Upcoming Dynamics 365 releases - exciting features worth waiting

Ever since Microsoft started publishing the Dynamics 365 product roadmap, there is that part of me who checks eagerly to see is some of the ideas have turned into features or not.

With the 2021 wave release, following are some of the key items which made me super excited and I want to try them as soon as the preview lands.

ILMerge - Thanks for being there, but we don't need you anymore

Microsoft is bringing in the new concept of Dependent Assemblies which will allow developers to register third-party libraries along with the plugin assembly.

Arguably the most used third-party assembly is Newtonsoft's Json.net, we don't need to use ILMerge for using it in our project 😁

Dependent assemblies for plug-ins - Power Platform Release Plan

Multi-Table Lookup fields

Yes, you heard it right, you will soon be able to create lookup fields which references multiple tables in Dataverse.

Multi-table lookups - Power Platform Release Plan

In-App Notifications on Model-driven apps This feature has been requested for so long now, am so happy to see it making its place into the platform.

Anytime we had requirements for a notification, the only simple solution was to send out an email to people, well not anymore. Soon we will be able to add notifications to the Xrm.Panel, (see screenshot below)

Model-driven app adds in-app notifications - Power Platform Release Plan

Application Insights and Plugin Trace

Centralized place to track all of the application logs, including the ones that gets generated from plugins, no longer required to fiddle with Trace Log Table

Plug-in telemetry with Application Insights integration - Power Platform Release Plan