Silver Bullet for D365 SCM

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Saved views for purchase orders and Enable resetting procurement related workflows features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

In this blogpost I would like to go through some features and explain what has been done for them.

Name: Saved views for purchase orders

Description: This feature provides several saved views for the purchase order details page. The views help users to focus on relevant fields and actions while working with purchase orders. The feature adds views optimized for each of the following purposes: order creation, order approval, inventory management, and financial management.

When this feature is enabled, new views for purchase order details will be available. Go to Purchase order details, select views and then go to Manage my views.

Select Organization views. 4 new views are available.

Name: Enable resetting procurement related workflows

Description: This feature allows you to reset following workflow to draft status: Purchase Order, Vendor Change and Purchase Requisitions.

This feature makes customer can recall the workflow for PR, PO and vendor in the UI of PR, PO and vendor directly if the workflow is unrecoverable.

This works in the following way:

Go to any procurement documents that are stuck (Purchase requisition, Purchase order, Vendor).
Select Workflow -> History (Note: do it with Admin role)
Make sure that workflow status is Unrecoverable.
Select Reset button
After that document will be set to Draft state

That's it!

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Release to warehouse in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management: Shipment, wave, load, work

In this blog post I would like to go through the Release to warehouse process and show you what is happening there. Below you may find an illustration of the process.

When you Release a sales order, the system performs a set of validations whether it can be released at all. Upon successful validation, the system starts creation of the Shipment/Shipment lines and Load lines.

A shipment is a single delivery of the items to a single address within the same mode of delivery. One shipment might have multiple sales orders if they are for the same delivery address and mode of delivery,

When shipment has been created, the system is looking for a wave template which matches the Shipment. When wave template has been found the system determines whether a new wave needs to be created or the shipment to be added to an existing wave. If you have not defined parameters on the wave template to create wave/or assign to the existing wave, the system will stop the process here. In this scenario, users will need manually add shipments to the wave. A wave is a group of shipments to be processed together in the warehouse and combines the warehouse work. One wave might have multiple shipments, but a single shipment can only be on one wave.

If Wave template is configured to process wave, the shipment(s) will be released to the warehouse for picking. In other words, the system will try to create a work. But first the system will try to add shipments to a Load. A load is set of Shipments that are to be delivered at the same time (consider it as a single vehicle). One load might have multiple shipments, but a single shipment can only be on one load.

Work creation process starts upon Wave allocation step. At this step, the system tries to determine from where the items need to be picked up. So, system tries to construct Work pick lines. For this reason, the system searches for a location directive to determine pick location and work template to determine the policy on how pick lines need to be grouped into work headers. Then the system determines where to put the items. So, the system constructs put line for your work. Once it is determined the system creates a work(s) with pick and put pair.

If Wave template is configured to release the wave automatically, created work is unblocked and warehouse workers can start picking and putting items using mobile device.

That's it!

Monday, July 4, 2022

Vendor bank information enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM

If you are using Maintain vendor bank information using vendor collaboration workspace feature, you might experience some issue with entering bank details. For example, prior 10.0.28 when you create a new bank account in the vendor collaboration for non-USD vendors, IBAN and Swift code fields were mandatory.

In 10.0.28 IBAN and Swift code fields became optional by default, but a new parameter was introduced that controls whether SWIFT and IBAN are required for non-USD vendors. Keep in mind that this parameter is applied only to the bank accounts created from the vendor collaboration (not from the vendor)

Go to Accounts payable -> Setup -> Accounts payable parameters.
Select General Fast Tab
Parameter: Require SWIFT and IBAN for non-US vendors.

Walkthrough:

Go to Vendor collaboration -> Workspaces -> Vendor information.
Select Vendor that has not USD currency.
Select More details button.
Choose Bank information.
Select Add button
Based on the "Require SWIFT and IBAN for non-US vendors", IBAN and SWIFT fields will be mandatory or optional.

That's it!

Purchase agreement matching policy in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

In this blogpost I would like to go through the feature and explain what has been done in scope of this feature.

Name: Purchase agreement matching policy

Description: This feature enables you to define a matching policy on the Purchase agreement that all associated documents will adhere to.

Within this feature the following capabilities were introduced:

Users can now define an invoice matching policy to use for purchase orders released from a purchase agreement.

When this feature is enabled and Enable invoice matching validation parameter is enabled (Accounts payable > Setup > Accounts payable parameters > Invoice validation tab > Invoice validation section), a new field 'Line matching policy' will appear on the Purchase agreement classification page (Procurement and sourcing > Setup > Purchase agreement classification).

When this feature is enabled and Enable invoice matching validation parameter is enabled (Accounts payable > Setup > Accounts payable parameters > Invoice validation tab > Invoice validation section), a new field 'Line matching policy' will appear on the Purchase agreement page (Procurement and sourcing > Purchase agreements > Purchase agreements).

If the Allow matching policy override on the Accounts payable parameters page is set to 'Higher than company policy' and you are attempted to select a lower matching policy then defined in the parameters, you will get an error message: The line matching policy cannot be changed to a lower line matching policy than %1.

When Purchase agreement is released, matching policy on the purchase order will be defaulted from the purchase agreements.

Setting 'Higher than company policy' will update Purchase agreement classifications and purchase agreements to Company policy with additional dialog popping up: At least one line matching policy is lower than the company line matching policy. The lower matching policies may exist on purchase order lines or in the Matching policy form. Do you want to set all of them to use the company line matching policy?

That's it!

Purchase agreement responsible party feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

In this blogpost I would like to go through the feature and explain what has been done in scope of this feature.

Name: Purchase agreement responsible party

Description: This feature enables the ability to define a primary and secondary responsible party on the Purchase agreement classification form and resulting Purchase agreements.

Within this feature the following capabilities were introduced:

Allow users to identify the employees that are responsible for maintaining purchase agreements.
Users can now mark a Purchase agreement as 'closed' to signal the agreement is no longer actively used, making it so users will not be able to create release orders from the purchase agreement.

When this feature is enabled, two new fields will appear on the Purchase agreement classifications page (Procurement and sourcing > Setup > Purchase agreement classification)

When you define the responsible workers, a secondary responsible worker cannot be defined without a primary responsible worker. The same worker cannot be defined as both the primary and secondary responsible worker.

When Purchase agreement is being created, Primary and secondary responsible workers fields are getting defaulted from Purchase agreement classification page.

Purchase agreements can now be marked as 'Closed'. This status appropriately indicates to the user that this document will no longer be in use moving forward. Additionally, the Confirmation and Pro forma buttons in the action pane are disabled.

Like for the On hold purchase agreements, you cannot select Closed purchase agreements in the Purchase order creation dialog.

That's it!

Thursday, June 2, 2022

Import vendor catalogs: from setup to importing a sample catalog in Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM

I would like to start this blog post with the list of useful links.

To get more details, please visit the following sites:

Now let\s jump into configuration.

Catalog import product approval

This type of workflow processes all the products that are included in the catalog file. Completion of all of the individual line-level workflow completes the overall catalog import workflow. In order to create a product approval workflow:

• Click Procurement and sourcing > Setup > Procurement and sourcing workflows.

• On the Action Pane, select New.

• Select Catalog import product approval and then select Create workflow.

General setup

The common catalog import product approval workflow should look like this:

Set up approvers

Double click the Catalog import product approval element.
Select the Step 1 element.
Select Assignment in the action pane.
The simplest assignment would be User->Admin.

Set up automatic actions

Automatic actions allow the workflow framework to automatically approve or reject the products in the imported vendor catalog which meet certain conditions. In order to set up an automatic action you need to:

Select the Catalog import product approval element.
Select Automatic actions in the action pane.
Select the Enable automatic actions check box
Setup the conditions for auto approval/rejection
Select the type of automatic action (approve/reject)

Catalog import approval

This type of workflow is used for setting up the rules for approving the whole catalog. When you configure this workflow, you can reference the Catalog import product approval workflow that you configured earlier. The common setup would be to automatically approve the whole catalog import after all the products have been approved:

In the properties of the Vendor catalog lines (products) element you need to reference the catalog import product approval that you created earlier. If the previous created workflow is not visible in the lookup, make sure that previous workflow was activated.

As the result, 2 workflows have been created.

Setup the import project

In the Data management workspace, refresh Data entity list.

Set up an import project in the Data management workspace.

Import the sample file.

The sample file that I used:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>

<PRODUCTNUMBER>LCTest6</PRODUCTNUMBER>

<PRODUCTCATEGORYHIERARCHYNAME>Procurement - Office Supplies</PRODUCTCATEGORYHIERARCHYNAME>

<PRODUCTCATEGORYNAME>Computers</PRODUCTCATEGORYNAME>

<SEARCHNAME>Insurancesearchname</SEARCHNAME>

<PRODUCTCANDIDATEPRODUCTNUMBER>LCTest</PRODUCTCANDIDATEPRODUCTNUMBER>

</CatVendorProductCandidatePurchasePriceEntity>

</CatVendorProductCandidateSalesPriceEntity>

<PRODUCTCANDIDATEPRODUCTNUMBER>LCTest</PRODUCTCANDIDATEPRODUCTNUMBER>

</CatVendorProductCandidateDefaultOrderSettingsEntity>

</CatVendorProductCandidateEntity>

</CatVendorCatalogMaintenanceRequestEntity>

</Document>

Assign vendor to the category

Select Account payable > Vendors > All vendors > General tab on the Action pane > Categories button.

Import catalog

Select Procurement and sourcing > Catalogs > Vendor catalogs.
On the Action Pane, select New.
Select Vendor and then enable vendor for catalog processing.

Enable Automated catalog import approval by selecting Enable automated approval button.

Select Upload file.
Select the file and procurement hierarchy.
Select OK.

New record will be inserted in the Catalog file history.

Make sure that Workflow message processing and Workflow line-item notifications batch jobs are scheduled and awaiting execution.

Select Workflow > Submit.
Select Details.

Wait until it is Approved.

Status of the catalog will be set to Succeeded.

Select Released approved products on the Action pane.
Set the Release to legal entity parameter and click OK.

Make sure that newly imported product has been released. Make sure that corresponding trade agreements are created.

That's it!

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Public Sector partition in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management

D365 SCM enables data isolation by using data partitions. So, for instance, most of the Public sector data are defined in a different partition compared to Contoso data.

In PS (Public sector) partition, there is a PSUS legal entity that contains handy data already and you can leverage it for your Public sector testing and exploratory. So if you are testing General budget reservation functionality, for example, this partition will be ideal to use.

You will not be able to find the PSUS legal entity from the list of available legal entity (if coming from DAT or USMF) but you can get to it straight by changing the legal entity context of the D365FO demo environment URL.

To access PSUS legal entity that is in PS partition, you will need to use the following link:

https://usnconeboxax1aos.cloud.onebox.dynamics.com/?cmp=PSUS&prt=ps

If you use this link, this will bring you to a different set of legal entities, mainly for Public sector scenarios.

That's it!