An article posted by Dynamics CRM Tip of the day with the title “Transition to Unified Interface. Now” had got a lot of people’s attention around the word and there are loads of frustrations and panic about speed at which the possible Classic Web Client deprecation announcement and removal expected to happen.
https://crmtipoftheday.com/1287/transition-to-unified-interface-now/
The article pointed to the few references, including Unified Interface Playbook (http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/F/3/AF3D45A7-4F38-41BE-8956-1DF7A4A5AFDB/dynamics365unifiedinterfaceplaybook.pdf). It’s the Unified Interface Playbook that had the text “THE SITUATION The Web Client is likely to be deprecated by October 2019 with a view to be discontinued a year later”. However, the same playbook when I checked yesterday (13th August 2019) says this instead, “THE SITUATION There is a fantastic opportunity to review the value of the Unified Interface as we move towards it being the strategic direction”. What changed then? Clearly the deprecation news has caused loads of panic and alarm and Microsoft realised the line published on the Playbook not helping at all so they changed it now. Since the Wave 2 release (Oct 19 - March 2020) plan does not mention anything about Classic Web Client depreciation, at least we can be sure this is not going be announced until after March 2020.
The Original Playbook page text that caused the panic is the following.
And the updated text I see as of today is the following
When will the Classic Web Client deprecation news likely to be announced?
I am going to predict this here as I do not have any solid evince to prove. Based on what has been shown and discussed in recent Business Application Summit and other videos, the Classic Web Client deprecation announcement is definitely in the plan by Dynamics team. The line that caused the panic indicates the team is planning and working on this. With the introduction of PCF and loads work towards unifying PowerApps (Modal and Canvas), it is possible the Classic Web Client deprecation would be announced as part of Wave 2 2020 release plan.
When will the classic Web Client likely to be removed?
Let’s assume Microsoft will announce the depreciation in Oct 2020, I do not think they will remove the web client all together within a year. Why? A year time is simply not enough to plan and conduct a project to transition from Classic UI to UCI, especially by the clients who have built products with heavy UI customisation and configurations. I think the classic client will be around for few more years after the announcement. The Dialog depreciation was announced in 2017 but it still not removed as of today. If a feature like Dialog is not removed for over 2 years since announcement, definitely the whole classic web client would stay longer than that. Personally, I think the classic web client will not be removed until early 2023. We just have to wait and see how much of my predictions become true
