MS Announced new capabilities and updated features in the Dynamics 365 for Financials February release

Microsoft announced New capabilities and updated features in Dynamics 365 for Financials February release.

Improved Setup and Configuration

Microsoft making it easier to add industry or third-party extensions to configure Dynamics 365 for Financials to our needs. A new Services and Extensions button was added to the Business Manager and Accountant Role Center. From the list of actions, you can open most setup pages, including service connections and add-ons, with either assisted or manual setup.

Contact Management

Quickly identify and delete duplicate contacts in your customer lists from the new Contact Duplicates tile in the Sales and Relationship Manager Role Center.

Attach an ID like sales person or purchaser codes to an account for better reporting. The sales person or purchaser code can also be set up to be automatically included on new sales or purchase orders. For more information, see How to: Set Up Salespeople and How to: Set Up Purchasers.

Help sales better manage opportunities with pipeline probability tracking and a more consistent experience across your devices. For more information, see Managing Sales Opportunities.

Target your marketing efforts with the ability to filter contacts you want to export from a segment and securely send to a marketing agency.

Human Resources

Maintain a list of employees in your company and add basic information and a picture for each employee.

Multiple Locations

Manage inventory in multiple locations or within different places in your warehouse. In addition, you can now buy and sell from various locations. The Availability per Location window will tell you how to best deliver items to customers based upon inventory location and you can transfer items between locations with transfer orders.

For more information, see How to: Transfer Inventory Between Locations.

Dynamics 365 for Sales Integration

When you need more advanced customer relationship management capabilities you can easily connect to Dynamics 365 for Sales in a few easy steps. The assisted setup helps you synchronize your data across the two apps, including sales orders, item availability, units of measure, and currencies.

For more information, see Manage Your Customer Relationships using Dynamics 365 for Sales from inside Dynamics 365 for Financials.

AppSource Extensions

Easily extend your Dynamics 365 for Financials application with industry and third-party extensions. Check out the new extension for payroll from Ceridian and visit AppSource for a complete list of add-on solutions. 

Ceridian payroll

This extension allows you to import payroll transactions from Ceridian HR/Payroll (US) and Ceridian Powerpay (Canada). Aggregated payroll data, including date, payroll account, description, and amount, will be imported to your G/L accounts mapped to the payroll account. For more information, see The Ceridian Payroll Extension to Dynamics 365 for Financials.

New and updated capabilities in the September update of Project "Madeira"

More flexibility in sales processes

This update adds more flexibility in what you sell:

Nonstock items

You can now set up nonstock items - items that you offer to customers but do not maintain inventory for. For more information, see How to: Work with Nonstock Items.

Drop shipments

You can now mark an item for drop shipment on a sales order and immediately create a purchase order for the item. This way, you can sell an item to a customer, purchase it from the vendor, and have it shipped directly from your vendor to your customer. For more information, see How to: Purchase Products for a Sale.

Categorize items in your inventory

With this update, you can create a hierarchy of item categories and assign item attributes to each item category. When you add items to a category, they will inherit the attributes on the category. This ensures a common set of attributes on related items, speeds up the assignment of attributes to similar items, and allows filtering and navigating related items based on the category. For more information, see How to: Categorize Items.

Send purchase orders to vendors

Now you can enter purchase orders within Project "Madeira". You use purchase invoices to record the cost of purchases and to track accounts payable. With this update, you can send an order to your vendor and track this in Project "Madeira". For more information, see How to: Record Purchases.

Better quality incoming documents

You can now easily correct errors in the scanned documents before you receive the resulting document - this way, you'll train the service to avoid the errors going forward. You use the new Lexmark ICS online experience to visually train and validate the processing of PDF and image files for incoming documents, such as vendor invoices. From each incoming document record, you can now link directly to the online extracted document to validate the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) result and train the service with your corrections. A new Role Center cue allows you to monitor incoming documents that await your OCR validation. For more information, see How to: Use OCR to Turn PDF and Image Files into Electronic Document.

We have also added the much requested support for also extracting line details when we send PDF or image files on incoming documents to Lexmark ICS, the 3rd-party provider of OCR services. You can now create, for example, purchase invoices with multi-line details instead of just one line with the total. To map item numbers and names on an incoming document to your representation of the vendor's items, use the existing Item Cross Reference feature. To map vendor-specific text on an incoming document to the vendor's G/L account, use the existing Text-to-Account Mapping feature.

Updating and Testing Multiple Custom Report Layouts - NAV2016

Occasionally, we may need to update a custom report layout that is used on a report. This is required when there has been a design change to the report's data set, for example, a field that is used in the layout has been removed from the report data set. If a report layout requires updating, we will get an error message when we try to preview, print or save the report.

We can automatically update a report layout from the error message that appears when we run the report or, in advance of running reports, we can update specific report layouts or all custom report layouts that might be affected by dataset changes.

We also have the option to test updates without applying the required changes to the custom report layouts. This enables us to see what changes will be applied to the report layout and identify possible issues in the process. From the test results, we can open the custom report layouts directly for editing to fix any issues. Microsoft recommends that we test the report layout update before we apply the updates.

Not all report dataset changes can be automatically updated in the report layouts. When we choose to update or test the custom report layout updates, Microsoft Dynamics NAV scans the custom report layouts that are stored in the database and compares them to their corresponding dataset design. Some changes will require that we manually edit the report layout.

To update a custom report layout from the error message when we run a report

• To update report layout from the error message that we get when we run a report, choose the Yes button on the error message.

The system will attempt to update the layout. If the update is unsuccessful, then we get an error message about a condition that must be fixed

To update a specific custom report layout

1.     In the Search box, enter Custom Report Layouts, and then choose the related link.

2.     In the Custom Report Layouts window, select the layout that we want to update, and then on the Actions tab, choose Update Layout.

The system will attempt to update the custom report layout to dataset changes. If no errors occur, then the update is applied to the report layout. If errors occur, then a message that contains the errors appears. We will then have to manually edit the custom report layout to fix the error.

To update all custom report layouts for the company

1.     In the Search box, enter Report Layout Selection, and then choose the related link.

2.     In the Report Layout Selection window, on the Actions tab, choose Update All Layouts.

The system will attempt to update the custom report layouts to dataset changes. If no errors occur, then the update is applied to the report layouts. If errors occur, then a message that contains the errors appears. We will then have to manually edit the custom report layouts to fix the error

To test custom report layout updates

1.     In the Search box, enter Report Layout Selection, and then choose the related link.

2.     In the Report Layout Selection window, on the Actions tab, choose Test Layout Updates.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV validates the changes to the report layouts but does not apply the updates. A Report Layout Update Log window appears that provides the status a potential updates for each report layout. If there are errors for a report layout, we can access the report layout directly for editing from the message to fix any issues.

Limitations of the Custom Report Layout Update

There are several types of changes that the automatic update can apply to custom report layouts, for example, a field that is used in the layout has been removed from the report data set. However, the automatic update cannot handle the following changes to a report dataset.

1.     Deleted fields, labels, or data items.

2.     Duplicate field names in the report layout after a field has been renamed in the dataset. This should be treated as a design error.

3.     Upgrade scenarios where there are multiple iterations of a report layout that causes multiple rename actions on the same fields, labels or data items.

If the update process detects any one of these issues, the update cannot be applied. We will have to fix the issues manually, for example by editing the report layout in Word, or programmatically by using upgrade codeunits.

Fixing Errors

If we get an error message when we update or test report layout updates, we most likely will have to modify the report layout to fix the problem. Read the error message to help determine the cause of the problem.

The most typical problem occurs when a field that is used on the layout has been removed from the report dataset. In this case, we will see a line in the error message that states that an item has been removed. To fix this issue, we will have to modify the layout and remove the field in question.

How to: Modify a Custom Report Layout and Removing Label and Data Fields in Word Layouts.

After we modify the layout, try to update the layout again.