Dynamics 365 Human Resources 2020 release notes
On the 8th July 2020, Microsoft announced the range of new features coming to Dynamics 365 Human Resources in October 2020. This forms part of Microsoft’s 2020 release wave 2.
This article explores just some of the new features coming to Dynamics 365 Human Resources. These powerful new capabilities will be released between October 2020 and January 2021.
Self-service
A large part of this release focuses transforming the employee experience of the self-service offerings, particularly improving the interaction of managers between team members and HR.
Changes include:
- Ability to add custom links to your ‘my team’ tab in the self-service portal.
- Being able to access attachments that have been uploaded to the application by HR or the employee.
- Raising a request to recruit through the self-service portal or personnel management module. To further simplify this process, managers will be able to complete the request using default job and position information. Once submitted, the status of the request can be monitored.
One of the most anticipated additions of the 2020 release wave is the extension of the self-service absence functionality to Microsoft Teams. In the Dynamics 365 Human Resources Teams app, users can request details of their holiday balances, raise a holiday request and complete approval all through Microsoft Teams.
Leave and absence management
There are several enhancements to leave and absence management in this release, including workflow experience enhancements which allow team members to track the status of their leave requests. A cross company view of employee leave will empower managers by allowing them to view their whole team’s leave, even if they are employed under different companies or functions within the organisation. Furthermore, approved leave can be easily integrated with Outlook allowing your approved leave to be displayed in your calendar.
Through additional insights into leave balances, managers and HR advisors will be able to gain better visibility of employees’ leave balances in a single view including time taken, accrued and remaining, allowing for better management of leave requests across the organisation.
Personnel management
To eliminate double entry and streamline the hiring process, enhancements have been made to include candidate records. Candidates’ records were previously only available through the attract module, these can now be recorded within the personnel management module and include functionality to record additional information including education, skills, and employment history.
Once a candidate is processed as a ‘new hire’ all data on the candidate record will be transferred to the employee record. This enhancement will save valuable admin time for HR teams as well as ensuring one source of the truth in terms of employee data.
Integrations and extensibility
To provide further extensibility and to support better integrations, several data entities will be added the Common Data Service including:
- Benefit plans, setup, and employee enrolled entities for integration with third party solutions.
- Skills, certifications and performance entities for improved reporting and analytics.
As a result, HR users will be able to benefit from the Microsoft Power Platform to further enhance their functionality.
Additional developments to improve integration of Dynamics 365 Human Resources to third party applications include enhancements in recruitment and payroll.
Recruitment
As part of the continued development to support the recently retired attract module, new functionality is available to integrate with LinkedIn Talent Hub. This will allow candidate record details to be sent to Dynamics 365 Human Resources once an accepted offer has been received in LinkedIn Talent Hub. This will remove the need for manual entry – reducing both time and risk of errors.
The candidate record will be created and submitted to workflow in Dynamics 365 Human Resources for additional data and approval before being created as an employee record.
Additional API’s will also be available to link your Dynamics 365 Human Resources solution with third party applicant tracking solutions (ATS) which are currently available in the application eco-system.
Payroll
As many organisations relay on third party providers to process payroll, the ability to provide data regarding employee details, benefits and salary information is critical. Microsoft have therefore focused on simplifying the integration with payroll providers. Functionality is now available to build new API’s with third party solutions to include:
- Pay details
- Salary information
- Benefit deductions.
Summary
All the 2020 release wave 2 powerful capabilities outlined above are free to organisations who hold an active subscription to Dynamics 365 Human Resources. The features can be applied in an automatic update from October 2020 through to March 2021. Dynamics 365 Finance users can also benefit from the wave 2 updates in Dynamics 365 Finance and the Power Platform.
If you would like to learn more about Dynamics 365 Human Resources, download our comprehensive guide. Alternatively, please get in touch and we will be glad to help your organisation transition through and harness the power of these changes.