Dynamics 365, Power Platform & Copilot 2026 Release Wave 1 Overview

With the publication of Microsoft’s upcoming April 2026 release plans, we take a look at the more interesting changes and new features.

As has become the norm with Microsoft release plans, there are three versions – Dynamics 365, the Power Platform and Role-Based Copilot Offerings. Unlike with previous releases, no Early Access stage has been announced this time – these new features and changes will roll out straight into General Availability from April 1st, 2026, with UK deployment currently scheduled between April 3rd and April 6th.

Please note that some AI functionality will require Copilot licences/capacity.

Dynamics 365 Key Changes

Dynamics 365 Sales

Sales Research Agent enhancements

Use AI-suggested, role-specific research topics (or provide your own) to produce fresh insights and visualisations from your data. You can then view the reasoning behind the decisions and refine the logic accordingly.

Sales Qualification Agent enhancements

Evaluate whether a lead is a suitable fit for your business by using any data source either from a public web search or (through Copilot Studio) custom data sources. These sources can then be applied to the Lead Assessment process (previously called Handoff Criteria).
Easily review AI-researched insights into your lead data and trigger follow-up actions based on urgency, value and engagement.
Personalise emails sent by the Sales Qualification Agent to ensure they match your company voice, seller style and branding.

Sales Close Agent enhancements

Using an ask-and-refine experience, a salesperson can ask questions directly on an opportunity to generate additional insights, tailor preparation for meetings and seek guidance when preparing to advance an opportunity to the next stage.
Next Best Action provides appropriate context and insights alongside each suggested action and allows a salesperson to carry out that action, whether they are in Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, or Outlook, ensuring that their workflow is not interrupted.
Create personalised research layouts on opportunities, allowing a salesperson to work in a way that suits them, by bringing in the data they need to see, laid out how they need it. They can also add their own notes and context and bring in inputs from approved knowledge sources.

General enhancements

Portfolio Planning – Get executive‑ready overviews generated automatically from CRM and relevant web context so you spend less time assembling the data and more time acting upon it.
Fabric Lakehouse support – As some organisations store their operational and financial data in Fabric Lakehouse rather than Dynamics 365, native connectivity has been added to allow the Sales Research Agent to use this Lakehouse data when generating its insights.

General Sales improvements

Sequences – Create or edit an email template without leaving the Sequence editor, reducing the back-and-forth disruption of building Sequence that involve the sending of emails.
Sales Hub Dialler – Embedded directly into the Sales Hub app and allows a salesperson to click any number to call it or receive inbound calls; all with logging and optional conversation intelligence and call recording.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data

You can now access behavioural data captured by Customer Insights – Journeys, such as opened emails and links clicked, and use it in Customer Insights – Data. This makes it easier to identify how contacts responded to previous campaigns and adapt future campaigns accordingly.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys

Dynamic content blocks in emails. These eliminate the manual work of updating the same content in multiple emails. When a dynamic content block is updated, all emails using that block are automatically refreshed, ensuring recipients always receive the most up-to-date content, making it ideal for promotional content or text disclaimers.
Expiring messages. Avoid customer frustration when sending outdated communications, such as expired vouchers or irrelevant event reminders by setting an expiry date on any message within a journey, including emails, SMS messages and push notifications.
Create any type of record or activity during a Journey. Previously, it had only been possible to create leads and opportunities mid-journey, and with a limited set of fields. Now it is possible to create any type of record and with all of the fields you require, including custom fields.

Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Contact Center enhancements

The improved chat widget now loads more quickly, has a more modern feel and allows for deeper customisation. This ensures a better experience for customers and keeps the experience in line with in-house branding.
Call recordings are now split by speaker, making it possible to jump to the actions of a specific speaker, saving time when looking for specific interactions.

General Service improvements

For organisations that want to evaluate how AI can aid with their service delivery, Shadow mode can be enabled, which provides AI-generated insights with predicted and suggested responses on cases without sending any customer-facing communication or modifying existing case data. The results can then be compared to the actions of the actual service agent to identify mismatches or potential opportunities for improvement.
Customer sentiment can now be directly viewed on a case or in lists of cases, making it easier to identify potential issues more promptly.
Dynamic forecasting – By analysing historical and contextual data, AI generates forecasts for the selected timeframe, including reasoning, making it easier for organisations to optimise staffing requirements.

Dynamics 365 Business Central

AI Agents – Specialised assistants can now be created and invoked directly from within Business Central. Pre-built agents such as the Sales Order agent can simplify order creation by turning natural language into a complete sales document. And when there is no suitable agent for the tasks you’re trying to complete, a new agent can be built, without leaving Business Central, using the AI Development Toolkit. These agents help to automate repetitive tasks and make your business processes more efficient and intelligent.
To help organisations in the UK comply with the updated Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance (Amendment) Regulations 2024, new data points have been added to the existing Payment Practices page, making it simpler for users to track and report on late payments.
Tighter Shopify integration – With this latest release, it’s now possible to synchronise additional data, including item product options and image variations between Business Central and Shopify.
A new Expenses Management module enables users to capture, approve and reimburse expenses, without the need for an additional third-party solution.
Support for self-billed invoices has now been added, enabling businesses to generate invoices on behalf of a vendor when a self‑billing agreement is in place.

Power Platform Key Changes

Power Apps

Row summaries in grids. When reviewing lists of data, a quick AI summary against each record can give a user immediate high-level insights on each row, without having to study the data in detail, making it easier to identify and interact with the data.
Generative Pages rolled out to more regions. Initially only available in the US, Generative Pages allow a user to create bespoke pages within model-driven apps, simply by describing (or uploading a descriptive image) what the page should show. This page can then be refined manually or with AI assistance. This technology will now be rolled out to the UK and other supported regions.
Enhanced search in filters and lookups. It will now be even easier to find a specific record with improvements such as: automatic wildcard matching, fuzzy matching (catering for typos, spacing differences etc.) and highlighting the searched phrase in the returned results.

Power Automate

Recover deleted flows. If a Power Automate flow has accidentally been deleted, the flow owner(s) and administrators will now be able to recover it easily, providing it is within the designated timeframe.
Power Apps integration for desktop flows. Apps can now be invoked from a desktop flow and inputs passed from the flow to the app automatically. Building experiences within Power Apps rather than custom forms ensures a reliable and consistent experience.

Copilot Studio

Computer-Using Agents. This enables your agent to interact with any system with a graphical user interface (GUI), such as websites or desktop applications. Tasks are described in natural language, and are executed by the agent on a configured computer with a virtual mouse and keyboard. The agent even adapts to visual changes in the layout of the target system.
SharePoint lists can now be used as a data source for a Copilot agent.

Role-Based Copilots

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales

Sales Agent chat. Provides a conversational way of interrogating your sales data, whether it lives in your CRM system, Teams, or elsewhere. This can help salespeople prepare for customer meetings, get up to speed on new accounts and identify new opportunities.
Improved record summaries. It’s now easier to configure and curate AI-generated summaries and even allow for the summaries to retrieve data from non-CRM data sources.
Sales Development Agent enhancements. This agent acts as an autonomous salesperson, generating opportunities from assigned leads and assigning them to a salesperson once qualified. To ensure that the agent correctly engages with potential customers, simulations can be run between the agent and testers.

Summary

The 2026 Wave 1 release has an emphasis on refinement rather than launching extensive and wide-ranging changes. We look forward to April 1st, when this new functionality begins rolling out across supported regions. Existing Strategy 365 customers who would like to discuss any of the above changes and how they might be able to assist their organisation, please get in touch with one of our experts who will be happy to help.