New Features Release in Dynamics 365 Sales

New Features Release in Dynamics 365 Sales

The Microsoft 2023 release wave plans for Dynamics 365 brings new innovations that provide you with significant capabilities to transform your business. The release contains hundreds of new features across Dynamics 365 applications, including Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Operations Business Central, Customer Insights, Customer Voice and much more.

This blog showcases the all new features release for D365 Sales and covers all business needs – just choose the Dynamics 365 Sales offering that best fits your needs

There’s a Dynamics 365 Sales offering to fit every need of a business from Sales Premium and Sales Enterprise to Relationship Sales and Sales Professional.

What’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 Sales?

D365 Sales brings new features such as:

enhanced sequence capabilities supporting personalised and account-based engagement
actionable AI-powered suggestions within the seller workflow
an updated form layout, and new opportunity management workspace
Additionally, enhanced email templates, content suggestions and SMS capabilities
as well as various new abilities to create, loop, and optimise sales sequences will be released during this latest wave.

D365 Sales enables salespeople to:

build strong relationships with their customers
take actions based on insights, and close deals faster
Use Dynamics 365 Sales to keep track of your accounts and contacts
nurture your sales from lead to order, and create sales collateral
You can also create marketing lists and campaigns, and follow service cases associated with specific accounts or opportunities.

This features list are planned for release from October 2023 through March 2024. As some of these features have not yet beeen released, please note – delivery timelines may change and projected functionality may not be released. For more information, go to Microsoft policy. For a list of the previous wave’s release plans, go to 2023 release wave 1 plan

In the General availability column, the feature will be delivered within the month listed. The delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including the date of release.

This check mark ( ) shows which features have been released for public preview or early access and for public preview, early access, and general availability.

What’s New & Planned in Dynamics 365 Sales Release Wave 2 Plan:

Dynamics 365 Copilot:

Reimagine Dynamics 365 productivity leveraging GPT technology.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Accelerate sales with AI-generated proposals	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	Oct 2023	–	–
Know your account better with AI-generated account summary	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Dec 2023	–	–
Elevate your customer engagements with AI-recommended content	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jan 2024	–	–
Follow up on emails using recommended actions	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jul 2023	–	Oct 2023
Gear up for your meetings using AI-generated preparation notes	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jul 2023	–	Oct 2023
Stay on top of your deals with AI-generated opportunity summaries	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jul 2023	–	Oct 2023
Stay on top of your lead with AI-generated lead summary	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	Jul 2023	–	Oct 2023
Stay updated with contextual news within Copilot chat	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jul 2023	–	Oct 2023

D365 Sales engagement

New sales engagement capabilities help sellers stay efficient and successful.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Navigate to new records faster with sales accelerator form load updates	Users, automatically	–	Jul 2023	Oct 2023
Streamline repeated follow-ups with prospects and customers	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	–	–	Jan 2024
Guide sellers to work simultaneously using multiple sequences	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Dec 2023	–	To be announced

D365 Sales execution and sales force automation

Sales execution includes tools and processes that help sellers engage with a prospective customer from the early stage of awareness to closing a sale.

Feature	Enabled for	Public preview	Early access*	General availability
Empower seller to proactively pick next prioritized record based on business rule	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	–	–	Nov 2023
Improve success rate of assignment rules with harmonized pipeline monitoring	Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically	–	–	Dec 2023
Notify sellers and sales managers after assignment rule execution	Users by admins, makers, or analysts	–	–	Jan 2024

* You are able to opt into some features as part of early access on July 31, 2023, including all mandatory changes that affect users. To learn more, go to Early access FAQ.

Description of Enabled for column values:

Users, automatically: These features include changes to the user experience and are enabled automatically.
Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, marketers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
Users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.

Tip – If you’d like to try Dynamics 365 Sales for free, you can sign up for a 30-day trial.

Here’s a short video to help you understand the power of using Dynamics 365 Sales in your organisation

Choose the offering that fits your needs – There’s a Dynamics 365 Sales offering to fit every need of a business:

Sales Premium: Ideal for enterprises that need a sales automation solution, along with AI-driven insights powered by conversation intelligence, relationship intelligence, and more. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales Premium.

Sales Enterprise: Ideal for enterprises that need a sales automation solution with contextual insights and advanced customization capabilities. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.

Relationship sales: Ideal for enterprises that need to connect sales records with LinkedIn to enhance business processes with data about people, organizations, and relationships. Learn more about Microsoft Relationship Sales.

Sales Professional: Ideal for enterprises that need a sales automation solution. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales Professional.

Viva Sales: Ideal for enterprises that wants sellers to use Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams to automatically capture data, access, and register data into any customer relationship management (CRM) system, eliminating manual data entry. Learn more about Viva Sales

Dynamics 365 Sales Premium:

Dynamics 365 Sales Premium combines Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise capabilities with AI. The AI-driven features in Sales Premium continuously analyze the customer interaction data stored in Dynamics 365 Sales and collected from Microsoft 365. They help you to understand your business relationships, evaluate your activities in relation to previous successes, and choose the best path forward to build strong relationships with customers, take actions based on insights, and close opportunities faster.

A Dynamics 365 Sales Premium subscription includes all the capabilities of Sales Enterprise plus:

Guided selling: Guide sellers on their next course of action with timely and actionable insights with the sales accelerator.
Relationship intelligence: Build stronger relationships with customers and move relationships forward with AI-guided selling features like the sales assistant, who knows whom, and conversation intelligence. Free up sellers’ time by minimizing manual data entry with contextual, real-time suggestions, making sure your data is always up to date. Take preemptive steps to mitigate risks with relationship analytics and health scores.
Predictive models: Increase conversion and win rates by using AI to prioritize leads and opportunities using predictive lead and opportunity scoring and predictive forecasting.

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise:

With Sales Enterprise, your sales organization can automate the sales process from lead to cash, run marketing campaigns, enforce best practices, collaborate with customers, and much more. A Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise subscription includes the following capabilities:

Nurture sales from lead to cash: Achieve more consistent sales interactions by following the sales process as it takes you through each stage, from creating a lead to closing the sale. Learn more about the sales process in Dynamics 365 Sales.
Forecast sales: Predict how much revenue your sales team will generate in a given timeframe. Track individual sales performance against quotas to proactively identify pipeline risks and provide coaching. Learn how to project accurate revenue with sales forecasting.
Enforce best practices with playbooks: Automate repeatable processes and define your organization’s best response to events that affect sales. Learn how to enforce best practices with playbooks.
Run and track marketing campaigns: Promote your business and improve sales with targeted marketing campaigns. Track customer response and costs for each campaign. Get started with in-app marketing.

With your Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise license, you can take advantage of Sales Premium features like sales accelerator, conversation intelligence, and predictive scoring with a limited monthly capacity. Learn more about digital selling capabilities in Sales Enterprise.

Microsoft Relationship Sales:

Microsoft Relationship Sales combines LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise or Sales Premium. With Sales Navigator embedded in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers are empowered to have more personalized and valuable interactions with customers. Activities and Smart Links sync between Sales and Sales Navigator, and sellers can save accounts, leads, and contacts to Sales Navigator from the Sales app.

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional:

The Sales Professional app is similar to the Sales Hub app, but the entities included in Sales Professional are a subset of the entities included in Sales Enterprise. Go to Dynamics 365 Sales Professional documentation.

Here’s a short video to help you understand how Dynamics 365 Sales Professional can transform your sales organization:

Viva Sales:

By enriching the data set with customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and the power of AI, Viva Sales empowers sellers with sales intelligence that helps them deeply understand their customers for faster deal closure. Viva Sales is designed to help sellers boost productivity, lighten workloads, save time, and help salespeople sell more. Go to Viva Sales documentation

D365 Sales Release Plans Updates:

Check out the D365 sales release plan updates for:

D365 Sales Copilot AI
Sales Executive and Salesforce Automation
Sales Engagement
Revenue Intelligence

Checkout the Release Planner @ Microsoft D365 Sales Release Planner

Price Your D365 Sales Solution:

Check out our D365 Sales Pricing Calculator – Simply Pick your Dynamics 365 Sales Pricing Plan in 5 Minutes with our easy to use Pricing Calculator

How can Dynamics 365 helps transform your sales organisation?

The digital selling capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales include built-in intelligence to equip your sales teams with adaptive guidance to better serve your customers.

Meet buyers where they are:

Engage and interact with your customers at the right time and place, using methods that they prefer:

Capability	Description	Reference links
Know the exact customer to engage	Shorten the sales cycle with a single workspace that has everything that sellers need to engage the right customer, stay focused, maximize productivity.	Administrator: Configure the sales accelerator Seller: Prioritize your sales pipeline by using the work list
Complete the next best activity	Help sellers focus by giving them clear and achievable sales activities, prioritized through artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive scoring.	Administrator: Configure the sales accelerator Seller: Prioritize your sales pipeline by using the work list
Communicate with effective call techniques	Converse with empathy by employing AI-powered conversation intelligence to detect customer emotion, sentiment, and priorities.	Administrator: First-run setup experience for conversation intelligence Seller: View and understand call summary page
Connect across channels	Streamline selling with integrated multichannel communications such as, soft phone dialer, Microsoft Teams dialer, and email templates.	Administrator: – Integrate a sample softphone with Dynamics 365 Sales – Configure Microsoft Teams dialer – Set up enhanced email Seller: – Call a customer – Send email using the enhanced email experience
Meet and collaborate virtually	Provide coordinated virtual engagement with an enterprise collaboration hub that brings together colleagues, customers, and contextual customer data.	Administrator: Install and set up Microsoft Teams integration Seller: Basic Collaboration experience for Microsoft Teams integration with customer engagement apps in Dynamics 365
Gather and act on customer feedback	See the customer’s point of view and improve sales engagement by incorporating survey insights from Dynamics 365 Customer Voice—included with Dynamics 365 Sales.	Dynamics 365 Customer Voice documentation

Build lasting customer relationships:

Build relationships with customers through information from LinkedIn and relationship analytics:

Capability	Description	Reference link
Get insights from LinkedIn Sales Navigator	Within a unified experience from Dynamics 365, view contextual LinkedIn profiles and insights as part of account, contact, lead, and opportunities records.	Administrator: Integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator solutions for Dynamics 365 Sales Sales manager/Seller: How to sync LinkedIn leads by using Dynamics 365 Connector for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Find new buyers	See recommended leads and discover mutual connections who can provide a warm introduction.	Administrator: – Integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator solutions for Dynamics 365 Sales – Configure who knows whom Seller: –How to sync LinkedIn leads by using Dynamics 365 Connector for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms – How to get introduced to a lead
Keep track of buyers	Within a unified experience from Dynamics 365 Sales, find out when contacts change jobs and visualize relationships between contacts with interactive org charts.	Administrator: Integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator solutions for Dynamics 365 Sales Sales manager/Seller: How to sync LinkedIn leads by using Dynamics 365 Connector for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Get a unified view of interactions	Use a comprehensive timeline across Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator to deliver consistent experiences.	Administrator: Integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator solutions for Dynamics 365 Sales Sales manager/Seller: How to sync LinkedIn leads by using Dynamics 365 Connector for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Identify customers who need attention	Track relationships with a single score based on signals from Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 that reveal relationship health and risks.	Administrator: Configure relationship analytics and health Seller: Use relationship analytics to gather KPIs

Collaborate seamlessly:

Collaborate with customers by getting visibility into the right data data and communicate seamlessly using Microsoft Teams:

Capability	Description	Reference link
Gain visibility into the right data	Access customer data and insights in Microsoft Teams to collaborate productively within the sales team.	Administrator: Install and set up Microsoft Teams integration Seller: Basic Collaboration experience for Microsoft Teams integration with customer engagement apps in Dynamics 365
Communicate in context	Use embedded Microsoft Teams chats in Dynamics 365 for real-time collaboration within the sales team.	Administrator: Install and set up Microsoft Teams integration Seller: Enhanced Collaboration Experience with Microsoft Teams

Boost the seller productivity

Boost seller productivity by automatically capturing tasks and integrating sales processes with marketing:

Capability	Description	Reference link
Minimize routine tasks	Get suggestions to automatically create new records such as contacts, meetings, and tasks.	Administrator: – Configure notes analysis – Enable and configure auto capture Seller: – How notes analysis assists you with suggestion – Capture customer-related activities with auto capture
Automate sales and marketing processes	Connect your processes with a common platform to optimize efficiencies and marketing ROI and lead handoff.	Administrator/Seller: Overview (Marketing)
Work seamlessly using everyday apps	Minimize app switching with contextual sales data surfaced in productivity apps like Outlook.	Administrator: Deploy and install Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Seller: Basic navigation in App for Outlook
Manage the pipeline in a single workspace	Use an intuitive, personalized workspace to view deals, get context, and act swiftly. Get one-click actions and built-in productivity and collaboration from Microsoft 365 and Teams (preview)	Administrator: Configure the opportunity pipeline view Seller: Preview: Manage opportunities using the pipeline view

Keep Sales Teams selling while on the go:

Get information on day-to-day tasks and keep your deals current even while you’re on the move using the mobile application:

Capability	Description	Reference link
Juggle tasks with ease	Stay on top of tasks from anywhere with a mobile-first interface that includes push notifications and robust search, and quickly create or update records in mobile-optimized forms.	Seller: Use the Dynamics 365 Sales mobile app
See daily priorities at a glance	Quickly scan upcoming meetings, recent contacts, and real-time notifications to accelerate customer engagement.	Seller: Learn the basics
Prepare for meetings	Using the mobile app for iOS and Android, view critical meeting details, attendee information, and AI-generated reminders, and join Teams meetings—all from a single meeting card.	Seller: View meetings
Skip manual data entry	Easily capture notes using voice-to-text or the camera on your smartphone for automatic association with related records.	Seller: Manage notes

Adapt & Respond to rapid changes:

Get advanced information about revenue projections, performance, and daily actions, and plan better.

Capability	Description	Reference link
Streamline forecasting	Gain visibility and control over revenue with a flexible forecasting solution that reveals risks and opportunities.	Administrator: – Configure forecasts in your organization Seller: – View a forecast – View and understand data through drill-down entities – View and manage underlying opportunities
Increase forecast accuracy	Leverage built-in AI to augment seller-submitted forecasts and view deal flows and trends.	Administrator: – Configure premium forecasting – Take snapshots automatically Seller: – Analyze revenue outcome by using predictive forecasting – Understand forecast projections by using trend charts – Analyze deals flows between snapshots
Gain real-time visibility into sales performance	Use interactive dashboards and reports to track performance, make data-driven decisions, and deliver more effective coaching.	Administrator: – Create or edit a Power BI embedded system dashboard – Use Power BI with Microsoft Dataverse data – Use Power BI Seller: – Add or edit Power BI visualizations on your dashboard
Tailor processes based on best practices	Design a sequence of activities and connect the sequence to leads and opportunities that appear in a seller’s work queue.	Administrator: Create and activate a sequence Seller: Prioritize your sales pipeline by using the work list
Adapt AI for your unique needs	Use a powerful, flexible, no-code tool to quickly design and implement next best action recommendations for your sales team.	Administrator: Configure the assistant Seller: Use the assistant to guide customer communications
Quickly create custom applications	Extend and adapt the solution with Microsoft Power Platform, including Power Apps and Power Automate, to create custom applications and orchestrate workflows to optimize revenue generation.	Administrator: Overview of creating apps in Power Apps