kids at Christmas as Microsoft has just published the release notes for 2022 Wave 1! In this article I am going to discuss some of the features that are mentioned in the release notes for Power Apps and what they mean for end-users and administrators of Dynamics 365. I installed the early access features on 1/31 in my sandbox so I could test some of these new features that are mentioned in the release notes. If you want to take a look at the complete 2022 Wave 1 release notes for Power Apps, you can do that here.

Grid control support for editable scenarios in model-driven apps

Microsoft is working on a new Power Apps read-only grid control. This is a grid control for model driven apps, and it will be available for public preview in April of 2022. There are two major updates that this grid control has vs the ‘old’ read-only control. As the name doesn’t really explain, this control can be configured to be used as an editable grid as well, which I think is a big win. The second thing that I want you to know is that this control will have ‘infinite’ scrolling capabilities. This means that users will no longer have to navigate across pages in a sub grid, they will be able to scroll until they get to the desired record(s). Nice! Who doesn’t like less clicks! Unfortunately since this is not coming until April, I wasn’t able to test this out or get an image of the functionality.

Model-Driven app notifications GA in April 2022

I am sure you have heard of the notifications for model-driven apps, and if you don’t know what I am talking about, I suggest that you take a look at the article that I wrote about this topic back in September of 2021. You can access the article here. This functionality has been in preview since July 22, 2021 and I am excited to announce that this feature will be generally available in April 2022.

Appointment description field supports rich text

We already have a few tables that have the rich text editor control enabled, like the body of emails and notes, but now the description field of appointments in Dynamics 365 will also take advantage of this feature. This rich text editor control will be supported for all model-driven apps and will be the default editor for appointments and emails. This feature will be in public preview in March 2022.

Create and join Teams meetings from in-app appointments

This is a feature that I am very excited about and shows that Microsoft is really investing in the integration between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams. With this feature users will be able to create an appointment in Dynamics 365 and add a Microsoft Teams meeting to the appointment.

This will save users a lot of time, as they are no longer forced to create Microsoft Teams meetings outside of Dynamics 365. Besides the ability to add Microsoft Team’s meetings to appointments, users will also have the ability to join a Team meeting from a Dynamics 365 appointment or the timeline directly! Keep in mind this is something that you can turn on or off in the environment settings in Power Platform Admin center. This feature will also be in public preview in March 2022.

New activity drop down showing relevant activities only

There will be a new activity chooser, which will only show activities that are related to the app that you’re in. When you read the Microsoft docs feature details it shows that ‘Activities that are not included in the app metadata are now hidden from the ‘New Activity’ command.

This means that if the individual activities aren’t added to the app, then they will not be visible in the new activity chooser drop down. Keep in mind this is also functionality that you can enable or disable in the environment settings in the Power Platform Admin Center. If you set this feature to ‘off’ then all activities will continue to show up in the activity chooser. This one will also be in public preview in March 2022.

Power Apps read-only grid control is the default grid for read-only scenarios

The power apps read-only grid control was released during 2021 wave 2. The change here is that this grid will be the default read-only grid in model-driven apps, meaning that this grid will be used for all views and sub-grids in Dynamics 365. This is important to know because this grid disables the jump-bar on the bottom of views. If you need to enable the jump bar please take a look at this article that I wrote on what the jump bar is and how to re-enable it in your model-driven app.

Modern Advanced Find

It looks like Microsoft is finally getting rid of the legacy advanced find in Dynamics 365, and honestly I am not sure how I feel about this! The new modern advanced find functionality will be available as a public preview starting in February. It looks like the new advanced find will be accessible from the Dataverse search bar on top of model-driven apps.

According to the information in the release notes, this modern advanced find experience will allow us to create queries and views just like we were able to do in the legacy advanced find. On top of that, we will be able to allow users to hide views from the view selector! Does this mean the legacy advanced find goes away? Yes it does! If you want to read more about this functionality take a look at this article I wrote on the new modern advanced find.

I hope you found this article informative! Don’t forget to check out my articles on 2022 Release Wave 1 – Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Field Service. Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!