Microsoft reveals 2023 Release Wave 1 plans for Power Platform, Dynamics 365

Microsoft has published the plans for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2023 Release Wave 1, which will cover preview and production updates from April to September 2023. Starting on January 30th, people can begin enabling early access to some features.

The updates span every app and service in the portfolio, but the distribution of updates varies widely, with some areas virtually untouched while others are due a wealth of improvements.

In announcing the availability of the new plans, Microsoft CVP and COO of the Digital Transformation Platform Group Mo Osborn also noted that the group is launching a new implementation portal "to provide contextual guidance and recommended practices for Dynamics 365 implementations" once they go live.

Microsoft's release planner provides a broad view of releases, and to view 2023 Release Wave 1 alone, visitors will have to set the appropriate filter (from the upper right filters menu action).

Since 2022 release wave 2, the release plans now includes a "Finance and Operations cross-app" section that outlines One Dynamics One Platform (ODOP) planned features. The ODOP initiative aims to reduce the standalone nature of the F&O architecture by moving more elements into Power Platform related to administration, integration, user experience, and, to some extent, solution architecture. The 2023 release wave 1 plan for F&O cross-app calls for the general availability of improvements to virtual table performance and preview features for transactional consistency, simplified access to Dataverse, security updates, and using Power Automate to schedule background jobs in Dataverse.

Microsoft MVP Carina Claesson identified a lengthy set of interesting updates in this release wave, including the improvements to ODOP. Having entered the F&O world from a Dataverse perspective, she welcomes the improvements in prospect-to-cash integration with Dynamics 365 Sales. She also noticed the plan to provide less disparate developer tools for Power Platform and F&O in Visual Studio. "You can tell Microsoft is really working on bringing their product portfolio closer together. I have hope for the future that integrating the products will go smoother," she wrote.

F&O MVP Adrià Ariste Santacreu believes that when it comes to ODOP for Finance and Operations, "all the new platform features point to the same direction: Dataverse."