Microsoft rolls out two major updates per year. Release Wave 1 was available to ‘early access’ customers in February and will become available to the masses over the next few weeks. In a previous blog, we discussed what’s new in Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Today’s post is focused on Dynamics 365 Sales.
While dozens of updates were announced earlier this month, today we’ll take the one-by-one approach by exploring one enhancement and one new feature respectively. Note that both these functionalities must first be enabled by the administrator before they can be accessed by users.
Enhancement
Enhanced opportunity product experience
When users want to add products to an opportunity, they click on ‘Add products’ and are presented with a basic lookup field to identify the products they want to add—one at a time. That said, the new enhanced experience is vastly improved. Now, when users open an opportunity and click on ‘Add products,’ they don’t just see a basic lookup field. Instead, they can now search products, filter them, see recently added ones, multi-select them, quickly change quantities, prices and more.
New feature
The Kanban view of activities and opportunities
Previously, when users selected a view of ‘Activities or Opportunities,’ the results would appear in a text list format (in other words, a grid). Please refer to the following image:
They would then click on one of those records to edit it. However, users now have multiple formats available once enabled. Now, when users select a view—under the ellipses in the Command Bar—they can choose ‘Show as Grid’ or ‘Show as Kanban.’ The new Kanban view is a powerful, drag-and-drop visual representation. Here’s an image to help you understand better:
Activities are displayed as cards, separated into swim lanes based on status (Open, Completed, Canceled, Scheduled). Cards can be dragged from lane to lane, which updates their status automatically without drilling into any individual record. These cards are also editable inline, so the details can be edited without drilling into the record.
Opportunities have two Kanban views available. Cards can be separated by Opportunity Status (Open, Won, Lost) or by Business Process Flow Stage (Qualify, Develop, Propose, Close). Moving cards across Business Process Flow Stages opens the opportunity form; closing the form refreshes the Kanban view. These cards too are editable inline, so the details can be edited without drilling into the record.
P.S. The latest Dynamics 365 Sales solution doesn’t need you to be on the recent-most Microsoft ERP system. At Columbus, we can integrate it with your current AX/NAV/GP solution.
Curious to know more? Write to me at sbow@columbusglobal.com. It’ll be a pleasure to hear from you.