There might be a case where the vendor sends a single invoice for multiple purchase orders receipts, in this scenario we will see how to post one invoice for multiple purchase receipts of the same vendor. You can use Combine Receipt function to Invoice more than one purchase receipt. In search option, enter Purchase order and then choose related link Click on New button to create Purchase Order. Enter all necessary information on Purchase order which are required and click on Post button. Select receive and choose OK button to post purchase receipt. Repeat steps from 1 to 4 to create multiple Purchase order and post purchase receipt. Now in search option, enter Purchase Invoices and choose related link. Click on New button to create Purchase Invoice. Select Vendor in Vendor Name field. On the LinesFastTab, choose the Get Receipt Lines. Select multiple receipt lines that you want to include in the invoice and choose the OK button. In Line section, You can see the added purchase receipt lines. To post the invoice, choose the Post action.    

There might be a case where the company sends a single invoice for multiple Sales orders shipments, in this scenario we will see how to post one invoice for multiple sales shipment of the same customer. You can use Combine Shipment function to Invoice more than one sales shipment. In search option, enter Sales order and then choose related link. Click on New button to create Sales Order. Enter all necessary information on Sales order which are required and click on Post button. Select ship and choose OK button to post Sales Shipment. Repeat steps from 1 to 4 to create multiple Sales order and post sales shipment. Now in search option, enter Sales Invoices and choose related link. Click on New button to create Sales Invoice. Select Customer in Customer Name field. On the LinesFastTab, choose the Get shipment Lines. Select multiple Shipment lines that you want to include in the invoice and choose the OK button. In Line section, You can see the added sales shipment lines. To post the invoice, choose the Post    

Introduction:   Since the release of Microsoft Teams on March 2017 which was designed for business for all sizes, it is now being used by almost 500,000 organizations worldwide. Microsoft Teams is a big hit in the messaging app market after having such huge competitors like Slack, Facebook, Google, etc. Microsoft released its free version in July 2018 which is designed for small businesses or groups of people within a company who doesn’t have commercial Office 365 subscriptions or a couple of people working together. In this article, we are going to discuss the feature comparison between MS Teams ‘Premium’ and ‘Freemium’. I have written several articles on Microsoft Teams which comes with Office 365 subscriptions (Refer blogs on https://www.cloudfronts.com/category/azure-office365/) but asked by many users to provide some info on Microsoft Teams free.   Sign Up for MS Teams – Any person with corporate or consumer email address can sign up for Teams. People who have commercial O365 subscription will already have access to MS Teams and those who don’t have the commercial subscription can sign up for the Microsoft Teams Freemium from this link – https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/free Maximum no. of users – Free Teams brings up the features for up to 300 people. This number is similar for the commercial subscription as well, excluding Enterprise plans for which the max no. if users are unlimited. Online Apps in MS Teams – Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are available online with a free version of Teams. With Office 365 commercial subscriptions the desktop versions of apps are available for Office 365 Business Premium and Enterprise plans (excluding E1). Like the premium MS Teams, the free version of Teams can also be integrated with more than 140 different apps. Note – Office 365 services like SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and other Office 365 services will not be available with free MS Teams as it doesn’t have Office 365 subscription. Guest Access – This is a very awesome feature introduced by Microsoft in Teams with the help of which you can collaborate with external contacts, clients or with partners. Guest access is available with MS Teams free version as well. We can invite users with corporate or consumer email address and the users with commercial Office 365 subscriptions using Teams as well (see below image for sending an invite from MS Teams free). Audio & Video calls, Screen sharing and chat – Audio, video calling, screen sharing, and one to one chat are some of the key features any communication and collaboration platform. So, of course, these features are available with Microsoft Teams free version as well otherwise what would be the use of the free version. Scheduling meeting and Audio conferencing – Feature of Scheduling meetings, Audio conferencing and then depending upon your SKU, things link phone number calling and dial-in conferencing is not available in Microsoft Teams free version which we get with the paid version of MS Teams. Security and Compliance – Paid version gives you a full set of powerful IT capabilities, compliance and security controls and developer options to manage and scale Teams all as part of Office 365. Plus, you also get support and guaranteed uptime which you don’t get in free MS Teams version. Of course, security features such as Data Encryption and region-based data residency is available with free Teams, but we don’t have features like MFA, Auditing, reporting, etc which are there with a paid subscription. Custom status message – Presence status we can set in free MS Teams version which is awesome, but we don’t have an option to set custom status message compare to that we have in paid Teams. Storage – With free MS Teams you get 2 GB of storage per user and 10 GB of team storage (Shared storage) whereas with paid Teams you get 1 TB per user. Conclusion:   Microsoft Teams Freemium is an awesome way for the people to start using Teams whether they are a couple of co-workers, small business or a group of people working together. It is easy to use and has all the major functionalities a messaging and collaboration app should have but if you want all the features with discussed above you can of course upgrade to the paid version and have a commercial Office 365 subscription. Hope this article helps you to understand the differences between Microsoft Teams ‘Premium’ and ‘Freemium’.

Introduction: In this blog, I want to depict how a table structure can be integrated into an Email in Business Central using the HTML tags. Pre-Requisites : Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central HTML Steps: Create an Email Structure using the SMTP Mail setup Codeunit and pages. The body that is to be attached to the Mail will be the table structure that will be created using HTML tags. The HTML tags used are as follows: <th> : To create the heading for the table <tr>: To create the rows for the table <td>: To input the data for the table Code for the table structure and mail is as follows: SMTPSetup.CreateMessage(”, SMTPMailSetup.”User ID”, Rec_Contact2.”E-Mail”, ‘Scheduling Report’, ”, TRUE); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(MailBody); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<br>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(UserDetails); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<br>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<table border=”1″>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<tr>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>Purchase Conformation</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>Vendor Name</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>Vendor Ref:</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>Product Name</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>Estimated PU Date</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>PU Date</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>PU Time Begin</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<th>PU Time End</th>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘</tr>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<tr>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(“Blanket PO No.”) + ‘-‘ + Format(“Blanket PO Line No.”) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(Name) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(VSO) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(ProductName) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(EstPUDate) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(PUDate) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(PUStartTime) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘<td>’ + Format(PUEndTime) + ‘</td>’); SMTPSetup.AppendBody(‘</tr>’); SMTPSetup.AddCC(Rec_UserSetup.”E-Mail”); SMTPSetup.Send; 3) The table output looks as follows when the mail is sent:               Conclusion: Thus, using the basic HTML table tags a table structure can be integrated into the Email functionality of Business Central.

Introduction In this blog we will see how to use the Email Engagement functionality from Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Pre Requisites 1. Dynamics 365 for Sales Implementation Step 1: To enable Email Engagement we can simply, navigate to Settings > AI for Sales > and accept the terms and agreements Once Accepted, we have to grant permissions for Email Engagement Here we must click on Grant Permission and provide consent on behalf of the organization as shown on the screen below Once configured correctly, the below message will be shown Step 2: Now let’s try sending out emails and tracking, when we create on new Email Activity, we get the following details Step 3: Here in this example we will look at how we can track if an email is opened. In “Set a reminder to follow up on this email”, we have set a reminder to remind us at a set time, and we have also added comments as shown below We also have other options in conditions as shown The reminders can also be changed/removed once it has been set Once the record is opened, appropriate cards are shown in the relationship section, as shown below Step 4: Once the reply is tracked in the system, the replies to the emails are also visible in the sent email timeline shown below Step 5: If there are any links, in the Email body, they are tracked, and the Link Clicks are also recorded, as shown Note: The opens and links clicks take some time to reflect in the system. Hope this helped!

Introduction In the previous blog we looked at how we can register Email opens, Link Clicks and View Replies to a mail in D365 Customer Engagement using Email Engagement. In this blog we will see how we can follow emails to use the same feature using Dynamics 365 for Outlook App. Pre-Requisites Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Implementations Step 1: While composing an email in Outlook, before sending the email, we click on the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook sign Step 2: Before following an email, first we must track it. There are two options, we can either Track without setting the Regarding  Or “Set Regarding” on the mail  Step 3: Once tracked, click on the follow option as shown Step 4: In the next tab, click on “Follow this Email” Step 5: After following, a completion message will be shown After this, when the email is sent, the email will be tracked in CRM, along with email engagement details. Hope this helped!

Introduction In this blog we will take a look at how we can follow records automatically in Dynamics 365. As the name suggested when we follow any particular record, we can get details of that record in our activity feed. This can then be displayed on the dashboards in CRM. Following a record can also be done automatically based on come criteria. Implementation Step 1: For this demonstration we will look at a case where I would like to follow a lead only when the Rating of that lead turns to “Hot”. Step 2: First we create a workflow on Lead Entity as shown below Below is the configuration of Create Follow record properties Here on update of the field Rating, we check if the rating is “Hot”,  if true then to follow the record we create a follow record Step 3: Now we change the Rating of the Lead “Darren Parker” from “Warm” to “Hot”. Step 4: If we refresh the page we will see the Unfollow button is present, as the record is already followed. Step 5: In the View > Leads I Follow, we can see the followed Lead Step 6: If someone creates posts on this record, it will be shown on my timeline. Here I have added the Timeline view on the Sales Overview Dashboard and we can see I am able to view the post as this record is followed. In my next blog we will look at how we can create automatic posts to view specific details of the followed records on your dashboard. Hope this helped!

Introduction In this blog we will look at how to create automatic post based on criteria. In my previous blog we saw how we can follow records automatically, based on some conditions. Both these scenarios could be clubbed to use the system more efficiently Implementation Step 1: For this demonstration, we will create a post on a lead, when the Annual Revenue is updated and the value is greater than 5K. For this we have designed a workflow with the following configuration. In the Create Post, the properties are as shown below Step 2: Now when we change the Annual Revenue of a Lead above 5K, a post is created on the record as shown below Step 3: Now, if this lead is already followed and the Timeline view is set on the dashboard, we could also see these posts on the Dashboard as shown below Here in this case we, we have taken a simple example on creating posts, this could be configured as required in the workflow. To find more details follow my blog “Stay updated using the “Follow” Capability in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement“. Hope this helped!

D365 BC product is being improved continuously and following is the expected improvement coming in April Updates. Improvements to Scrolling in Lists When scrolling in a list page today, your scrolling is periodically interrupted with a “fetching more rows” indicator. Scrolling pauses while Business Central fetches and loads more rows into the page. See below for an example of this: Microsoft’s latest enhancements aim to improve scrolling experience. You will be able to scroll to any position on a list without pause. We’ve been able to see the improved experience in our preview environments and believe this will be a simple but highly valued feature for frequent Business Central users!

D365 BC product is being improved continuously and following is the expected improvement coming in April Updates. Longer Names and Descriptions Microsoft plans to update Business Central to allow for longer name and description values. All name and description fields are being lengthened from 50 to 100 characters, providing you with greater flexibility and fewer compromises when naming or describing entities such as general ledger accounts, customers, vendors or items. The image below illustrates a Business Central vendor record where the vendor’s name has been populated with 100 characters.