A closer look at the 2023 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 Project Operations

Microsoft recently announced the 2023 release wave 2 plans for Dynamics 365 Project Operations. From streamlined budget management to advanced subcontract capabilities, this update brings a host of features that empower project teams to navigate complexities with ease, make informed decisions, and elevate their operational performance to new heights. In this blog post, we dive into the key updates and enhancements that the 2023 release wave 2 brings to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations.  

To read about the new features and updates in the previous release wave, read our 2023 release wave 1 blog.  

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations introduces a suite of updates in the 2023 release wave 2 aimed at enhancing budget management. These enhancements not only simplify budget creation but also streamline forecasting and facilitate historical revenue tracking. They collectively empower project managers with greater control and insights, revolutionizing the way budgets are managed and tracked. 

• Create budgets with summarization during estimate import: This feature transforms the budget creation process by importing estimates into summarized budget lines. By condensing data at a task or role level, project managers can simplify budget tracking and gain a higher-level overview, even when estimates are highly granular. 
• Easily summarize budget lines in Dynamics 365 apps: With this enhancement, Dynamics 365 Project Operations offers the flexibility of generating forecasts through the dynamic summarization of budget lines. By consolidating budget lines at the task, role, or contract level, project teams can streamline forecasting processes and make more accurate predictions based on aggregated data. 
• Support historical tracking using project sales budget: The project sales budget feature empowers project managers with historical revenue insights. By maintaining versioned snapshots of estimated billed sales, project teams can compare actual revenue against benchmarked and forecasted figures. This historical tracking supports agile decision-making and allows for adjustments to revenue projections in response to evolving project scopes. 

Customers running large complex projects across various industry verticals often require detailed project plans to sequence and assign their work with a level of granularity designed to mitigate project risks and to drive clarity in each work package. While task checklists offer supplementary information, they do not inherently impact project scheduling and may not always be a suitable substitute for comprehensive WBS. To address this need, the 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Project Operations introduces an advanced capability that doubles the current limit for creating WBS structures. This enables project managers to design detailed project plans with a significantly greater number of tasks, enhancing the granularity and accuracy of project sequencing and assignment.

For project-based companies with ongoing projects involving large teams and recurring billing cycles, the efficiency of the invoicing process is paramount. The 2023 release wave 2 of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations brings a significant overhaul to project invoicing usability and performance, focusing on streamlining the review, correction, and creation of invoices. This crucial enhancement ensures smooth operations, faster invoice generation, and better operational metrics, ultimately contributing to a seamless service-centric practice. 

• Effortless review and edits: Project managers gain a simplified interface to review billing backlogs, enabling them to effortlessly edit billable hours and chargeable transaction aspects. 
• Real-time impact assessment: Changes to invoices are dynamically evaluated, ensuring accurate invoicing with immediate insight into financial implications. 
• Proforma invoice enhancement: The control and selection of transactions for proforma invoices are improved, enhancing accuracy and flexibility. 
• Optimized performance: Leveraging multiple paradigms and parallelized CRUD options, Dynamics 365 Project Operations enhances the scale and speed of invoicing operations. 

The role of project managers is pivotal in orchestrating the success of any project. In the 2023 release wave 2 of Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Microsoft introduces features to streamline resource utilization. This advanced capability is designed to simplify the decision-making process for project managers by offering strategic staffing choices based on comprehensive analyses of cost, availability, experience, skill alignment, and utilization of employees and subcontractors. Each recommendation is accompanied by a scoring system that presents a clear evaluation of the advantages and potential drawbacks, ensuring more informed staffing decisions. 

• Comprehensive analysis: The recommendation engine leverages AI to analyze cost, availability, skill alignment, and more for employees and subcontractors. 
• Scoring system: Each recommendation is assigned a score, highlighting its strengths and potential concerns. 
• Experience inclusion: For the first time, the engine considers the experience level of resources, enhancing the accuracy of staffing suggestions. 
• Dynamic learning: Over time, the engine learns from successful project completions and resource performance to refine its recommendations. 
• Data-driven insights: Built on the foundation of Microsoft Power Platform’s AI infrastructure and CDS resource data, the engine ensures robust and data-driven recommendations. 

The 2023 release wave 2 of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations introduces an enhancement that allows salespeople to provide quotes for both prospective accounts and established customers. This feature streamlines the quoting process, enhances performance, and aligns the system with the evolving needs of modern sales teams. Traditionally, the system supported quotes for accounts categorized as customers, overlooking prospects in the quoting process. However, recognizing the need for a more comprehensive approach, Dynamics 365 Project Operations now seamlessly accommodates prospective accounts within the quoting landscape. The new feature introduces intelligent mechanisms that facilitate the conversion of prospects into customer accounts, allowing salespeople to generate accurate and thorough quotes for a broader range of scenarios.

The 2023 release wave 2 of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations introduces advanced subcontract capabilities that elevate project procurement and financial management. The new advanced subcontract capabilities redefine how organizations manage vendor-reported time, expenses, and material consumption. This process is now automated, ensuring accurate vendor invoice posting while maintaining up-to-date project cost tracking. This feature proves indispensable for finance teams, as it facilitates the generation of projected cash flow for subcontract purchase orders, enabling more informed financial planning. 

• Streamlined visibility and coordination: From project managers to accounts payable clerks, the advanced subcontract capabilities provide a unified view of subcontracting processes, fostering seamless collaboration across the organization. 
• Automated tracking and invoicing: Vendor-reported data, including time, expenses, and material consumption, is automatically registered, simplifying the three-way match process and guaranteeing accurate vendor invoice posting. This automation also ensures real-time updates to project costs. 
• Efficient purchase order management: Project manager-created and managed subcontracts are visible as purchase orders in the accounts payable department. The system generates automatic receipts upon subcontractor completion of work. 
• Precision in vendor invoice matching: Leveraging existing three-way match policy configuration capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, the feature empowers accounts payable clerks to match vendor invoices to reported work with confidence, reducing the risk of accepting incorrect invoices. 

Efficient task management is pivotal to maintaining project momentum, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations continues to refine this aspect with the 2023 release wave 2. A noteworthy addition to the toolkit is the ability to update tasks as complete directly from the Task Grid. This feature addresses a common challenge faced by project managers, eliminating unnecessary steps and friction in the task completion process. 

Currently, when leaf node tasks reach completion, project managers often need to navigate to the tracking grid and manually adjust the remaining effort, even if the task’s actuals are less than the planned hours. This process can introduce inefficiencies, especially for milestone tasks that do not require effort tracking. The introduction of a streamlined task-completion process transforms this paradigm, enabling project managers to seamlessly express 100% task completion without having to switch user interfaces. 

Rand Group is your Dynamics 365 Project Operations support partner that can highlight new features that your organization should utilize, train your users on the new features, and perform system checks to ensure all modules are performing as expected after each release wave. Ready to start using these new features from the 2023 release wave 2? Contact Rand Group today to schedule a consultation.