Dynamics 365 – 2021 Release Wave 1 | Part 2

It’s that time of year again! Starting February 3rd we are able to get early access to some of the new features and updates in Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform! I am writing a series of articles on what is new and what is coming in this release. Last week’s article was about generic features and updates for Dynamics 365 Sales which you can read here.
In this article I will be discussing updates and enhancements for Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Just for the folks who are not familiar with the release cadence, Microsoft Power Platform and Customer Engagement apps (Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation) deliver two major releases per year which occur in April and October. These releases offer new capabilities and added functionality. Since these releases include features that affect the user experience, you can opt in for early access to try out and test some of these features. Click here to see the early access features for this release. I have to tell you, I am super excited about what folks at Microsoft came up with for this release so let’s dive right in!

Visual Improvements for multi-session apps

There are some small improvements to the Omnichannel and Customer Service Workspace apps, which are the two multi-session apps that are available in Dynamics Customer Service. When you log in either of the apps, you’ll notice that the tabs in the application now show icons on the left side of the tab name. Another thing that you would probably hardly notice if you’re not looking the new and previous experience side by side, is the size of the tabs. They are a little less high than they were before. Below is an image that shows the new experience on the lower side of the image. Lastly the browser tab now shows the name of the app that you’re in!

Enhancements in core service scheduling

Most of you are probably aware of the new schedule board that got introduced in 2020 release wave 2. Unfortunately not all of the functionality that was available in the legacy schedule board were added to the new schedule board. In this release Microsoft added (not all, but) a few important features to the new schedule board experience.
Prior to this update only the daily view was available, but in this release a weekly view and a monthly view has been added. Schedulers can now view the map on the board as well. I have to say I really like the way the map shows on the new schedule board, but I am missing the ability to drag an unscheduled requirement from the map onto the schedule board… I hope that’s coming back.. Lastly, the resource cards are back as well. This card shows information about the resource when you right click on a resource on the schedule board. Contact information, skills and roles can be viewed directly from this card.

Email configuration enhancements

This one threw me a bit for a loop, and I’ll tell you why. There are not a lot of details on the docs site. It mentions that

‘in this release, these improvements enable the email editor, email template builder, and email signature builder to accept the full configuration capability of the Rich Text Editor control. Key improvements include the ability to:

• Customize the list of available fonts.
• Set a default font.
• Add your own font.
• Adjust the toolbar location and buttons.
• Automatically increase the editor height to fit the content.
• Access the HTML‘

That sounds great, so I tried to figure out where I could find those configuration options. When I dug a little deeper I found that you need to be able to create a JSON file, (wait what?!) which I don’t know how to do since I am not a developer. This one is a little disappointing in my opinion. Oh well, you lose some you win some I guess.

Ability to configure the search control in the new form designer

YES! This is great! I have to admit that I am not using the new form designer as much as I probably should, but this is also because not all of the configuration options are available in the new form designer as of yet. This results in a lot of switching back and forth between the legacy and the new form designer which is why I usually just stick to the legacy experience. That,.. and probably the fact that I’ve been using it for 10 years..
Seeing Microsoft moving this control configuration to the new form designer is a big step into the right direction!

Federated knowledge search

What is that?! If you read my blog articles on a regular basis then you might remember the article I wrote on the preview feature ‘Setting up search providers’ in Dynamics 365. This feature allows users to search content like articles, documents, files, etc. from sources that are outside of Dynamics 365. For example your organization could have knowledge base related documents and files stored on a SharePoint site, or maybe your company has another org setup where some of these knowledge base articles are stored (maybe because they don’t want to store those articles in two orgs). If you haven’t read the article yet you can access the it here.
For this release Microsoft will provide connectors for SharePoint, Microsoft Search and allow for searching for content in Dynamics 365 instances under the same tenant. Other connectors will be added later based on customer feedback. Keep in mind that this feature is still in preview today, but is scheduled to be generally available in April.

What else is coming!?

There is a big list of additional features that was not included in the early release which are scheduled for April of 2021. Keep in mind that this is a work in progress so not all of these features might be shipped.

Appointments data included in core service scheduling

This is another nice one. What this means is that the scheduling engine will look at a resource’s bookings and appointments in Dynamics 365 when trying to determine a resource’s availability. This means that the appointments will also be considered ‘booked time’. The appointments will also be visible on the schedule board so that dispatchers have visibility.

Invoke Power Automate Flows from Macros in Customer Service Workspace

Another item where I wrote an article about back in November of 2020. If you haven’t read it yet, you can do so here. What is a macro you say? Think of a Macro like a short cut to certain actions. Customer Service Reps can click on a Macro from within an agent script and very quickly perform these actions. For example you can create a macro to open a new email message with a template preloaded in the message and with the customer name automatically populated in the email ‘To’ field. This will save the Customer Service Rep a lot of steps and therefore will improve productivity. In this release we will be able to kick off a power automate flow directly from a macro now how amazing is that?!

Configuration enhancements

A few more configuration enhancements are scheduled as well. Like the ability to configure knowledge article search filters. Currently the filters available are status, visibility, modified date, and language. This feature allows admins to use custom fields as filters as well.
Timeline Configuration enhancements are also coming where we can configure the command buttons for each table, set the default filters to apply and remove unnecessary filters, and configure fields and labels on each table. (Not sure what that last one means but I guess we’ll have to wait until April to find out!!!)

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