Columbus UK Blog

What's new in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE?

Written by Carl Shields | Apr 25, 2022

2022 release wave 1 - overview

This month, the 2022 release wave 1 for Dynamics 365 became available for 'General availability'. It contains hundreds of new features and innovations across various applications with significant capabilities to transform your business. We've analysed the new releases for Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE (releasing from April through September 2022) and picked out some highlights for you to explore - 

1. Marketing

2. Sales

3. Customer service

4. Field service

1. Marketing updates

Introducing moments-based marketing – Utilise real-time, event-based triggers based on data changes across any Dynamics 365 app.

Utilise data and AI to personalise interactions – Implement dynamic personalised content using an intuitive easy-to-use no-code conditional text.

Collaborate using the built-in Microsoft Teams chat – Use dedicated linked chats to interact with people across your organisation and across Microsoft applications directly from your Dynamics 365 campaigns

2. Sales updates

Conversation intelligence - Capture every interaction with the customer to provide real-time business insights on top of any conversation, and automatically transcribe calls and analyse content to get the right insight, at the right place, at the right time.

Teams and outlook collaboration - Enable sellers to be productive from wherever they are with enhanced Dynamics 365 integrations between Microsoft Teams and Outlook.

Forecasting and pipeline intelligence - Provide sales teams with predictability to their revenue forecasts and a workspace that provides comprehensive views and insights into their sales pipeline.

Improved sales accelerator and process automation - Enable your sellers to engage with prospects and customers across multiple channels using a prioritised worklist. Use process automation to assign leads and opportunities to the right sellers based on easily configurable rules.

Sales usage reporting – Use standardised reports to understand the usage of the sales application helping you to gauge the performance of teams and individuals using the application.

3. Customer service updates

Enhanced teams integration – Utilise embedded team conversations to collaborate and communicate directly via customer service records

Improve agent experiences with automation and knowledge management – Knowledge base capabilities have been enhanced to provide search integration for portals and historical analytics on knowledge articles and search terms.

Delivering the all-in-one contact centre - Omnichannel for customer service enables organisations to instantly connect and engage with their customers via channels like live chat, SMS, voice, and social channels by providing a modern, customisable, high-productivity app. The app offers contextual customer identification, real-time notification, integrated communication, and agent productivity tools like knowledge search, macros, and case creation.

Manage support policies using Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – Manage and understand how quickly a customer is entitled to receive support, how many support requests a customer can make, and how long after a purchase a customer can be supported as part of an agreement.

Using communities to power self-service and enable peer-to-peer support and the creation of relevant high-quality content at scale – Online communities of customers, partners and employees offer a collaborative approach to rapid, user-generated content creation through formal and informal knowledge articles, Q&A forums, feedback-sharing and blogs. This helps deliver improved self-service through peer-to-peer support and the creation of relevant and high-quality content at scale

Enhancements to agent experiences – Improve employee confidence through new enhancements to the inbox view and the customer service workspace app.

New intelligent routing service transforms contact centre routing - Use a combination of AI models and rules to assign incoming service requests from all channels (cases, entities, chat, digital messages, and voice) to the best-suited agents, considering customer specific criteria and active SLA agreements.

4. Field service updates

Focused mobile application enhancements for improved usability – Mobile-friendly experiences aimed at making it easier to edit information on mobile and tablet touch screens and reducing the number of taps needed to perform common tasks. Helping reduce the time frontline workers need to spend in the app.

New enhanced schedule board enabled for new customers - Improves the user experience by bridging the functional gaps between hourly and multiday views on the schedule board to improve dispatcher productivity, as well as improved UI and map capabilities.

Windows 10 support for Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile – Enables technicians on Windows devices, such as Microsoft Surface tablets, to be able to see their bookings, manage their work orders and perform inspections with this rich application deeply integrated with the rest of their Dynamics 365 applications.

Time to adapt your customer experience & engagement strategy?

At Columbus, we help build visions to bring value to businesses through technology-based change. In our interactive infographic we explore how to leverage the power of Microsoft customer experience and engagement software using the following services:

 

- Discover Business Insights

- Enable Always on Service

- Connected Commerce

- Activate Digital Selling

- Personalise Customer Digital Experiences

 

Click below to find out more in our interactive infographic: