Dynamics

What we can expect from D365 for Finance and Operations – Summit EMEA

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I usually don’t write about this topic (Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations). My topics are more related with Dynamics NAV or Dynamics 365 Business Central in the future. But this time, I think I heard a lot of amazing news here in Dublin on a Summit EMEA from Muhammad Alam (D365FO GM) and want to share it.

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OK, first Muhammad discuss about all great news in this spring update and how we can use all these features as well as together with the other services available as integrations.

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But after that, he announced what we can expect soon in this fall update (of course, not everything, but some very nice features). The main topic in the fall update will be Intelligence & Insights, Productivity & Usability and Adaptability trying to improve as more as possible performance, automation, supportability and integrations.

And based on his speech, we can expect the following features:

Finance / Public Sector Enhancements:

  • Enhanced reporting/inquiries
  • Budgeting enhancements
  • Encumbrance enhancements
  • Vendor collaboration enhancements
  • Distribution of interest accrued on cash balances
  • Vendor 1099 enhancements (US)

Revenue Recognition Management:

  • Revenue automation to comply with IFRS15 and ASC606
  • Support product bundles/kits:
    • Software and maintenance
    • Software and services
    • Software, hardware and services
    • Bundles of multiple elements
  • Deferred revenue management
  • Revenue recognition schedules
  • Subscription & renewals
  • Revenue forecasting & reporting

Supply Chain Management:

  • Advance Warehousing:
    • Advanced X-docking
    • Catch weight integration
    • Replenishment slotting plan
    • Put to wall / Put to store
    • …many more
  • Advanced Trasportation
  • Retail Pack & Ship
  • Small package
  • Material handling

Probably we will have more, but this is just the first list.

And on the end, important information; from October 2018, Microsoft announces end of mainstream support for old versions: AX 2009, AX 2012 RTM and AX 2012 R2. There will be upgrade plans for migration to Dynamics 365 FO and we can expect public preview for AX 2012 in April 2018 and for AX 2009 in May 2018.

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Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing

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As we already had insight in Dynamics 365 Business Central and this solution will be available in only three days, it is a moment to get more information about licensing. In this post I’ll show only the basic important topics regarding licensing.

As we already know, there are three licensing types Premium, Essential and Team Members. Premium and Essential will provide full access to solution, but not to the same level of features. Essential has most of the future, but not Manufacturing and Service Management (this is included in Premium package). And very important thing is that we cannot use a mix of these two user types. You must choose what level of features you need and all full users must use the same license type.

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As a Team Member, you can do the following:

  • Read anything within Dynamics 365 Business Central
  • Update existing data and entries in Dynamics 365 Business Central – existing data are records like customer, vendor or item records which are already created. Entries means entries on which it is specifically allowed from an accounting perspective to update specific information. (e.g. due date on customer ledger entries)
  • Approve or reject tasks in all workflows assigned to a user
  • Create, edit, delete a quote
  • Create, edit, delete personal information
  • Enter a time sheet for Jobs
  • Use PowerApps for Dynamics 365

And more, it is important to know that the minimum number of full users is 1 and w don’t have a maximum number of users (you can register number of users you need). But keep in mind, we are talking about named users, not concurrent.

And Dynamics 365 Business Central Essential, Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium and Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members also includes the PowerApps for Dynamics 365 Applications license.

Dynamics 365 Business Central users are not provided with any standalone or general-purpose Power BI license or use rights, but this subscription includes an option to embed Power BI content as a product feature but require users to subscribe to Power BI separately to configure access to this content.

And with a question what we have more included, this is important table:

D365BC environment

Customers who wish to expand beyond the default subscription capacity included in Dynamics 365 Business Central will need to have a separate Azure subscription.

But on the end as very important: please do not use this article as license manual. If you need more details for licensing of real or potential customers, please use an official Dynamics 365 Business central Licensing Guide.

Personalization vs Design in D365 Business Central

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I’ve just finished with my presentation on eXtreme 365 about new in Dynamics 365 Business Central and I want to continue my texts about new solution, because I’ve already wrote about some basic expressions.

With Dynamics 365 Business Central we’ve got some new features for customizations and “customizations”. Previously, you could use Design mode as In-App Designer to make some basic customizations or to download it as extension code, open in Visual Studio Code and continue with development. But now we have personalization as well and I want just to show what is basic difference.

When you run standard environment, you can see only ‘Personalize’ in settings.

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But if you run sandbox environment, you can see both ‘Personalize’ and ‘Design’ options in settings.

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If you choose ‘Personalize’ options, you will get something similar as the following picture:

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You will see red frame and that means you can personalize your page or pages. You can move or hide some parts. But you can also add new fields (existing fields from table), or set new place for Freeze Pane. What is else new? If you run list page, you can stretch your columns. You can do it in all pages where you want and when you finish and click on Done, system will collect all your personalization and you can continue to use them.

But if you run ‘Design’, you will get the similar screen, but this time with purple frames.

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Generally, you can do more or less the similar things with Design feature as with Personalize. But this time when you finish everything you planned you will create Extension. When you finish everything and click on Stop Design, you need to fill Extension Name and Publisher and save it. And if you plan to add some bigger changes, you can choose do mark Download Code field and then you will download AL code which can be opened with VS Code and add more seriously customization.

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Anyway, when you use Design mode, everything you done will be showed and installed extension:

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And on the end I would like to add some conclusion. These conclusions are based on advice from some my friends and readers and I think they are in right, because it will be more clear.

Personalization is, as stated, a personal affair. Any changes I make are applicable only to me. This is of course a highly valuable feature in production environments (what you called “standard environment”) to have my workspace optimized just right for how I work.

Designing, on the other hand, applies to all users on that environment. It is intended for Developers or power users to create lightweight extensions that will ultimately be used by all in the organization. The extension produced by the Designer could be edited and enriched further in Visual Studio code where the possibilities are endless (through AL code). Eventually, that extension could be submitted to AppSource for distribution at scale, or it could be imported into a customer’s production environment to customize D365 Business Central.
Since Designing is a technical and mostly dev-focused activity, we don’t enable it in production environments. That is also why Designing gives you a few more features, such as being able to preview your creation as it would appear on a tablet or phone.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Roadmap

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In my previous text, I’ve mentioned I’ll continue with first impressions about Dynamics 365 Business Central. But I’ll continue this text the next week, when I finish my presentation with this topic at eXtreme 365 in Dubrovnik.

This time, I’ve just wanted to show more details about Dynamics 365 Business Central roadmap. When we compare this roadmap, there is just a small difference in comparison with the last one shown on Directions NA and EMEA the last year (OK, except new name).

D365BC roadmap.PNGIn the previous roadmap, we had Dynamics NAV 2018R2 planed for this spring, but now we can see it will not be published with its name. We can see that we will get Dynamics NAV 2018 updates (personally, I think it is much better).

And as we could hear, in the future we will get small updates every month and bigger package two times per year. If you want to find more about each planned feature, you can go here.

Run D365 Business Central for the first time

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When you run your Dynamics 365 Business Central for the first time, you will see new refreshed Web Client. Well, I think we will get some more small features soon (but just small polishing). Anyway, everything is easy for navigate and everything is exactly where you expect to be. And everything works very smoothly. I think the first what we can see are the messages in the left part of screen, with the most important information (the first will be “Good afternoon…”, but after that information).

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Now we have a main menu on the top of the screen. Depends what we choose, we will get submenu just below the first row. Again, depends of the number of commands, we will get just one or more rows.

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But we also have a lot of the most important actions on the right side of the page. Then we can see information and tiles in the activities and there are ordered noticeable. If you click on ‘See more’ or on some tile, you will open additional information (the same thing s with the large message on the left top part of screen).

We can also find “Product videos” and “Get started” links. On “Product videos”, you can find a few interesting videos about product, but more interesting is “Get started”. OK, we can find some educated videos again, but we have something more interesting – Role Centers link. With this, we can Explore different business roles features.

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If you run it, you will get new window where you can choose all available role centers as an option and see what features are covered with each of them as the main menu structure (for each of them, you will see small tooltips with the basic information). And even more, if you click on Continue, you can change your role center; and again you don’t need to make logout/login, because system will change your role center automatically.

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Of course, you can change your role center using ‘My Settings’, but guess… you will run the same page as I already showed. Really good user experience.

Then, when you run some page, from menu… for example customer, you can choose if you want to unpin the top menu… just to get little more space. Of course, you can chose the view type and so. But everything is so modern and provides really good experience.

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OK, this is just beginning. This is still not even the first impression. But I don’t like to write so big texts. I’ll continue soon with more details.

D365 Tenerife is Dynamics 365 Business Central

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I didn’t plan to write this article before keynote on Directions ASIA, but two days before it, it is announced – new SaaS solution, previously known as code name Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ is named as Dynamics 365 Business Central. This news is published today by Alysa Taylor (General Manager, Business Apps & Strategy) here in blog.

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Dynamics 365 Business Central (it is interesting that only this solution hasn’t ‘for’ in its name) will be available in first 14 countries from April 2nd and it will continue one of the most successful customer base with more than 160.000 customers. This solution also has new refreshed Web Client and many other interesting features.

If you want to find more information, you can run official D365BC page, where you can find new licensing model and new prices as well.

We will have two different packages of features with different price range:

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I will try not to copy already published blog and wait on another news in next two days. And just not to forget, Dynamics 365 Business Central has new logo:

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Dynamics NAV and GDPR

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A few days ago, Microsoft published Whitepaper about GDPR regulations and NAV as well as package of new Cumulative Updates where the first part (DataClassification property) on these changes were implemented.

Day after this was published, we could find a new article with more details how to work with classified data and new DataClassification property in tables and fields.

I don’t want to retype all these details, because you can find all these information on NAV Team blog as well as complete documentation about data classification. I’ve just wanted to spread a word. Again, all details about new CU’s and how to implement GDPR requirements can be found on a NAV Team blog.