2024 Wave 1 Release Notes: D365 Field Service

Like every year, I’ve been writing several articles about the features included in the 2024 Wave 1 release for Dynamics 365 CX! In the first article of this series, I explored all the additions and enhancements for Dynamics 365 Sales. Following that, I wrote a piece about the new SKU Microsoft Copilot for Sales; you can catch up on it here if you haven’t gotten a chance to do so yet. Last week, I told you everything there is to know about what’s coming to Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and in today’s article, I’ll guide you through the features and updates designed for Dynamics 365 Field Service!

Copilot in Field Service

Copilot is everywhere in the Microsoft landscape, and I have to tell you, I’m loving it! We already have some Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Field Service today, and Microsoft is investing even more in this release wave. Let’s take a look at all the features for Copilot in Dynamics 365 Field Service.
The first feature is called ‘Create work orders in Teams using AI’ You are probably aware that we can create work orders by using the Field Service app in Microsoft Teams today. This feature will utilize M365 Copilot in Teams to create and schedule work orders. Copilot will look at what was said in the chat and use that information to enter the details needed on the work order form! I assume this will work the same way for the scheduling of the work orders, but we’ll have to wait and see! Currently this feature is set to go live in April of 2024.
The Generate custom responses and summaries in Outlook with AI feature is very similar to something that you might have seen in other apps like Sales Copilot in Outlook. With the functionality in Copilot for Sales users can choose from several prompts to have Copilot generate a draft email as a response. As you can see in the image below, Sales Copilot has 3 different prompts; Reply to an inquiry, make a proposal and address a concern.

Today the only prompt available in Field Service Copilot in outlook is to generate a work order from an email, but more prompts will become available as a part of this feature. These prompts in Copilot for Field Service will be related to work orders and bookings, and my guess is they could be something like ‘propose a booking time’. Can’t wait to see this in action!
Another Copilot item on this list is the ‘Get insights for technicians from Copilot‘ feature. This feature was originally on the 2023 Release Wave 2 plan. I really like this feature as this allows frontline workers to ask copilot questions in natural language from within Microsoft Teams. Copilot will be able to access data from Dynamics 365 Field Service to provide answers, which will allow frontline workers to get the most up to date information. Being able to ask copilot questions vs having to look up the information in the system will save a lot of time and improve productivity.

The next two features mentioned in the release notes and have been in preview since December of 2023. Both features will be available from within the enhanced mobile experience, which I wrote an article about in early January. If you missed it, you can read it here. The first feature is called Update work orders with Copilot in the new mobile experience, which allows workers to simply describe the progress they made on the work order, for example, tasks that were completed and products that were consumed, after which Copilot will show them suggestions of what updates to make in the system. The frontline worker can then choose and confirm the updates they wants Copilot to make in the system.
The second feature is the ability to summarize work orders with Copilot in new mobile experience. Frontline workers can access this functionality from within a booking, and it’s important to understand that the data Copilot uses to create the summary, is not only coming from the booking or the related work order, it’s also using data from historical work orders and other tables, like work order history, the customer asset (if there is one associated with the work order), work order products, services and more. To learn more about either of these features, be sure to check out the article I wrote about it in January 2024.

Empower frontline workers

Microsoft is always looking for ways to empower the frontline workers who are using Dynamics 365 Field Service. All of the features mentioned under this heading have been in preview since last year. As I mentioned above, Microsoft is working on a brand new and intuitive user experience for Field Service mobile that has a new modernized refreshed look. Part of the new mobile app is also the updated agenda view in new mobile experience, which also has a new design.
Makers will be able to configure list view in the new mobile experience, I mean it would be a pretty bad thing if they couldn’t, right? But the ability to do this is listed as one of the enhancements in the release notes. It is important to understand that these new views support 5 columns instead of the 3 columns we were used to in the legacy views. To learn more about any or all of these features, please read the article I wrote back in January on the enhanced mobile experience.

Frontline workers will see two new offline sync settings in the mobile app when they navigate to the offline status page: the Sync interval allows them to set how often the data from the mobile device is synched, or they can choose to disable auto sync and only use manual sync instead. The second setting is being able to choose if auto-sync happens on both Wi-Fi and cellular networks, or only on Wi-Fi networks. I noticed that this feature is not limited to Field Service mobile, it will be available for model-driven apps in general as you can read here.
Another feature I think is really nice is being able to use embedded guides in Field Service Mobile. This feature is also in public preview today and is slated for GA in June of 2024. This functionality allows frontline workers to access and launch Dynamics 365 guides from within the mobile app. Please note that in order to try this, you’ll need to have Dynamics 365 Guides installed in the same environment as Dynamics 365 Field Service. More information on can be found here.

Microsoft 365 integrations for Field Service

The preview work orders in Teams with link unfurling feature shows the preview of a work order when a (work order?) link is pasted in a Microsoft Teams message. I am assuming that this works the same way as when you paste a link of an D365 record in a Microsoft Teams chat today. The link then turns into an adaptive card showing information about the record the link refers to. According to the release notes, we also will be able to create and edit work orders this way, so that is definitely different from what we can do today! This feature will not be released to all regions, so make sure to check the release notes to see if your region is listed!

Optimize service operations

One of the new features in this category is the ability to manage vendors with advanced contractor management. The release notes state that we will be able to add and remove contractors, capture their capacity and compliance information and deactivate their access if needed. I am not really sure what this would look like, but I am assuming this is related to the Contractor license that Microsoft has for subcontractors. I would also think that a contractor would be a different type of resource that we can schedule work for, but we’ll have to wait for the public preview that is currently set for April of this year.
Integrating Field Service with Business Central is a feature that will make it a lot easier for organizations that currently use Business Central to connect the two applications. This also makes this a great new option for companies that don’t want to have to implement a large ERP system like Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management, which already has some integrations with Dynamics 365 Field Service in place. However, as part of this release, Microsoft added functionality that helps integrate financial and inventory management. In other words, this feature enables the integration between Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Field Service by simply flipping a switch! If you are a Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management customer, this is something you can try out today as it’s been in preview since November 2023.

The Get updates when they are available feature has everything to do with when the Dynamics 365 Field Service app gets updated. Today the default setting in the app is to received updates on a semi-annual basis, which is when the features from the release waves are being pushed out, but the default setting for this will be changed to get updates monthly.

If an app needs to be to switched back to semi-annually, then this is something that an admin can do. Please note this setting is not only available for the Field Service app, this setting is available for all model driven apps and makers can change the setting at any time.
Postal codes in Dynamics 365 Field Service are related to the territory table. Makers can create multiple postal codes for each territory. When the postal code of an account is entered and it matches a postal code related to a service territory, this territory is automatically populated on the account. The ‘Manage postal codes globally’ feature allows makers to add a country code to postal codes in the system. This is needed, as different countries can have the same postal codes. I hope you enjoyed this article! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!