Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2021 release wave 1 kicks off

In January, Microsoft made available the 2021 release wave 1 plans for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. With early access being provided next month, general availability was initially slated for an April 1 release production deployment, followed by regional deployments kicking off a day later.

Today, Microsoft has announced that GA rollouts for the release wave 1 have officially begun, starting a six-month period featuring the release of hundreds of new capabilities for both the Power Platform and Dynamics 365.

For the Power Platform, focus will reside on Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents, as well as data integration for the whole platform. In comparison, the first release wave for this year for Dynamics 365 will be bringing updates to Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Project Operations, Guides, Human Resources, Commerce, Fraud Protection, Business Central, Customer Insights, Customer Voice, and industry accelerators.

At its virtual Business Applications Launch Event held earlier today, Microsoft highlighted not only the new capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, but also some of the updates announced for these platforms last month at Ignite. Some of the highlights of the event include:

• The latest innovation on customer journey orchestration capabilities for Dynamics 365 Marketing.
• Discussion about Microsoft’s industry cloud approach, announced previously, including Microsoft Cloud for Retail, Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit.
• New capabilities for Dynamics 365 Commerce that introduce B2B e-commerce offerings, synergize task management with Microsoft Teams, and further bring together frontline and back-end operations.
• Showcasing a new application, Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management.
• New Power Platform capabilities announced at Microsoft Ignite across that will accelerate low-code application development for business users, business analysts, IT admins, and professional developers.
• How customers BNY Mellon, Patagonia, Rockwell Automation, and Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED are implementing these capabilities across Dynamics 365 and The Microsoft Power Platform.

If previous releases are anything to go by, the release wave 2 timeline should be unveiled in June, with the release wave plans becoming available the month after. The detailed release plans for release wave 1 can be viewed here. Microsoft's Business Applications Summit is set to be held on May 4, and it should help provide even further insights into this release. Registration for the event is now open.