Many businesses rely on Dynamics 365 CE to manage sales possibilities, support marketing efforts, and handle service situations.
Developers are essential in making this platform perform properly for many firms.
They adapt Dynamics to specific business requirements, integrate it with other systems, and create extensions that offer new capabilities.
As we enter 2024, the world of Dynamics 365 CE development looks full of exciting opportunities.
New Microsoft tools and technologies will empower developers to create solutions faster and enable more advanced scenarios.
Emerging best practices for modern development will help improve quality and productivity.
Industry trends point towards low-code platforms, everything-as-a-service models, and sustainability initiatives shaping project priorities.
What specific innovations await Dynamics 365 CE developers next year?
Let’s explore some likely advancements across three key areas: new tools, updated techniques, and emerging trends.
New Tools
In 2024, expect to see major enhancements in Microsoft’s Power Platform suite aimed at citizen developers as well as pro code solutions.
For example, Power Apps will gain more robust features for building responsive experiences across the web and mobile devices.
Power Automate will expand connectivity to new apps and services while also embedding more robotic process automation tasks.
The broader integration of AI through Microsoft Cloud services will accelerate.
For instance, conversational bots leveraging Azure cognitive services can transform customer engagements or employee self-service scenarios.
Advancements within the .NET ecosystem specifically will also impact Dynamics developers.
New frameworks like .NET MAUI introduce easier ways to build cross-platform mobile apps connected to CE data.
Popular libraries like Blazor now streamline web development by avoiding JavaScript using C# directly in the browser.
As these complementary tools progress next year, Dynamics 365 CE solutions can greatly expand what’s possible while boosting team productivity.
Updated Techniques
In pursuit of higher quality software delivered faster, development teams will increasingly adopt more modern methodologies in 2024.
The shift left mindset promotes starting testing even before full coding begins through test-driven development tactics.
Unit testing individual functions along with mocking and spying facilities in frameworks like Moq make this highly iterative style manageable.
Containerization of local environments through Docker paired with continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines powered by Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions helps automate testing and deployment tasks earlier in lifecycle stages.
Infrastructure defined entirely in code finally gives consistency and reproducibility when spinning staging and production cloud resources.
Architecting solutions also move away from monolithic single-layer applications. Breaking big codebases into micro frontends promotes independent development and update cycles.
Backend APIs can similarly isolate domains around capabilities like orders, inventory, etc.
Transitioning to service-oriented architectures centered on message queues and event buses provides resiliency.
Combined, containers, microservices, and APIs lay a foundation for Dynamics 365 CE solutions that can scale more efficiently.
Emerging Trends
Burgeoning low-code no-code platforms indicate custom development for Dynamics 365 CE may require writing less manual code in 2024 and beyond.
With robotic process automation capabilities plus deeper integration with Microsoft Cloud services, Power Platform provides “out of box” solutions to needs once reserved for custom plugins, workflows, or extensions only professional developers could tackle.
While pro coding mastery remains critical for complex scenarios, more streamlined delivery of standard requirements becomes possible using tools friendly to non-developers.
Consumption models for business software also keep moving towards “everything as a service” rather than on-premises deployments.
Dynamics 365 CE already pioneered subscription-based access but now back office systems like ERPs and databases also emphasize cloud hosting options.
Serverless computing, elastic resource allocation, and automated provisioning all make scaling easier in the cloud.
Lastly, sustainability and social responsibility have shaped technological direction more overtly lately.
Dynamics 365 CE updates now target enabling renewable energy usage insights and lowering emissions tied to organizations and their global supply chains.
Ethics concerns permeate discussions around the usage of emerging technologies like AI.
Developing secure, transparent solutions trusted by users grows as an industry priority.
Enhanced Integration
Integration connects data and processes across multiple systems to create unified experiences and workflows.
As Dynamics 365 CE matures as a cloud platform, expanding integration capabilities pervade every aspect of development from data connections to user experiences.
In 2024, expect closer API-driven integration between Dynamics 365 CE and complementary Microsoft cloud services like Azure Synapse Analytics, Power BI, and Teams.
Support for real-time data ingestion and analytics pipelines to these services removes previous lags in synchronizing data insights across products.
Tighter integration also helps embed Power BI visualizations or Teams chatbots directly within CRM entity forms for more contextual user experiences.
Open API standards like OData and OpenAPI Specification will shape access patterns.
For non-Microsoft technologies, Dynamics 365 CE should extend integration adaptors to leading SaaS tools across sales, marketing, and service to consolidate data pipelines.
Robust API gateways improve governance over external connections with authentication, rate limiting, and API keys to manage usage growth.
Event grid subscriptions create reactive integration triggering downstream actions when data changes upstream.
iPaaS templates streamline typical app, DB, and legacy system connections so developers avoid reinventing common integration needs.
Low code tooling like Power Automate handles more simple use cases while developers focus on complex scenarios.
Improved development environments
Cloud-based integrated development environments (IDE) will gain mainstream appeal by 2024 among Dynamics developers seeking improved inner loop coding experiences.
Visual Studio Codespaces provides a browser-based IDE eliminating local tool installation. Cross-platform accessibility aids developer mobility across devices.
Extensions and templates turbocharge Dynamics CE-specific development driving IntelliSense, code snippets, debugging, and more.
Native version control through Git/GitHub avoids context switching enabling streamlined changes with commits, branches, and pulls all within the IDE.
Containerization also arises for local Dynamics CE development harnessing Docker to achieve environment consistency and reproducibility.
Containers standardize SDK versions, development configurations, and dependencies reducing unknowns across machines.
Quick Docker setups augment traditional development virtual machines.
Teams share template containers housing the optimal Dynamics CE build agents, plugins, and extensions.
Containers can even emulate production-sized environments with data sampling that replicates live systems for improved testing fidelity.
Advanced customization
Dynamics 365 CE customization techniques will achieve greater sophistication in 2024.
As CRM online instances grow larger in usage, customization must balance against upgrade complexity, security, and performance.
This demands honing changes for maximum return without technical debt.
Specialization of custom plugins reduces unnecessary activation through specific message invocation.
Targeted code isolation limits risk, eases testing, and improves governance over business logic uniqueness.
Custom APIs equally justify themselves better through intentional facades, not wholesale system exposure.
Privileged custom code tucks safely away through Azure execution contexts while shared data moves to CDS entity extensions limiting schema disturbance.
Teams partition complexity into manageable service modules with purpose-built data and process scope.
Client scripting adopts modular patterns using web pack bundling to organize jQuery shortcomings. Reusable SPFx extensions replace one-off client script hacks.
Code promotion from makers to pro developers improves sustainability without losing business agility.
As makers create prototypes, devs transition them to production-grade components secured for enterprise use.
Build automation around security analysis, performance load testing, and upgrade simulation to verify protections.
Achieving alterable agility – combining enterprise security with startup speed – signifies the new ideal for customization in 2024.
The Dynamics 365 CE customization and enhancement field heads towards an exciting phase in 2024 defined by new tools, techniques, and trends holding interesting potential to empower developers to build ever more capable solutions.
But mastery of emerging technologies can only augment not replace foundational expertise across data, architecture, security, and other longstanding pillars of effective software application development.
By staying current across both fronts – core tenets and leading-edge advances – Dynamics 365 CE developers can achieve rewarding new capacities to provide customer and business value in 2024.
How do you envision leveraging the evolving tools, techniques, and trends discussed to redefine your approach as an MS CRM developer in 2024? Let us know in the comments below.