1. Lock-free number series (Allow gaps in Number Series). Users can choose to mark number series to allow gaps in the series. These number series will be non-blocking, which will boost performance. Add notes and links to data Users can quickly add a note to the data they are currently viewing on the Business Central, these notes can be used if a user needs to add some note to the specific page. 3. Customize a user profile without writing code. (New fields have been added, Caption, Description, Use as Default Profile, Promoted). Users need not have to write code to change a user profile, instead, they can make changes to a user profile from Profile only.

Let’s say you need to create a new store with multiple registers on CPOS.   It is now possible to have a retail store with multiple registers each running CPOS and each having their own dedicated hardware.   For example: A store with two registers both running CPOS and both having their own receipt printer, scanner, etc. . Here comes the concept of a shared hardware station for CPOS, It may seem impractical to have multiple registers sharing the same scanner, pin pad, etc but it is actually possible.   You’ll need to install a hardware station per CPOS and then you should be good to go.   Sharing hardware can be handy in scenarios with limited space or lesser sales persons moving around taking the sales and so on and it’s valid for CPOS.   Note: However, for MPOS you need a dedicated hardware.   Please notice that you can’t have multiple hardware stations installed on the same machine. Please do correct me anyone if that has changed 🙂 This can be done absolutely and is perfectly possible. Just deploy a Hardware station on each device and it will work as discussed in the example above.

“Run Jobs” – as the name suggests is a process between Retail Channels and Retail essentials through which we transfer data between channels and database. Please Note: Jobs Run at a specified time which may be different for every Retail Scheduler. Be aware of what the time is set for jobs to run automatically.  Running jobs at a specific time requires setting to be done so that we can schedule a specific job to run at specific time. It can be easily done manually. You’ll have to follow the below steps: Step 1: Go to distribution schedule or Channel database in Retail Dynamics 365. If the job doesn’t run from distribution schedule run it through channel database. Step 2: Go to download sessions and make sure your Job is available or in applied state. If it is in available state, go to “Batch Jobs“. Step 3: Now you will have to find the same batch job that you were searching and need to run it at a specified time. Step 4: Here, since the Job is in waiting state, you need to change it’s scheduled date and time to current time. This change must be according to the time at which you want your job needs to be run. The specified time will make your job run immediately.   Step 5: You can check if Job is being applied in “Download sessions” whenever required. Step 6: You can also change how often the job should run from going to Recurrence. Step 7: Only things highlighted in Red boxes should be checked. Hope this helps!!! Thank you! Please feel free to post any doubts you have.

Problem Definition: The sales cycle in my company demands me to create an opportunity every time a CR is requested or there is an additional estimate via a proposal that we ask on the current project from the customer. This needs me to go through the cycle from Opportunity to Quote to Contract. But, in this cycle, I do not want to create another Quote or contract, but update the existing one to add another Quote Line Detail. This is not possible once the Quote is marked a won in PSA. Solution: Following is what can be done to enable the Quote to move it to Draft mode an make it editable. Step 1: Go to the Quote and click on the Flow button in the Ribbon control and click on Create New Flow as shown in the screenshot below. Step 2: Use the Common Data Service Template and click on Continue. In case you see this page and you are not signed in with your account, please sign in and continue. Step 3: On the next screen select the details as shown in the below screenshot. Step 4: Select the Update Record Option from below as shown.   Step 5: Click on Add Dynamic Content link and select Quote field from there as shown below. Step 6: Change the field “Status Value” to Draft and Save the Flow. Step 7: Navigate to the flow and name is as shown below. Step 8: Its time now to test the Flow developed. Navigate to your Quotes and filter out the Won Quotes. Open one Quote and Click on Flow button from the Ribbon control and select the Flow that we wrote as shown below Step 9: Refresh the page and check that the Flow has done its job and the Quote is now in the Draft mode, ready to edit. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for the last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project management, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Problem Definition: One of my clients decided to use Expense module in PSA and to his surprise he could see the amount value to be 0 in the Actuals. But, at the same time the Cost line had values in it. Upon researching and digging into all the configurations I was tired and couldn’t conclude. Finally, one configuration that made it work was to add the Transaction Category in the Sales Price List and make it Chargeable at Cost. Below is how to do it: Navigate to the project contract. Open the Pricelist associated with the Contract. It can be either the default pricelist or can be the custom price list for that particular contract. In the case shown in the screen shot, it is the Custom Price List. How do we Identify whether it is a Custom Price List is that, with the name of the Pricelist i.e. Sales Price List USD, there is the name of the opportunity and the Timestamp appended to it. You will see it in the screenshot below. Once you open that Custom Price List and Navigate to Category Prices, Click on “+ Add New Transaction Category” You will see a Quick Create Form opening up to add the Transaction Category. Fill in the details as shown in the below screenshot. The click on Save and Close and you will see your transaction Category added in the Grid. Your configuration is now ready. The next step is: To raise an expense as shown below. Configure/Create a Expense Category and relate it to the Transaction Category as per below. Navigate to Settings Area and Click on Expense Categories and then click on New. 2. Fill in the details as shown below. If you observe in the above image, there is a Transaction Category associated with the expense category and that is the one that should be present in the PriceList that we discussed initially in the above part of this blog. Once the expense is raised, Submit it. Submission sends it for the project Manager for approval. Project Manager approves it and as soon as the Project Manager approves it, it gets converted to Actuals as shown below. 4. Last step is to Create Invoice and see if the Expense gets shown up in the Invoice. For the same traverse to Project Contract and Open the specific project contract. It will automatically take you to Invoice Entity where the Invoice will be generated as shown below. Tips to remember: For Fixed Bid Project contract, you will need to create one more project contract line header which is of T&M type. This will be associated with another project on which you can raise the expenses. For T&M, we can still continue to raise the expense on the same project and there is no need of creating one more project contract line header. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3+ years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.

Docker is an independent container platform that enables organizations to seamlessly build, share and run any application, anywhere from hybrid cloud to the edge. Docker provides the ability to package and run an application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. The following steps shall help you to get Docker in place on your system. Steps: Visit the link- https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop, which will direct you to the Dockers website, after opening the link choose the “Download Desktop for Mac and Windows”. Now Create an Account for Docker or Login with credentials if you have an Account. After that go with “Download Docker desktop for Windows” and your download shall start soon. Install the downloaded “.exe” file and you are good to go with Dockers. Now look for “Docker Desktop is running”on your TaskBar with  Docker Icon. Open Powershell, and execute the command “docker info” and you shall see the docker information as below: Hope this helps!

1.Power-full filtering of Reports When running reports on Business Central, Users see a request page where they can add filters, this addition of filters was achieved by customization and coding. With the new Business Central Wave 2 Release users do not have to worry about customizing from the back end. Business Central Wave 2 comes up with hassle-free filtering of reports which is achieved before the report is run. Thus making it more efficient to use. The snapshot shown below is an example of previous report filters. This is how the business central wave has added filters. You just have to click the filters button and you can have multiple combinations of simple and complex filters. 2. Resize columns with fewer clicks. Columns play a major role in Business Central because the data to be displayed is dependent on how much visible that particular column is, In the earlier version of business central it was not possible to increase the width of a column to be displayed. With the new Business Central Wave 2 release, the developers have made it convenient for the users to increase the size of columns just with a single click and mouse drag.   Below is the snapshot of the previous Business Central. This picture shows how the column “Contact” has been increased. Hope this helps!

Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation helps companies to have control over the projects that they undertake. It is the main reason why a lot of companies love this particular ERP solution. Companies can complete the project within the timeframe and the budget that is allocated. Estimating the project budget and planning resources becomes a lot easy. Communication between employees in the company improves substantially. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation equips the project managers with the essential tools to make them efficient. It helps companies to become organized and to become successful. Here are some quick tips on how you can give your colleagues access that is necessary to do expense and time entries without exposing them to other available entities on the system. Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation is a software application that companies need to buy and use if they want to have full control of a project. Organizations can use this application to manage, track, and deliver project-based services on time. Creating work schedules and quotations utilizing this system is secure. You can manage and assign resources with ease when you use this software. Mastering how this system works is quite essential if you desire that your projects become successful. You might encounter so many unique problems when you are using this particular system. Here are some probable solutions that will help you to solve these problems. Problem Definition: We sometimes have a few team members who only need to do the time entries and expense entries. They do not need any exposure to other entities. How do we make it possible via the OOB (Out of the box) security roles in PSA V3.X. Solution: From the security–>Users–> select the user–>Manage Role and Only keep “Project Resource” Role. 2. Go to Security–>Security Roles–>Open the security Role “Project Resource” –> change the following 2 parameters read/write access as shown below in the image. 3. Log off and log in again and you are set 🙂

These days there are so many companies that are developing software applications to help businesses manage the projects. But, nothing comes close to dynamics 365 project service automation. It is unique and is one software that every business should have if they want to manage projects and help them to become successful. Companies can track as well as manage projects well when they use this particular software.astering this software is essential if you want to use this application efficiently. PowerApps is one service that Microsoft offers, and developers can use it to build apps as per the requirement of the client. As my thoughts build to initiate writing this blog, similar was the feeling when I first thought about exploring Power Apps. The expression was, “What exactly is Power Apps?”. When the world is talking about it, it brings me more curiosity to understand what is so powerful about it. Let’s first commence with understanding what exactly is Power Apps: PowerApps is an initiative by Microsoft that allows developers and nontechnical users to build mobile applications from selectable templates. The objective of PowerApps is to enable business users to build new capabilities via apps, without requiring that they have code expertise. Types of Power Apps: Model driven apps: These types of apps directly publish the entity on the mobile/ tablet. These apps can be used from Microsoft Dynamics 365 App from mobile. They are very easy to make and can be ready within 15mins of time. Canvas apps: These apps are blank canvas given to the developers with a free hand to design the app in the way they want. In this blog we shall focus more on how to make a Canvas app. Follow the steps below to make a PowerApps. Step 1: Login to www.portal.office.com Step 2: Click on PowerApps icon as shown in the image below: This will open a new browser tab where we need to select what kind of app do we need to make. Step 3: Click on Canvas app from blank, which opens a pop up. Please name your app and select whether the app is for Phone or for Tablet as shown below and click on Create button. This opens the Canvas app editor as shown below: To take this blog forward, I will use an app that is created by me and explain a few commands used by me and how was the design done in that app. The app captures the Grievances of people in office. There are 5 screens created by me and they are: list_Grievances Screen: This list all the grievances in the system. 2. frm_GrievanceRecord Screen: This opens a grievance record. 3. Frm_NewGrievance Screen: This screen is used to capture a new grievance. 4. Frm_CameraScreen : This is used to capture the image of the grievance using camera control. 5. SuccessScrn: This is used to display the success on the screen. Technical dive Let’s take a dive in each screen and get into understanding of functionalities developed on each screen: List_grievances: a. New Grievance button: This button will navigate to a frm_NewGrievance Record to capture new grievance from the employee. The code written behind that is:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Navigate(frm_NewGrievance,ScreenTransition.Fade );   …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….b. To display the list of Grievance I have inserted a List Screen as shown in the image below: c. To display the list of Grievance, we need to add a Data Source. How to add a data source is shown below: There are approximately more than 250 Data sources to which Power apps can connect. Select the data source you wish to connect. In my case, I will connect to Dynamics 365 Data Source. It will ask you to choose your entity and then you can click on connect. Your Data Source “Grievances” will start appearing in Items drop down of Property Window. Post that we can align the attributes that we need to see on the list view: To Display Employee Full Name, below is the code that I wrote: ………………………………………………………………….. ThisItem.’Employee Full Name’ ………………………………………………………………… To get the department value, which is a lookup to another entity below is the code that was written: …………………………………………………………………. LookUp(Departments,new_departmentid=ThisItem.Department, new_name) …………………………………………………………………. To display the image from the SharePoint Library, below is the code: LookUp(GrievanceLibrary, Title = TitleGrievance.Text, Image)   Where GrievanceLibrary is the Sharepoint Datasource added in Powerapp and Title and image are the fields created in SharePoint.   To open the Grievance record on frm_Grievance Record, write the below code: Navigate(frm_GrievanceRecord,ScreenTransition.Fade,glryGrievances.Selected)   frm_NewGrievanceRecord: To store the new grievance record, we used the Form Screen. On the update button, write the below code: Patch(     Grievances,     Defaults(Grievances),     {         new_employeefullname: DataCardValue3.Text,         new_description: DataCardValue15.Text,         _new_departmentl_value: DataCardValue10.Selected.new_departmentid,         _new_grievancetypel_value: DataCardValue6.Selected.new_grievancetypeid,         new_signature: PenInput4.Image     } ); Patch(     GrievanceLibrary,     Defaults(GrievanceLibrary),     {         Title: DataCardValue3.Text,         Image: First(Collection1).Url     } ); UpdateContext({resettext: !resettext}); UpdateContext({resetcombobox: !resetcombobox}); Navigate(SuccessScrn,ScreenTransition.Fade); frm_CameraScreen Insert a Camera Media Control on the form as shown in the below screen shot. Insert an image control on the form below the Camera Media control. Capture button code: ClearCollect(Collection1, Camera1.Photo) Collection 1 s described above is the SharePoint collection object which needs to be cleared and then referred with the new Photo from the Camera Control, which in our case is Camera1. Confirm button code: Confirm Button will only Navigate it to New Grievance form and the code is ass per below: Navigate(frm_NewGrievance)  To summarise: We learned how to create a Canvas Power app. Different controls that can be used. How to store image on Sharepoint in a Power app. Again I am sharing the code for storing the image on Sharepoint herewith: Patch(     GrievanceLibrary,     Defaults(GrievanceLibrary),     {         Title: DataCardValue3.Text,         Image: First(Collection1).Url     } ); To explain the above code, GrievanceLibrary is the SharePoint site of which Data Source is added. Title: This is a field in the Sharepoint library that will store the name of the Grievance. The data type in Sharepoint for Title is Single line Text Image: This will store … Continue reading First Canvas Power App: Learn Few Easy and Important Commands →

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail Management Solution is an end to end or complete retail solution that every business need to have. It provides unified commerce solutions to retailers in all the channels, such as mobility, intelligence, sales, and productivity. Retailers can do a wide range of activities using this particular software. This solution helps customers to have an immersive experience. Retailers achieve a lot when they use Microsoft dynamics 365 for retail as people can do most of the things on the cloud. It increases the efficiency of the workers that are using this software. It is a SaaS solution that Microsoft is hosting. It is one of those solutions that retailers and their staff will love using. In this blog I am going to demonstrate how to deal with errors generated during statement posting. At times while you are posting a shift/statement, you may run into number of different errors. You may need to resolve them on your own. However, sometimes the error occurs because of a bug as shown in this article. It is asking you to run a validate store transactions job. Run the job, however the error message may not go away. If  this error message does not go away than it’s more like  a bug than an error.  You need to contact Microsoft and raise a ticket . They can resolve this error in a day or two. As you can see here shift 2637 is still unposted i.e. no right tick in the posted column next to it. It won’t let you post it even if you create a new statement and try to post it. The reason could be that the statement containing it is not posted yet.  Go to statements and find the unposted statement and try to post it. Issue should be resolved. Hope this helps!