2023 Release Wave 1: D365 Sales Release Notes | Part 1

It’s that time of year again! On January 25, 2023 the release notes for 2023 Release Wave 1 were published! I dove into the documentation and decided to do read through of all the features to (hopefully) give you a better understanding of what’s coming in this wave. Please note that these notes are a constant work in progress, meaning that some of these features might be removed at some point in time, and others might get added so I would definitely recommend keeping your eyes on them and checking back every now and then. You can access the release notes here. There are so many features and updates for Dynamics 365 Sales alone, which is why I decided to split the article for D365 Sales into two parts. Be sure to check back next week for part 2!

Revenue intelligence

Microsoft is heavily investing in artificial intelligence this year. You’ll notice a lot of these features use AI to help their sellers get on the right track and stay there. Below are a list of the items Microsoft mentions in the release notes, I added my comments to give some more color and hopefully more of an explanation on what these features do.

Manage oppty’s more effectively using the new pipeline view – By reviewing the images related to this feature it looks like this is the new deal manager going GA. The Deal Manager preview (It’s been in preview since July 2021.) was part of 2021 release wave 1, so I am happy to see that it’s finally rolling out! According to the documentation users will be able to personalize views, update rows using the editable grid and side panel and review metrics. Administrators will be able to configure the side panel to show custom fields, add business rules and configure the charts related to the Deal Manager. It also looks like users will be able to access this from the opportunity table on the sitemap! For more information on the Deal Manager check out this article I wrote on the topic.

Sales Forecasting updates and enhancements

There are three features that are mentioned in the release notes that are part of sales forecasting in Dynamics 365 Sales. Let’s start with the ability to Configure forecasts for multiple business units – I feel that the name of this feature speaks for itself. Sales users with the right permissions will be able to create sales forecasts based on a business unit, allowing them to track sales progress of individual business units. Keep in mind that you can also setup your D365 instance to utilize business units for the different LOB’s of your organization, which brings new reporting capabilities to the platform. Business unit forecasts will be restricted to the sales team that belongs to the business unit the forecast is configured for. At this time it’s not clear if we will be able to share these forecasts with folks that are not part of the business unit, but I would assume so?

And lastly, one of the features I have been waiting for when it comes to sales forcasting: The ability to Improve forecast accuracy with yearly and weekly forecasts. This was part of an earlier release and then got pushed out to a later date. Today we can only configure Monthly or Quarterly forecast periods, but this functionality will allow sales users to create forecasts with a weekly or annual recurrence. Can’t wait to get my hands on this one! Unfortunately the images on the website aren’t very good, but hopefully it’ll give you an idea of what this looks like.

Sales Engagement

There are lots of features in this section that I feel are definitely worth mentioning. You’ll also see a lot of AI embedded in this part of the application. Let’s start with the ability to Get insights for calls made through 3^rd party softphones from D365. As you may or may not know, today Microsoft’s conversation intelligence only supports D365 calls made using Microsoft Teams. This enhancement will extend conversation intelligence to calls made through third party telephony providers as well. This means if your organization is not using Microsoft Teams for their sales calls, they can still take advantage of conversation intelligence in Dynamics 365. Keep in mind this is something that will need to be configured by an admin.

The next feature is called Improve lead qualification with intent detection. This is a brand new feature which will use artificial intelligence to help sellers qualify leads better and faster by detecting customer intent from emails and ensure that good quality leads are worked on at the right time. This is also something I can’t wait to try out!

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the ‘Up Next’ widget in Dynamics 365 Sales. The ability to Guide sellers to favorable sales outcome with best next step is a feature that will not only show the scheduled activities , but it will include AI based suggestions to help sellers with their follow up actions. When the AI based suggestions show up, the seller can decide to move forward with the suggestion or dismiss it. I am not sure where AI is basing these suggestions on, but I am hoping we’ll get more information on this later. I apologize for the bad quality of the image, this is coming from the release notes website directly.

Prioritize engagement for any sales entity by working in focus mode. This feature stacks on top of the one I mentioned above. What my understanding is for Focus mode is that this is a new view for leads. This means users can pull up their work list for leads without having to navigate to the sales accelerator area. In this view users can define the columns they want to show on the work list cards, and they can easily switch back and forth between views. If you look at the image below, you can see the user is accessing this work list view from the lead page! I spoke with the PM’s from Microsoft and they stated support for other tables (COLA) will be coming as well, so in the long run, this functionality won’t be restricted to just leads.

Work efficiently with enhanced sales accelerator worklist items. The release notes suggest the worklist in the sales accelerator will get an enhanced user interface with an updated look and feel. The work list will not only show any scheduled activities, but also the AI suggestions I mentioned earlier. There will be a new prioritized view of items, showing all interactions sellers should focus on.

Is that it? Absolutely not! There are many more features coming for Dynamics 365 Sales, and I will publish part 2 of the Dynamics 365 Sales features next week, so be sure to check back! You can also subscribe here to get notified when new articles are published, so you’ll never miss another post!