A lot of stuff happened this year around Dynamics 365 Human Resources and there's nothing better than summarizing all changes and new features. Mainly because I want to share it with my network but mostly because I know this will be a handy entry for my future self. There is always someone asking "When did this change?" or "How was this back in Jan 2021?". This is the wrap-up post about Dynamics 365 Human Resources' new functionalities and announcements.
I truly expect you to like it and enjoy it as much as I did creating it.
❄️️ January
Two main things happened in this month and both are equally good.
Workflows: we experienced some additions in the work items assigned to a user - all displayed in a unique place at the main dashboard - and the workflow submission improved for the better with a much better user experience.
Benefits management: last year we experienced a new benefits management module with complex but complete functionality. As we keep working with BM, we were missing reason codes for benefit enrollment, this release provided us with this capability.
⛄️ February
The amazing Dynamics 365 Human Resources Team App moved from public preview to general availability and all companies started using it for real. For those who do not know, this app enables employees and leaders to manage Leave and Absence requests through Microsoft Teams connected with D365 HR. Did you start using it already?
☔️ March
Speaking about Leave and Absence, during this month the functionality for managers to view leave cross-company was enabled and with this D365 HR keeps delivering a smart and rapid experience not only for HR but for everyone!
💫 April
Because HR People like to have all info under control, the Product Team made available the functionality to restrict employees from editing business contact details, this means all corp details such as email, telephone, or even address.
🍃May
During May we experienced a simple but good enhancement for the D365 HR Team App, supporting half-day requests and splitting days on multiple leave types.
🌻 June
A few exciting things happened during June.
Benefits management: in this release custom fields for eligibility rules started to be supported, so now HR People are able to run the eligibility processes based on custom fields.
Leave and Absence: firstly auditing leaves accrual transactions became a reality. Secondly, a new workflow experience was delivered for requesting time off.
💐 July
Once again a simple feature, but keeps answering customer needs, a new functionality helps HR People to calculate years of service from different dates according to business needs.
🔥 August
No features were moved to GA, but lots of new ones under public preview looked promising.
🐚 September
To compensate for a few calm months, September came with a lot of new and good stuff. We did have some GREAT new features around Payroll Integration, this means that companies were able to integrate Dynamics 365 Human Resources with local Payroll providers through an API. This way HR can create an employee pay profile, a fixed compensation as well as benefit contributions and deductions (already in D365 HR) and one-time payouts. A major goal that helped to rank D365 HR as one of the complete hire-to-retire solutions. Due to this integration, new functionality to mark employees as ´ready to pay´ was enabled during September as well.
For Leave and Absence, we had three impressive new features:
1. Absence Manager feature was announced, watch the video below to know a bit more about it. Is a very cool functionality that I really like.
2. Add attachments can be configured by leave type. For leave requests related to medical stuff, for example, you can enable attachments as mandatory every time an employee sends a time-off request. Cool, huh?
3. Units per leave are now configured by leave type. You can have vacation leave type in days and PTO as hours. Also very cool.
⚡️ October, November & December
These last three months have been quiet, but there's a reason and that's the infrastructure merge. Keep reading below to understand a bit more.
What about the Infrastructure merge?
As of today, customers interested in using Finance and Operations and Human Resources face integration challenges and a lot of questions about which of the HR capabilities to use.
Starting on January 2022 this reality disappears because both HR and the rest of the Finance and Operations applications (Finance, Supply Chain, Project Operations) share infrastructure and we can count on a single set of capabilities for Human Resources, this opts for:
Clarity for customers, partners, and end-users.
Extensibility with Power Platform that covers business scenarios.
Consistency between D365 Human Resources and Finance and Operations applications, both for ALM, LCS, geographic availability, among others.
An advantage over shared services and tools, which translates into cost reduction.
All efforts made to improve Dynamics 365 Human Resources functionality, will be gradually reflected in clients who are using the Human Resources workspace within Finance and Operations, such as Personnel Management, Task Management, Compensation Management, Employee Development, Self-Service, and so on. All functionalities can be disabled from the well-known Feature Management.
The merge will be available from Public Preview next January 2022 and is all I can think about.
We will have at least three scenarios and all of them are challenging and an incredible opportunity to take part in the comeback of HR to F&O Infrastructure.
Organizations using both solutions (HR | F&O) with custom integrations: Congratulations! Custom integrations are no longer necessary. The database will be shared between HR and other F&O apps.
Organizations using only HR: Don't worry, the migration of your environment to new infrastructure will be almost automatic. You will have support tools to test the migration process and validate the information (data mapping) before making any mess.
Organizations using HR in Finance and Operations: existing functionalities in Dynamics 365 HR will be gradually available and your # 1 ally will always be the Feature Management functionality, to enable or not the new features.
If you want to know more about this infrastructure merge I highly recommend you to keep an eye on:
A LOT can change in a year, and this is a reflection of it
Lovely end of the year for everyone!