Dynamics 365 & Power Platform – 2020 release wave 2 plans

Currently, you will see a lot of sharing related to the new Dynamics 365 and Power Platform release plans. Microsoft is releasing these plans twice a year to indicate what they are working on. In this post, you will find the links to the 2020 wave 2 plans and the highlights for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

2020 release wave 2 plans

In the two release plans, Microsoft reveals a lot of new upcoming features. These features are planned to be released between October 2020 and March 2021. In total just above 400 pages (pdf download) wit h exiting news. You can find the plans here:

Dynamics 365: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2020wave2/
Power Platform: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2020wave2/

Note that the plans are subject to change. New features might be added, dates may be changed, but also some topics might be pulled from the current plans. The changes will be trackable in the Change history. Currently, there are no changes yet. You might review the changes for wave 1 as an example: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2020wave1/change-history.

Dynamics 365 Finance

There are some exiting new features coming up starting in October 2020. It looks like the themes for Finance are: Vendor invoice automation (9 related features), Collection automation, Geo-expansion and a more easy way of storing and sharing regulatory configurations (Electronic Reporting).

There is positive news for the countries Bahrain, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Microsoft will add support for local regulatory requirements and translations in these countries which brings the total of supported countries to 42!

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

For Supply Chain Management, there is a focus on the performance of inventory transactions and Microsoft will add an option to archive inventory transactions. This will ensure better scaling for larger enterprise organizations.

Another useful feature is the addition for a new inventory dimension called ‘Version’. This would enable manufacturers keeping track of multiple specifications in the whole supply chain during the lifecycle of a product. In addition, there will be two additional generic dimensions for dimension 11 and 12. There can be used in implementations where there is an extensibility requirement for new inventory dimensions. As it is not possible to add these fully compatible with extensions, Microsoft will 12 free dimensions which can be used by ISVs partners and customers on their implementations.

As almost common, Microsoft also has a focus for some features on Costing and Warehousing. Next to these topics, there are new planned features for procurement with one, in my opinion, very welcome improvement for landed costs.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Just recently, Microsoft released Dynamics 365 Project Operations bringing together Project Online, PSA and the Project Accounting capabilities in Finance and Operations. The coming period Microsoft will focus mainly on improving project invoice proposals and an upgrade story for existing customers from PSA to Project Operations.

Cross app capabilities

Currently, there is a feature preview for a new grid control and saved views. It is planned to complete the development efforts and make them generally available for production environments.

Another focus is the Task recorder. This is to ensure the support more scenarios and validations in the RSAT tool.

Last but not least, there will be investments in making Finance and Operations data available in the CDS and table feeds to the Azure Data Lake in all regions.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources

If you want to read the summary for Human Resources, you can read the blog post from Malin here: https://malindonosomartnes.com/2020/07/08/dynamics-365-human-resources-2020-release-wave-2/

There is more…

In this post, I tried to just quickly summarize some feature highlights. With the links provided at the top of this post, you can read all details for all Dynamics 365 and Power Platform enhancements.

I do hope you liked this post and will add value for you in your daily work as a professional. If you have related questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the Comment feature below.


That’s all for now. Till next time!