Microsoft offers the preview for new capabilities and enhancements in the Dynamics 365 platform on a regular basis. At what point should you consider exploring, opting in and turning on the preview? Microsoft says:

  • A preview is a feature that is not complete, as it may employ reduced privacy, security, and/or compliance commitments, but is made available before it is officially released for general availability so customers can get early access and provide feedback. Previews are provided “as-is,” “with all faults,” “as available,” and without warranty.
  • This preview feature does not come with technical support and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Technical Support won’t be able to help you with issues or questions. If Microsoft does elect to provide any type of support, such support is provided “as is,” “with all faults,” and without warranty, and may be discontinued at any time.
  • Previews are not meant for production use, especially to process Personal Data or other data that is subject to heightened compliance requirements, and any use of “live” or production data is at your sole risk. All previews are subject to separate Terms and Conditions.

How to Opt-In

You can enable the features coming in the release update by opting in to the updates in the Power Platform admin center. Opting in will enable all changed user experience updates for Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement, which will be enabled by default to everyone starting in the latest release.

Visit the Power Platform admin center and select the environment in which you want to enable the latest release updates. It’s highly recommend that you create a copy of your Production environment as a Sandbox environment to try out the latest release updates. After enabling the latest release update, it can’t be turned off. Therefore, it’s necessary to first test the updates in a Sandbox environment prior to enabling it in a Production environment that could impact your users in the organisation.

Select Manage.

Select Update now to activate the latest release updates and proceed through confirmation dialogs.

The latest release update is activated for the Dynamics 365 platform, Dynamics 365 for Sales, Customer Service, Sales Hub, Customer Service Hub, and Marketing.

Take Out

Previews are a great way to see what features are coming out and what will be deprecated. Although not full featured, it’s a great asset to ensure customer solutions are tested to ensure user experience remains unaffected or even enhanced.

Originally posted at: https://msdyn365.blog/2020/04/04/dynamics-365-previews-and-what-it-means/