What is the Dynamics 365 release schedule and early access?
Solutions that are based on Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry receive service updates in two annual release waves. The release plans provide information about new and changed capabilities. Learn more at Release plans for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry.
In this article, you can find key dates and other information about the two release waves for the following apps:
- Dynamics 365 Sales
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service
- Dynamics 365 Field Service
- Finance and Operations cross-app capabilities
- Dynamics 365 Finance
- Dynamics 365 Project Operations
- Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
- Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Power Apps
- Power Automate
Key dates for the 2024 release wave 2
These release plans describe functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).
Here are the key dates for the 2024 release wave 2.
| Milestone | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Release plans available | July 16, 2024 | Learn about the new capabilities coming in the 2024 release wave 2 (October 2024 - March 2025) across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft Cloud for Industry. |
| Early access available | August 12, 2024 | Test and validate new features and capabilities that will be part of 2024 release wave 2, coming in October, before they are enabled automatically for your users. You can view the Dynamics 365 2024 release wave 2 early access features now. |
| Release plans available in additional languages | August 2, 2024 | The Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Cloud for Industry release plans are published in 11 additional languages: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Swedish. |
| General availability | October 1, 2024 | Production deployment for the 2024 release wave 2 begins. Regional deployments will start on October 1, 2024. |
Release waves
As part of the Dynamics 365 release cadence, we deploy updates in two release waves each year to all our customers and partners:
- Release wave 1 covers features releasing from April through September
- Release wave 2 covers features releasing from October through March
With early access, you can validate the update in your sandbox environment before it is applied to your production environment. Early access also gives you an opportunity to experience the new features in advance and confidently roll them out to all your users.
The following figure illustrates the key milestones and dates for rolling out a major update. The dates are loosely based on 2024 release wave 1 and 2023 release wave 2. The same timeline applies to all other major updates, though dates will differ.
The following table describes the milestones with example dates for the two release waves in any given calendar year.
Tip
Dates differ across countries and regions.
| Milestone | Example date wave 1 | Example date wave 2 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Release plans available (English only) | January 25 | July 20 | Learn more at Release plans for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry. The release plans are translated and published in supported languages three weeks later. The currently supported languages are Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Swedish. However, Cloud for Industry release plans are available only in these additional languages: French, German, Dutch, and Spanish. |
| Early access available (public preview ) | February 5 | July 31 | Test and validate new features and capabilities that will be part of the upcoming release wave before they get enabled automatically for business users. |
| General availability | April 1 | October 1 | The date when the new version of a Dynamics 365 app or Power Apps becomes generally available. Production deployment for the release wave begins. |
Note
The dates vary across Dynamics 365 apps, and can also vary across capabilities. Always check the relevant release plan for the latest information about availability.
Early visibility through release plans
The Dynamics 365 release plans announce the latest updates as features are prepared for release. You can browse the release plans online, view them in the release planner, or download the document as a PDF file.
The release plans call out how each feature will be enabled in your environment:
- Users, automatically: These features include changes to the user experience for users and are enabled automatically.
- Admins, makers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
- Users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.
Early access
Customers and partners can validate the upcoming features and capabilities months in advance, before they're enabled automatically during the April and October updates. With early access, you can try out and validate these new features in a non-production environment, and get ready to confidently roll out the changes to users.
The following table provides an overview of how to get early access to new functionality across the Dynamics 365 apps.
| Dynamics 365 apps | Description | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Sales, Customer Service, Marketing, or Field Service | You can enable the preview features from the Microsoft Power Platform admin center. | Opt in to early access updates |
| Finance, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, or Commerce | You can apply the preview package to your environment via the Shared Asset Library in Lifecycle Services. | Service update availability |
| Business Central | You can get to know the preview features in sandbox environments close to the General Availability release, or by contacting your reselling partner. | Prepare for major updates with preview environments |
Note
We highly recommend previewing these features in a sandbox or trial environment prior to production. To get the full experience of the new features, we also suggest that you create a copy of your current production environment or database (for Finance, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Commerce, or Business Central) as a test or sandbox environment to try out the new features and experiences.
Report bugs in early access features
Follow the current process of reporting bugs through Microsoft Dynamics 365 support. We'll prioritize and fix the blocking bugs before we deploy the update in production.
From early access to production
The following table provides an overview of how to move from early access to production across the Dynamics 365 apps.
| Dynamics 365 apps | Description | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Sales, Customer Service, or Field Service | Microsoft applies the new version at general availability, and all environments receive the capabilities in the new release wave. The updates deploy to the environments automatically following our safe deployment process. If you enable the updates yourself by opting in to the preview, the preview flag is removed automatically. By the end of April and October, respectively, all instances will have had the new capabilities applied. This gradual rollout is the last safety measure to catch any potential issues as we apply the changes to all instances. It is the same approach we do for our regular patches and updates. | Manage your maintenance window |
| Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, or finance and operations cross-app capabilities | You can configure the maintenance day and time windows in Lifecycle Services. You'll receive an email if you opt in to receive Lifecycle Services notifications. You'll be able to select the designated tier 2 sandbox for the update. The sandbox environment will be updated followed by the production environment. You'll have five business days for testing and validation. | One Version service updates FAQ |
| Business Central | The preview sandbox environments contain demonstration company data. Trying the preview on a copy of your current production data isn't supported; nor is testing the upgrade from your current version to the preview. Microsoft applies the update to all your environments, based on your settings. | Managing Updates |
Quality and reliability
Each new update is designed and developed by the Dynamics 365 team. Any new update is first validated by the feature team, then validated in combination with the full product. During this time, extensive testing is done on various test topologies. A compatibility checker also runs tests to ensure backward compatibility.
The monthly updates contain changes that are critical improvements to the service, including regulatory updates. A minor update will roll out across Azure regions over several days and weeks. The following figure illustrates the key milestones and dates for rolling out a monthly update.
The following table provides an overview of how Microsoft manages quality and reliability across the Dynamics 365 apps.
| Dynamics 365 apps | Description | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Sales, Customer Service, or Field Service | The quality of our releases is paramount to ensuring our customers' satisfaction. We have multiple parts to how we approach quality as we release to our global audience. We begin our process with a series of automated and manual tests across a wide variety of scenarios. These tests progress to the group of customers in multiple regions participating in our First Release program, where those customers work in conjunction with the FastTrack program on validating key scenarios on the builds scheduled to be deployed. This approach is followed by our robust safe deployment process that phases deployments over several weeks, gradually rolling out changes across the entire customer population. The safe deployment process allows us to continue to validate and monitor the release as it progresses, and provide slip-streamed fixes, if needed. This process provides the flexibility to quickly respond to any issues that might be found, and to update a build before it reaches additional customers. |
|
| Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, or finance and operations cross-app capabilities | We ensure the quality of the release by adhering to a fundamental principle that's enabled through a series of progressive, rigorous, and automated validations. | Service update availability |
| Business Central | Business Central online is a service that consists of a Microsoft-maintained platform and business functionality. Many Microsoft partners provide extra business functionality, such as to address specific industry or localization needs. Both business functionality and service components are monitored continuously and updated as appropriate. | Major updates and minor updates for Business Central online |
Impact on on-premises deployments
The following table provides an overview of the impact on on-premises deployments across the Dynamics 365 apps.
| Dynamics 365 apps | Description | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Sales, Customer Service, or Field Service | The Dynamics 365 release waves do not apply to customers of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises). The release waves apply to customers who belong to global, local, and sovereign cloud services. | Apply the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises) updates |
| Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, and finance and operations cross-app capabilities | The capabilities in the release waves apply to customers of Finance + Operations (on-premises). You can opt in to preview the new functionalities similar to online. | On-premises deployment home page |
| Business Central | Business Central on-premises also receives monthly updates. A subset of capabilities are not implemented in on-premises deployments | Deployment of Dynamics 365 Business Central |
Questions or feedback?
For any questions or feedback, join the discussion at Dynamics 365 community.