In previous months, Microsoft updated the email designer and included some additional features some as allowing us to include images, not only by using a Url, but also by uploading a file or using drag and drop functionality and dropping an image file into the editor directly.

Email Attachments

Now with the Release Wave 2 plan, attachments have received a minor uplift. This is probably the first of many, but it is a starting point. After you add a new attachment, you now have the option to Preview, Download or Delete the attachment by using the More Actions Menu in the Attachment subgrid.

If you click on the Preview in the More Items menu, a modal window will open displaying the image or pdf of the file that you uploaded to be included in the email message (as shown in the image below). This works for image file types and portable document format (pdf), but not for Office documents at this point in time. The Preview option does not appear in the More Items menu for document types where preview is not supported.

Email Templates

If you navigate to Power Apps Admin Center (https://aka.ms/ppac), and go to Settings -> Templates and select Email Templates, that link will still redirect you (at the time of writing this article) to the classic interface where you can modify the email templates. If you go to your maker portal and open the Customer Service Hub, you will notice that in the Service area under the Templates group, there is an Email Templates subarea.

If you open a new or existing email template, you will notice that the same designer that is available for the email message, is also available here, hence a new design experience for email templates. You can add attachments to the email template as before and also insert dynamic text using the new designer.

On the command bar, you will see a button for Insert dynamic text. Clicking on the button will open a panel on the right hand side, which will enable you to select the entity, the field and the custom text for the field that you want to embed in your email template (as shown below). Dynamic text fields show up in the email message in light blue (as shown in the previous image)

The New Email form also has some additional capabilities. When you click on the Insert Template button, the system will ask you to select that template (once you have selected the recipients), however, if you click on the drop down next to the email template, you get the option to convert your current email message into an email template, directly from the New Email form.

I am hopeful that this enhancements to emails and email templates will provide an improved experience to Dynamics 365 users.

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In the previous wave, several entities were enabled for pdf creation and export, which included Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Quote, Order and Invoice. In the new release, this has been extended to include also custom entities.

If you are new to this feature, then the prerequisite to the generation of pdf documents is the creation of document templates. You can have one or more document template per entity, and once created you can enable the entity for pdf export functionality. Let’s go over how to create this. We will use the account entity for this purpose, as it already has the Account Summary template associated with the entity.

If you choose a custom entity, you should create a document template first, and then enable the pdf functionality for that entity. If you want to create a document template navigate to the Power Platform Admin Center (https://aka.ms/ppac), select your environment and click on Settings on the Command Bar. In the Settings window, expand Templates and then click on the Document templates link. This link will redirect you to the Document Templates view (still in classic interface at the time of writing this post). Once created, you should be able to use that template for your export to pdf functionality.

Now, let’s go back and enable the account entity for Export to PDF. We do this by first going to the Sales Hub App. From make.powerapps.com, select your environment and click on the Apps navigation link on the left hand side navigation. Click on the Sales Hub App to open the app in a new tab. Once the app is open, change the selected area from Sales to App Settings. Click on the Productivity Tools subarea under General Settings. This will show you the available Productivity Tools, where you will see Convert to PDF as one of the options. Click on Manage in order to add your entity to the available entities for Export to functionality.

From here scroll down to the required entity (or entities), in our case this will be the account entity, and check the box next to the entity name, and the click Save (as shown in the image below).

Once this is saved, your entity should now be enabled for export to pdf. Change your area back to Sales, and navigate back to the account entity. You should now see the Export to PDF command bar button when you open your entity form record. If it is not visible on the Command Bar, click on the more command button (the three vertical dots at the end of the command bar). Once clicked, this will show the Export to pdf modal window, where you will be able to download, email or save the document to SharePoint. The window also contains a preview, so that you can print the document directly from the browser. If you have multiple templates, you can select the template to use for this record as well. The image below shows the resulting dialog and available options that will allow you to generate your pdf document and Save, Email or Print the document.

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The new multisession app for Customer Service allows agent to handle customer cases efficiently with the help of the following features:

• Management of multiple cases simultaneously
• Management of email and other case-related activities without losing context of the parent case
• Productivity pane for AI-based suggestions of knowledge articles, similar cases and other productivity tools

The original document can be viewed on Microsoft docs:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2020wave2/service/dynamics365-customer-service/customer-service-new-multi-session-app

Enabling 2020 Wave 2 Release Plan updates

To enable the updates for the 2020 Wave 2 Release Plan, navigate to the Power Platform admin center (https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com), and click on the environment that you want to enable the updates for. In the Update section it will show you whether the Updates have been enabled for your environment (as shown below):

If your updates are marked as Off, click on Manage, and then click on the Update now button. Note that once you enable the updates this process cannot be undone, and you will experience some performance degradation during the update. The update can take several hours and once your can come back to the same page to check status.

If you receive any failures after the update has been completed, in particular with Field Service (in particular in the North America region), you can click on the Retry button and let the process attempt to fix the installation issues, or wait for Microsoft to fix any deployment issues. Remember that these are preview bits, so do not you use this in a trial or test environment.

Accessing the new App

After you enable the 2020 Wave 2 Release Plan, and you navigate to make.powerapps.com, and click on Apps, you will notice that there is a new App called Customer Service workspace (Preview), which was provisioned on August 3^rd (or later), based on when you enabled the release plan preview features. The image below shows you how to access it.

Once you open the app, you will notice that the Site Map is empty, and only contains the Home navigation link. You will be sent to the Customer Service Agent dashboard page, but will see that above the Command Bar there is a tab that shows you the current open session that you are working on.

On the right of the current open session tab, you will see the + sign which will allow you to open additional sessions. The list of entities that are available for opening additional sessions are based on the Site Map of the Customer Services workspace app. You can modify that site map, which should allow you to see additional entities.

You will notice at the bottom of the list the note that says you can open a link in a new tab by pressing CTRL + Click. An example would be that while on the Cases view, clicking CTRL+TAB will open an additional tab instead of loading the data on the current tab. You would be able to open multiple tabs simultaneously, as shown below):

When you have multiple sessions open, they will all appear on the left navigation under the Home Page link. In order to open an additional session, you click on the link of the Case (or other entity) that you want to open, but using the SHIFT + Click combination. The image below shows how multiple sessions appear.

When using the SHIFT + Click combination, not only will you open the new session, but you will enable the Smart assist pane within you Case entity. The Smart assist pane is a new solution that is installed in the 2020 Wave 2 Release plan, and will display a pane that will provide suggestions on similar cases or knowledge articles. The smart assist AI functionality is not enabled by default. You will need to enable it via the Customer Service Hub App. This will be under the Service Management area in Analytics and Insights. To learn more about how to enable it, follow the link below in Microsoft Docs.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-service/csw-enable-ai-suggested-cases-knowledge-articles#enable-ai-suggestions-for-similar-cases

The following image shows you the Smart assist pane when no suggestions are available.

To see screenshots of smart assist and the full article on Microsoft Docs for the Customer Service workspace and an overview of the productivity/smart assist pane, click on the links below:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-service/csw-overview

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-service/csw-productivity-pane

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-service/csw-view-ai-suggested-cases-knowledge-articles

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In this post, I am going to review some of my favorite and anticipated features in the Power Platform, especially Power Apps Portals and Model Driven Apps.

Let’s start with some of the anticipated changes to Power Apps Portals. Screenshots were not yet available for the Power Apps Portals, so I will just list some of them out:

Power Virtual Agents as a component of the Power Apps portals Studio. This will allow portal makers to drag and drop a Power Virtual Agents bot component on their portal, similar to the way that it is done with the Power BI Component.

Power Apps component framework control suppose in Power Apps portals. This will allow app makers to create code components to use across apps. As part of the initial release, this will include support for code components created sing Power Apps component framework inside of Power Apps portals. This feature is expected to be in Public preview on December 2020.

Power Apps portals web API General availability. This feature will make Power Apps portals CRUD web API generally available for all customers. It is expected to be in GA in February 2021.

Next, let’s look at some of the changes that are coming to our Model-driven apps.

Makers can add custom page in the model-driven app designer. This enabled model apps to create custom layouts and use PCF controls in ways that are not possible with the model-driven app form and dashboard pages. Using the modern app and sitemap designers, custom pages can be added enabling more flexibility in the components, behaviors and visuals. These pages are authored using Canvas designer with no code/low code support and configuration of controls and components. These enhancements will be in Public preview in December 2020.

Modern model-driven app and sitemap designers enable more productivity. This enhancement enables authoring model-driven apps and sitemap within context and aligned with the other designer in the Power Apps shell. The new app designer makes app authoring easier, with page based authoring approach that complements existing sitemap/entity authoring. A preview canvas is added to clarify the parts of the app that are being edited, and leverages the modern entity, form and view designers as well as providing access to other classic designers. These enhancements will be in Public preview in December 2020.

New and improved global search experience in model-driven apps. The Global search experience in model-driven apps is easy, intuitive and modern. The search bar provides suggestions on recent records, automatic records suggestion on types query, improved search results page, high quality results that allow users to search for information quickly and easily. The improvements to the search experience will also allow users to use relevance search on the desktop. This will be in GA in October 2020.

Improved model-driven app header, sitemap and app switching. The model driven app shell has gone through various enhancements and has an updated Office app launcher. When clicking on the app name, it will open the inline app switcher. When the website is opened without an app parameters, the message bar enabled switching to a specific app. The classic sitemap controls have been replaced with modern sitemap controls for better usability. This will be in GA in October 2020.

There are a lot more enhancements that the ones I mentioned in this post, and not only in Power Apps, but also in Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, AI Builder, Power Platform Administration and the Common Data Model.

You can view or download the full Power Platform 2020 release wave 2 plan from here.

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