Microsoft Dynamics 365 Archives - FMT

Auditing changes in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central, like with any ERP, is fundamental to ensuring compliance. In this blog, we’ll take a look at the differences between the 2 tools that you can use to audit changes in Business Central.   The first is native functionality, and the other is an app that you can add-on.  By the end, you’ll have a solid idea of how these options can help you audit changes in your ERP. Let’s jump in! Business Central Change Log The Change Log functionality is built-in to Business Central.  It’ very simple to setup and get going in it.  Putting you’re controls in place quickly. The Change Log can track changes when a value is inserted, modified or deleted from a field. It also provides a nice viewable log with the user id, date/timestamp, before and after values as well being exportable to excel. The actual process […]

The release plan (formerly release notes) for the 2019 release wave 2 describes all new features releasing from October 2019 through March 2020 for Dynamics 365. You can either browse the release notes online or download the document as a PDF file. New for wave 2: The Power Platform (PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI) features coming in the 2019 release wave 2 have been summarized in a separate release plan. 2019 release wave 2 overview The 2019 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 brings new innovations that provide you with significant capabilities to transform your business. The enhancements to Dynamics 365 applications include hundreds of new capabilities across the business process applications: Sales Marketing Customer Service Field Service Project Service Automation Finance and Operations Talent Retail Business Central The 2019 release wave 2 enhances artificial intelligence capabilities to help organizations accelerate their transformation of customer service, sales, and marketing […]

So you want to take your business to the cloud. Dynamics GP has been great. It’s comfortable, it’s widely used and supported across North America, but let’s face it…it could use some updates to take advantage of newer technologies offered by other systems. Moving to a more modern platform can provide many advantages to an organization. However, migrating from an on-premise to cloud deployment can be a large undertaking and the advantages offered may also come with a cost - Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) is no exception. Throughout this article, we aim to highlight topics that should be considered when contemplating a migration from Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central. Start by taking a look at the advantages of migrating. Advantages • Improved Platform/User Experience – Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a more modern look and feel which allows users to take advantage of enhanced dashboards and other […]

I recently had a D365 Business Central client that whenever she attempted to ship and invoice specific sales orders, she would receive an error message “The record in table Sales Invoice Header already exists" - see screenshot below. She was able to ship and invoice other sales orders without issue. However, certain sales orders would error out, regardless of what she did. Since this error was concerning the posted invoice number, we first investigated the numbering series for posted sales invoices.  Here is what we found: The invoice number in our error message was not from the currently assigned numbering series The invoice number in our error message was from a previous numbering series The previous numbering series was one that had been replaced by the current numbering series. Great information, but what next? After reading a few user questions in the Dynamics 365 User Group site, I found comments […]

Using global and shortcut dimensions in Dynamics 365 Business Central provides much flexibility for reporting options.  One limitation, which isn’t much of a limitation, is that you can only filter on up to four dimensions. However, building the report to use up to four dimensions takes a few steps in order to properly report on dimensions (other than Global 1 and Global 2).  By default, you can create an account schedule using the Global 1 and the Global 2 dimensions but not on shortcut dimensions.  Here are the steps to report on shortcut dimensions: Create an Analysis by Dimension View Update the Analysis by Dimension View Assign the Analysis View to a Column Layout on an Account Schedule Personalize and Design the Column Layout Window to Add Filtering Options Print the Report Sounds simple enough! And it is, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Plus, if […]

The April ’19 release notes describe all new features releasing from April 2019 through September 2019 for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Previews for some features will start in February 2019. You can either browse the release notes below or download the document as a PDF file here. April ’19 Release Overview The April ’19 wave of releases for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform provides you with significant capabilities to transform your business. These release notes describe functionality that may not have been released yet. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy). Dynamics 365 The enhancements to Dynamics 365 applications in the April ’19 release include hundreds of new capabilities across Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Portal, Field Service, Project Service Automation, Finance and Operations, Talent, Retail, and Business Central. Microsoft is adding a new set of mixed reality experiences using Microsoft Layout and […]

I’ve been a part of the Microsoft ERP community for over 20 years and the title of my blog is a pretty remarkable statement. Why? Microsoft has made some pretty remarkable decisions in the past year to make this happen! You have to go back in time to 2001 and 2002 when Microsoft acquired both Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV (back then known as Great Plains and Navision) which made Microsoft mid-market ERP leaders in both North America and Europe with these acquisitions. However, both Dynamics GP and Dynamics NAV are on-premise products and if this term is ‘computer geek-speak’ to you, here’s what this means:  Running on-premise software applications means you need a dedicated server to run the database for the ERP software and then the user needs to have the application or client installed on the user’s workstation to run the software.  Now there are variants to running […]

Dynamics 365: Editable Grids Do you like efficiency and saving time? If you do, read on to learn more about Dynamics 365 Editable Grids. All versions prior to Dynamics CRM 2013 had no type of editable grid, if a user needed to modify any record, the record had to be opened in a new window or exported to an Excel editing function. A lot of unnecessary time spent making edits. In this blog, we’ll discuss what the Editable Grid feature is, the benefits, and how FMT can help your business unlock this functionality. The Basics An editable grid (or list) is a custom control providing inline editing capabilities on web and mobile clients. This includes the ability to group, sort, and filter data within the same grid so you don’t have to switch records or views. So, a record does not have to be opened to edit it, you can […]

Your customers are relying on your service to help them work through their daily woes and the Dynamics 365 CRM Service Module can help you do just that! In this blog, we’ll discuss various Out of Box features and many benefits of the Service Module. FMT can help your business unlock this functionality and much, much more. The CRM Service Module in D365 enables you to accept an incoming customer request on a Case (or incident), manage these in queues or views, and track all communications with your customer. Automatic Case Creation When an email is received by the designated Service Email Account, the system automatically creates a new Case, and with a simple extension, we can assign it to a Queue and even send automatic responses to the customer! Including situations where the customer is unknown in CRM, we are easily able to configure the system to create the […]

You might be wondering: Is your organization getting enough out of its CRM system? There are a couple reoccurring themes that we as FMT Consultants often encounter when working with our customers in moving Dynamics CRM On-Premise to D365. If you are considering the move for your CRM environment, you might want to pay attention to some of these factors as they are real opportunities for you to effectively modernize your business processes: 1. Customizations From Custom Entities to Workflows to Plugins to ISVs to XRM, chances are, you’ve got some level of customization going on in your CRM system. As long as you have CRM 2013 or later, cross your fingers, you’ll be able to upgrade customizations without issue: Version compatibility Solutions exported from an earlier version of Dynamics 365 can be imported into later versions as shown in the following chart. Upgrading without issue, unfortunately, is oftentimes not […]

Back in 2013, Microsoft added a nifty Autosave feature to CRM 2013 during the Polaris or UR 12 release for CRM which is still here today in Microsoft Dynamics 365. How does it work? Essentially you don’t have to manually save your work anymore! Instead, every 30 seconds after a field changes and if you’re still on the form, the record is automatically saved to the server. The only time you will ever need to manually save a record again is when you first create it! Afterward, you never have to click on any save button ever again. Now you’re all wondering how one might add this Auto Save functionality to your Dynamics 365 CRM. Just follow these two simple steps: Go to the Dynamics 365 Menu and navigate to Settings > Administration > System Settings Under the General tab, on the first line, you will see “Enable autosave on […]

  The relationship between buyers and businesses are changing, engaging your prospects at every stage of the buying cycle is now essential to closing more deals. Watch this video to discover how you can deliver customized, memorable experiences and start turning every lead into a loyal customer with marketing automation. We'll explore: What is it and who uses it Why marketing automation is an essential tool How to shorten your sales cycle with marketing automation If you want to learn more about how your organization can take advantage of marketing automation to help you keep prospects and customers better engaged, feel free to reach out to us by submitting the form below. We'd love to hear from you!