Microsoft will retire the product name Dynamics 365 Marketing and rebrand most of its current capabilities as part of Dynamics 365 Customer Insight.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, is an AI driven solution which will revolutionize customers experiences. For the two elements, of Data, and Journeys. “Customer Insights – Data” will be the name of the existing Customer Insights solution for a customer data platform that provides an organization with a 360-degree view of their customers. D365 Marketing will be known as “Customer Insights – Journeys”. the new offering will be available for purchase starting on September 1.
Combining both marketing and customer data under one brand aligns with Microsoft’s product vision, for Customers to run campaigns based on customer entities stored in Dataverse or based on profiles stored in Customer Insights from other sources.
For existing D365 Marketing customers, the transition from outbound to real-time marketing will continue as part of the product change. Starting this month, new customers will only have access to real-time marketing capabilities. Existing customers can continue to use outbound marketing, but Microsoft will not be adding any enhancements.
(Microsoft’s 2023 Release Wave 2 plans still includes a section for D365 Marketing separate from Customer Insights.)
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Microsoft Viva Topics applies next-generation AI to empower people with knowledge and expertise in the apps they use every day.
Viva Topics automatically organizes content and expertise into related topics like projects, products, processes, and customers.
Topic cards deliver knowledge just-in-time across Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Office. And topic pages—created and updated by AI—enable experts to cultivate and share knowledge with simplicity.
New features that will free up time and make it easy for people to find information and to apply knowledge – including Copilot in Viva Topics, Teams app, and more.
Copilot in Viva Topics
Use Copilot in Viva Topics, in your organization’s to :
share intelligence to distribute best practices and knowledge to everyone
– uncover new opportunities b
summarise complex topics across multiple connected documents,
translate topic pages based on sources even in other languages,
analyze connections between what may seem disparate concepts
Then validate & augment the source of organizational knowledge to ensure accuracy and credibility.
Expected release for preview insSeptember 2023.
Explore and query your organization’s knowledge graph with relevant people & resources
Answers in Viva
Copilot is also coming to Answers in Viva. When an employee asks a question, Copilot can:
suggest additional details to clarify of the question.
recommend existing resources and potential answers.
curate knowledge by providing a summary of all the replies and contributors
and to brings it all together into an aggregate view with FAQs, experts, and other resources.
These Copilot capabilities will use natural language AI interfaces to improve employee experience
Copilot can help people provide answers to questions by recommending existing resources and potential answers.
Viva Topics Teams app:
The new Viva Topics app in Teams will be available for all licensed Viva Topics users. You can now use the Viva Topics app in Teams as a destination to see ‘their’ associate Topics, and knowledge managers can even access Manage Topics and the upcoming analytics tab. You will no longer have to navigate out of Teams to access their Topic Center. The app will also include new Viva components that will allow Viva Suite users to easily transition between Viva apps, submit feedback, and get support.
Updates to this feature can be tracked should reach GA in May 2023.
Multi-Hop queries for Related Topics
This generally available version of Related Topics adds a second layer of connections so that topics that are two degrees of connection away from the focal node are shown. Click on a node to expand the visualization to show more topics connected to that node.
Viva Topics in Feed
Microsoft Feed is a dedicated Feed experience in Office.com and Edge New Tab Page that helps Microsoft 365 users feel connected and up to date on the people, topics, and tasks most important to them-files, meetings, tasks, news, links, people highlights and community posts.
Your Feed, will show you relevant Viva Topics. When a SharePoint object that is already associated with a Topic is shown in Feed items, you will see a corresponding Topic to help you further understand the context and do more. Only SharePoint objects that are associated with an existing Viva Topic are highlighted with a Topic.
Updates to this feature should be GA by end April 2023.
Viva Engage conversations and Q&A on Topic Card as Activity
Viva Topics will be a continuous source of information with Viva Engage conversations and Q&A associated with a topic appear on the Topic Card as new activity.
Updates to this feature will reach GA in May 2023.
Verified Topic badges
Mark published topics as verified and add a specific group of SMEs as editors to the topic.
Verification helps readersto identify topics with added reliability.
Topics that are verified are identified by a special badge and indicate the content is reviewed for accuracy and are regularly updated by assigned editors.
Updates to this feature will reach GA in April 2023.
Topic engagement analytics for knowledge managers
Usage and engagement analytics showing Viva Topics adoption and value will be available to knowledge managers in a new analytics tab in topic center. Analytics will include:
• Unique user counts and Usage counts for:
o Topics activities overall o By activities like consuming, contributing and sharing Topics
• Detailed breakdown for Topics consumption usage from Topic card, page, search, Topic center cards; Usage count details for; • Detailed breakdown for Topics contribution activities like Editing and publishing topics, will provide feedback.
Updates to this feature will reach GA in May 2023.
Topic Engagement Analytics for Admins
Usage and engagement analytics on topics (views, edits, etc.) to the Microsoft Admin Center for Admins.
Updates to this feature will reach GA in May 2023
Control topic highlights on SharePoint
SharePoint includes a Viva Topics experience that identifies topics on SharePoint pages, news posts and automatically highlights those on the page.
Both page authors and editors can control which topics get highlighted on the page to ensure the messaging and styling of the content is accurate.
A new dedicated space for Viva Topics within SharePoint pages o discover and consume all the topics on the page in a single place without scrolling to look for a highlight.
Updates to this feature will reach GA in April 2023.
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Microsoft 365 Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.
Microsoft Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. It provides a unified programmability model to access the tremendous amount of data in Microsoft 365, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Use the wealth of data in Microsoft Graph to build apps for organizations and consumers that interact with millions of users. Custom applications can use the Microsoft Graph API to connect to data and use it in custom applications to enhance organizational productivity.
Microsoft Graph provides a single endpoint that the app can use to access the required data and to simplify the overall development process.
Organizations store vast amounts of data and intelligence across Microsoft cloud services, but how accessible is the data to users?
For example, a salesperson is setting up a meeting with a customer, wants to easily access files and previous meetings and notes but are those emails and chats between a salesperson and customer easy to find? What people within the organization can the customer contact for support?
Data and intelligence like the following types can be accessed through the Microsoft Graph REST APIs and client libraries:
Users and groups
Teams data
Tasks
Files
Mail
Meetings and calendars
Organizational charts
Copilot is an AI-powered tool that uses natural language processing and machine learning to understand users’ requests and provide personalized recommendations, tips, and assistance. Users can ask Copilot questions and get instant answers, guidance, and suggestions to help them work more efficiently.
Copilot is designed to be available across multiple Microsoft 365 applications, including :Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and Outlook, and is intended to be context-aware. It ‘understands’ the user’s specific needs and the task at hand. Some examples of this functionality are the ability to point copilot to a word document, and request to create a power point presentation based on the data in the document.
Copilot will also work with tools from the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 products. Copilot for Power Virtual Agents is already in preview.
Copilot enables marketers to create targeted customer experiences and interactions that are informed by data-driven decision making. With access to the natural language data discovery feature in Customer Insights, they can build confidence by validating and discovering customer insights for their marketing strategies. For example, a marketer can ask Copilot how many of their customers fit the profile of currently residing in Washington, DC, who are over the age of 25, who have also attended a promotional event in the last six months.
With just a few clicks, Copilot will present the results of their query, including the number of customers that match the attributes or behaviors, as well as other useful information such as the customer lifetime value, product preferences, or average purchase price.
Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights removes the barrier of needing to craft queries in SQL to get a deeper understanding of customers, enabling marketers to speed and scale the delivery of hyper-personalized experiences that customers expect.
Copilot in Viva Sales
Automatically generate contextual email replies and meeting summaries with Copilot in Viva Sales, available to Dynamics 365 Sales customers. Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales helps sellers dramatically reduce the time they spend on clerical tasks. AI helps write email responses to customers and can even create an email summary of a Teams meeting in Outlook. The meeting summary pulls in details from the seller’s CRM such as product and pricing information, as well as 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.
. For example, with Viva Sales, Copilot can learn how to connect to CRM systems of record to pull customer data — like interaction and order histories — into communications. As Copilot learns about new domains and processes, it will be able to perform even more sophisticated tasks and queries.
Copilot in Microsoft VivaGoalssimplifies goal setting by guiding leaders through the process of creating objectives and key results (OKRs) as well as simplifying goal management across the organization. Copilot can suggest draft OKR recommendations based on existing Word documents, such as an annual business plan or a product strategy paper. Once created, Copilot saves employees time by summarizing the status of OKRs, identifying blockers, and suggesting next steps. Lastly, Copilot can consolidate existing data to generate more comprehensive check-ins so teams can leverage a breadth of knowledge across different sources of truth.
An entirely new experience is Business Chat that works across he 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.
You will be able to access Business Chat from Microsoft 365.com, from Bing when you’re signed in with your work account, or from Teams.
Copilot will fundamentally change how people work with AI and how AI works with people. As with any new pattern of work, there’s a learning curve — but those who embrace this new way of working will quickly gain an edge. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 and automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy protections, and more make Copilot the AI solution you can trust.
I have only scratched the surface – Teams swept the business world during COVID now Co-Pilot and VIVA integrated across your favourite apps erps and crm systems – we often read about game changing software and paradigm shifts- but this times it’s for real and faster than we realise.
Microsoft recently reminded its customers of the Windows 10 21H2 end-of-service (EOS) on June 13, 2023. It will affect editions released in November 2021 such as: Windows 10 Home, version 21H2; Windows 10 Pro, version 21H2; Windows 10 Pro Education, version 21H2; and Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, version 21H2.
These editions will no longer receive security updates after June 13, 2023.” reminds. Customers who contact Microsoft Support after this date will be directed to update their device to the latest version of Windows 10 or upgrade to Windows 11 to remain supported..
Microsoft noted that the June 2023 security update of Windows 10 21H2 will be the last one it will receive. This EOS signals the stop of updates for version 21H2, especially the security and monthly quality updates. This will expose users to possible issues without necessary future security patches and bug fixes.
Encourages users to get Windows 10 22H2 (Windows 10 2022 Update) or upgrade to Windows 11 available since November 2022 for users running Windows 10 20H2 or later via Windows Update. Microsoft said it would also push the update to consumer and non-managed business devices running Windows 10 20H2.
“To help keep you protected and productive, Windows Update will automatically initiate a feature update for Windows 10 consumer devices and non-managed business devices that are at, or within several months of reaching end of servicing. This keeps your device supported and receiving monthly updates that are critical to security and ecosystem health.”
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Asset Management is an advanced module for managing assets and maintenance jobs in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Asset Management integrates seamlessly with several other finance and operations apps.
The new mobile app is available for all commonly used mobile platforms, devices, and form factors.
The app enables maintenance workers to review their assigned jobs, mark tasks as complete, enter notes, and log the time and materials consumed. Other staff can use the app to quickly file maintenance requests by scanning a barcode, entering notes, and submitting photos.
The Asset Management mobile app is built as a Canvas app in PowerApps, and doesn’t require any additional licenses to use. The app leverages the security roles already established in Supply Chain Management to grant the appropriate users access to the maintenance request and/or job management functions as needed.
System requirements
To run the Asset Management mobile app, you must be running Supply Chain Management version 10.0.32 or higher.
The app is available for all commonly used mobile platforms, devices, and form factors.
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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.
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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 “
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.
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;
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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.
Go to General ledger > Chart of accounts > Financial tags > Financial tags.
Select New to create a financial tag.
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.
In the Value type field, select Text, List, or Custom list.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If the Financial tags feature is also enabled, then this feature is enhanced to enable edits to the tag values.
After the feature is enabled, go to Voucher transactions.
Use the query to find the transactions that you want to edit.
Select the lines in Voucher transactions, and then select Edit internal voucher data.
You can edit only lines that are selected.
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
Stock # – Solar company or auto reseller wants to keep track of all the transactions for a specific unit throughout the life of an asset.
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.
Lot – Expense tracking by specific lots, value add, etc. going directly through AP/GL
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.
Functionality
Financial dimensions
Financial tags
Account structures
Dimensions 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.
Validation
Dimension 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.
Defaulting
Default 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.
Reporting
Dimension 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 processes
Although 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 values
Dimensions 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 deactivate
New 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 delete
Dimensions 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 posting
Dimension 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:
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)
To reduce maintenance derive Financial tags from other values like a vendor, customer, etc. either as a standalone list or created as custom list.
Unlike Financial dimensions; Financial tags are not validated against such lists and do not have to be predefined prior to use on the transaction.
Voucher screen and standard reports will show financial tags.
For the future?:
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.
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.
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