Sunday, November 8, 2020

Summary of what's new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain update 10.0.14 (November 2020)

 
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations update 10.0.14 became generally available in November 2020 and is loaded with another bag of goodies. 

I wanted to share a summary from the analysis I did post installing it. Talking about numbers, there are 35 new features and 630 KB fixes across various modules. Quality update which got released has around 118 fixes across application.  

Below is a quick summary snapshot of 10.0.14 update. 




I want to briefly talk about few key features :


Dynamics 365 Guides for Manufacturing  -->  This feature enables you to deliver mixed-reality, step-by-step instructions for production processes using Dynamics 365 Guides. 
Basically once you setup the guides parameters and then define the guides, then the worker can use their HoloLens to scan the QR code and the guide will get launched. 
Refer to this docs link for more details.  Below are some screenshots and steps from the same link, for quick reference: 
To configure how Guides appear on the shop floor, go to Mixed Reality > Dynamics 365 Guides > Configure Guides integration.


You can attach guides to various aspects of production control like Resources ,Resource groups, Released products, Formulas, Routes, Route versions. etc. 


When a worker opens a job list on the shop floor execution interface, Supply Chain Management finds the relevant guides for the jobs shown. Use the Guides button to view the relevant guides.




Then put on a HoloLens and access the respective guide by glancing at the QR code and activating the respective Guide.

Asset Leasing :
Asset leasing helps you adapt and be compliant to the ASC 842 and IFRS 16 accounting regulations related to lease management and its financial impact Asset leasing is integrated with fixed assets and the chart of accounts. Refer to Microsoft Tech talk on this topic having feature demonstration here.


Below is a summary of asset leasing capabilities from the tech talk presentation: 



All the asset leasing objects are under a separate model in the application explorer



Enable Project Operations on Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement : 

This feature allows to define default configurations can be defined to support Project Operations integration. It is dependent on the feature "Enable multiple contract lines for a project" . 

The feature to Enable multiple contract lines for a project provides support for a project to have fixed price components and time and material components. Project type will be moved to the contract line. Project group will become optional and the setup related to tracking of work in process and revenue calculation will be moved to a new entity - Project revenue profiles. The project revenue profile rules will determine which project revenue profile to use. Internal projects will be projects without a contract and only costs will be tracked. 

Test this in SBOX environment as these should be enabled only if using synchronous integration with the Common Data Service.


(Preview) Vendor invoice automation :

The automation processes can be used to perform these tasks:

·        Automatically submit imported invoices to the workflow system.

·        Match product receipts to pending vendor invoice lines.

·        Simulate posting before a vendor invoice is posted.

·        Quickly and efficiently view workflow history.

·        View and analyze the results of automating vendor invoice processing.

Refer docs here for more details. 


Below is a complete list of 35 new features shown in feature management post 1.0.0.14 installation 





KB Fixes

Below is the breakup of KB Fixes across various modules. The complete list of  KB details can be found in LCS here



We can see most of the fixes are in Localization, PMA, Retail, Financial management and Warehouse and Transportation management modules.


Quality update got released with around 118 fixes as well across various modules. The details can be seen from environment details page. 


Platform features

In terms of platform features now we can have drop-down list on multi-line controls. Previously, only single-line input controls permitted drop-down lists.


An update to the (Preview) Grouping in grids feature is available now to expand/collapse groups and select or unselect all rows in a group.

 

I hope this article gives a summarized view of what's new in 10.0.14 and will enable readers to dive deep into the areas of their interest and related ongoing projects. Thanks for reading the blog. Have a great day and keep DAXing :). 



Wednesday, September 16, 2020

New features at a glance for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations update 10.0.13

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations update 10.0.13 is generally available and the details of release can be found on docs site . This update marks end of 2020 wave 1 and as expected, this update is packed with lots of goodness and new features. 

I wanted to share a summary from the analysis I did post installing it. Talking about numbers, there are 60 new features and 950 KB fixes across various modules. 

Below is breakup of the new features per module. Most of the new features are released in Retail & Commerce, Project management & accounting and Accounts receivable module.



I did some more digging around the newly introduced featured and queried some tables under the hood and found: 


Some features that cannot be disabled once you enable them:



Features which are force enabled:



Preview features:



Some of my favorite features from the release, which I feel shall catch a lot of attention going forward: 


The complete list of the new features can be seen from feature management workspace after updating the environment



With regards to the platform capabilities, some cool and awaited features like saved views and new grid control have been made generally available. These will give great personalization capabilities to users and also allows them to use mathematical formulas in tabular grids and empowers them for fast data entry.

The tentative release plan for  wave 2 features can be accessed from  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2020wave2/ . 

Microsoft business applications launch event is also planned where James Phillips, President of the Business Applications Group, will guide the community through what’s new in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2020 release wave 2. Register here https://msft.it/6049TsJ1J

Keep sharing and stay safe. 












Thursday, July 23, 2020

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations apps - Achieve more with power of personalization

One of the features, released in the platform updates for version 10.0.12 of Finance and Operations apps is, the ability to mark fields as mandatory via personalization toolbar.

This comes quite handy to enforce mandatory fields validation when doing manual data entry. Another great personalization feature of saved views is also released which allows users to save personalized views of the form. This makes user task more effective by hiding the unwanted fields and saving the view as default views. Saved views can also be published to other security roles and shared across organisation.

Now these two features can be combined to achieve some really great user experience. For example, let’s consider as scenario: A company wants to enforce that customer requisition field needs to be captured for creating sales order in USMF company by any sales representative.  This can be achieved by below simple 3 steps:

-        Personalize the form to make fields mandatory

-        Save view

-        Publish the view

 

Below is a detailed walk-through with screenshots:

1.      Login as System Administrator


2.      Navigate to sales order details form and right click on “Customer requisition” field

3.      Select “Required”. This will make field mandatory as changes the frame to red


 

 

4.      Click on the down arrow head and select, save as

5.      Save view with a meaningful name

 

 

6.      Once the view is saved, click on ellipse and then select publish

 

7.      On the publish screen, select security role and company

 

8.      Click on “Publish”

 

9.      Now I assigned, sales representative role to a user

 

 

 

10.   Login to D365 F&O as a sales representative

 

11.   Open the sales order details form. The view published will open as Default view and we can see that customer requisition field is marked as mandatory

 

 

12.   If I try to save with blank value, system throws warning


 

13.   Now I change company to USP2 and open the sales order form. Notice that custom view is not available and the field customer requisition is not mandatory.

 

 


 We saw in this post, how we can mash up the personalization capabilities to actually implement business rules along with user personalized UI.

Microsoft is adding many more amazing features in the product. Stay safe and keep sharing the knowledge. Closing with a very famous signature line of good old AX times ..Happy Daxing J.