There were two waves released for Dynamics 365 in 2024: Wave 1 and Wave 2. This blog focuses on updates that relate to Copilot for Sales Wave 2.

The 2024 release wave 2 for Copilot for Sales, focused on the following capabilities:

  • Empowering sales managers with insights about their sales pipeline.
  • Helping sales professionals find high-quality leads using AI-powered insights.
  • The end-to-end meeting experience for sales professionals as they talk to customers and leads.
  • Deepening the integration of Copilot for Sales into Copilot for Microsoft 365, specifically in Outlook and Teams,
  • Suggested next actions for sales professionals directly in Outlook and Teams.
  • Natural language capabilities that allow sales professionals to ask questions about the data in their CRM.

You can find more information in the following blogs:

Application experiences

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales experiences connect CRM systems across Microsoft 365 surfaces, helping sellers stay productive within the flow of work.

Easily save meeting notes to CRM following Teams meetings

As a sales professional, you can update your CRM directly from the post-meeting Microsoft Teams recap page. Select the Sales button to see sales-related insights. Select Save to CRM to update your CRM by performing the following actions:

  • Save the AI-generated meeting summary directly to CRM. You can review and edit the summary prior to saving.
  • Link the meeting summary to an out-of-the-box entity or custom entity of your choice.
  • Meeting summaries are saved to the description field of the appointment in CRM for the sales team to access.

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Easily save meeting notes to CRM following Teams meetings

Access Copilot for Sales usage data via Analyst Workbench

Within Viva Insights, you’ll have access to a user-friendly and self-serve mechanism to track Copilot for Sales adoption, covering usage from high-level key metrics to scenario-specific details. Out-of-the-box Power BI templates will be provided to see both high-level usage data pivoted by your organisational data, all the way down to scenario-level usage, and even usage trends over time.

Usage metrics and Power BI templates will be available for use in the Viva Insights Analyst Workbench. The Analyst Workbench gives you access to a wide range of usage metrics from Copilot in Microsoft 365 and Copilot for Sales. These are complemented by an out-of-the-box Power BI dashboard so you can get started rapidly and with minimal effort. You can always choose to build your own customer dashboards using the results from your analysis query in the Analyst Workbench.

In order to access the Viva Insights report, you must have a Viva Insights Analyst role, assigned by your administrator in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Access Copilot for Sales usage data via Analyst Workbench

Extensible experiences

Experiences that can be extended using connectors for data, enrichments, and insights to suit an organization’s needs.

Extend email drafts with file links from third-party systems

With the new capability to integrate content from third-party systems, customers can now enhance their email replies with the file links from third-party systems.

As an administrator, you can create a connector-based plugin that builds connection between Copilot for Sales and the external system to enable file links to be added in email drafts.

As a sales professional, you can sign in to the plugin and see file links relevant to the emails automatically added to the email replies.

This capability is available in Copilot for Sales product area: Microsoft Outlook.

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Extend email drafts with file links from third-party systems

Microsoft Outlook experiences

Experiences in Microsoft Outlook to empower sellers to efficiently and effectively communicate throughout the sales process.

Share records when composing emails in Outlook

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Share records when composing emails in Outlook

Access Copilot for Sales from Outlook mobile

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Access Copilot for Sales from Outlook mobile

Add contacts, save emails to CRM from Outlook email banner

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Add contacts, save emails to CRM from Outlook email banner

Benefit from enhanced email summaries and drafts with meeting suggestions

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Benefit from enhanced email summaries and drafts with meeting suggestions

Microsoft Teams experiences

Experiences in Microsoft Teams to assist sellers with sales collaboration and effective customer communication.

Generate post-meeting summary emails using AI for customer follow-up

This release for Copilot for Sales will enhance your productivity by improving the following aspects of the thank-you email generated after a Teams meeting:

  • Enhanced email draft quality: AI-generated email drafts are now better aligned with the meeting action items and notes with improved tone for effective customer communications.
  • Key details from the meeting: Information such as participants’ email addresses will be automatically added to the To and Cc fields, streamlining the steps for sales professionals to just click Send.
  • Improved email draft management experience: The email draft opens in the sales professional’s default email client, which makes it easier to quickly edit and send.

For more detailed information, visit Microsoft: Generate post-meeting summary emails using AI for customer follow-up

Full Details of 2024 Releases

For more information, please refer to Microsoft’s Release Documentation:

Dynamics 365 2024 Release Wave 1

Dynamics 365 2024 Release Wave 2

What other applications are updated as part of Dynamics 365 Releases?

Dynamics 365 Releases usually contain hundreds of new features across Dynamics 365 applications, including:

  • Sales
  • Customer Service
  • Field Service
  • Finance
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Project Operations
  • Finance and operations cross-app capabilities
  • Human Resources
  • Commerce
  • Business Central
  • Customer Insights – Data
  • Customer Insights – Journeys
  • Copilot for Sales, Service and Finance
We hope you found this article interesting and informative. For more ideas on how to streamline, automate and digitally transform your business (thereby saving you time and money):
author avatar
Caroline Robertson Project & Planning Manager
Caroline has lived in the CRM and technology world from her very first job! From Sales Executive to CRM Consultant, Project Manager to Marketing Team Leader, she loves ticking things off a list so has a reputation for "getting things done". Outside work, she is a dedicated mother and rescue pup parent as well as caring for her siblings and parents.
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