New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Usability Improves for Warehouse, Inventory, and Tracking

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2.

The twelfth of the new functionality in the Application section is usability improves for warehouse, inventory, and tracking.

Productivity increases when processes are easy, so Microsoft have improved the usability of several areas within inventory and warehouse management. For example, you can get help to create warehouse employees, and in several places data is easier to access and digest.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

Based on feedback from their customers, Microsoft have made it easier to complete several inventory and warehouse processes.

Create warehouse employees during testing and presale

Each user who performs warehouse activities must be set up as a warehouse employee and assigned to a default location, and potentially more non-default locations. This setup filters all warehouse activities across the database to the employee’s location so that they can only perform activities at their assigned locations.

During testing or presale activities, you may run into scenarios where Business Central checks whether a warehouse employee record exists for a user. If the warehouse employee record is missing for the user, and the user has the right permissions, Business Central will suggest that you create a warehouse employee without interrupting your flow.

On the Warehouse Employees page, you can add a location for the user. Alternatively, you can choose the Add me as warehouse employee action and select one or more locations. The page is filtered for the current user, so the User ID field will be filled in automatically.

Warehouse locations

For users who don’t have permission to add warehouse employees, the behavior is unchanged. Business Central will stop the flow and notify the user that a warehouse employee record is missing. They’ll need to contact their administrator to get unblocked.

My Opinion

I can see the benefit of this when performing QA or UAT, but there are risks for production systems, unless clients are locking down permissions correctly. I’m still somewhat finding my way with Business Central, and two recent projects I’ve worked on, the clients have been setting up and assigning permission sets but when I was working with Dynamics GP, lots of clients were running systems with super user permissions (despite my regular advice not to do this).