What Is A Release Wave?

If you’re reading this we assume you know all about Microsoft’s Release Wave calendar but just in case… twice a year Microsoft will release a schedule of rollouts (updates) to their suite of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform products.

Each ‘wave’ is carried out in stages, with each individual update assigned a specific date, ensuring a stable release at a rate that’s easy for system admins to get used to and digest.

Some updates are released for early adopters to ‘test’ things and once Microsoft are happy, it’s pushed to general availability.

Today we’ll run you through the highlights of Release Wave 1, 2025 for Dynamics 365 Sales, what’s out for testing and what’s hitting General Availability.

Overview Of D365 Sales

Dynamics 365 Sales is an AI-powered sales solution specifically designed to let organisations close more deals fast than ever before.

It helps you understand customer needs, driving authentic and ROI inducing engagements, letting your sales teams close more efficiently.

Managing multiple opportunities and staying connected with customers, all whilst navigating competitive pressures can be tough.

With that in mind, Microsoft will be unveiling a suite of new agents in Release Wave 1 to help your sales teams.

The releases cover discovering new leads and automating follow ups

What To Expect & When

You can expect all of the below releases between Apr 2025 through to Sep 2025 (Release Wave 1) although some dates and details do on occasion change if you’re reading this a few months after we publish!

• Integrate with Exchange using server-side synchronisation – This will be enabled automatically for users, with early access available in February and April being the target date for general availability. Microsoft will upgrade the Exchange infrastructure to better support Dynamics 365 Sales Premium features like Relationship analytics and Who Knows Whom. Post release, Exchange data integration will be shifted over to SSS (sever-side synchronisation) to allow for more granular control over email sync settings, boosting reliability and giving users greater flexibility in managing the timing and scope of their email synchronisations.
• Boost qualified pipeline with sales qualification agent – Entering public preview in March this year and general availability in April, the sales qualification agent in Dynamics 365 Sales will, in Microsoft’s own words, “eliminate human toil by autonomously researching information about every lead from CRM data and public web sources, making a recommendation on whether that lead should be qualified and pre-generating an email with highly personalised talking points to grab the prospect’s attention.”
• Expand qualified pipeline with leads from service interactions – Entering public preview in April this year (although with no general availability date announced expect changes to any finalised feature), the sales qualification agent will begin automatically identifying new leads from existing accounts and customers by collating and aggregating their interactions and case history with your organisation.
• Boost response rate by automating follow-up communications – Again, entering public preview in April with no general availability date, the sales qualification agent will look to eliminate human mistakes by automatically following up with leads, nudging them if there’s been no response and feeding this data back to sales personal. Ensuring no lead is accidently left by the wayside.
• Increase pipeline quality with intent-to-buy analysis – Another new feature to the sales qualification agent hitting public preview this April will be an improvement to intent-to-buy analysis. The sales qualification agent will read all responses to emails from opportunities, analysing their content and tone and classifying their intent level for your sales teams. It will be able to parse replies and hep identify budget, need, timings or any other purchase criteria.
• Provide your own tone of voice across all email communications – Of course, not of the above is going to be very useful if the automation and replies all sound AI generated, so entering public preview in April 2025, the sales qualification agent will learn from your sales staff, automatically mimicking their tone of voice across all communications, ensuring the entire funnel sounds as though it’s being conducted by the same person.
• Improve qualification rate by grounding agent in external data sources – The final feature entering public preview this April will be the ability to add custom instructions to your sales agent and roll them out across the entire team, whilst mimicking the behaviours of your best sellers, enabling it to make more informed qualification and prioritization decisions by configuring it to use external data sources.

Not sure if this will affect you or how to make sure you’ll benefit from it come April?

Perhaps after reading this you’d like more information on Dynamics 365 Sales (we would after reading this!).

Reach out below and we’d be happy to talk over how Release Wave 1 could benefit your organisation…