For years, twice a year, Microsoft published a giant document listing everything coming to Power Platform and Dynamics 365 over the next six months. The people who run those tools used it as their agenda: they planned training, testing, budget and, of course, the perfect excuse to postpone a project ("let's wait for the next wave").
On August 25, 2026, Microsoft announced that document is gone. There will be no September release wave. New features will now show up gradually, with no fixed date, on a single roadmap called AI at Work.
If you have never heard of release waves, you are in good company. But if your company uses Power Apps, Power Automate or Power Pages, this change affects whoever manages those tools. And the deadline to adapt is November 15.
Two seasons a year, with a set premiere
Think of a TV series with seasons. Microsoft had two a year: wave 1, which started rolling out in April, and wave 2, which started in October. Months before each premiere, the full plan came out: every new feature, with the expected date of the preview (the test version, for those who want to try it early) and of general availability (when it becomes available to everyone).
It was a PDF hundreds of pages long that few people read cover to cover. But it had dates, it had a format, and you could forward it to your boss with a "look what's coming". Consultancies built presentations on it. IT teams scheduled meetings around it. It was boring and it was useful.
The menu turned into a sushi conveyor belt
In the new model, each feature appears on the roadmap whenever Microsoft decides it is confirmed. No waiting for the season. Each item moves through three stages: in development, rolling out and launched. And everything lives in the same place as the news for Microsoft 365 and Copilot.
The official reasoning makes sense: almost no company uses a single product in isolation. Power Platform, Dynamics, Microsoft 365 and Copilot work together, so one roadmap better reflects how customers actually operate.
An important detail before anyone panics: feature ship dates do not change. Only the way Microsoft tells you what is coming changes.
| With release waves | Without release waves | |
|---|---|---|
| When news is announced | In batches, twice a year | Whenever Microsoft confirms it, at any time |
| Where to check | Plans on Microsoft Learn and Release Planner | AI at Work roadmap |
| Format | A closed document, with a beginning and an end | A living list, updated nonstop |
| Who sets the review pace | Microsoft | You |
The homework changed address
Microsoft's own recommendation is that each customer build a recurring review, monthly or quarterly, using a saved filter on the roadmap and an RSS subscription (an automatic alert when something new appears). In plain terms: the checkpoint Microsoft used to hand you ready-made, each company now builds on its own.
And there is more hidden work. Release Planner, the tool where many people kept personalized views of the products they use, shuts down on November 15, 2026. The new roadmap does not save personalized views: the workaround is to bookmark the link with your filters applied.
On top of that, the story is now split across two places. Features with a preview or launch date before June 1, 2026 remain in the old plans, which stay available only as an archive. Anything after that date is on the new roadmap. Anyone tracing the history of a feature will need to check both.
Microsoft didn't stop announcing. It stopped scheduling the announcements.
An AI to read the AI roadmap
The most curious part of the announcement: along with the continuous roadmap, Microsoft launched an MCP server for it. In simple terms, it is a door that lets AI assistants query the roadmap conversationally, with data refreshed daily. If you still don't know what MCP is, we explain it in this article.
In other words: the roadmap got so big and so continuous that Microsoft itself provides a tool so your AI can read the news for you. A good share of that news, by the way, is about AI. The loop closes on its own.
What to do before November 15
It takes no project and no budget. It takes someone with a first and last name:
- Assign an owner to check the AI at Work roadmap on a fixed schedule. Without an owner, the review does not happen.
- Save the filter for the products your company uses, bookmark the link and subscribe to the RSS feed.
- Keep watching the Microsoft 365 Message Center. It is still the channel that tells you what changes specifically in your company's environment.
- Update internal documents that point to release plans or to Release Planner, before those links stop making sense.
No season, no excuse
Release waves had a side effect few people talk about: they gave everyone permission to wait. There was always a next season to push the decision to. With features arriving without a calendar, that excuse expired along with the PDF.
If keeping up with Microsoft's roadmap has become homework, subscribe to the macareno.net newsletter. We read the changes and tell you what matters, straight to your inbox.
Sources
- Microsoft Ends Dynamics 365 Release Waves as Roadmap Planning Goes Continuous, ERP Today
- The End of Release Plans: Dynamics 365 & Power Platform Roadmaps Move to AI at Work roadmap, Dynamics 365 Lab
- Release plans are dead: how I'm tracking the Dynamics 365 roadmap now, Totovic
- What Happened to the 2026 Release Wave 2 for Dynamics 365?, ServerSys
