Dan's Corner on Power Platform and D365

Have you ever wanted to put a website or a model-driven Power App in one of your existing Dynamics 365 Finance workspaces or forms?  You might already know you can create a new workspace with a website, but did you know you can add the website to an existing workspace? Here is an example of the Vendor invoice entry workspace with the Invoice Capture Power App embedded. Prior to using this feature, you need to turn on "Saved views support for workspaces" in feature management. Once this feature is enabled you can follow the following steps to add the Invoice Capture app or any model-driven Power App or website to an existing workspace. Open the vendor invoice entry workspace From Options - choose Personalize this page From personalize menu - select the 3 dots - and then Add an app Once that is selected (the screen goes gray) - click on the section header where you want to add the app (in my example I put it in Links) On the Add an app menu - choose Website Give it a name (my e...

As a solution architect, prospects and clients often ask me for ways to improve their Accounts Payable process.  They receive hundreds of invoices every month, and it can take considerable amount of time to enter all of the detail as well as attaching the invoice for reference during the approval process.  This is an area where we have often needed to bring in an ISV solution, but that could cause other issues.  Microsoft has been doing considerable work around automation for AP and they recently released a public preview of their Invoice Capture solution. I have had the opportunity to set this up in one of my test environments so I could get an idea of what they have to offer.  As we would expect, the Invoice Capture solution is built on the Power Platform.  It uses a model driven Power App along with Power Automate Flows to integrate with Dynamics 365 Finance.  However, since it is a solution, they have done much of the work for you, including creating th...

To follow up on my earlier posting about using the right tool for the right job, I had to share the latest announcement from Microsoft.  On November 14, 2022, Microsoft announced support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro.   Yes, this now means without acquiring a premium license or premium workspace, you will be able to create paginated reports.  No longer will you just have a scrolling table or matrix that you have to export to Excel, you will be able to create more traditional operational reports as well as document-like reports. I am excited to see how everyone puts this new functionality to work.  I have a lot of ideas on how I will use this with my clients, especially with some of their common ERP (Dynamics 365) report requests.

I recently presented a session on using Power Automate with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain.  The session was very well received, so I wanted to post some videos and details to help users better understand the examples I covered in the session. In the following video I will walk through using Power Automate with Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain to manage a workflow around adding a new vendor. Business scenario  – To on board a new vendor, the organization requires a new vendor request be submitted, an internal review process is used, including sending an email to the vendor with the required tax documents (W9) and instructions. Components used in the scenario  – Dynamics 365 Finance virtual entities, Power Automate, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Teams and Outlook Synopsis  – By using an Automated cloud flow in Power Automate the system can automatically manage this business process.    Power Automate will listen for new vendor ...

I recently presented a session on using Power Automate with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain.  The session was very well received, so I wanted to post some videos and details to help users better understand the examples I covered in the session. In the following video I will walk through using Power Automate with Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain to manage a workflow around adding a new customer. Business scenario  – The sales team adds new customers to Dynamics 365 Finance, but the company wants a business workflow in place, so the credit team can review the account and set the credit limit before any activity takes place on the new customer. Components used in the scenario  – Dynamics 365 Finance virtual entities, Power Automate and Microsoft Teams and/or Outlook Synopsis  – By using an Automated cloud flow in Power Automate the system can automatically manage this business process.    Power Automate will listen for new rows (customers) being a...

I am sure many of you have used the Data Entities that are part of Dynamics 365 F&SCM.  These data entities are used when working with data integrations.  They can also be used with the D365 F&SCM connector for the Power Platform.  I have shown examples of using this connector in earlier post on both Power Automate and Power Virtual Agent.   Using the standard data entities with the Power Platform gives you a lot of options, but there are times it would be easier to work with the Dataverse connector instead. The problem with the Dataverse connector is that is connecting to the Dataverse as the name implies and your D365 F&SCM data is not in Dataverse unless you are using Dual-Write.   There are many scenarios where Dual-Write is a good option especially if you are using D365 Sales along with D365 F&SCM.  However, Dual-Write has its own challenges.  So if you are looking to use the Power Platform for a simple integration s...

Have you ever wanted to just create your Dynamics 365 Finance journal entries in Excel, without dealing with the Excel Add In.  This blog article will show you have using Excel, OneDrive and Power Automate. Typically I put all the steps right in the article, but this is a pretty detailed process, so I have included the link to a document I prepared, or you can simply watch the video below. Download the detail directions here

  Business scenario – Sales team needs to be able to add a new customer to Dynamics 365 Finance, but before the customer is used in Sales the Credit Team needs to review the record and set the proper credit limit and payment terms.   The customer should automatically go on hold until the review is complete, and an email should alert the Credit Team to act. Components used in the scenario – Dynamics 365 Finance business alerts and Power Automate Synopsis – By combining the business alert functionality of D365 with Power Automate the system can automatically manage this business process.   Power Automate will watch for a new customer to be added in D365.   When the new customer is added, Power Automate will automatically put the account on Hold with a status reason of New.   Power Automate will also send an email to the Credit Manager including the information from the new customer as well as a link to the On Hold Customers in D365. Step 1 – Create a custom...

As Microsoft continues to grow, expand and improve Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply, one of the most powerful features released has been Dual-write.  Dual-write is an out-of-box infrastructure the provides near-real-time interaction between customer engagement apps and Finance and Supply Chain apps.  In summary, it is a tightly coupled, bidirectional integration between Finance and Supply Chain applications and Dataverse (formally known as Common Data Service).  Dual-write makes integration with Dynamics 365 Sales and other CE application very straight forward.  It also opens up the opportunities to use PowerApps, Power Portal and Power Virtual Agent with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain apps by connecting through the Dataverse. There is already documentation from Microsoft as well as many blogs already available on setting up Dataverse.   Here are a few links:  Microsoft Documentation  Dynagile Consulting Sandeep Chaudhury ERP Coder Blog Instead...