Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ category

Microsoft Releases SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Update 23H1

March 17th, 2023

Microsoft Releases SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Update 23H1

  • The update adds support for the SharePoint Framework version 1.5.1 development platform, with support for “modern web technologies and tools.”
  • Microsoft “recompiled SharePoint Server Subscription Edition with the newest Visual C++ compiler: Visual C++ 2022.”
  • Microsoft also added four new PowerShell commandlets that “will replace the functionality of the ‘stsadm.exe -o variationsfixuptool’ command.”

The update supports private key management of SSL/TLS certificates in SharePoint Server farms, which allows the certificates to be ” dynamically updated when the certificate assignments change.

Microsoft added “wildcard host header binding” for web applications that share the same TCP port, which means that organizations can now shorten DNS names using an asterisk.

With this update the sharing function in “lists, document libraries, pages, or site contents” follows the modern sharing dialog box convention . However, Microsoft also added the option to its Lists column totals view to make it look more like the “classic” SharePoint approach.

The Quick Chart modern Web Part can now get data from a SharePoint site’s List or Library, which previously wasn’t possible.

The File Picker now supports more file types, namely “PDF, TXT, MP4, M4V, MP3, OGG and WAV.”

SharePoint Server 2019 and AMSI Support
Microsoft announced that it has integrated the Windows with this update (AMSI) security capability into SharePoint Server 2019 with its March 2023 cumulative update. This capability is “designed to prevent malicious web requests from reaching SharePoint endpoints.” It will examine incoming Web requests and block the malicious ones.

AMSI lets applications and services integrate with any AMSI-capable anti-malware product present on a computer.

AMSI was added to SharePoint Server SE back in November, and is now available in SharePoint Server 2019. “This feature will also become available to SharePoint Server 2016 customers later this year,” Baer indicated.

CoPilot and Business Chat

March 17th, 2023

This week Microsoft demonstrated how its natural language AI capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot will extend across the company’s products and services.

Microsoft also owns a 49 percent share of OpenAI, a generative AI firm that announced  the next iteration of its natural language AI chatbot.

Microsoft has already integrated ChatGPT into its: Azure cloud,  the Bing search engine and the Edge browser, Microsoft 365 Copilot further promises to embed natural language querying capabilities into Office productivity tools in the Microsoft 365 apps like: Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Teams.

In a livestreamed presentation, CEO Satya Nadella positioned Copilot as a turning point in computer-user interactions. For years, AI has been working “behind the scenes” in search engines, auto-correct and recommendation lists. “You can say we’ve been using AI on autopilot,” Nadella said. The new generation of AI — specifically, natural language and generative AI — will let users run it “on co-pilot.”   “We believe this next generation of AI will unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” he said.  

Microsoft 365 Copilot similar to ChatGPT uses large language models (LLMs) with the Microsoft Graph API. It’s powered by the Copilot System, “a sophisticated processing and orchestration engine.”

“Copilot is more than OpenAI’s ChatGPT embedded into Microsoft 365. It’s a sophisticated processing and orchestration engine working behind the scenes to combine the power of LLMs, including GPT-4, with the Microsoft 365 apps and your business data in the Microsoft Graph — now accessible to everyone through natural language.” said  Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro

The demos showed how a user can prompt Microsoft 365 Copilot within in minutes or even seconds to:

  • Create a personalized slide deck in PowerPoint.
  • Highlight relevant data in an Excel sheet in response to a question.     
  • Create a customized marketing document, as well as a corresponding PowerPoint presentation (with presenter notes).
  • Summarize a Teams meeting and identify calls to action.

Microsoft acknowledge that Microsoft 365 Copilot is not infallible as put it sometimes, it will “be usefully wrong”. A  user might then choose to manually make edits, corrections or stylistic changes to the file that Copilot generated. , Sumit Chauhan, head of Microsoft’s Office product group, cautioned: “Now remember — you’re not going to send this off to a customer without a review.”

Microsoft also debuted a brand-new feature on Thursday called Business Chat, which Spataro described as a “knowledge navigator” that users can access from Teams, Bing or Microsoft365.com. From his blog:

“Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data — your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts — to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads. “

Jon Friedman, head of design and research at Microsoft said. “Our goal is to give people agency,” …. “You always have the option to use, discard, adjust or undo.”  

Copilot has “mitigations against mistakes, biases and misuse, said Chief Microsoft Scientist Jamie Teevan,. “Every Copilot feature has passed privacy checks … and is monitored in real time,” “We’re going to make mistakes, but when we do, we’ll address them quickly.” she said.

Copilot has two-factor authentication enabled and will fall in line with the Microsoft 365 security, compliance and privacy policies that a company already has in place. It also has protections against data leakage, Spataro wrote:

“Copilot LLMs are not trained on your tenant data or your prompts. Within your tenant, our time-tested permissioning model ensures that data won’t leak across user groups. And on an individual level, Copilot presents only data you can access using the same technology that we’ve been using for years to secure customer data “

 Launch of the new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot 

March 7th, 2023

 Provide interactive, AI-powered assistance across business functions. With Dynamics 365 Copilot, organizations empower their workers with AI tools built for sales, service, marketing, operations and supply chain roles. These AI capabilities allow everyone to spend more time on the best parts of their jobs and less time on mundane tasks.

According to a Microsoft recent survey on business trends, nearly 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce repetitive tasks in their jobs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are mission-critical; however, these both frequently require burdensome tasks like manual data entry, content generation and notetaking.

Dynamics 365 Copilot uses recent advancements in generative AI to automate these tedious tasks to unlock the full creativity of the workforce.

This is not the first time Microsoft has used the term “copilot” in relation to its AI technology. When it announced in February that Bing was incorporating AI, the company said the search engine is now an “AI-powered co-pilot for the web.”

Dynamics 365 Copilot puts CRM and ERP can accelerate pace of innovation and improve business outcomes in every line of business:

  • Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales helps sellers to dramatically reduce the time spent on clerical tasks. AI can help to write email responses to customers and to create an email summary of a Teams meeting in Outlook. The meeting summary also pulls in details from the seller’s CRM such as product and pricing information, and insights from the recorded Teams call.
  • With sellers spending as much as 66% of their day checking and responding to emails, this presents a significant business upside to give the seller more time with their customers.
  • Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service empowers agents to deliver exceptional customer care. Dynamics 365 Copilot can drafts contextual answers to queries in both chat and email. Interactive chat experience uses knowledge bases and case history and this AI-powered expertise is always available to answer questions.
  • Customer service departments can now build virtual agents in minutes with conversation boosters in Power Virtual Agents,to harnesses the power of the Azure OpenAI Service and Bing to provide answers from company websites and internal knowledge bases.
  • Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing empowers marketers to simplify data exploration, audience segmentation and content creation.
    • With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, marketers can curate highly personalized and targeted customer segments, using dialogue with their customer data platform in natural language.
    • Marketing staff can receive suggestions about additional segments not previously considered. This new capability can handle complex calculations and match customers that fit a select profile.
    • In Copilot for Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketers can describe their customer segment in their own words to create a target segment with the query assist feature.
    • Marketers can also use Dynamics 365 Copilot tfor inspiration for fresh email campaign content based on a simple request. Copilot makes suggestions based on: key topics entered by the marketer, the organization’s existing marketing emails, and from a range of internet sources to increase the relevance of generated ideas.
  • Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central streamlines the creation of product listings for online commerce. Use Product attributes such as colour, material and size to create compelling product descriptions for online storefronts in seconds. Tailor the descriptions and choose tone of voice, format and length. Business Central customers who use Shopify can seamlessly publish the products and their descriptions to their Shopify store in just a few clicks.
  •  Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management customers can access Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center, to proactively flag external issues such as weather, financials and geography that impact key supply chain processes.
  • Predictive insights can then
  • surface impacted orders across materials, inventory, carrier, distribution network and more. Supply chain planners can automatically draft an email generated by Dynamics 365 Copilot to alert impacted partners and mitigate potential disruptions before they happen.

The next era of business applications is already transforming with generative AI. Users will increasingly expect their CRM and ERP applications to include AI-powered expertise.

The recent AI momentum incorporates the next generation of AI capabilities across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform and includes::

  • Viva Sales, which helps sellers by bringing a sales copilot to their flow of work in Microsoft 365;
  • Power Apps, enabling citizen developers to write code using natural language.
  • Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform for work with more than 280 million monthly active users; 

Dynamics 365 Finance – Tags – new feature

February 13th, 2023

Source: Microsoft

After transactions are posted, it’s common for organizations to require visibility into subledger data, to analyse the accounting entries. Organizations use fields such as the document number, description, or financial dimensions to track subledger data in the general ledger, because it’s difficult to navigate the data model to the subledger data.

The types of subledger data that are often tracked include sales order or purchase order numbers, vendor or customer names, payment references, invoice numbers, or reference numbers from external transactions that are imported into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance.

In addition to being used for analytics, the subledger data is used for processes such as ledger settlement.

The Financial tags (tags) feature eliminates the need to solely rely on document numbers, descriptions, or financial dimensions and an organization can now create and enter up to 20 user-defined fields on transactions. Those fields are then stored on the accounting entries that are created for the transactions.

Tag values aren’t stored in any subledger tables, nor in the Customer transactions or Vendor transactions table.

Tags were introduced in the 10.0.32 release of Dynamics 365 Finance. This release supports the capability to define up to 20 user-defined tags and to enter tag values on the following journals (and corresponding Open Data Protocol [OData] and Data management entities):

  • General journal
  • Global general journal

In subsequent new releases, tags will be implemented in additional journals, documents, and processes.

Setup

To use the functionality, enable the Financial tags feature in the Feature management workspace.

The feature can be disabled at any time. When the feature is enabled but later disabled, any values that were entered for financial tags on transactions will be maintained in the database. However, they’ll no longer be visible on any transactions or in inquiries in Dynamics 365 Finance.

Enter tags on transactions resembles similar to entry a ledger account that uses financial dimensions.

Tags don’t use the same control as a ledger account, but those still require a delimiter between the tag values, so define the tag delimiter before you define any financial tags.

  • On the General ledger parameters page, select Financial tags, and specify the delimiter.
  • The delimiter that you specify must not be used in any tag values that are entered on transactions. The delimiter can’t be changed after it’s defined.

After the feature is enabled, each legal entity can define up to 20 financial tags.

 Tags are legal entity–specific.

Use the Financial tag configuration and Financial tags custom list value entities to import the tags for each legal entity to quickly and easily define the same initial setup in multiple legal entities.

Create financial tags

Before you create financial tags, note the following points:

  • Evaluate whether the data should be tracked as a financial dimension or a financial tag.
  • Financial tags are an alternative to financial dimensions, especially when you’re tracking values that have little or no reusability, such as sales order numbers or purchase order numbers..
  • After a financial tag is created, it can be deactivated but not deleted. This restriction helps to ensure that the tag values remain available for reporting on posted general ledger entries. Financial tags can easily be activated and deactivated at any time.
  • The label of each financial tag can be changed at any time, even after transactions are posted.
  • If no transactions have been posted for a specific financial tag, then a change to the tag’s label will have no impact. This behavior is useful when you must repurpose a tag so that you can track other data.
  • When transactions are posted for a specific financial tag, the tag values don’t change. When the tag’s label was originally “Purchase order number,” but it’s later changed to “Sales order number,” the accounting entries that were posted before the label change will still contain the purchase order numbers that were entered and posted to the general ledger.

Create a financial tag

Follow these steps to create a financial tag.

  1. Go to General ledger > Chart of accounts > Financial tags > Financial tags.
  2. Select New to create a financial tag.
  3. Enter a label for the tag. The label must start with a letter or underscore, and it can contain only letters, numbers, and underscores. No special characters, including spaces, are permitted.
  4. In the Value type field, select TextList, or Custom list.
  5. If you selected List in the Value type field, select the value source in the Use values from field. The field contains a list of entities that the tag values can be selected from during transaction entry.
  6. If you selected Custom list in the Value type field, select Tag values to create the custom list of tag values that will be available for selection during transaction entry.
  7. Select Activate to activate the tag.

Enter financial tag values on transactions

After one financial tag is activated, tags are available for entry on each transaction that supports the feature.

Journals and lines

When you enter journals, define tag values on the journal batch header. Those values will be used as default values for the lines in the journal.

  • As for other default values in the journal, they’ll automatically be entered on new lines that are added to the journal.
  • However, these will not be entered on lines that already exist when you define the values on the header.

Default values

Tag values that you enter in a journal are entered as default values in the following way:

  • Single-line voucher:
    • Tag values that you add to the journal batch header are entered as default values on the account.
    • Tag values that you add to the account are entered as default values on the offset account.
    • If the offset account already exists when you add tag values to the account, then those tag values aren’t entered as default values on the offset account.
    • If tag values exist on both the account and the offset account, then changes to the tag values in one place don’t cause the values in the other place to be updated. For example, when you change the tag values on the account, the tag values on the offset account aren’t updated. This behavior helps to prevent loss of data should a user manually override the default values.
    • When you add a new line, and you assign a new voucher number (which represents a new transaction), the defaulting behavior starts over.
    • Tag values from the lines of one voucher are never entered as default values on the lines of a different voucher.
  • Multiline voucher:
    • Tag values that you add to the journal batch header are entered as default values on the account of each line that’s added to the voucher.
    • The tag values that you add to the account on the first line aren’t entered as default values on the account of the next line of the voucher, and so on.
Financial tag values on journal lines.

Tag values from master data are never used as default values. For example, there’s no capability to define default tag values on customers or vendors.

In addition, tag values from the transaction itself aren’t automatically entered as default values. For example, when a tag was created to track the customer name and subsequent transaction contains a customer, then the  tag value isn’t entered as the customer name by default. The value must be manually entered or imported.

Validation

When tag values are entered on transactions, no validation occurs during either transaction entry or posting.

Even when a tag of the List or Custom list value type is defined, the tag values aren’t validated to ensure that they exist in the list.

For example, a tag of the List value type is created, and the purchase order number is selected as the source of the list. Although a list of purchase order numbers will be presented, the user can still enter a purchase order number that doesn’t exist in the list.

Posting transactions that have tag values

After a transaction is posted, the financial tags are available on the lines of the general ledger account entry.

  • Those are shown on the Voucher transactions ,and the Transactions for main account pages.
  • The financial tags are shown in separate columns, so that they’re easier to sort and filter.

For reporting, the tags aren’t part of the dimension sets. Therefore, you can’t get a summarized balance of transactions for a specific tag value. For example, when you’re looking at the trial balance, you can’t get balances per tag value.

However, when you drill down into the balances from the trial balance, the tag values will be shown on the detailed transactions. The detailed transactions, including the tag values in separate columns, can be exported to Excel, where they can be summarized if balances are required.

When a tag is deactivated, the tag values remain on the posted transactions.

 By default, deactivated tags aren’t shown on inquiry pages. However, you can add the columns by selecting Show inactive financial tags.

Correct tag values after posting

Although financial tags are available for reporting, they aren’t part of the ledger account and have no impact on financial statements.

Because tags are used only for internal analysis, edits to the tag values are permitted after transactions are posted.

  1. In the Feature management workspace, enable the feature that’s named Allow edits to internal data on general ledger vouchers. This feature enables some roles to modify the Description field of posted accounting entries.
  2. If the Financial tags feature is also enabled, then this feature is enhanced to enable edits to the tag values.
  3. After the feature is enabled, go to Voucher transactions.
  4. Use the query to find the transactions that you want to edit.
  5. Select the lines in Voucher transactions, and then select Edit internal voucher data.
  6. You can edit only lines that are selected.
Editing tag values on voucher transaction lines.

The page shows the lines that you selected in Voucher transactions, including the current financial tags and new financial tags.

The current tag values are entered as default values for the new tags. Therefore, you don’t have to manually enter everything again but can instead change only what’s incorrect.

Use the Bulk update selected records button to do mass updates. Mass updates are useful to assign tag values to large groups of posted transactions that were incorrect or that no tag values were defined for (for example, because they were posted before the feature was enabled).

Example uses

  1. Stock # – Solar company or auto reseller wants to keep track of all the transactions for a specific unit throughout the life of an asset.
  2. Vendor accruals – Keep track of accrued expenses by vendor in the General Ledger, instead of maintaining Excel files outside the system to track Vendor ID for expenses coming through accrual entries.
  3. Lot – Expense tracking by specific lots, value add, etc. going directly through AP/GL
  4. Marketing campaigns – tracking marketing campaigns is not a perfect candidate for a financial dimension as you don’t want to keep adding too many financial dimensions. But Financial tags can serve this purpose to track expenses by marketing campaign.

Financial tag values used within D365 are not critical for financial reporting outside the company, but they can be important for the internal reporting by FP&A teams. These teams need the ability to make changes to transactions after posting rather than reclass journal entries.

Tags and Financial dimensions

Financial dimensions are used to code accounting entries for reporting (for example, to identify sales per department or expenses per cost center in general dimensions are primarily used to create a detailed P@Ls at the dimension level).

 Financial tags (tags) are not meant to be an alternative to financial dimensions. An organization can create up to 20 user-defined financial tags and enter values for these on transactions.

 Like financial dimension values, tag values are stored on the accounting entries that are created for the transactions. However, tag values aren’t stored in any subledger tables, such as the Customer transactions or Vendor transactions table. Both financial dimensions and financial tags can be used for analytical reporting, and also for some processes, such as ledger settlement.

Financial dimensions are very structured. The setup is used to control which dimensions are required, which dimension values are valid, and which dimension combinations are valid.

Financial tags have limited structure, no validation is done, and very limited defaulting is done.

The following table describes, in detail, the differences between financial dimensions and financial tags, to help organizations determine which feature they should use.

FunctionalityFinancial dimensionsFinancial tags
Account structuresDimensions must be included in an account structure before they can be used in a legal entity. The account structure determines the dimensions that are required for the main account and the valid combinations.Tags aren’t part of the account structure.
ValidationDimension values on the ledger account are validated against the account structures to determine whether the dimension values are active, the dimension combinations are valid, and the values exist.Tag values aren’t validated during transaction entry or posting.  Any value can be entered, even when the tag is defined as a tag of the List or Custom list type. A value doesn’t have to be selected in the list. There’s no way to require a tag value.
DefaultingDefault dimension values are entered from master data, such as customers, vendors, products, or projects. These are also entered from the header of a document to the lines. For journals, these are entered from the journal header to the account, and from the account to the offset account.Default tag values aren’t entered from master data. However, they’re entered from the header of a document to the lines. For journals, these are entered from the journal header to the account, and from the account to the offset account.
ReportingDimension values can be used for reporting in multiple ways. Dimensions can be included in a dimension set, which is used to calculate totals for the ledger account. Dimension values can also be viewed on each detailed transaction. The segments can be parsed out, and then used to sort and filter the detailed transactions.Tag values aren’t included in dimension sets. In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, you can’t generate a trial balance to view balances for tag values. When you drill down from the balances on the trial balance, tag values are shown on each detailed transaction.  The tag values are in separate columns. Therefore, it’s easy to sort and filter on transactions in the Voucher transactions or Transactions for main account inquiry. The detailed transactions can be exported to Excel or Power BI.
Impact on General ledger processesAlthough dimensions are considered unlimited, the more dimensions that are created and used in a dimension set, the slower transaction entry, import, and processes will become.Because tags have no structure or validation, there’s minimal impact when they’re used on transactions or imported via an entity.
Non-reusable valuesDimensions should never be used to track non-reusable values, such as document numbers or reference numbers. This type of data will cause your chart of accounts to explode, because of the uniqueness of so many ledger accounts. Therefore, performance will be negatively affected, especially around the year-end close and during foreign currency revaluation and consolidations.Tags should be used to track non-reusable values, such as document numbers or reference numbers.
Ability to activate or deactivateNew financial dimensions can be activated, but the system must be in maintenance mode. Financial dimensions can’t be deactivated. Instead, they can be removed from an account structure, so that they’re no longer used by any legal entities that use that account structure.Tags can be activated or deactivated at any time.
Ability to deleteDimensions can’t be deleted if they’re referenced anywhere, such as on a posted transaction. If the dimension references an entity, the entity and entity values can’t be deleted. This restriction helps maintain referential integrity.Tags can’t be deleted. This restriction helps maintain the tag values that have been entered on posted transactions. However, tags can be deactivated at any time. If a tag references an entity for a list, then no reference to that entity is maintained. For example, if the tag is mapped to the Customer name entity, customers can be deleted, because the tag values hold no reference to the customer. In addition, if a customer name is changed, the customer name isn’t updated in the tag values.
Ability to edit after postingDimension values can’t be edited on posted transactions, because any change to the ledger account will directly affect financial statements.Tag values are used only for internal analysis and processing. Therefore, they can be added, removed, or edited on posted transactions by using the Allow edits to internal data on general ledger vouchers feature. An audit trail is maintained for all edits that are made to the tag values after posting.
Global or legal entity specific?Dimensions are set up globally, and they are “assigned” to each legal entity through the account structures. Dimensions also have legal entity overrides, so that the same dimension can be active in one legal entity but inactive in another legal entity.Tags are set up at the legal entity level. They can be shared by using the Shared data feature. The tags and custom tag values can be copied to each legal entity by using the data management entities.

Some highlights:

  1. Create financial tags and use these in the general journals, via the web interface or through the upload function.
    • Update Financial tags after posting (as needed without need for journal entries for reclass)
  2. To reduce maintenance derive Financial tags from other values like a vendor, customer, etc. either as a standalone list or created as custom list.
  3. Unlike Financial dimensions; Financial tags are not validated against such lists and do not have to be predefined prior to use on the transaction.  
  4. Voucher screen and standard reports will show financial tags.

For the future?:

  1. We can only use tags now in GL transactions not in subledgers. It will be a much stronger feature when available on purchase orders, sales orders, and inventory close/adjustments to track write-down adjustments, purchase requisitions, and other transactions.
  2. To distribute an amount across multiple tag values. For example, the GL has one transaction for an expense, but the amount needs to be distributed across multiple Financial tag values for reporting purposes.

Windows 10 sales to end this month

January 26th, 2023

Windows 10 use currently leads worldwide in terms of Windows desktop use.

Windows 7 with Extended Security Updates support fell out of support on Jan. 10. The same date as the end of supportfor Windows 8.1.

Both the Home and Pro Windows 10 OSes can’t be purchased from Microsoft after this month. Here’s Microsoft’s language to that effect from its Microsoft Store listings for the Home and Pro editions:

January 31, 2023 will be the last day this Windows 10 download is offered for sale. Windows 10 will remain supported with security updates that help protect your PC from viruses, spyware, and other malware until October 14, 2025.

A “get Windows 10” search currently defaults to Microsoft’s get Windows 11 page.

The statement seems to just apply to the downloadable OS product.

For the various ways to buy Windows, see this PCWorld.com article.

Microsoft Edge update will permanently disable the Internet Explorer 11 desktop web browser

December 19th, 2022

Microsoft announced last week that in February. 2023 a future Microsoft Edge update will permanently disable the Internet Explorer 11 desktop web browser on some Windows 10 systems.

115 June 22was the day Internet Explorer reached its end of support, and the company told customers that the legacy web browser would get disabled via a Windows update.

“The out-of-support Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) desktop application is scheduled to be permanently disabled on certain versions of Windows 10 devices on February 14, 2023, through a Microsoft Edge update, not a Windows update as previously communicated,” Redmond said on Friday.

“All remaining devices that have not already been redirected from IE11 to Microsoft Edge are scheduled to be redirected with the Microsoft Edge update scheduled for February 14, 2023.”

Enterprise admins should to transition from IE11 to Microsoft Edge with IE mode and remove IE visual references from the Start Menu and the Windows taskbar with the Disable IE policy before February 14 to avoid “business disruption at scale when users lose access to IE11-dependent applications.”

Next year’s May non-security preview release and the June Windows monthly security update are designed to remove those in environments where admins do not act before IE11 gets permanently disabled.

Internet Explorer will redirect users to the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge when launching the Internet Explorer 11 desktop applications. During the process, users’ data (including settings, passwords, and favorites) will be imported into Microsoft Edge to make the switch easier.

Since October 2020, IE11 has automatically launchrd Microsoft Edge when visiting incompatible sites. The list of incompatible sites (managed by Microsoft) contains 7,562 domains, a long list of high-profile online platforms and services, including Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Twitter, and many others.

Internet Explorer around for some time yet

Although officially retired from multiple Windows 10 versions on the semi-annual channel (SAC) servicing channel and not shipping with Windows 11, IE11 will still be available on Windows 7 ESU, Windows 8.1, and versions of Windows 10 LTSC client, IoT, and Server. The web browser will continue to receive technical support and security updates on systems that run these Windows versions for the lifecycle of the Windows version.

You can switch to Microsoft Edge with IE mode which enables backward compatibility and will be supported through at least 2029. To enable IE mode in Microsoft Edge, go to edge://settings/defaultbrowser, toggle on the ‘Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer‘ option, and restart the browser.

Microsoft also discontinued IE support in Teams in November 2020 and also ended support across Microsoft 365 apps and services in August 2021. Other Microsoft services and apps have also ended support for Internet Explorer during the last few years.

Why Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations technology makes a difference.

December 7th, 2022

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into Dynamics 365 technology and security, which has produced many great new features.

When you move to the cloud, everyone is maintained on the same version, and you will always be in lockstep with Microsoft updates. You can be proactive and flexible in promoting those upgrades into your production environment to enhance your user experience.

Your integrations will become extensions-based, rather than relying on over-layering. This will give you several benefits because Extensions make rolling updates much easier

  • Easier to apply new releases, updates, and hotfixes without affecting customization
  • ISVs provide new releases quicker
  • Reduce the cost and effort involved with an upgrade
  • – all of this without impacting the core code of your environment

We understand why some businesses are hesitant to move to the cloud, but from our view, the benefits outweigh the risk. Microsoft has invested heavily in Azure. It is built on the latest hardware, has 24-7 monitoring year-round, and is consistently updated.

With this move, you will have peace of mind not having to worry about the hardware, energy, labour costs and work associated with backup and disaster recovery. While many businesses feel they have control over their on-site servers, this can lead to a false sense of security. Cyber threats are prevalent and getting faster and more sophisticated. Whether a business has on-site servers with a backup plan or not, many simply aren’t prepared for the worst-case scenario unless they have a large internal IT team or pay for a costly third-party IT service.

Microsoft recognizes this and has over 3,500 Azure cybersecurity professionals working to protect its cloud and has invested in it to the tune of over $1 billion annually. Simply put, upgrading takes that load off your shoulders and puts it onto a specially trained Microsoft team.

Azure also has thousands of connectors, and a Dataverse ( Common data model) to integrate non-Microsoft systems with your Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations environment.

One of the greatest benefits of upgrading is you can create low/no-code applications using the Power Platform. Power BI, PowerApps, Power Automate, and the Dataverse combine to form the Power Platform, a program that integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365 solutions.

It lets you compile, design, and publish your data very easily into visually appealing reports and dashboards that can be used internally and externally and published to workspaces or organizational/public-facing apps.

Create apps for your team to have the information they need to work from wherever they are, on whatever device they use..

One of the best features of the Power Platform is that data changes synchronise across your system. For example, go into a system to update a client’s contact information, and that change will update in all your connected systems.

Power BI is a cloud-based analytics tool that gives you a single visual view of your most critical business data. You can create reports on the health of your business, dashboards displaying critical numbers and figures that help your staff work, and rich and interactive visualizations. It is easy to use and integrates seamlessly with Dynamics 365 technologies. There are out of the box embedded dashboards and Synergy has created many client specific dashboards.

Time to move to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations with Synergy Software Systems

December 7th, 2022

No more Dynamics Ax support

Most versions of Dynamics AX are off both Mainstream and Extended Support, which means they have no access to new features, and will not get fixes for either non-security or security issues, and cannot reach out to Microsoft for one-on-one support.

AX 2012 R3 is on extended support, but that support cycle will end on January 10, 2023. Extended support means you still get security fixes. However, you have no access to new features, and need to pay an annual fee plus a per-incident charge for non-security fixes and access to support.

AX TO FO 2 SUPPORT LIFECYCLE

From January 2023, all Dynamics AX customers will be on their own for Microsoft core code and security threats, or for issues about compatibility with database or operating system changes. It’s essential to have a proven partner to support local builds and customisations and to help explain and manage the upgrade process.

That’s why if you have not already moved to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations then time has run out. Urgent action is advised. It takes time to review options, to understand the different licences, the many new features, the new technology platform, and to mobilise resources and to reimplement an enterprise company.

Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 release wave 2 – ask Synergy Software Systems

October 6th, 2022

This covers the new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from October 2022 to March 2023. 

Updates in 2022 release wave 2 include:

  • Seamless service: No matter the industry type of a small or midsized business (SMB), business users expect a dependable service and platform that they can run their business on.
  • Administration: Business Central delivers a set of features for better and improved communication about the health of each environment.
  • Application: Improve integration with Shopify. The finance and supply chain capabilities in Business Central are improved with several optimizations and enhancements so that users can run their business processes more efficiently.
  • Better with Microsoft 365: Improved the efficiency of collaborative business processes in Microsoft Teams. Users can pin cards inside Teams, and delegated admins can now use the Excel add-in.
  • Country and regional: In 2022 release wave 2, Business Central is generally available in more countries and regions.
  • Onboarding: Organizations can get to productive usage faster because it’s easier to discover and install apps.
  • Development tools: Now entirely Visual Studio Code
  • Power Platform: More efficient automation with Power Automate so that users can set up workflows for the specific needs of their organization.
  • This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged “Users by admins, makers, or analysts” in the release plan.

FUNCTIONAL ENHANCEMENTS

FeatureEnabled forPublic previewGeneral availability
Better bank reconciliation for checks and improved reportingUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Extended text functionality for VAT clausesUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Financial reporting replaces account schedulesUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Find posted and non-posted document lines in searchUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Flexible sorting in the Planning Worksheet pageUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Make entry of variant codes requiredUsers by admins, makers, or analysts Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Post item charges for each step of the processUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Service – minor improvementsUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Simpler Shopify connectionUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Track items that are used in projects, including picksUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
New VAT Date field on documents and entriesUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Oct 2022
Set up data exchange more easilyUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Oct 2022
Use multiple remit-to addresses for vendorsUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Oct 2022
Reverse payment reconciliation journal entriesUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Nov 2022

NAV 2018 recent updates

September 12th, 2022

#NAV2018

1. Title – Cumulative Update 56 for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018

  Build No. – 49175

  Local Version Included – AT,AU,BE,CH,CZ,DE,DK,ES,FI,FR,IS,IT,NA,NL,NO,NZ,RU,SE,UK

  Details of Update

  Download Link

  Docker Pull Request – Get-NavArtifactUrl -nav 2018 -cu cu56 -country w1

  ** Replace w1 with country code that you need.

Platform Hotfix in NAV 2018 –  

  • 444600 – “Fatal Error during installation” error message when installing the Demo Database from the NAV 2018 CU54 installation media setup.exe.