Dynamics 365 & Power Platform – 2024 release wave 1 plans

Today, Microsoft released the new plans for 2024 release wave 1. These plans will tell you about the short-term investments to be released by Microsoft for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. 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 2024 wave 1 plans and some of the highlights mentioned in these plans.

2024 release wave 1 plans

When looking at the new release plan documents, there is one common topic that stands out. It seems to be an even bigger focus from Microsoft than the previous release plans. In the previous plans a specific word was used over 270 times, now in total the term was used 674 times. On average more than once per page. Of course, a large focus from Microsoft is bringing Copilot to every area of the Dynamics 365 applications and Power Platform.

The AI Companion focus is tremendous. It should help every individual around the globe to achieve more. However, organizations should not focus on using all AI and Copilot support added, but only those that will make an impact on their business. I have seen some partners promoting their efforts of bringing Copilot features and they are proud to announce that processes are fully automated. This is what I call an Autopilot and not a Copilot. Don’t forget that a Copilot is there to assist you, but should not replace you or make decisions for you!

In the release plans, Microsoft reveals a lot of new upcoming features. These features are planned to be released between April 2024 and October 2024. Again, a lot of new features announced to be released. You can choose to read them online or download the PDF version. You can find the plans here:

Dynamics 365: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2024wave1/

Power Platform: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform-release-plan/2024wave1/

Microsoft Cloud for Industry: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/release-plan/2024wave1/

Note that the plans are subject to change. New features might be added, and dates may be changed, but also some topics might be pulled from the current plans. The changes will be trackable in the Change history. You might review the changes for the previous release plan as an example: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2023wave2change-history/.

Additionally, you might have a look at the Release planning portal.

My main area of focus in this blog is the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations features. You can read a short summary below. Ensure you read the full release notes as I just listed some of the highlights per application.

Dynamics 365 Finance

You might already have heard about the Business Performance Analytics offering. There are multiple features planned to become generally available and some as a preview. Some features include help from Copilot. Using generative AI, users can use their natural language to perform certain tasks. Next to that, there is some focus on securing data, having options for restricted lists of dimension values per user or group of users.

In the core of the Finance module, some features will enhance the maturity of the product. Take for example the addition of a bank lifecycle management. You can now, supported by workflow, manage the activation, changes, and deactivation. In addition, more features will be supported for using a specific exchange rate type, where specific postings can use e.g. a monthly closing rate instead of a daily exchange rate.

Microsoft is continuing to ensure the database will be healthy and responding with a good performance by adding archival features for posted GL and Tax transactions.

The areas where you can use the new Financial tags feature will be expanded to more journals and accounting distributions.

Where some companies now use bank accounts for petty cash, there will be a new and dedicated Petty cash functionality available for all countries and regions.

Concerning the globalization options, Microsoft will merge the Regulatory Configuration Service into the core of Dynamics 365 Finance. In my opinion, this is a smart move, where the external service was a black box in the case of ISV development. I hope this will simplify the extensibility and troubleshooting options.

Lastly, Microsoft will mainly focus on supporting LATAM countries, including Colombia, Guatemala, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

The first feature to mention is Copilot and AI. Copilot support will be added to demand planning. This will be released as a preview in April. Next, also in the preview, there will be support for making decisions on purchase order changes. This was already released as a preview in the US data centers. Supply Chain Management.

I will not list all the new features. One of the features that got my attention is about making reservations without specifying a site or warehouse. There will also be an option to synchronize external inventory changes using Inventory Visibility.

Microsoft will also make more enhancements to the warehouse-only mode.

Finally, also there will be new support for approving purchase requisitions and purchase orders from a mobile device. This will be a replacement for the current mobile workspaces that were announced to be deprecated.

Cross app capabilities

Microsoft is working on a convergence story to bring the F&O apps closer to the Power Platform. In the new plan, Microsoft announced support for a-synchronous dual write support and an easier option utilizing the Dynamics 365 F&O data as virtual entities in the Power Platform.

Process Mining

As I recently shared information about Process Mining with an F&O Twist, in the Power Platform plan, you can also read about a few enhancements planned to be added to Process Mining in Power Automate.

Today, there is a preview available to ask Copilot questions in your natural language about the process. That feature will become generally available. Next, there will be options to directly access data in a customer’s data lake with existing data pipelines, reducing steps to transform data for a specific event log.

There is more…

You can also watch a video with announcements.

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 about all the details of the planned feature enhancements for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, and Microsoft Cloud for Industry.

Usually, the April and October releases are the moments where Microsoft is cleaning up deprecated features and obsolete objects. Some DLLs might be deleted or updated to a more recent version. Ensure you will get hold of the preview releases in time to check if your customizations are still compatible or if you need to adjust them to ensure they will continue to work in the future.

Also, note that quite some features in feature management will become mandatory or enabled by default. Ensure you read the release plan for these changes.

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!