Dynamics 365 spring update boasts more value and features for users
AlfaPeople |
Apr 05, 2018

Dynamics 365 spring update boasts more value and features for users

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Spring Release – Microsoft’s highly anticipated Dynamics 365 Spring update is now available, and the new feature set makes this upgrade worthwhile. There are some particularly useful and productive tools in the update that can quickly create ROI and should be considered as a business decision. In this brief, we explore some of the new features that stand out.

One of the most anticipated features is the addition of the Power BI Insights apps. This series of apps will be an ongoing effort to expand the Dynamics 365 platform with third-party integration. According to a recently published article by Tech Republic, the first of these new apps are Power BI for Sales Insights, and Power BI for Service Insights. Microsoft has announced more forthcoming apps covering additional segments including marketing, HR, finance, and operations to be released later this year.

New Apps and Services

The new apps are designed to query data from not only the Dynamics 365 database but also from third-party platforms. They will apply across the Dynamics 365 Sales, Service, Finance and Operations, and Talent modules. Essentially, Power BI combine data sourced from various applications using a standard scheme, creating a more user-friendly design. This innovative design allows a user to create insights into more information using advanced analytics without the need for advanced data modeling schemes. This is an enormous advantage for the layman data miner needing an ongoing set of intelligence with calling in programmers.

“It’s really an evolution of bringing forward modern applications that are unified across Office, LinkedIn and Dynamics, as well as our third-party ecosystem, and then building embedded intelligence throughout the application,” said Alysa Taylor, general manager for business applications and industry at Microsoft.

New Power BI Offerings

Tech Republic’s article also states Power BI for Sales Insights will offer the ability to summarize the health of relationships between sales teams and customers, and create a score calculated from transactions, customer sentiment, and messages. Additionally, the predictive lead scoring feature will generate pipelines designed to help sales prioritize leads. Both are very anticipated features that will impact performance. Additionally, businesses will be able to customize Power BI apps using tools from Azure Databricks.

Additional Features You’ll Love

Another feature being released that has been requested by users for a long time is the Dynamics 365 Sales auto-capture. This is the long-awaited feature that works with the Outlook mail client. The auto-capture will locate messages specific to certain accounts, then allow sales teams to track those messages dynamically.

Additionally, a new email engagement feature will enable sales teams to rank the most promising contacts by mining specific criteria from within emails directly. This can potentially automate a pipeline based on email queries and create an additional resource for sales reporting and prospecting.

According to a recently released press release by Microsoft, there are hundreds of new features in the new Dynamics 365 update designed to merge many of Microsoft’s business applications, improve integrations with Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Stream, Flow, Azure, LinkedIn, Office 365 and Bing. Before upgrading to the new Dynamics 365, consider contacting AlfaPeople for a no-cost upgrade or implementation evaluation.