2025 Release Wave 1 – Highlights and Reflections

The release plans for this year’s first wave are out, and in this post, I’ve picked five areas to highlight. Of course, there are many more exciting updates coming, each deserving its own spotlight. Which features grabbed your attention the most? Share your thoughts in a comment!

There were three release plans for the previous wave, 2024 Wave 2, and there are four for this one. We are being introduced to “Role-based Copilot Offerings”. No one is surprised about this additional one. The 2025 Release Wave 1 Release Plans are found here:

• Microsoft Power Platform: 2025 release wave 1 plan
• Microsoft Dynamics 365: 2025 release wave 1 plan
• Microsoft Cloud for Industry: 2025 release wave 1 plan
• Role-based Copilot offerings: 2025 release wave 1 plan

Don’t forget we also have the Release Planner from Microsoft to utilize as well as the Release Plans Visualized from Jukka Niiranen.

Now, let’s dive into the five highlights! I’ve picked some from the Power Platform release plan and one from the Dynamics 365 edition. These do not come in any particular order based on most interesting or promising and as already mentioned, there’s much more to discover in the plans! Note that the dates mentioned can change. PP = Public Preview, GA = General Available.

Secure data access using filtered view

The Dataverse security concepts include Business Units, record ownership, Dataverse teams, and security roles, which allow access on table level. It can be extended to control access down to column level through column security profiles. All of that has been available in the platform for a long while.

A new feature is now being introduced, which allows defining security roles using filters for certain values in a column. It’s described as needed for securing the data with reporting and data analysis in mind.

“Using filtered views, admins can secure record-level access by defining security based on certain values of a field. For example, admins can define access to records where the City field value is equal to Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond.“

Secure data access using filtered views, PP Apr 2025, GA N/A.

Ask questions about your ERP data in natural language

This one can be found in the Dynamics 365 release plan. We’ve had the possibility to setup virtual tables for Dynamics 365 F&O entities. With this feature we’ll be able to add those as knowledge sources in Copilot Studio. So that we can built agents that connects to the business data in F&O.

“Makers will have the ability to add Dataverse virtual tables for finance and operations apps as knowledge sources to the agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio. This provides users the ability to ask questions in their agent chat experiences in natural language and get answers from their enterprise business data in finance and operations apps.“

Ask questions about your ERP data in natural language, PP Apr 2025, GA Oct 2025.

Generate process maps for multi-flow automations

With this new feature it sounds like we’ll get an easier way to gain an overview of and easier way to troubleshoot our cloud flows and related child flows (and more). Something that has been a bit tricky in the past.

“View and manage all flow-dependencies involved in your multi-flow process. Parent/child flows, desktop flows, and work queues are all visualized through the new process map management experience. Efficiently navigate between flow run logs, credentials, and connections.“

Generate process maps for multi-flow automations, PP Mar 2025, GA Sep 2025.

Create generative actions in cloud flows

This sounds like the AI flows that were presented during Microsoft Build last year. See my post about that. This one has also been present in the 2024 Release Wave 2 plan. I choose to highlight it anyway, it’s an interesting feature and I’m looking forward to try it out.

“Generative actions use generative AI reason over unstructured content and determine what steps and sequences it needs to achieve a process outcome based on instructions and parameters provided by you in natural language.“

Create generative actions in cloud flows, PP Dec 11 2024, GA Apr 2025.

Copilot related features in model-driven apps

As the fifth feature to highlight, I’m going to cheat a little! It’s my blog post, I feel entitled to do what I want. There are Copilot related changes coming to our model-driven apps. We’ve heard about these during events last year, e.g. at Microsoft Ignite.

I do believe these will be valuable for the end users so I’ll bring them up anyway. And it’s a good fit to group them together under one and the same headline. What did I mean with cheating? Well, it’s not one feature, it’s several.

Add AI record summaries on forms. We’ll have the possibility to create a record summary prompt for any table by using a guided prompt builder experience. Get assistance when filling out forms by adding files. Add files (drag and drop) to the form-fill assistance capability Get suggestions what data to add. Other coming features are Copilot powered visualizations and search and filtering functionality.

Then we have the Plan Designer itself, which of course expands beyond the model-driven apps!. Below are links to the mentioned features. Navigate to each to find the Public Preview and GA dates.

• Add AI record summary to model-driven apps
• Improve form fill assistance by adding custom knowledge
• Visualize the data in your view easily with Copilot
• Find records and filter views using natural language
• Copilot helps you plan out solutions to business problems

Other reflections

Gone are the days when release plans introduced entirely new features to us only, or most at least. Nowadays, we more often hear the news during the official Microsoft events, and then it’s presented in the plans. Features are being re-imagined, name changes are made. Some features might also appear in an earlier plan and then gets move to the next one. It can be challenging to distinguish between what’s actually new and what features have gone under a different name or costume in the past.

Another reflection is that the Dataverse chapter includes a lot of Copilot Studio related features, Extend your copilots with knowledge and actions. I can imagine this being a bit confusing. We’ve had Dataverse (C#) plugins since long back and now there is also a “plugin concept” for Copilot Studio. Same thing with “Entities”. I need to explore the Copilot Studio parts more. There are chapters in the official documentation that needs to be read, this one for instance, Copilot Studio action architecture.

Useless Fun Fact: Currently, in the Power Platform edition, the word “Copilot” is mentioned 311 times. In the Dynamics 365 edition, it appears 310 times, in Cloud for Industry 68 times, and in the Role-based Copilot offerings plan 157 times. Yes, there’s still a lot of focus on Copilot and AI-related features, and the Power Platform edition is the winner.

Have you noticed any interesting features in the latest release plans that were new to you? Or is there a particular feature you’d like to highlight? Leave a comment!

Featured photo by Ch Photography on Unsplash.

Original Post https://carinaclaesson.com/2025/01/23/2025-release-wave-1-highlights-and-reflections/