Transform Project Management with D365 Project Operations

In this article, you will find the product overview and what’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 Project Operations. We share the latest release updates from Microsoft to help you Transform Project Management with D365 Project Operations . Check out the planned release dates from April 2024 through to September 2024 and beyond – enabling you to transform your Project Operations with Copilot AI.

What is Dynamics 365 Project Operations?

Now more than ever in todays ever growing multi-faceted business environment, project-oriented organisations are faced with multiple challenges from winning new business to resource optimisation to simplifying time and expense processes, streamlining project financials and more. Project-centric organisations need to continually look to new ways to optimise the Project Operations processes.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations enables you to connect resourcing, project management, finance and sales teams in a single centralised application to enable you to win more business opportunities, fast-track project delivery, and optimise the profitability opportunities.

The application provides the necessary visibility, collaboration, and agility across the project lifecycle to drive success for project-centric businesses. Powered by Microsoft Power Platform, customers are provided with an unmatched set of capabilities that enable everyone to analyse, act, and automate across their organisation to transform their services business.

Stakeholders get business insights to increase visibility across all teams, data, and processes, plus AI capabilities for better and faster business decisions.
Sales Teams are enabled to win more deals and accelerate the sales cycle with fast and accurate quotes, flexible pricing, and seamless transitions from estimate to execution.
Resourcing is set up to optimise resource use by aligning the right people, with the right skills, to the right projects. This alignment improves quality and helps to retain top performers.
Project managers can accelerate project delivery with state-of-the-art, built-in project management that uses familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft Project capabilities.
Team members can improve productivity, collaboration, and visibility with integration to Microsoft Teams, and submit time and expenses from anywhere.
Finance teams can simplify project accounting with time and expense tracking governance, project costing, budgeting, invoicing, revenue recognition, compliance, and visibility into key business health metrics.

Project Operations is a powerful tool on its own but can be expanded by clients who require more capabilities and functionality from Dynamics 365. These capabilities include Marketing, Human Resources, Customer Service, and much more.

Transform Project Management with D365 Project Operations – What’s New & Planned for Dynamics 365 Project Operations?

Powerful Copilot features in Project Operations enables you to streamline and expedite workflows from the frontline to the back office, optimising operational efficiency for service delivery organisations.

In one application, Dynamics 365 Project Operations connects your sales, resourcing, project management, and finance teams so they can win more deals, accelerate delivery, empower employees, and maximise profitability. The application provides the necessary visibility, collaboration, and agility across the project lifecycle to drive success for project-centric businesses.

Powered by Microsoft Power Platform, customers are provided with an unmatched set of capabilities that enable everyone to analyse, act, and automate across their organization to transform their services business from the ground up. It is everything you need to run your project operations, from deal management to financials, all in one application.

For 2024 release wave 1, Microsoft are delivering functionally rich experiences in the following areas:

General availability of increased work breakdown structure task limits to 1,000.
Usability improvements for resource bookings and assignment reconciliation across projects and resources.
Usability improvements in contract management to reduce clicks for common tasks and KPI access.
Performance improvements in entry and correction journal confirmation, and approvals.
Support for invoices with more than 500 lines.
Support for defining project stage rules.
Support for discounts and fees definition on quotes, quote lines, contracts, and contract lines.
Time entry enhancements to support definition of time entry periods and delegation.
Time entry enhancements to support definition of min and max and time entry increments.
Mobile experiences for time entry.
Improvements to expense entries in the mobile experience.
Ability to attach the invoice report on project invoice proposal in finance and operations apps to the confirmed proforma invoice in Dataverse.
Investments in generative AI to help with core operational workflows in project proposal generation and side car conversations on project data.

Check out the video for the latest release updates and Transform Project Management with D365 Project Operations

Copilot AI in Project Operations

With every new release wave, AI and Automation investments through Copilot empower consultants, sales personnel, project and resource managers, as well as project accountants in Dynamics 365 Project Operations, providing them with intelligent, natural-language interactions.

These enhancements extend beyond business applications to productivity tools like Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Excel, meeting employees where they are most productive. Copilot features in Project Operations streamline and expedite workflows from the frontline to the back office, optimizing operational efficiency for service delivery organizations.

Optimise project operations

In every release wave, Project Operations continues to invest in capabilities to improve usability, performance, and scale across critical areas of the product like project sales, planning, resourcing, budgeting, invoicing, and core transaction processing flows.

The core processes in outsourcing and purchasing will get the spotlight with enhancements to service procurement scenarios with integration to Purchase Order, support for vendor retention, pay-when-paid, intercompany vendor invoices, and 3-way vendor invoice match functionality in Dynamics 365 Finance. Project contracting and pricing models will see new scenarios enabled with units, progress and subscription billing and contracting models, cost-plus and contribution-based pricing models. Intelligent resource recommendations will make project staffing easier by providing resource suggestions using experience and a multidimensional prioritization of criteria like costs, utilisation, skill match, and availability.

To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave – wave, Check out the release plan Dynamics 365 Project Operations below :

Get the most out of Project Operations

Helpful links	Description
Release plan	View all capabilities included in the release.
Product updates	Stay up to date on latest product updates.
Release calendar	Know important release milestones.
Licensing	Improve your understanding of how to license Project Operations.
Product documentation	Find documentation for Project Operations.
User community	Engage with Project Operations experts and peers in the community.
Upcoming events	Find and register for in-person and online events.
Product trials	Get started with Project Operations.