Hi and welcome to Dynamics Updates. And this time we are actually not recording after hours. We are not at our respective homes. We are actually in a podcasting studio, which is the first. Yeah, absolutely. It took what, four years, five years and and we also have an audience. So that's also a first today. So as as usual, I'm Johan Parson and I have my colleague Gustav Sundot. Hello.
HelloHi. It's fantastic to be here. It seems very, it's a very far stretch from being at home with like laundry in the background and but now it's a professional studio. But we don't have a podcast poodle. We don't have a podcast poodle, but that's that's that's true. So we'll see how this goes actually. But hoping I can survive. Yes. So this is this is one of the regular episode updates. Where we go through the updates in the new dot 40
version. Yeah, exactly. And I think, I mean we've been discussing you on how we're going to survive now that they've well lowered the release cadence to to fewer releases per year. But I think we will manage with fewer special episodes now that we have a fancy podcast studio as well. I think we will manage. Yes. And we will also be able to do more interviews and things. Yes, exactly. That's even more fun. So anyway. All right. So let's get started. I I hand a stick over to you, Gustav. Oh, can I
start?Thank you. Well, I just started and as always, there's no like built-in priority here. It's just looking at the release notes and trying to figure out the ones that that speak to me most so. Well, being the nerd that I am, one of the first ones I noticed was in accounts payable in finance. There's a feature to extend the length of vendor invoice numbers. It's not really a big thing.
It's more like usually in ED TS when you have when the string string is too short, you need to extend it because I mean vendor invoices, depending on where you do business, it can, it can be anything. It doesn't have to be the 20 character number sequence we have in Dynamics. It can be. Very, very long. So I would say 99% of everyone have resolved this with extension. But now you can actually enable a feature that will extend the invoice number from 20 characters to 50 in the vendor invoice
and invoice journal. You need to however add a ticket to open a specific flight key. So it seems I haven't seen this this type of feature before. I mean actually improving specific EDTS, it's been it's been extension I would say. So if you have extended your vendor invoice number, maybe have a look at this to, as you say, you want to minimize your technical debt and move
more over to standard. Makes sense. Yeah, as as you said before, we have only seen flighting keys for preview features, especially preview features that that sort of changes the base behavior of of the system in a way where we might not be able to go back if we. Decide we are not going to use it anymore. But as you said, I think it's a good idea to point out that we will eventually get into situations where Microsoft does updates
that everyone already has done. Which means that you will have to make a decision on whether to revert your own updates and go with Microsoft's, which I would say is the preferred way because it's it's less code that we need to maintain going forward. Or if you keep your setup and and go on the way it is, yeah, I think that this is a pain point for pretty much all system implementations ever that when you when you reach the operation state, you have this backlog of
nice new features to have. It's always a hard sell to remove something that's working with something that's working just exactly the same. It's just that it's standard. So I think that makes, but this makes a good point to kind of always. Include at least a couple of percent in your backlog to make improvements to move away from customizations because it's it's easier to maintain. That's my my two
cents. Yeah, I I really agree. We we need to have, we need to have space in our backlog to be able to to work on technical debt because we will always have it and we will always need to get rid of it. This is a hard sell in a budget discussion normally, but it's important. Yeah, I I think going at it more long term and and trying to understand why do we do
this and what is the point. Because I mean eventually Microsoft will do things that depend on this longer number sequence field and then we will have to handle it anyway. So might as well do it while it's less work and no issues. Yeah, I mean I've had scenarios where we had to
do an extension and then. Couple of releases later that extension down standard functionality came to to to handle it and I'll be honest in not in 100% of those cases we have moved to standard yet but I think it makes it's important to to kind of keep it in your backlog to try to try to do it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So so my my first is actually finance feature and once in a while you end up in a situation where you see a feature and you're thinking. Wasn't this already there?It should have been
absolutely. So in this case it has to do with managing bank accounts and activation of bank accounts and changing bank accounts. So what we got here is that we have got the better support for workflows around how we handle bank accounts. So it's it's not a good idea that anyone in this in the system can change the bank account for anyone. Because that's normally a very bad idea. So having a workflow is the absolute
minimum. But what I like with this one is that not only do we get the workflow, we also get the logging feature, which means that we will be able to go back and see the history of all of the changes that has been done for a specific customer and so on. And and that's even more important because that that is one of the things that I actually think is lacking a bit in in finance and supply chain we have a lot of.
History when it comes to purely financial transactions, we have journals, we have postings, we can see everyone, everything that has been done, everyone who posted anything, everyone that did the change. But when it comes to set up and configuration, there is actually no follow up on what has been changed, when it was changed, by whom and what the previous version as the value was. That's very true. I I mean in many cases you use the database log, you
use alerts. We also used with with good measure the electronic signature recently to to force a user to actually sign why they do this change on specific this was on VAT accounts. I think just to ensure that consistency. I actually back in the day I ran like an update. It was a service ticket to update cost table. It was in AX 2012 and. When you do that in in a X of course in in many systems it it logs the create the
modified buyer. So I got a very very angry e-mail the day after from their from their their supervision supervising team who has changed all the customers because they were worried that I would had changed the the bank accounts. So that that particular customer had a very good like monitoring in place. So using this way of of doing workflow you can also make sure that you can trust. That no one changes your sensitive information, and specifically in payment scenarios, that's even more important.
Yeah, and there are a couple of those obvious things that should always have logs enabled for it. So having to resort to using database logging and having to resort to build your own functionality around this, it shouldn't be a thing, especially when it comes to bank bank accounts. That should be something that that wouldn't even. Be possible to turn off the logging for in my opinion?
No, exactly. And I think both alerts and database logging can be a bit dangerous from the performance perspective if you don't know what you're doing. So it's it's good to have another mechanism in place for this. Yeah. And the thing with database logging is that since it's not sort of a recommended way of doing things, I mean the general. Advice from Microsoft is don't use database logging and and the reason is of course not that you shouldn't use it at
all. The reason is but that if you if they say you can use it then will then people will turn it on on everything and that will have performance issues. But I mean for for bank account it doesn't really matter if you have database logging or not. Yeah you just know who who did it. Yeah exactly. It doesn't matter from a performance perspective. But it does matter from a security and
governance perspective. And that's why I think that that it's it's it's relevant that Microsoft says that you shouldn't use database logging by default, but it should be that they have an alternative solution for those areas where it is absolutely required to have have logging and and accountability. Yeah, makes sense. Yes. So you're next. This one is also on
finance. So this is one thing that I've noticed throughout my career or is in a lot of implementations you encounter a lot of processes that you look at them and you think, OK, why hasn't, hasn't anyone complained?You're spending hours on these tedious tasks where you click 20 times, et cetera. So I I think all of these minor improvement, this is a very small thing. The feature is reverse related journals, so.
Basically, when you you can automatically spit large journals when you post them to for performance reasons you and that of course creates multiple journals. So now if you made an error, you need to reverse all of those individual journals 1 by 1. So now this feature basically allows you to reverse them at the same time. So you're saving time. It's not a big thing, but every little feature that improves the daily working life you and I, Yuan, we often work with. Technical
implementations. It's very rare that we actually do the day-to-day work to post journals. It's important to keep that in mind that it's not only a technical cool performance solution, it's also someone has to go every day and handle the journals. So every little improvement there is a nice feature I think. So worth looking into if you have a lot of hopefully you can, you shouldn't have to reverse that many journals, but if you do
this will save some time. Yeah, and I I think also that that having. Having a clear understanding of of what it means to be on the on the on the line, so to speak to to work in the system every single day. Because I I even think sometimes that our colleagues, the people who work more functionally with the system, they don't always appreciate the the the end user experience as well. They they talk a lot about new features and so on and I think this is one of the ones that.
That is actually very, very important because of of what it does to the end user experience. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so my next one, I would just like to mention that the feature that we talked about a while ago, the customer and vendor netting is actually being put into general availability now. So now you can
use it and. If I don't remember wrong, the whole point was that if you have both vendor and customer invoices for for for a an entity, then you can then you can net them and and just do the it simplifies the process. Well again, I'm not the finance expert here, but I've I've been in a couple of tedious walkthroughs of how to handle customer balances and netting and reconciliation. So if I understand correctly this will.
Make it easier because you could work with the the balances and not on the on the individual transactions when you need to like it's a lot of detective work. It's what you need to do and this what I hope at least will simplify that process so you so you can keep track of your customer balances. Yeah, I think this also has to do with the reconciliation functionality that's coming with automatic reconciliation,
so. Again, the end user experience not having to do this, this matching would I think would be a good thing. Absolutely yes. So my next one I would just like to mention as well that there is a new workspace. It's been in the works for quite long time, but it's called a collection and coordinator workspace. It's. Actually not something extremely new, but the the whole point of it it is that you you you group all of the things that has to do with with the collections in
into one place. So for instance the the payment prediction features will be there and and and so on. So I think that's good because I think normally if you look at how people work in the system, this is a specific. Task to be done. Having all of that in one place also makes it a lot easier to
handle it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we mentioned this before, there are some A I capabilities in that workspace as well to kind of help generate at least a draft of an e-mail like we we see you haven't paid invoice X on date Y etcetera. So it kind of helps you to to initiate that process. It's not magic, it's like it's pretty simple, but it it helps again saving those. 15 minutes an hour perhaps to do the analysis and and to filter the form. So
I think it's worth looking into. It also has I I looked into this a little bit because I know a lot of customers have you need to decide do you need do you do your own collection or do you hand it off to a third party collection agency. In many cases the customers like payment what do you want to the payment will is higher if it comes from a. Known collection agency rather than if it says like please pay our invoice from customer or from vendor at X. But you can do both.
You can have like the first phases of your collection can be your own because then you can save some costs and then once you reach a specific stage then you can hand it off to a third party collection agency which is also supported in the system. So it's not, it's not either or. You can do both and reduce your costs. So it's worth looking into. Yep, cool. Your next. Yeah, another one is a little bit, I was not going to say favourite, but it has to do with warehouse and return items.
I've worked both at warehouses and I've worked with designing logistics flows for returns in a commerce perspective mainly. And it's quite the Swedish word is it's like it's quite tedious sometimes because you need to on the on the one hand a box shows up at the warehouse and it's tagged with something and you need to OK. What is it?Is it a quality return?Is it broken? Do they don't want it?On the other hand, finance departments wants a clear disposition code. They want to book it to
the correct account. So you have these two worlds where one is a poor warehouse worker like myself who just needs to like put it into the warehouse. So this it has been a more efficient process of the inspection of of returned items. One clear change here is that you had to enter a disposition code before you could start before. And the disposition code can be like put it into back into the warehouse so it can be sold or scrap it. And it's hard to make that choice before
you've actually done the inspection. So makes total sense to 1st do the inspection and then add a disposition disposition code. So there are some improvements here in that process. It's a quite important process. It can vary, it can. Drive a lot of time at any warehouse to handle the returns properly. So it's it's worth looking into that feature. It's some improvements in in how to print the return labels, some batch jobs for cleaning up data and
well expiration dates etcetera. So improvements in the return process worth looking into. Yes, that's really nice. So my next has to do with one of our reoccurring themes that we've had over the at least this year.
It has to do with the data management and and The thing is that since Microsoft decided that they were going to start charging us for database storage, a lot of the features that has been coming out has have have had to do with how we optimize storage amount, how we get rid of data, what we can get rid of because they historically. We have never had to get rid of anything. We just ask IT to put in a few more disks in the SAN and then we're off to the races.
And in this case it has to do with customer balance statistics, which is, which is something that is updated constantly, but which is also kept constantly, but which means that it will end up just growing and growing and growing and growing. And it there hasn't been a clean up solution for this prior to this. So what we have coming is is a solution that we can actually set the like a an amount of time that the where where the this table expires so we can purge older records
from it as well. So I think that's really good, very nice. So it wouldn't be a real episode without mentioning Copilot at least once, right? You had the chance when we talked about collection workspace. Yeah, exactly. You could have used a new brand name. I I could have. I should have mentioned Copilot, of course. So shame on me. But well, I'll redeem myself by bringing up Copilot now and forecasting the supply chain management forecasting where you now can use Copilot to kind of.
To help out, I think I've been working a lot with Copilot now recently actually I worked in Copilot studio. I'm always been struggling a little bit to find the natural use cases for finance and operations specifically and it's been it's I think it's easier now to make the pitch that Copilot is actually it's a tool that can assist and it can improve because you it it can when used correctly again remove those additional minutes and maybe hours that you need to spend on analysis and
need to spend on OK. What does this mean? When did I last sell something to my customer, etcetera. And this, it's exactly that. It's in the demand planner workspace where you can work with copilot to kind of ask questions. It's it's all natural language. So that's what you need to kind of come over that threshold to to speak to a chat agent as as soon as you do that and you work with it naturally like ChatGPT and a lot of people are using that already. This can help you to
kind of. Get a better understanding of what am I looking at. I think that's the best use case I have. Like, OK, what am I looking at?Can you give me some more information?Can you help me find this? Once Copilot is used that way, it's really it's a game changer in the form of efficiency I would say. So it's also very like fun to play around with. So I implore you to to do that if you have the
chance. Yeah, I I think that that the traditional view of of copilot that we have that it's it's something that generates output from an F&O perspective. I think the more relevant use is actually to have it as an interface to be able to talk to the system, ask questions to the system to in an easy way try to understand because I mean from for me that is not using the system
functionally. I have realized a long time ago that that my big issue is finding where I need to go to figure something out because I I don't necessarily have all of the correct concepts in in that I know what they are called. So that means that when I try to find something, I need to 1st understand what it's called and then I need to go there. But if I can explain to to a chatbot in this case and say I would like to figure out. The the net value of the customer's orders for
2024 for instance. That would be a very simple way. Yeah, because exactly it takes away that. OK, go to this form, filter this way, find it, export to Excel, do some summaries. It takes away those extra minutes of additional work that you can use. Being the nerd, I try to compare it to like Star Trek tricorder or any sci-fi scenario like computer, give me this, computer, give me that. Yeah, that's really, but that's what it
can be when used well, I would say. And that's really, it's really cool and it's actually a very good efficiency enhancer in any, any process really. Yes. So I don't actually have any, any other. Oh really?No, then it's all me. I have three more, but they are all commerce. My, my favorite, one of my favorite topics. I want to again mention, we mentioned it a couple of times before the insider programs previously known as Yammer, now Viva
Engage. They are very, it's worth your time to to be there. We're trying because the product teams are there, they're asking for feedback and I know the commerce team is doing a lot of UI enhancements, so they're asking for feedback in many cases. So it's it's if you haven't been there already, please go there because you can find a lot of information and actually provide feedback to the product to make it work the way
you want. With that in mind, there are a couple of enhancements now for the point of sale, the store commerce. Specifically, one thing I noticed is the app you know for mobile devices for Android or iOS. You can now scan barcodes and QR codes with the rear facing camera. So you kind of light up a lot of easy scenarios where you can have mobile devices and I just run around any pop-up store or just a store where you need to be mobile. You don't need to maybe invest. A lot of money in these
fancy rugged devices. You can actually do it on a on a simple Android device because that that was actually the change here was that you before you could do it, but you needed a specific device with a specific software on it. Now you can use the standard out-of-the-box functionality in iOS and Android. Exactly. So it lowers the threshold to use store commerce in in in those scenarios, I
would say. Another thing just to mention is that the store commerce self checkout, you know in any store you walk in now they a lot of people have self checkouts. So now you can turn on the kiosk based basically self checkout. So it's also again in the pop-up scenario perhaps or in your if you have a minor need to do self checkout, you can do it now with store commerce as well. So yeah, another I can just mention a
final one where you have. One thing I I've built a couple of payment solutions for commerce before and it's always been a little bit from a technical perspective tedious because you had to store the whole card token. Even though you're not using credit card, you're using something else you needed to to kind of save it and it's if you look at like largest tables in the in the solution payments are usually there. Now there is support for the non-recurring payment tokens
where you can. You can support payment operations without the need to store a card token. You can do it for online store, call center and customer orders. So you can do it with a single authorization request. You don't need to store those large tokens throughout. And it's important for some scenarios, not for all, but it's worth mentioning because if you if you have those payment scenarios where you don't need to reserve and then capture, et cetera, it's worth looking into to save some time.
So, yeah, that was it for me. Yes. So that means that we are done for today. We have a couple of special interviews lined up going forward. So we will be back with more episodes soon. Definitely. Yes. And by that, bye, bye, bye, bye.