Category: Microsoft

New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Wave 1: Use Improved Troubleshooting Options for Cost Adjustments

Ian Grieve4 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Wave 1.

The 5th of the new functionality in the Application section is use improved troubleshooting options for cost adjustments.

The improvements to cost adjustment in Business Central enhance processing speed, provide greater control over adjustments, introduce proactive issue notifications, offer visibility into adjustment progress, and ensure partial progress is saved to prevent full reruns on failure—leading to more accurate inventory valuation, reduced financial discrepancies, improved decision-making, and increased operational efficiency.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview:  Mar 14, 2025
General Availability: Apr 2025

Feature Details

Inventory cost adjustment in Business Central is the process of ensuring that item costs are accurately reflected by adjusting costs based on changes in purchase prices, revaluations, or applied costs through transactions such as sales, consumption, and transfers.

It’s essential for maintaining correct inventory valuation and COGS, especially when businesses use costing methods such as FIFO, LIFO, or Average. You can run cost adjustment automatically or manually, and it affects historical transactions and financial reports. To avoid discrepancies, it’s important to set up cost adjustments correctly and regularly monitor them.

Microsoft are introducing multiple enhancements to the cost adjustment process to improve its performance for larger workloads and allow easier troubleshooting and monitoring:

  • Identified and eliminated bottlenecks based on telemetry data and code analysis, which significantly improves processing speed.
  • Introduced period-by-period and selected production and assembly order adjustments for high-transaction items, which lets you control processing scope.
  • Added notifications for potential issues, suboptimal settings, high volumes of entries, and data discrepancies.
  • Developed a tool to visualize adjustment progress, which helps you analyze performance issues and identify inefficiencies.
  • Enabled item-by-item adjustments, which ensures that partial progress is saved in long-running processes to prevent full reruns if things go wrong.
Period-by-period and selected production/assembly order adjustments for high-transaction items

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Wave 1: Use Improved Troubleshooting Options for Cost Adjustments”

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Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Business Central Functional Consultant Associate (Renewed in 2025)

Ian Grieve1 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralThe MB-800 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Functional Consultant certification needs to be renewed on an annual basis; I originally passed the exam in September 2022 which means it is up for renewal in September this year, but you can actually renew from 6 months prior (I’ve passed two prior renewals as well).

I received an email from Microsoft earlier that the certification was available to renew and had a little time to spare so figured I might as well take the recertification test (and successfully passed):

Certificate confirmation
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Working with Power Automate Solutions: Who Should be the Solution Publisher?

Ian Grieve4 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis article is part of the Working with Power Automate Solutions series and of the larger Working with Power Automate series I am writing on my experiences working with the Power Automate, which is part of the Power Platform from Microsoft. I also have a related series of articles on Power Automate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC.

When I wrote the what is a solution publisher article, and follow up on creating a solution publisher, back in January 2024, I didn’t really consider who my audience would be and that I actually have an audience split between consultants, like myself, and end-users.

It’s easy enough to say something like “create yourself a solution publisher”, but this skates over the detail of who the publisher should actually be, which really does need to be considered. I’ve seen this debated previously, both in connection with Power Automate and also Microsoft CRM, for which I used to be certified.

The solution publisher, should be the owner of the solution. There are four main scenarios:

  1. If you, a consultant, create a solution for sale as a managed solution, then you would be the publisher.
  2. If you, a consultant, create a solution for a client, then the client would be the solution publisher, regardless of who will maintain the solution.
  3. If you, an end-user, create a solution for yourself, then you would be the solution publisher.
  4. If you, an end-user, create a customisation of a managed solution, then you would be the solution publisher.

The above represents what I regard as the best practice for solution publishers and should minimise problems with different solution publishers and prefixes being in a system. While a publisher of a solution can be changed, the prefix assigned to any objects cannot be changed.

Working with Power Automate

Working with Power Automate
What is Power Automate?
What Type of Flow Are Available?
What Type of Cloud Flows Are Available?
Power Automate with Business Central
Working with Power Automate Solutions: What Are Solutions?
Working with Power Automate Solutions: What Types of Solution Are There?
Working with Power Automate Solutions: What is a Solution Publisher?
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Who Should be the Solution Publisher?
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Create a Solution Publisher
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Create a Solution
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Publish a Solution
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Version Numbering for Solutions
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Exporting An Unmanaged Solution
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Importing An Unmanaged Solution
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Exporting A Managed Solution
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Importing A Managed Solution
Working with Power Automate Solutions: Change the Managed Properties of a Solution Component
Create a Visio Diagram of a Flow
What Are Environment Variables and Why Should They be Used?
Create an Environment Variable
Create a New Cloud Flow From a Template
Managing Large Flows
What is a Scope?
Example of How to Use a Scope
Best Practice For Using Scopes
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: What are Child Flows?
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: Create a Child Flow
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: Change Run Only Users For Child Flow
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: Add a Child Flow To a Parent Flow
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: Test the Parent/Child Flow Examples
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: Error Encountered Saving a Flow Which Calls a Child Flow
Working with Power Automate Child Flows: Error Encountered With Surprise Extra Parameters for a Child Flow
Calculate 30 Days Ago
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Error Creating a Data Source in Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralBeing considered somewhat of an expert with Jet Reports, I was asked for assistance by a colleague who was configuring Jet Reports for a client; they had installed the extension and were trying to create a data source for accessing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, but were receiving an error message every time they tried to connect:

Error message trying to log into the data source

Jet Reports
Invoking the web service failed with the following message:
The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.

Continue reading “Error Creating a Data Source in Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central”

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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1: Build Desktop Flows With Record With Copilot

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1.

The 9th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is build desktop flows with record with Copilot.

Record with Copilot makes building desktop automations easier than ever. By simply sharing your screen and describing the task, you can create detailed automations without needing deep technical knowledge. This feature enhances productivity, reduces manual setup time, and empowers you to automate routine tasks with ease.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview:  Sep 2, 2024
General Availability: Apr 2025

Feature Details

Record with Copilot in Power Automate for desktop allows you to build desktop automations by sharing your screen and describing the task you want to automate—just as if you were explaining it to someone. During the recording, record with Copilot captures your voice, mouse, and keyboard inputs. It then processes and converts these inputs into a desktop flow that you can review, edit, and save before running. This makes automation accessible to everyone, regardless of technical expertise, and significantly speeds up the process of creating desktop flows.

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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1: Create Automations With Natural Language

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1.

The 8th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is create automations with natural language.

This feature is an enhanced Copilot in Power Automate for desktop. It’s a natural language feature that simplifies automation creation with support for Power Fx syntax. With this feature, you can boost productivity and efficiency with Copilot. By leveraging natural language and Power Fx syntax, you can easily create desktop flows without the need for complex coding. This allows for increased productivity and efficiency, which frees up valuable time and resources for other important tasks.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Aug 2025
General Availability: –

Feature Details

Copilot in Power Automate for desktop offers an interface that simplifies the automation creation process. With natural language and Power Fx syntax capabilities, you can create desktop flows by providing instructions in natural English language or using Power Fx syntax. This eliminates the need for algorithmic or pseudocode knowledge. With Copilot, you can generate automations with ease, saving valuable time and resources.

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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1: Optimize Desktop Flows Intelligently

Ian Grieve5 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1.

The 7th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is optimize desktop flows intelligently.

The optimize desktop flows with intelligent insights and recommendations feature delivers significant business value by proactively offering data-driven recommendations during the desktop flow creation process. This ensures higher efficiency and reduces the likelihood of errors, allowing you to build more robust and performant automations. By leveraging historical flow data, usage patterns, and design best practices, this feature empowers you to swiftly identify and resolve potential issues, optimize code, and adhere to best practices. This ultimately enhances productivity and reduces maintenance costs.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Aug 2025
General Availability: –

Feature Details

The optimize desktop flows with intelligent insights and recommendations feature in Power Automate for desktop is designed to provide users with proactive, intelligent recommendations during the creation of desktop flows. This feature leverages historical flow data, usage patterns, runtime performance, error profiles, and established best practices to offer tailored, context-sensitive insights that can significantly enhance the efficiency and reliability of your automations.

In the Error Avoidance category, this feature helps prevent run-time errors by alerting users to potential issues before they occur. For example, it can warn of data loss prevention (DLP) policy violations that could cause a flow to fail, and it offers workarounds where possible. It also identifies elements that violate flow checker policies and suggests automatic remediations. Furthermore, it detects previous selector failures and self-healing events, recommending users to review or remediate these selectors accordingly. This feature also highlights potential flow timeouts by analyzing past run history, and it offers code-scanning recommendations to avoid pitfalls like infinite loops or uninitialized instances.

In the Error Remediation category, this feature assists in fixing design-time errors that might otherwise go unnoticed. It provides suggestions to complete any missing action properties, including variables, and helps correct syntax errors in Robin or Power Fx. This guidance ensures that flows are logically sound and free from common errors, making the development process smoother and more efficient.

The Code Optimization category focuses on improving the performance and maintainability of desktop flows. This feature suggests more performant or understandable actions, identifies logical shortcomings, and proposes possible solutions. It recommends wrapping actions in try & catch blocks to handle exceptions gracefully. It adds comments or regions for better readability, and breaks large subflows into smaller, more manageable units. These optimizations enhance flow performance and make the code easier to understand and maintain. The AI-powered Copilot facilitates these improvements by providing clear remediation steps and linking to relevant documentation. This empowers you to implement best practices with ease and confidence.

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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1: Use Your Voice To Interact With Copilot

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1.

The 6th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is use your voice to interact with Copilot.

The voice command functionality for Power Automate’s Copilot enhances productivity by allowing hands-free interaction for creating desktop flows. Users can dictate automation steps in natural language, streamlining the setup of complex workflows. This intuitive interface helps businesses automate repetitive tasks more efficiently, improving operational efficiency.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Feb 2025
General Availability: May 2025

Feature Details

The voice command functionality for Power Automate’s Copilot allows users to create and manage desktop flows using natural language spoken through a microphone. Users can turn on voice commands by pressing the microphone icon in the bottom right of the Copilot side cart and start dictating automation steps hands-free. To finish, users press the stop icon, and their prompt is automatically submitted to Copilot. This feature reduces manual input, saving time and effort, and enhances Copilot’s versatility and user-friendliness, contributing to improved productivity and streamlined operations.

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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1: Configure Entra Hybrid Join for Hosted Machine Groups

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1.

The 5th of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is configure Entra hybrid join for hosted machine groups.

Microsoft Entra hybrid join using custom virtual networks (VNETs) with hosted machine groups allows your hosted machine group bots to enroll in both your on-premises Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID. This feature is useful in scenarios where automation requires authentication using an AD account, or when devices need to be managed using Group Policy (GPO).

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Feb 2025
General Availability: May 2025

Feature Details

This feature provides support for joining hosted machine group bots to both on-premises Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID when using custom virtual networks (VNETs).

  • A custom virtual network (VNET) is configured using Azure Virtual Network. Access to the domain controller is required from the custom VNET.
    • A custom VNET allows you to access on-premises resources when running your automation.
  • Microsoft Entra hybrid join is configured as part of Power Automate network connection setup.
    • Microsoft Entra hybrid allows your hosted machine group bots to enroll in both your on-premises Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID.
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New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1: Configure and Manage SLA with Work Queues

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Power AutomateThis post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Power Automate 2025 Wave 1.

The 3rd of the new functionality in the Desktop flows section is configure and manage SLA with work queues.

Configuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for your work queues allows Power Automate to prioritize running work queue items that are close to the SLA deadline. It also allows Power Automate to highlight work queue items at risk of SLA breach and recommend actions to prevent SLA breaches.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Mar 2025
General Availability: Jun 2025

Feature Details

Work queues in Power Automate can play a crucial role in improving the efficiency, scalability, and resiliency of automation and help prioritize work.

This is how you can configure Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for work queues:

  • Type of SLA
    • Time to live (TTL)
    • Business hours
  • SLA engine
    • Prioritize work queue items that are nearest to the SLA deadline.
    • Identify work queue items at risk.
    • Monitor the state of SLAs for work queues.
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