Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations unifies global financials and operations to empower people to make fast, informed decisions.
Finance and Operations helps businesses adapt quickly to changing market demands to drive rapid business growth.
The April ’19 release will bring users together on One Version (version 10) for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. This release marks a monumental shift in supportability based on a common codebase and continuous update cadence. that’s till allows for customers to build extensible solutions for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.
This release also enhances the user experience of the solution with Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback as a primary driver. The targeted areas of t enhancements include: performance, compliance, automation, and supportability of the service.
Financial management
The April ‘19 release for financial management provides capabilities needed to comply with IFRS 15 and for responding to the guidance on accounting for revenue recognition on contracts. An enhanced expense report entry experience with a new header and details expense report, together with an automated settlements processin the general ledger completed periodically. Bank foreign currency revaluation I also added..
Supply chain management
Product information management and inventory management
Inventory management performance improvements. The April ’19 release, introduces the ability to configure and apply unit of measure (UoM) conversions for product variants so that UoM conversions at the product variant level are supported throughout the application.
In future releases, new classes of products and production processes will evolve the product definition . The inventory valuation capabilities will be expanded to support scenarios where multiple valuation methods and multiple currencies are required—for example, in case of different managerial reporting and statutory reporting requirements. Inventory on-hand information will be more readily available in distributed scenarios, such as the retail industry.
Warehouse management
The Warehouse Management System (WMS) has been gradually enhanced since its introduction in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, and a large suite of additional enhancements has recently been licensed from an ISV. With the April ’19 release, the integration of these enhancements will begin, and the ability to handle catch weight (CW) products in WMS processes will be added.
The suite of 30-plus distinct features will partially be integrated as preview for the April release and its subsequent monthly releases. For example, a feature like enabling label printing during wave adds flexibility in configuration and operation.
Sales and procurement
Usability enhancements in sales and procurement will allow Super users will be able to propose filtered views and build forms where unnecessary fields or actions can be removed. Super users knowledge can thus be more easily disseminated to the organization and all skill levels of users can benefit from targeted views, crafted for the task at hand.
Going forward expect to see: supplier collaboration, extended self-service, data sharing and maintenance capabilities, and improved business support within integration scenarios such as : purchase requisition, request for quotation and purchase ordering relative to data flow and accounting distribution constraints.
A primary focus will be improvements to track and account for goods in transit.
There will also be enhanced support to kit to stock, as well as kit to order, and to enhance sales price and promotion management with extended price management flexibility.
Manufacturing
In the April ’19 release, the focus is on optimizing the resilience of master planning toward platform and infrastructure errors, as well as to deliver incremental master planning performance improvements.
To support the connected, intelligent operations of modern manufacturer integration with the intelligent Microsoft Azure IoT service will support manufacturing customers close the digital feedback loop with close to real-time information from the shop floor with business data to generate events and actionable insights.
The future road map includes enterprise asset management capabilities to track the total cost of ownership of operations assets, nd to manage the ongoing maintenance of those assets. .
Globalization
Microsoft Dynamics for Finance and Operations is localized for 37 countries/regions and provided in 42 languages directly.
To operate in many countries or regions, businesses need to quickly respond to changing regulatory requirements and meet very specific requirements of industries and verticals. The April ’19 release, will expand the areas of configurable localization to simplify this process. Configurable engines for both Electronic Reporting and Global Tax, are accessible through Regulatory Configuration Service, so that users can extend Microsoft-delivered regulatory configurations or build new configurable features from scratch.
The invoice layout is one of the most-customized areas by customers who deploy globally, in the April ’19 release there are more configurable invoice layouts beyond the Free Text Invoice layout that shipped in the October ’18 release.
Platform
Several improvements to the developer tools will be previewed in the next 3 months.
-Development of more than one application on the same environment will be possible.
– Build automation will not require build virtual machines and will enable automated deployment to Lifecycle Services (LCS).
The Web Client introduces new features guided by user productivity, usability research, and customer feedback. This includes personalization of forms and workspaces, interacting with large data sets (with better filtering), and mobile device responsive capabilities.
An improved workflow experience, including integration with Microsoft Flow, will be available.
Analytical Workspaces support new personalization options and power user editing tools of Power BI reports within the Finance and Operations client. Power users can extend reports and do data mashups using PowerBI.com functionality without any developer intervention.
New tools for management of network printers are also introduced. The Entity Store is supported for on-premises deployments.
Integration
Customers will be able to seamlessly link to Common Data Service (CDS) for Apps from Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. A breadth of Finance and Operations entities will be available in CDS for Apps.
Entity Store will be staged in a customer’s Azure Data Lake. Microsoft will keep the data fresh with incremental syncs.
Event-driven integrations is a new capability that provides a framework to allow Finance and Operations business and workflow events to be consumed by Microsoft Flow and external systems. For example, this will enable a PO confirmation to trigger fulfillment by the vendor earlier; or enable a receipt of a damaged part to trigger the vendor claim process in real time.
Cloud operations and lifecycle services
Microsoft will manage the continuous updates of Platform, Application (Finance and Operations, Retail), and Financial Reporting . A set of tools and experiences to support this experience (called One Version) will be made available in Lifecycle Services and will enable predictability, reliability, and continuous delivery.
The service will also be made available in the China Sovereign Cloud with all customer data maintained within the region.
Diagnostic assistant enables an IT administrator to diagnose user-reported issues or performance issues using a guided troubleshooting experience in Lifecycle Services (LCS). The administrator selects from a list of predefined issues and provides a set of inputs to narrow down the search results. The inputs could vary based on the issue selected. They will then be guided on a drill-through experience that correlates multiple sources of information to help the administrator identify the root cause quickly and efficiently. Today, a lot of this information is available in LCS, but you need an expert to correlate the different pieces.
To troubleshoot the issues that arise from customization, activity monitoring, SQL insights, critical health metrics, and live view are made available to the IT administrator. The goal of this feature is to help simplify this experience. Once a potential root cause is identified, the administrator can choose from a set of predefined actions that they can take to mitigate the originally reported issue.
The true value of a cloud service is realized through continuous updates that can provide both improved reliability and new features, while minimizing operational impact.
Microsoft is optimizing the way it w ll deliver updates. A monthly update cadence aims to provide predictability, lower upgrade costs, user access to the latest product capabilities and performance improvements, and a better support experience. the ONE-V update experience available to customers and partners. You first need to Onboard: This is a one-time activity in LCS Project Settings to configure the environments for the update, configure the date and time for the production update, or select to pause updates up to three months, and to sign up for any first-release programs.
Tools to support the continuous testing process include:
Impact analysis tool: This tool provides insight into the usage, churn, and feature areas that can help assess risk and drive smarter testing.
Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT): Customers and partners can use this tool to validate business processes by using the web client without having to write code. This tool relies on the task recording framework that allows functional users to record business flows and play them back.
Data Task Automation: This tool allows the automation of data import and export tasks by using a data task manifest and data project definition, which therefore provides a robust framework for regression testing of data integration scenarios.
