Microsoft announced the release notes for the upcoming April 2019 update. It's the first major update where all customers across Dynamics 365 will be on the latest
update schedule, something Microsoft has been planning for a while which should make support easier to deliver and delivering a consistent platform to all organisations. The new features in this release demonstrate continued investment in digital transformation
and AI-infused intelligence to breakthrough customer experiences.
April 2019 Update: Key Dates
- 21 January - April 2019 release notes published
- 1 February - preview available
- 21 February - updated release notes with more detail about new features
- from 5 April - general availability for April 2019 update
Dynamics 365
The April 2019 release includes hundreds of improvements across D365 applications. Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Portals, Field Service, Project Service Automation, Finance and Operations, Talent, Retail, and Business Central will all be seeing new features added. Interestingly, a new set of mixed reality experiences using Microsoft Layout and Remote Assist will be added.
The April 2019 release will deliver continued investment in artificial intelligence capabilities. Leveraging the power of Microsoft AI research tools, data and the Power Platform to help organisations transform customer service, sales and marketing. AI for Sales provides actionable insights to drive personalised engagement and proactive decision-making. Market Insights enables business users to gather actionable insights based on what consumers say, seek, and feel about their brands and products. Customer Service Insights optimises your customer service experience through AI enhanced analysis.
Power Platform
The new Power Platform combines Power Bi, PowerApps, Flow and the Common Data Service into a toolset to extend, customise and integrate D365 and Office 365 into your working environment. Major improvements enable business analysts to build higher-quality
reports, apps and workflows more efficiently.
Preview of the April ’19 release
Starting February 1, 2019, Microsoft will enable a preview of some of the April 2019 update features for you to validate in a non-production environment before the features are deployed in production. Previews provide you with an opportunity to validate the update before it’s applied to your production environment and experience the new features in advance so you can roll them out confidently to your users. You can find additional details and how-tos in the following articles for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
Please note: In the event that administrators do not opt-in for the preview, the update will be applied automatically to production environments during the month of April.
Opting in to the preview isn't mandatory we strongly recommend it. This provides administrators an opportunity to test new featureswithin your Dynamics environment prior to the update being applied to live instances.
The preview can be accessed by navigating to the Power platform admin centre in Environment > Settings > Previews & Updates.
