In today’s global manufacturing landscape, businesses need more than just strong products to stay competitive. They need digital operations that connect customers, distributors, and internal teams in different regions. One powerful way to achieve this is by integrating e-commerce platforms with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.  This is the story of a 140-year-old global leader in materials testing machine manufacturing that transformed its order-taking process through a Shopify–Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations integration.  The Challenge  With offices in five countries and sales across the UK, Europe, China, India and multiple U.S. territories, this manufacturer had a truly global footprint. Yet, order-taking remained manual and inefficient:  In short: their legacy setup couldn’t keep up with modern customer expectations or their own ambitions for global growth.  The Solution  Over the course of a decade long partnership, we helped the company modernize and digitize its business processes. The centre piece was a seamless integration between Shopify and Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O), built natively within F&O (no recurring middleware costs).  Key integrations included:  This solution ensured that high data volumes and complex processing demands could be handled efficiently within F&O.  The Results  The change has reshaped how the company works:  Lessons for Other Global Manufacturers  This journey highlights critical lessons for manufacturers, distributors, and global businesses alike:  The Road Ahead  After integrating Shopify with Dynamics 365 F&O, the company has launched a dedicated distributor website where approved distributors can place orders directly on behalf of customers. This portal creates a new revenue stream, strengthens the distribution network, and ensures orders flow into F&O with the same automation, inventory sync, and reporting as direct sales. By extending digital integration to distributors, the company is simplifying order-taking while expanding its business model for global growth.  Ending thoughts  The journey of this global manufacturer shows that true digital transformation isn’t about adding more tools, it’s about connecting the right ones. By integrating Shopify with Dynamics 365 F&O, they moved from fragmented, manual processes to a scalable, automated ecosystem that empowers customers, distributors, and internal teams alike.  For any organization operating across regions, the lesson is clear: e-commerce and ERP should not live in silos. When they work together, they create a foundation that not only accelerates order taking but also unlocks new revenue streams, sharper insights, and stronger global relationships.  In a world where speed, accuracy, and customer experience define competitiveness, the question isn’t whether you can afford to integrate, it’s whether you can afford not to.  What’s next:   Don’t let manual processes slow you down. Connect with us at transform@cloudfronts.com and let’s design an integration roadmap tailored for your business. 

In this blog, one of our clients had made some small mistakes while providing the data for their opening balances, which caused the item costs to be wrong. After a lot of back-and-forth, we finally got a list of 100+ items with the correct costs. We thought it would be easy to fix using Edit in Excel but then we ran into an error:“Quantity must have a value in Item Journal Line.” But this is odd as when we are creating the entries manually, we don’t need to set the Quantity from anywhere. In fact, the Quantity field isn’t even editable, it is populated when the “Applies-to Entry” field is updated. We tried using Configuration Package.. same thing! We tried to create an excel import, that uploads data in the journal.. same thing! So what’s going on? Details After a bit of debugging we found this piece of code to be the problem –  And this -> When you update the “Unit Cost (Revalued)” field in Business Central, it also updates the “Inventory Value (Revalued)” field automatically. This part is simple. But the system also tries to update “Unit Cost (Revalued)” again based on the value you just changed—almost like it’s going in circles. To avoid this, the system checks which field is currently being updated. If it’s not “Unit Cost (Revalued)”, the update is allowed. When you make changes from the Business Central screen, the system knows which field you’re changing, thanks to something called CurrFieldNo. But when you use Edit in Excel, Config Packages, or AL code, this info is missing. That confuses the system and can cause it to divide by zero, which leads to an error. Also, there’s a rule that checks quantity in the “Applies-to Entry” field. This check only happens if the “Value Entry Type” is not set to “Revaluation”. This was raised back in 2018 on Github as a bug but it was closed as intended system design. At the end, we had to bypass the validation and assign the values directly to the fields. To conclude, what seemed like a simple task updating revalued costs turned into a deep dive into Business Central’s internal logic.  The issue stemmed from how the system handles field updates differently depending on the entry method.  While the manual interface sets background values like CurrFieldNo to help Business Central track changes properly, external methods like Edit in Excel or Config Packages don’t provide that context. If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your ERP setup, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com.

As of August 2025, the number of third-party apps available for Dynamics 365 Business Central on Microsoft AppSource is estimated to be between 4,000 and 6,500. Microsoft regularly publishes marketplace updates, with 200–300 new offers added monthly across all product lines, a significant portion of which are Business Central extensions.  It’s clear that the Business Central ecosystem is rapidly growing, making extension update management increasingly critical. The majority of clients we’ve worked with use third-party modules to enhance their business processes, making the management of extension updates a critical part of our environment health checklist. References Apps added to MS App Source MSLearn | Automatically update appsource apps with business central updates Configuration If you don’t have access to the Business Central Admin Center, your only option is to uninstall the extension and then reinstall it from AppSource. However, if you do have access to the Admin Center and prefer to manage app updates manually. Navigate to your environment and click on Apps. Here, you can –  For those looking to automate this process, Microsoft offers the “Appa Update Cadence” setting, which controls how and when apps are updated alongside Business Central. There are three available settings: To conclude, managing third-party extension updates in D365 Business Central is essential to maintaining a stable and reliable environment.  Whether updates are handled manually through the Admin Center or automated using the App Update Cadence feature, having a clear process helps minimize disruptions.  With the growing number of extensions in AppSource, proactively testing updates, monitoring changes, and coordinating with ISV partners ensures your Business Central environment stays healthy and future ready. If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your ERP setup, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com.

When working on big projects, it can be hard to quickly find classes, methods, or properties spread across different libraries. Searching through files one by one takes too much time. This is where metadata search in Visual Studio helps. It lets you explore and navigate types from external libraries (like .NET assemblies or NuGet packages) even if you don’t have the source code. Visual Studio creates a readable view of the compiled metadata, so you can instantly see definitions and details, almost like built-in documentation. References Metadata search – Visual Studio Usage -In Visual Studio, go to Dynamics 365 > Metadata Search OR Ctrl + R, Ctrl + S.-Start typing the name of the element you are looking for.-Results appear as you type.-Double-click a result to go directly to that metadata or code.-You can also right-click to add items to your project. You can filter via the follow criteria: To conclude, Metadata search in Visual Studio is a fast and easy way to find code and metadata in Dynamics 365 F&O projects. Using it saves time, reduces frustration, and helps you understand and work with large projects more efficiently.If you require additional support or have specific questions about your ERP setup, please don’t hesitate to contact us for personalized guidance. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com.

A job queue lets users set up and manage background tasks that run automatically. These tasks can be scheduled to run on a recurring schedule. For a long time, users had a common problem in Business Central—when a job queue failed, there was no alert or warning. You’d only notice something was wrong when a regular task didn’t run for a few days. Some people tried to fix this by setting up another job queue to watch and restart failed ones.But that didn’t always work, especially if an update happened at the same time. Now, Microsoft has finally added a built-in way to get alerts when a job queue fails.  You can get notified either inside Business Central or by using Business Events. In this blog, we’ll look at how to set up notifications directly within Business Central.  Configuration Search for “Assisted Setup” in Business Central’s global search. Scroll down till “Set up Job Queue notifications”. Click on Next. Add the additional users who need to be notified when the job queue fails along with the job creator (if required). Choose whether you want the notification to be in-product or using Business Events (and Power Automate). For now, I’m choosing in-product. Choose the frequency of the notification, you can have it either when a single job fails or you can have it after 3-5 jobs have failed (as per settings) Click on Finish. Now for testing I’ve run a job queue and on the home page, I get the following notification. Clicking on “Show more details” give me a list of all the failed job queues. To conclude, this new notification feature is a much-needed improvement and a good step forward. It helps users catch job queue failures quickly, without having to manually check every day.  However, the setup and experience still feel a bit buggy and lacklustre. With some refinements, it could be a lot smoother and more user-friendly.  If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your ERP setup, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. I hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com.

A Security Group is a way to group users together so that you can give access to all of them at once.For example, if everyone in the Finance team needs access to certain files or apps, you can add them to a group and give the group permission instead of doing it for each person. In Office 365, Security Groups are managed through Azure Active Directory, which handles sign-ins and user identities in Microsoft 365.  They help IT teams save time, stay organized, and keep company data safe. The same Security Groups you create in Azure Active Directory (AAD) can also be used in Dynamics 365 Business Central to manage user permissions. Instead of giving access to each user one by one in Business Central, you can connect a Security Group to a set of permissions. Then, anyone added to that group in Azure AD will automatically get the same permissions in Business Central. They’re also helpful when you want to control environment-level access, especially if your company uses different environments for testing and production. For example, only specific groups of users can be allowed into the production system. Security Groups aren’t just useful in Business Central; they can be used across many Microsoft 365 services. You can use them in tools like Power BI, Power Automate, and other Office 365 apps to manage who has access to certain reports, flows, or data. In Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure AD), these groups can be used in Conditional Access policies. This means you can set rules like “only users in this group can log in from trusted devices” or “users in this group must use multi-factor authentication.” References Compare types of groups in Microsoft 365 – Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn What is Conditional Access in Microsoft Entra ID? – Microsoft Entra ID | Microsoft Learn Simplify Conditional Access policy deployment with templates – Microsoft Entra ID | Microsoft Learn Usage Go to Home – Microsoft 365 admin center. Go to “Teams & Groups” > “Active Teams & Groups” > “Security Groups” Click on “Add a security group” to create a new group. Add a name and description for the group and click on Next and finish the process. Once the group is created, you can re-open it and click on “Members” tab to add Members. Click on “View all and manage members” > “Add Members” Select all the relevant Users and click on Add. Now, back in Business Central, search for Security Groups. Open it and click on New. Click on the drill down. You’ll see all the available security groups here, select the relevant one and click on OK. Mail groups are not considered in this list. You can change the Code it uses in Business Central if required.Once done, click on “Create” Select the new Security Group and click on Permissions. Assign the relevant permissions. Now, any User that will be added to this Security Group in Office 365 will have the D365 Banking Permission Set assigned to them. Further, these groups will also be visible in the Admin Center, from where you can define whether a particular group has access to a particular environment. To conclude, security Groups are a powerful way to manage user access across Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 Business Central. They save time, reduce manual effort, and help ensure that the right people have access to the right data and tools. By using Security Groups, IT teams can stay organized, manage permissions more consistently, and improve overall security. Whether you’re working with Business Central, Power BI, or setting up Conditional Access in Microsoft Entra, Security Groups provide a flexible and scalable solution for modern access management. If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your ERP setup, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. I hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfronts.com.

An AI agent is a smart program that can think, make decisions, and do tasks. Sometimes it works alone, and sometimes it works with people or other agents. The main difference between an agent and a regular assistant is that agents can do things on their own. They don’t just help—you can give them a goal, and they’ll try to reach it. Every AI agent has three main parts: Agents can take input like a message or a prompt and respond with answers or actions.  For example, they might look something up or start a process based on what you asked. Azure AI Foundry is a platform that brings all these things together; so you can build, train, and manage AI agents easily. References What is Azure AI Foundry Agent Service? – Azure AI Foundry | Microsoft Learn Understanding deployment types in Azure AI Foundry Models – Azure AI Foundry | Microsoft Learnhttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/how-to/index-add Usage Firstly, we create a project in Azure AI Foundry. Click on Next and give a name to your project. Wait till the setup finishes. Once the project creation finishes we are greeted with this screen. Click on Agents tab and click on Next to choose the model. I’m currently using GPT-4o Mini. It also includes descriptions for all the available models. Then we configure the deployment details. There are multiple deployment types available such as – Global Deployments Data Zone Standard Deployments Standard deployments [Standard] follow a pay-per-use model perfect for getting started quickly.They’re best for low to medium usage with occasional traffic spikes.  However, for high and steady loads, performance may vary.Provisioned deployments [ProvisionedManaged] let you pre-allocate the amount of processing power you need.This is measured using Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs).  Each model and version requires a different number of PTUs and offers different performance levels. Provisioned deployments ensure predictable and stable performance for large or mission-critical workloads. This is how the deployment details look for in Global Standard. I’ll be choosing Standard deployment for our use case. Click on deploy and wait for a few seconds. Once the deployment is completed, you can give your agent a name and some instructions for their behavior. You should specify the tone, end goal, verbosity, etc as well. You can also specify the Temperature and Top P values which are both a control on the randomness or creativeness of the model. Temperature controls how bold or cautious the model is. Lower temperature = Safer, more predictable answers. (Factual Q&A, Code Summarization)Higher temperature = More creative or surprising answers. (Poetry/Creative writing) Top P (Nucleus Sampling) controls how wide the model’s word choices are. Lower Top P = Only picks from the most likely words. (Legal or financial writing) Higher Top P = Includes less likely, more diverse words. (Brainstorming names) Next, I’ll add a knowledge base to my bot. For this example, I’ll just upload a single file.However, you have the option to add an sharepoint folder or files, connect it to Bing Search, MS Fabric, Azure AI search, etc as required. A Vector store in Azure AI Foundry helps your AI agent retrieve relevant information based on meaning rather than just keywords.It works by breaking your content (like a PDF) into smaller parts, converting them into numerical representations (embeddings), and storing them.When a user asks a question, the AI finds the most semantically similar parts from the vector store and uses them to generate accurate, context-aware responses. Once you select the file, click on Upload and save. At this point, you can start to interact with your model. To “play around” with your model, click on the “Try in Playground” button. And here, we can see the output based on our provided knowledge base. One more example, just because it is kind of fun. Every input that you provide to the agent is called as a “message”. Everytime the agent is invoked for processing the provided input is called a “run”. Every interaction session with the agent is called a “thread”. We can see all the open threads in the threads section. To conclude, Azure AI Foundry makes it easy to build and use AI agents without writing any code.  You can choose models, set how they behave, and connect your data all through a simple interface. Whether you’re testing ideas, automating tasks, or building custom bots, Foundry gives you the tools to do it.If you’re curious about AI or want to try building your agent, Foundry is a great place to begin. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com

What happens when a SQL query becomes too long or hard to follow?> It gets confusing> Difficult to debug> Hard to maintain or extend Use Subqueries or Common Table Expressions (CTEs) to break down the logic and improve readability. What is a Subquery? A subquery is a query inside another query.Below is a query which shows customers whose remaining amount is above the average. What is a CTE (Common Table Expression)? A CTE is a temporary result set you can reference in a main query.It starts with the WITH keyword and improves readability, especially with multi-step logic. To Conclude: Subqueries Advantages Disadvantages Quick and easy for simple filtering. Harder to read when nested. Good for one-off checks. Redundancy if used multiple times (no reuse). CTEs (Common Table Expressions) Advantages Disadvantages Clean, readable SQL for complex queries. May be slightly slower in some databases. Can be recursive. Not supported in old SQL engines. Both subqueries and CTEs help you write better SQL but choosing the right one depends on your needs. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com

In Finance and Operations development, it’s common for the same object to be referenced across multiple projects for different purposes. For example, one developer might have created the object in Project A, another could be using it with slight modifications in Project B, and yet another might be working on bug fixes for the same object in Project C. In such cases, the original logical grouping of the object—essentially the reason for creating a project—can become unclear. Unfortunately, Visual Studio does not provide a built-in method to identify all the projects an element belongs to. In this blog, we’ll explore how to determine the projects associated with a specific element. Steps 1. Go to the root of your projects folder in File Explorer. This will generally be the “C:\Users\<Username>\source\repos” folder. 2. Open a command prompt from this window by typing CMD in the address bar.  3. Type “dir /s /b *.rnrproj > projectslist.txt” this will generate a text file containing the addresses of all the project files in your selected folder. 4. Type “findstr /f:projectslist.txt /m Name_Of_Your_File”, this will return a list of all the projects which contain a file with the selected name. 5. You can also use regular expressions in FindStr to further narrow down the file you want. Conclusion Identifying which projects reference a specific file in Finance and Operations can be a challenging task, especially when dealing with large and complex solutions.By leveraging simple command-line tools like dir and findstr, developers can efficiently locate project dependencies without relying on Visual Studio’s limited search capabilities. This approach not only saves time but also provides greater flexibility through the use of regular expressions, allowing for more refined searches.Whether you’re debugging, modifying, or reorganizing your codebase, this method ensures you maintain better control and organization over your projects. If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your ERP setup, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.

Working with Lifecycle Services (LCS) may feel a bit outdated as we prepare for its eventual phase-out, but the reality is that many businesses still rely on it daily. Recently, I encountered an issue while deploying to a new environment after a long break; it kept failing without a clear cause. After investigating, I discovered the SSL certificate was the culprit, which I’d run into before (I’ve shared that experience in a previous post). Naturally, I tried rotating the secrets from LCS, but it failed repeatedly without any error message or explanation. I was ready to raise a ticket with Microsoft when Copilot stepped in with a suggestion that helped me quickly resolve the problem. Here’s what happened and how you can fix it if you face the same issue. What to do: Go into your development VM and search for certificates. You’ll see there’s a certificate with the same name as your VM and if you observe the “Expiration Date” it is past your current date. This is the reason the certificate rotation is failing. Microsoft offers a simple script that can be used to generate another certificate to replace this. Go to “Shared Asset Library” in LCS. Scroll down to “Renew WinRM Certificate” and download it. Move the downloaded zip into your Development VM and extract it. Right click on “RenewWinRMCertificate” file and click on “Edit” to edit it in Windows ISE. Once this is completed, go back to the Certificates and refresh the page. You’ll see there’s another entry with the VM name and a different expiration date. At this point, you can delete the old certificate. After this, go to LCS and restart your development environment. That’s it! Now you can try to rotate your certificate from LCS. And now I can finally get back to my development work! LCS might be on its way out, but for now, it’s still a big part of many businesses’ workflows.Running into deployment failures because of an expired SSL certificate was a frustrating experience, but fixing it turned out to be pretty straightforward.After checking the certificates, running Microsoft’s “Renew WinRM Certificate” script, and restarting the environment, I was able to rotate the secrets without a hitch.  If you ever find yourself in the same boat, start by checking your certificates, it’s a quick step that can save you a lot of stress! If you need further assistance or have specific questions about your ERP setup, feel free to reach out for personalized guidance. We hope you found this blog useful, and if you would like to discuss anything, you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.