My Highlights of the Dynamics 365 Project Operations 2025 Release Wave 2
- Sebastian Sieber
- Jul 17
- 6 min read
It is the time of the year again! No. Not summer vacation and sipping a light, refreshing and fruity drink at a beach somewhere nicer than the office. It is time for the 2025 Release Wave 2 announcements!
Microsoft has just announced all the future planned capabilities for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and - no surprise - their first-party Copilot apps.
In today's blog post, we will have a look at my highlights from the planned Dynamics 365 Project Operations features that will enrich our experience over the next couple of months.
But first, important dates at a glance
Let's have a quick look at the dates that might be interesting for you:
Event | Date | What does this mean? |
|---|---|---|
Timeline 2025 Release Wave 2 | October 2025 - March 2026 | The listed features will release starting from October 2025 and are expected to be live until March 2026 |
Release Plan available | July 16, 2025 | This is now! Learn about upcoming features based on the published documentation |
Early access available | August 4, 2025 | Access to 2025 Release Wave 2 early access featuers (Enablement via PPAC) |
General availability | October 1, 2025 | Production deployment for 2025 Release Wave 2 starts based on the regional deployment pipeline |
Disclaimer: Please review preview features in a separate sandbox environment with the goal of being prepared once they hit general availability for productive usage.
Links Links Links
Of course there are many many sources and links, so here are them at a glance for you start with the topic of your interest:
My Highlights of the Dynamics 365 Project Operations 2025 Release Wave 2
General availability in March 2026
Project Approvals are usually shown as a plain grid. With the new UI experience, the Project and Resource Managers receive a calendar-like grid view. Similar to the time entry creation grid experience.
This helps users to interact with a larger volume of records at the same time and identify approval records that need their attention, as crucial information is highlighted.
Seb's Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆
A long overdue change for the Project Approvals interaction. So far, every user needs to either customize and adjust the grid, or - even worse - open each and every record individually for review. Especially for larger projects and organizations, we can expect some serious time savings.
One star deduction as it's not clear how this new experience works together with the Approvals agent.
Public preview starts in September 2025
General availability in March 2026
With the task grid, Project Operations also leverages the task form similar to Planner. For a few weeks now, users can add custom fields to the grid that also receive a specific section on the task details view. But there is no further customization option. Potential unused fields will remain static, and all customer-specific information must make its appearance in the grid in order to be caught by the form.
With the new feature, it will now be possible to customize the whole task form.
Seb's Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆
Here we go again - if you have followed the last Release wave highlights you may have heard about this feature already. It was already part of the previous release wave, as the public preview starts before October.
In comparison to last time, I can award one more star this time. As there are designs indicating that we receive a fully customizable task form 👀
Public preview starts in September 2025
General availability in March 2026
As an experienced Project Manager you may have reached a certain, ideal Project structure to organize the tasks of your team. Or at least parts of it are close to being called perfect. Or you just want to bring the best of your best project task packages together.
Instead of copying the whole project, with all the details, you will be able to select only single or multiple tasks, without all the unwanted extra information.
Seb's Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Yes, yes, yes - we had this one in the last overview already. But for the same reason. The preview starts in September, which is technically before Wave 2 starts, but the GA is within the Wave 2 - confusing.
I'm pretty sure that the final implementation will be less confusing, as the previewed UI provides a nice experience for the Project Manager to select the desired Project Tasks:
Public preview starts in March 2026
General availability in March 2026
The project status report will be extendable using predefined tables leveraging the insight generator and enabling users to create and share reports with different target audiences.
Seb's Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆
I need to have a Copilot and AI-related feature in the list. Of course I need. Among all the Copilot capabilities available for Project Operations, the project status report is my favorite one. So I had to include the announcement to extend the report. The outlook of providing custom project reports for different purposes and target groups excites me.
The only downside as for now is that the announcement is quite short and mentioned "predefined entities". This leaves space to interpret that custom tables and values on the project table itself might be not supported in March 2026.
General availability in March 2026
As a Project Approver it is possible today already to assign the Project Approver permission to any other Project Team Member. But this comes with some limitations. May the colleagues who are not part of the regular project team, and they just count towards the Project Team Member limit. The employee receives additional permissions on the project, which are not desired, or we simply forget to remove the permission later on again. The new delegation feature offers a simpler and safer way to make sure the project approvals happen in time for the billing process.
Seb's Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆
A safe and secure delegation for the project approver role is an extension I see in most of our client projects. Therefore it is good to see to receive an out of the box approach but also I'm a bit sad as it was a great use case for extensions 😅 Jokes aside, how often did we grant extra permissions even tho we didn't want to. And then forgot about it.
In order to prevent unauthorized approvals and limit the time for the extra granted permissions, this is a great addition to the Project Operations toolbox.
A star got deducted because it took soo long 😝
Public preview starts in September 2025
General availability in March 2026
The work hours of each bookable resource are defined within a calendar tab on the bookable resource itself.
To group and organize these hours better, we usually use a work hours template. The same template is used for the Project calendar, too. And after the Project, now also the work hour template table receives the calendar control in order to support changes much more easily
Seb's Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A small one at the end. But also a quite helpful one. Especially for setting up and maintaining master data. Performing changes and setting up new work hour templates can be time-consuming today with a lot of extra clicks. It is great to see improvement here
Conclusion
My Highlights of the Dynamics 365 Project Operations 2025 Release Wave 2 - but before, maybe some general thoughts.
Over the past years, Microsoft has pushed and published a lot of features. Some of them are well-thought-out and just make sense, while others feel like a preview even after years, still.
Undoubtedly, the landscape is changing. Clients desire the latest features, and leaders and CEOs now commend Agents as essential. The more buzz, the better.
That being said, I truly value the Project Operations product team's dedication to enhancing business processes, improving them, and paying attention to customer needs.
Certainly, there is still work to be done, gaps in the processes, missing features, and specific approaches are not addressed by default.
However, the announced features seem extremely promising to me, and I am eager to try out the previews.