Author: Ian Grieve

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 10th of the new functionality in the Application section is capture data from e-docs with Azure AI Document Intelligence.

The e-documents framework in Business Central is the cornerstone for the exchange of electronic documents, and the import and export of data that supports operations and finances. When working with vendor invoices and receipts through e-documents, accounts payable departments can streamline their OCR and document capture with native Azure AI Document Intelligence support in Business Central. They can capture data at the invoice line level, so received invoices and receipts are ready for further processing.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

In this release, Microsoft are extending the e-documents framework to seamlessly handle and process imported e-documents. For some types of documents, such as PDFs and images, an OCR service must capture the data. In this release, there’s a new modern OCR service in Business Central that uses state-of-the-art technology to process invoices and receipts. This service is powered by a native integration into Azure AI Document Intelligence, which specializes in recognizing invoices and receipts (among other things).

E-documents is the key framework for working with incoming and outgoing documents and data exchange in Business Central. Going forward, Microsoft will enrich e-documents with features to help streamline document transport, processing, and sending/receipt, so document exchange can work smoothly. With the new Azure AI Document Intelligence processing in e-documents, the accounts payable department is empowered to process documents for the channel through which they prefer to receive e-documents

My Opinion

This sounds like Microsoft are extending the e-documents functionality to compete more with the Contina Document Capture extension which is widely used with Business Central. I need to do some testing to see how good a job this does.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 9th of the new functionality in the Application section is use directed put-away and pick warehouses with projects.

Businesses can use warehouse activities with projects to help drive an effective flow through the warehouse, and to organize and maintain inventory.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

As a continuation to Microsoft’s multi-release effort to ensure that project management features benefit from the rich warehouse capabilities in Business Central, you can now use locations configured for directed flows with projects.

Business picking items before they’re consumed in different ways. The process depends on how their warehouse is configured. When you want to specify either a default Location Code on the Project and Project Task Lines Subform pages, or enter a Location Code on Project Planning Lines, you can now also use locations where the Directed Put-Away and Pick toggle is turned on.

Now, to create or register a pick document, you can use the Create warehouse pick action under the following conditions:

• The Status of the project is Open.
• The Line Type of the project planning line is Budget or Both Budget and Billable.
• The Type of the project planning line is Item.
• The Project Consump. Whse. Handling is Warehouse Pick (mandatory) , which is now available when Directed Pick and Put-away is selected.

You can also create warehouse picks using a pick worksheet. The pick worksheet lets you organize pick information before you create warehouse pick instructions. You’ll need to fill in the a To-Project Bin Code field on the Location Card page.

My Opinion

it sounds like this enhancement brings project in line with the standard Business Central functionality which should simplify processes for people using project. My experience with projects was for a former employer who had heavily customised the project module; I really need to spend a bit of time and familiarise myself with the standard functionality.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 8th of the new functionality in the Application section is reconcile payment transactions in Shopify with invoices.

Integrating Business Central and Shopify lets you easily manage your online sales and payments in one place. You can track the different payment methods, such as gift cards, credit cards, and more, that buyers used during checkout, and create customer ledger and general ledger entries to ensure accurate accounting and reporting.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

When a customer completes their checkout in the online store, the information about their payment is saved as a Transaction. There might be multiple transactions linked to the order, such as when a customer uses a gift card to pay some of the cost and then uses a credit card or PayPal for the remaining amount. The payment transactions in Shopify synchronize with the orders and you can view them on the Shopify Orders page.

There are several options for processing imported payment transactions in Business Central. This release offers an extra option that’s helpful in cases where several payments methods are involved. The gift card scenario is probably the most common.

Example scenario

The scenario involves the following parties:

• The buyer, who is the person who buys goods from your Shopify online store.
• The merchant, which is your company.
• The payment provider, which is the company that facilitates payment processing for you. The provider can be Shopify Payments or a third party.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2: Reconcile Payment Transactions in Shopify with Invoices”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 7th of the new functionality in the Application section is replenish items for projects.

Business Central makes it fast and easy to ensure that you have the items you need to kick off a new project or keep one running smoothly. On the Project Card page, you can create purchase orders for the items by choosing the Create Purchase Order action. Afterward, you can review and edit the orders before you send them to your vendors.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

The process of creating purchase orders from projects is similar to the functionality you might already be familiar with from the sales area. The process lets you create purchase orders right from a project. It shares the same algorithm as Order Planning worksheet, which means it doesn’t require elaborated setup to produce recommendations, but it’s intelligent enough to analyze demand and supply for required items.

To create one or more purchase orders from a project

To create a purchase order for the quantity of each item the project is missing, use the Create Purchase Orders action.

1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Projects, and then choose the related link.
2. Open a project that you want to purchase items for.
3. Choose the Create Purchase Orders action.
4. The Create Purchase Orders page opens and shows a line for each item on the project. Lines for both fully available quantities and unavailable quantities show by default. Unavailable quantities aren’t available. To show only unavailable quantities, choose the Show Unavailable action.
5. The Quantity to Purchase field contains the unavailable quantity. To purchase a different quantity, edit the value in the field. You can also turn on the Reserve toggle if you want to reserve the quantity on the purchase line against demand.

6. Choose OK.

This process creates a purchase order for each vendor from which you purchase the items on the project, including any quantity changes that you made on the Create Purchase Orders page. You can continue to process the purchase order or orders, for example, by editing or adding purchase order lines.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 6th of the new functionality in the Application section is export posted sales invoices to Shopify.

Buyers can sign in to Shopify and access all their invoices, regardless of whether the invoices were created in Shopify or in Business Central.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

You can export posted sales invoices to Shopify as orders by using a new report (batch job). The report is available on the Shopify Shop Card page, or you can use Tell Me search to find it. You can also run the report by using the job queue.

To enable the capability for specific shop, go to the Shopify Shop Card page and turn on the ** Posted Invoice Sync** toggle.

The sync includes invoices under the following conditions:

• The Shopify Order ID field contains 0.
• The bill-to customer has a mapping in the Shopify Customers or Shopify Companies tables.
• The bill-to customer isn’t used as the Default Customer on the Shopify Shop Card or Shopify Customer Template.
• The posted invoice has at least one non-comment line where the No. field has a value.

When you run the report, the following happens in Business Central and Shopify.

Business Central

Update the Shopify Order ID field based on results of sync:

• Successful export – update Shopify Order Id field with ID of order in Shopify.
• Export failed – set “-1”
• Invoice is excluded from sync for a reason listed in the conditions mentioned earlier – set “-2”

The same pattern is used in the Posted Sales Shipment, where the Update Document page lets you replace “-1” and “-2” or “0” to retry the export.

Shopify

The connector uses GraphQL to first create a draft order with header and item lines, and then complete the draft order and convert it to an order.

Headers and lines

The following fields are exported on the order header:

• The mapped bill-to customer/company is used.
• The Fulfilment Status field shows Fulfilled. Tracking Details don’t synchronize.
• The Paid Status field shows Paid or Partially Paid, based on the customer ledger entry linked to the sales invoice. For partially paid, it shows the Remaining Amount field.

The following fields are exported on the order lines:

• Items (item variants) that are mapped export as products.
• Items that aren’t mapped and lines of other types, such as G/L Account or Item Charge lines, export as custom products in Shopify.
• Shipping charges in Shopify aren’t created. The shipping cost is registered as a custom product in Shopify.
• The new setting on the Shopify Shop Card page lets you avoid exporting invoices with non-mapped items. Turn on the Items must be mapped to Products toggle to exclude posted invoices from sync if there’s at least one line of type Item where the selected item isn’t mapped to a product or variant in Shopify.
• Tax amounts. Because the Graph API doesn’t currently support the TaxLine object, the calculated tax is added as a custom product. Tax information from Business Central won’t be available in the tax report in Shopify Admin. To avoid Shopify recalculating taxes, orders are marked as Tax Exempt.
• Quantity, in whole numbers. Shopify doesn’t support fractions.

Impact on the process of synchronizing orders

Synchronization imports the order and checks whether it was exported earlier. If it was exported earlier:

• It marks the order as processed.
• It adds a link to the posted sales invoice (related documents, should happen automatically because the Shopify Order ID is already populated). Shopify might automatically archive Fully Paid and Fulfilled orders, and the synchronization won’t process them.

Deal with updates

In Shopify, because the order is already fulfilled, the only meaningful changes are Notes, Payment Status, and payment transactions. If payments are processed in Shopify, refunds and returns are as well.

In Business Central, changes aren’t tracked. Currently, if you want to mark order as paid, use the Mark as Paid action on the Shopify Order Card page.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 5th of the new functionality in the Application section is view item availability in Field Service work orders.

When integrated with Business Central, technicians and dispatchers can get insight into item availability for a specific warehouse or technician’s truck on a work order in Field Service. Having this information readily available helps businesses optimize work order scheduling, avoid unnecessary (travel) costs, and at the same time, optimize their service and purchasing operations.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

You can integrate, configure, and customize Field Service warehouses with Business Central’s locations. The integration can give you information about the availability of a product or item at a specific location. To manage the synchronization of data, Microsoft have added a unidirectional (from Business Central) integration table mapping between Business Central locations and warehouses in Field Service. To use the new integration table mapping, in Business Central you must turn on the Location Mandatory toggle on the Inventory Setup page.

Business Central synchronizes locations with the following settings on the Location Card page:

• The Use as In-Transit toggle is turned off.
• Project Consump. Whse. Handling is different from Warehouse Pick (mandatory)
• Assm. Consump. Whse. Handling is different from Warehouse Pick (mandatory)

On the Locations and Location Card pages, you can use the Dynamics 365 Field Service action to open a coupled location in Field Service, synchronize it, set up and delete couplings, and view synchronization logs.

You can use Open in Business Central in Field Service to open a location in Business Central that’s coupled to a warehouse in Field Service.

You can now view the allocated product quantity from work orders in Field Service as part of the gross requirements in Business Central’s inventory availability calculation. Demand generated by orders in Field Service automatically become an input for planning.

On the Field Service side, on a work order, technicians can check how much of particular product is available at a warehouse they specify.

My Opinion

This sounds like one of those things which I’d probably have expected to be already present, so it is good to see that it is being made available.

This article is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Administration), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Master Data Management (MDM) is new functionality, introduced in Release 2023 Wave 1, which allows data to be synchronised from one company in an environment to another in the same environment.

It works on a pull basis where a job queue in the “destination” company pulls changes from the connected company.

With MDM you can choose any setup or master table, which fields from those tables should be synchronised and if any filters should be applied to the data (for example, you might want to exclude the values of a specific dimension).

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 1st of the new functionality in the User experiences section is access keys with Key Tips in more languages.

Organizations are looking to streamline their operations through AI, automation, and empowering workers with productivity tools. When time to enter data is critical, every keystroke and mouse click counts. Business Central adopts the familiar experience from Microsoft 365 applications, such as Excel and Word, to boost efficiency for keyboard users. Access keys with key tips help users quickly explore, navigate, and activate any action in the action bar, navigation menus, and other user interface (UI) elements.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

You can use access keys with key tips, regardless of your language setting in My Settings. Key tips are optimized for the following languages:

• English
• Danish
• Dutch
• Italian
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Swedish
• Finnish
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Czech
• Icelandic

If you’re using the Business Central Web client, when you press the Alt key, the following becomes available:

• Key tips are revealed alongside UI elements to indicate the next keystroke.
• Sequences of keystrokes can be used to navigate the user interface and activate UI elements, without leaving your current focused element.
• Access keys are available for actions in the action bar and links in the navigation menu, regardless of whether they are assigned a specific shortcut key.

My Opinion

This is one of those seemingly small enhancements which I think will be very useful.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 4th of the new functionality in the Application section is archive service management documents.

Service documents often change and evolve during their lifecycle. The archiving capability gives you control over your service data through audit trails and version control.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Archiving capabilities for service management are similar to the functionality you might already be familiar with from the sales and purchase areas. You can set up documents to archive automatically, so that you don’t need to think about it. With automatic archiving, Business Central creates a new version of the archived document when people do the following:

1. Change the status of a document or delete it.
2. Print, download, or send a document by email.
3. Post service order.
4. Convert a service quote to an order or service contract quote to contract.

You’re in full control of archiving. The following list shows the documents and options you can choose when you set up automatic archiving on the Service Management Setup page:

• Archive service quotes: Never (default), Questions, Always.
• Archive service contract quotes: Never (default), Question, Always
• Archive orders: Yes/No

You can also use the Archive action to manually archive versions of service documents, such as service quotes, contract quotes, and orders.

To keep the size of your database under control, archived service documents are added to a list of Retention policy tables.