Microsoft Business Applications Summit — Dispatches from the Front

Real-time blogging by the Dyn365Pros team:

Modernizing the Update Process –

The old way of handling Dynamics 365 updates was customer driven – Where customers controlled when their instances were upgraded.

As of v9 of Dynamics 365 major releases will be handled bi-annually –  Each cycle in April and October.  Each major release will be available for preview in Sandbox environments – April’s release will be available in February and the October release will be available in August.  These major releases that are available in preview include the functionality updates that are visible to end users.  All other functionality updates that are not visible to the end users are released in smaller subsets weekly.  These weekly updates only include functionality that requires an Admin to facilitate/turn on.

Field Service Roadmap –

FS Roadmap

• Field Service One Version
  • Web Client End of Life
  • Move to Unified Client by Feb 2020 – Phasing out support in the Fall timeframe
  • Auto Update will then be rolled out just like the main platform
    • When they are breaking features that will affect customers there will be a preview feature but will provide the fixes and updates needed as the solution is auto-updated
  • Key Investment areas
    • Overall proactive service delivery
      • SLA and Entitlement management, etc.
    • Technician Success – continue to invest in helping them succeed
    • Resource scheduling – continue to improve on that functionality to make it easier and easier to manage and use
    • Service Insights and Actions 0 IoT
  • April 2019 Release
    • Travel Time updates
    • Quick Scheduling
    • IoT built in FS
    • Remote Assist for mobile devices – Android preview
    • New optimization objective – As soon as possible
    • Optimization Insights
    • Embedded IoT Insights web and mobile
    • Solution auto update
  • Future Release
    • Mixed reality guides for FS
    • Business Analytics
    • Suggested Actions based on IoT
    • Technician Inspections –
    • Time Entries – Leveraging functionality that was originally in PSA and take that into FS and roll out within – can do time entries against a WO
    • ERP Integration

Built-in optimization – desire to leverage optimization for smaller organizations to make it more approachable and easier to adopt.

By Jessica Smith, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Application Consultant, Dyn365Pros, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner, San Diego, Southern California