Dynamics 365 & Power Platform timeline for the 2019 release wave 2

April 2019 marked a significant milestone for Dynamics 365. Our customers are now on the latest in-market version of Dynamics 365 and we’ve modernized how updates are delivered to our users. Today, I want to follow-up with an update on the April ’19 release, as well as reveal the timeline for the 2019 release wave 2, starting in October 2019.

April ’19 release update deployed seamlessly

We are pleased to announce the automated delivery of the April 2019 update to our Dynamics 365 customers world-wide! This release was rolled out seamlessly just like the October 2018 release, confirming that the era of disruptive, expensive, and effort-entailing updates is behind us. This update will serve as a model for our future updates for Dynamics 365.

One Version update

With the April ’19 release, we reached an important milestone in our One Version journey! 100 percent of our commercial cloud customers for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement applications are now on the latest version. For Finance & Operations, 87 percent of customers are on the latest version, and the rest have a plan in place to upgrade to the latest version.

Our customers have experienced significant improvements in reliability and performance and are taking advantage of the latest capabilities and features. Here is what one of our customers said about the April ’19 update experience:

“The words “upgrade” and “easy” aren’t typically used in the same sentence for ERP, that is until the One Version service updates from Microsoft made it so. As a regulated industry, it is important for us to have the right processes to be ready for continuous updates and we have developed processes and are investing in the RSAT tool to experience an “evergreen” ERP world.”

– Jeff Ketelhut, Vice President and Head of IT, Atara Biotherapeutics

Key dates for the upcoming release wave

Today, we’re announcing the key dates for this year’s second release wave of updates, starting October 2019. These will help you plan and prepare to receive these with confidence.

  • June 10, 2019: Release plan available
    Learn about the new upcoming capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
  • August 2, 2019: Early access available
    Try the new features and capabilities before they get enabled automatically.
  • October 1, 2019: General availability
    This is when the production deployment for the 2019 release wave 2 begins. Specific deployment dates for each region/instance will be communicated in advance.

Early visibility through release plans

On June 10th, 2019, we plan to publish the release plan (formerly known as the release notes) for the 2019 release wave 2 with the initial list of features for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform being delivered to market. The release plan provides you with early visibility to get ready for the updates planned from October 2019 to March 2020.

Early access to mandatory end-user impacting features

Customers and partners can validate the upcoming features and capabilities months in advance before they’re enabled automatically twice per year, during the April and October updates. Early access enables you to try and validate these new features in a non-production environment and get ready to roll out the changes with confidence to users. Early access for the 2019 release wave 2 October update will start on August 2nd, 2019.

If you have any questions or feedback, please join the discussion in the Release Readiness forum in the Dynamics community.