There are 3 areas that I cover in each month’s What’s new update:
- New features planned for public preview in April/May 2021
- Features moved from public preview to general availability in March/April/May 2021
- Overall roadmap updates
Also, this month’s blog post is a bit special due to 2 reasons:
- The roadmap has transitioned from Release 2020 wave 2 to Release 2021 Wave 1 which means all the General availability features from Release 2020 Wave 1 would have moved to production environments. You can read all about the update process in the docs page: Update process
- I am combining the monthly what’s new updates from April and May in this blog post😊 (Sorry for missing the one in April!)
Curious to know more, continue reading…
New features planned for public preview in April/May 2021
🔗Custom field support in Benefits management
Custom fields will be supported on benefits management and will be included in the below tables:
- Plans
- Plan coverage options
- Worker benefit plans
- Eligibility rules
- Programs
🔗Custom field support for eligibility processing
Lets take an example of having employee benefits plans based on the t-shirt size of the employee which is defined as a custom field on employee’s profile or an example of having a specific benefit plan defined based on a custom field on a employee’s position (EG: eligible for management benefits as a yes/no field)
This new feature planned for public preview in May 2021 will enable the capability of using custom fields to define benefits plan eligibility.
Some screenshot references from Microsoft docs page that explains how this can be used. (Click on the URL of this feature above to access Microsoft docs page for more details)
🔗Enable simplified integration with payroll providers
This is one of the features that is slowly building up from the stages of an idea logged on the ideas portal – development team reviewing it for further feedback and now in public preview. In short this is one of the most sought after features that all partners and customers have been waiting for. It’s here…. and keeps getting better every time I read about it on Microsoft docs page🤩
A quick process overview of how the integration works:
There are 5 data integration touchpoints introduced as part of this feature:
- Payroll employee
- Payroll worker address
- Payroll fixed compensation plan
- Payroll position job
- Payroll position
🔗Leave and absence workflow experience enhancements
2 tiny bits of enhancements coming through which makes the life of all persona’s (Managers/ HR professionals) that are involved in the approval process better.
- User Interface made better and more obvious to approve or reject a approval workflow
- Capability to approve or reject multiple leave requests at the same time.
Features moved from public preview to general availability in April/May 2021
🔗Custom field support in Benefits management
Custom fields will be supported on benefits management and will be included in the below tables:
- Plans
- Plan coverage options
- Worker benefit plans
- Eligibility rules
- Programs
🔗Benefits management workspace
The benefits management workspace will focus on providing specific views for HR administrators based on the enrollment period selected:
- Employees with unconfirmed selections
- New hires not enrolled
- Employees with no plans selected during open enrollment
- Open life events
- Future life events
- Employees enrolled in benefits
Also a separate tab will be made available to view process results and communications.
🔗Restrict employees from editing business contact details
This feature will let the Organization admins control what address and contact information can be edited by the employees
Overall roadmap updates
There are some really cool changes in the overall roadmap items and release timelines of D365HR release 2021 wave 1. Find the updated overview illustrated below:
Do you want to have a quickly accessible overview of the roadmap which is linked to Microsoft official documentation? Download the pdf:
Wrap up….
As we progress start on the new release with April and May 2021 updates there are some interesting changes made on the roadmap by the product team of Dynamics 365 Human Resources. Curious and interested to discuss more about this topic please reach out to me on LinkedIn!
Kudos to all the hard work from the Product development team of Dynamics 365 Human Resources👍
Want to know more… Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog😀:
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