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What's new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition 7.3

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This article describes features that are either new or changed in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition 7.3. This version was released in December 2017 and has a build number of 7.3.11971.56116.

To learn more about the new features and changes in all of the latest product releases, see What's new or changed and What's new or changed in Dynamics 365 for Retail.

Go to the Dynamics 365 Roadmap to find supplemental information about new features and learn more about what new features are in development.

Demand forecast entries data entity enabled for Data management framework

Data management framework (DMF) is now enabled for the Demand forecast entries data entity (ForecastDemandForecastEntryEntity), which makes it possible to integrate with third-party systems.

In addition, each demand forecast entry is uniquely identified by a sequence number (entity field ForecastEntryNumber). For all integrations consider this unique identifier, even if it doesn't exist in the source or third-party system.

Demo data in data packages

Demo data has been delivered in prior releases as a database with a large number of companies. In addition to that database, we also create data packages using the demo data companies so that you can load your demo data on an empty environment using the data management framework. These data packages will be delivered, for a specific release, as assets in the global shared assets library in Lifecycle Services (LCS). Instructions for loading the data packages will also be provided.

The data packages are similar but not identical to existing demo companies and may change over time. The packages are very small and provide a quick way to download the demo data and modify it before you import it into an environment. We will continue to add additional demo data for more companies and module functionality in the future.

Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations integration – Phase 1 (private preview)

The first phase of the integration from Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is now available in private preview.

The Project Service Automation to Finance and Operations integration solution uses Data Integration to synchronize data across Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation instances via the Dataverse. The integration templates available with the Data Integration feature enable the flow of projects, project contracts, and project contract lines from Project Service Automation to Finance and Operations. For more information about Dataverse data integration, see Integrate data into Dataverse for Apps in the Power Apps documentation.

This solution provides direct synchronization in the following areas:

  • Maintain project contracts in Project Service Automation and sync them directly from Project Service Automation to Finance and Operations.
  • Create projects in Project Service Automation and sync them directly from Project Service Automation to Finance and Operations.
  • Maintain project contract lines in Project Service Automation and sync them directly from Project Service Automation to Finance and Operations.
  • Maintain project contract line milestones in Project Service Automation and sync them directly from Project Service Automation to Finance and Operations.

To nominate your organization to participate in the private preview, fill out the survey at https://aka.ms/psafinandopsintpreview.

Enhanced integration of Prospect to cash between Dynamics 365 for Sales and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

Enhancements to Prospect to cash integration between Dynamics 365 for Sales and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition 7.3 enable direct synchronization in the following processes:

  • Maintain accounts in Sales and sync them to Finance and Operations as customers.
  • Maintain contacts in Sales and sync them to Finance and Operations as either customers or contacts for a customer.
  • Maintain products in Finance and Operations and sync them to Sales.
  • Create quotes in Sales and sync them to Finance and Operations.
  • Generate sales orders in Sales for existing products and sync them to Finance and Operations.
  • Generate, modify, and fulfill sales orders in Finance and Operations and sync changes to Sales.
  • Generate invoices in Finance and Operations and sync them to Sales.

Highlights of these integration enhancements include:

  • Support data entity overwrite of numbers for quotes, sales orders, and invoices (no need to set number sequence to manual).
  • Conversion of quote, sales, or invoice line discount from per unit to per line.
  • Support for sync of tax related charges from Finance and Operations to Sales, such as freight tax.
  • Additional functionality to support sales order sync from Sales to Finance and Operations.
  • Additional functionality to support sales order sync from Finance and Operations to Sales.
  • Sync support for country/region ISO codes on invoice address, exposed on data entities.

More information

Expense management mobile workspace enhancements

This feature provides support for functionality that is available in expense management that was not available in the mobile solution for expense management. This list includes (but is not limited to):

  • Support for mileage expenses.
  • Support for intercompany expenses.
  • Support for per diem expenses.

For more information, see Expense management mobile workspace.

Financial reporting using Power BI

A set of default reports built using a new visualization using Power BI is available for financial reporting. The new financial reporting experience will be embedded within Finance and Operations, giving you a seamless experience of report generation and allowing you to drill into supporting documents. Limited subledger data will be available to provide better ledger to subledger analysis. Default reports, such as a trial balance, balance sheet, and profit and loss, will be shipped out of the box, however, initially no edits will be allowed using Finance and Operations. Edits need to be made using the Power BI desktop. The existing financial reporting using Report Designer is still available and fully supported.

To view additional information about Financial reporting using Power BI, watch the following video: Reporting for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

Fixed asset roll forward report

The new Fixed assets roll forward report provides you with the detailed fixed asset data needed for period closing, financial statements, and tax reporting in an easy-to-read Excel format. The report, which utilizes the GER framework, shows fixed asset financial details for a specific period. Comprehensive data includes individual asset starting and ending balances along with valuation movements for the period, in addition to any new asset acquisitions and disposals that occurred in the specified timeframe. Totals are provided for the fixed asset group and legal entity.

Global coverage – Configurable Electronic Reporting

Several new features have been added to the Electronic Reporting (ER) framework.

  • Improvements in supporting data import from incoming documents in XML format – You can now configure a single ER format to import data from incoming XML files with a different format. For example, you can have a different root element, or a root element predefined in the format, or any sequence of nested elements of a particular parent element. This allows customers to reduce the efforts needed to manage the ER solution and to easily adopt existing ER solutions to support new requirements.
  • Configurable import from incoming documents in CSV format – You can now use ER to configure the import of data from incoming documents in CSV format. Initially designed to support import from incoming files in only XML and TXT format, ER formats can be used for parsing incoming documents in another format – as plain text storing tabular data separated by a special character and embraced by quotation characters. This allows customers to easily adopt specific requirements that can be introduced for payment, settlement, and other processes.
  • Check prerequisites for the importing ER solution – This functionality allows you to check the compliance of the current application instance with the ER configuration that has been selected for import. All missing application updates (if any) will be indicated, as the list of required KB numbers that significantly reduce the efforts needed to install necessary prerequisites for making the application compatible with the selected for import ER configuration.
  • Re-usage of application logic by calling methods of application classes – The existing functionality to configure ER expressions for calling methods of application classes with arguments has been improved. With this new functionality, you will be able to configure expressions in which the values of such arguments can be defined dynamically at run-time by using ER data sources. This allows customers to significantly reduce the effort needed to configure ER solutions when the necessary logic is already available in the application's source code.
  • Improvements in calculation of aggregate functions and data grouping – For some ER data sources of the GROUP BY type, the data grouping and calculation of aggregate functions can be performed at the database (SQL) level. This allows customers to significantly improve the performance of ER reports especially for the transactional data sources that may contain many records.
  • Records deletion based on information from incoming documents – You can now configure ER formats for data import from incoming documents to only insert new records or update existing ones. You will be able also to configure the logic of existing records' deletion. This gives customers more opportunities to use ER framework for automation of various business processes as configurable ones.
  • Changes in APIs to access the ER framework – The existing APIs to access ER framework has been changed – most of X++ classes were moved to an external C# assembly while the rest of them were marked as internal. New APIs improves the ER framework's backward compatibility. This allows customers to significantly reduce the effort needed to manage their ER-related code modifications in the future updates of the application.

For more information, see Electronic reporting overview.

Inventory transactions logging (InventSumLogTTS) optimization  

Inventory transactions logging (InventSumLogTTS) is now turned on for all items and the old records in the log are automatically removed.

These changes prevent records from being inserted into the Inventory transactions log table (InventSumLogTTS) in certain conditions. This prevents the table from getting too large and causing performance issues.

When planning processes are enabled in a company, which means that Master planning > Setup > Master planning parameters > Disable all planning processes is set to No, inventory transactions logging (InventSumLogTTS) is not turned on in the following cases:

  • The warehouse on the transaction has the Manual replenishment setup.
  • The coverage code for the item and its product dimensions is Manual.
  • The transaction is related to Blocking inventory statuses.

The item is disabled for planning via the Product lifecycle state parameter on the item master.

When planning processes are disabled in a company, which means that Master planning > Setup > Master planning parameters > Disable all planning processes is set to Yes, inventory transactions logging is never turned on.

The Inventory transactions log table will be periodically cleaned up to remove all records that are older than 90 days. The cleanup is triggered automatically by regenerating the master plan.

India localization

India localization is available with the following features:

  • Withholding tax, including TDS and TCS.
  • Fixed assets, including depreciation as per the Companies act, depreciation as per the Income tax act, and special depreciation.
  • Value-added tax (VAT).
  • Custom duty and India Goods and Services Tax (GST). For more information, see the "Tax Engine (GTE) – India GST only" section in this article.

Master and reference data entities for warehouse and transportation management

Data entity support is now enabled for setup data in the supply chain management area. For the warehouse and transportation areas, enhancements have been made to the default configuration templates. The default configuration templates provide the entities and sequencing that are required to copy configuration data from one instance to another instance in a single step.

For more information, see Set up a warehouse by using a warehouse configuration template.

Notifications in Point of Sale

In today's modern retail environment, the store associates are assigned various tasks such as helping customers, running transactions, performing stock counts, or receiving orders in the store. Point of Sale (POS) client empowers the associates to do these and much more, all in one application. With various tasks to be performed in a day, there is a need to notify the associates when a task requires their attention. To address this requirement, we have created a notification framework that utilizes the notification capability in POS. For this release, the notifications can be enabled for POS operations only, and out of the box, the notifications can only be enabled for the order fulfillment operation. However, the notification framework is extensible and enables developers to easily plug in custom code for any operation. We have also provided the ability to configure role-based notifications that empower the retailers to easily define who should receive what notifications.

Optimization advisor

  The Optimization advisor workspace helps business users follow best practices to optimize the business processes that they own. It analyzes business processes, finds optimization opportunities, leverages application data to quantify the opportunities, and then recommends solutions that can help improve both the effectiveness towards the business goal and the performance of the application.

With Optimization advisor, business users can:

  • Find proactive, quantified, actionable, and personalized optimization opportunities in one place.
  • Take recommended actions.
  • Analyze the impact of taking the recommended actions.

With the current release, the advisor presents opportunities to optimize:

  • The performance of inventory closing. 
  • The performance of wave processing and work creation within warehouse management.
  • The overall performance of the application by updating system configuration settings to reflect the actual business processes. 
  • Master data quality across BOMs, routes, and inventory management.

More information

Partial release of materials and release materials per production operation

Previously, when a production order was released, all the material for the order was released to the warehouse. In some production scenarios, this was not the optimal process. For example, consider the following scenarios:

  • Production orders where material is consumed on different operation.
  • Long running production orders where materials for the total quantity of the production order cannot be released at once; either because all the material is not available or there is not space enough on the shop floor.

To better support these scenarios, the release process has been enhanced with the following capabilities:

  • Ability to limit the release of materials to an operation or selected operations.
  • Ability to release materials for a partial quantity of finished goods. In process industries, this can for example be useful for batch orders where not all the materials that are scheduled for the order can be consumed at once. For example, if you plan to produce 1000 pieces of the finished goods per day or shift, then you can easily limit the release of materials to match the requirement for this quantity.

Payment SDK and Retail POS handlers

Payment SDK – We added the support for sending custom error messages from the payment SDK to POS. Previously POS transformed all the messages to standard error message defined in the POS. Now you can send custom messages and error code to easily troubleshoot payment errors.

POS view extension – Support has been added for extending the POS Picking and receiving screen to add custom columns.

POS APIs – New deposit override APIs have been added to support overriding the deposit through code for scenarios, such as layaway.

POS overridable request handlers – We added a new handler in POS for extensions to override the logic and automate serial number entry. If an extension requires the modification of serial number entry in POS, you can override the new Get serial number handler. For example, in POS, a dialog box captures the serial number but you can automate the flow by calling an external webservice or autogenerated serial number and then override this request.

Sample extensions – In addition to the existing samples, we added the following samples to the Retail SDK to help with extensions.

  • Retail proxy extension for store hours and cross loyalty samples.
  • Custom column sample for the Picking and receiving screen.
  • POS serial number automation sample
  • Additional POS API samples.

Product configuration enhancements  

Arrange attributes in one or multiple columns – To optimize configuration experience, you can arrange attributes in one or more columns. The maximum number of columns is 10, and the default number is 1. This makes it easier to model configuration experiences with many attributes in one configuration step. You must first group attributes before you set up the field. If some attributes are not added to groups, they will be shown in the leftmost column. If all attributes are assigned to attribute groups, the groups will be shown in the columns.

Enable Z3 Solver strategy for product configuration – The Z3 Solver strategy is available for product configuration. In many benchmark tests, the solver has shown a significant performance improvement compared to the Microsoft solver foundation (MSF) solver. The new Z3 Solver strategy will be assigned per configuration model. Note that the other three solver strategies are all strategies of MSF: Default, Top-down, and Minimal domains first.

For more information, see Solver strategy for product configuration.

Import, export, and migrate the product configuration model – You can export and import the product configuration model and model versions using standard data entities. The configuration model is exported as an XML structure and saved in a single entity, which makes it simple to export and import again.  

Product lifecycle state

The product lifecycle state is now available for released products and product variants. You can define any number of product lifecycle states by assigning a state name and description. You can select one lifecycle state as the default state for new released products. Released product variants inherit the product lifecycle state from their released product masters. When changing the lifecycle state on a released product master, you can choose to update all existing variants that have the same original state.  

To control and understand the situation of a specific product or product variant in its lifecycle, it is a best practice in Product lifecycle management solutions (PLM) to associate a lifecycle state with a variable state model to products. This capability has been added to the released product model. The main purpose of this extension is to provide a scalable solution that can exclude obsolete products and product variants, including configurations, from master planning and BOM-level calculation.

Impact on master planning – The product lifecycle state has only one control flag: Is active for planning. By default, this is set to Yes for all product lifecycle states. When the field is set to No, the associated released products or product variants are: 

  • Excluded from Master planning
  • Excluded from BOM level calculation 

For performance reasons, it is highly recommended that you associate all obsolete released products or product variants to a product lifecycle state that is deactivated for master planning, especially when you work with non-reusable product configuration variants.  

Find obsolete released products and products variants – You can run an analysis to find and update obsolete released products or product variants.

If you run the analysis in a simulation mode, the released products and product variants that are identified as obsolete will be displayed on a specific page for you to view. The analysis searches for transactions and specific master data to find the released products or product variants that have no demand within a specific period. New released products that are created within the specific period can be excluded from the analysis.  

When the analysis simulation returns the expected result, you can run the analysis by assigning a new product lifecycle state to all the products that are identified as obsolete.  

Default value during migration, import, and export

  • When migrating from previous releases, the lifecycle state for all released products and product variants will be blank.  
  • When importing released products through a data entity, the default lifecycle state will be applied.  
  • When importing released product variants through a data entity, the product lifecycle state of the released product master will be applied. 

Note

The ability to set individual product lifecycle states using the data entities for released products or product variants is not supported.

For more information, see Product lifecycle state.

Retail proxy – New extension point added to support retail proxy extension without inline changes

Previously you needed to modify the retail proxy project inline to generate the Retail proxy to support your new CRT/RS extension in POS offline mode or e-Commerce extensions. Now, you can generate proxy without any inline changes as a completely new extension. We also added support for multiple ISV/Partner extension proxies without any code merge between the extension proxies. This will help you with a seamless upgrade for proxy extensions.

For more information, see Retail Typescript and C# proxies.

Safety stock replenishment enhancements

The constraint that, at any given time, the available inventory for an item must be above the safety stock quantity can introduce delays in shipping sales orders, production orders, and any other real, independent, or dependent demand. For example, for an item with 5 days lead time, if the item has 10 pieces in inventory, and a safety stock level is set to 10, a sales line will be delayed by 5 days, waiting for the delivery of the planned order for the item.

The constraint that the available inventory must always be above the safety stock quantity is deprioritized if the system determines that this causes delays in the fulfilment of real demand: sales lines, BOM lines, transfer requirements, demand forecast lines, and so on. Otherwise, making sure that the available inventory is above the safety stock quantity has the same priority as any other demand types. This ensures no delays for real transactions and helps to prevent over-replenishment and early-replenishment of safety stock.

During the coverage phase of master planning, safety stock replenishment is no longer deprioritized. Now on-hand inventory can be used before any other demand types. During the delay calculation, new logic will be added to go over the delayed sales lines, BOM line requirements, and all the other demand types, to determine whether they could be delivered on time, provided safety stock is used. If the system identifies that it can minimize delays by using safety stock, then the sales lines or BOM lines will replace their initial coverage with the safety stock, and the system will trigger the replenishment for the safety stock instead.

If the plan or the item is not set up for delayed calculation, then the safety stock constraint will have the same priority as any other demand types. This means there be a reserve of on-hand and other available inventory before any other demand types.

Coverage calculation for the items that expire also has new logic. At any point in time, the inventory receipt with the latest expiry date will be used for safety stock to allow real demand, such as sale lines or BOM lines, to be fulfilled in the FEFO (First Expired, First Out) order.

For more information, see Safety stock fulfillment for items.

Tax Engine (GTE) – India GST only

The Tax Engine (GTE) is an essential part of the configurable business application experience in Finance and Operations. It's highly customizable and lets a business user, functional consultant, or power user configure tax rules that determine tax applicability, calculation, posting, and settlement, based on legal and business requirements. Tax configuration is more flexible with GTE. It provides an easier extension experience; almost no code change is required for the data provider in the AOT to support extension scenarios.

More information

Vendor collaboration

Vendor collaboration has been extended to enable vendors to view and selectively maintain their own company information, such as contact information, business identification data, procurement categories, and certifications.

  • The vendor can view and respond to RFQs, which includes the ability to receive and upload attachments. The collaborative interface allows the vendor to receive information about the awarded or lost bids.
  • In public sector configurations, RFQs can now be published and exported as entities via data management. This enables the data to be consumed and exposed in a customer-hosted public website.
  • A new workflow-supported process, Vendor onboarding, can facilitate the addition of new vendors to Dynamics 365 for Financial and Operations. The vendor is invited to register based on a signup request imported via entities or based on a request entered directly in Financial and Operations.
  • The registration process provisions the person representing the vendor with a user account that has restrictive security roles and then invites the user to register by completing a wizard-guided process. The guided registration process prompts for data ,such as contact information, business identification data, procurement categories, and questionnaire answers. The information entered by the vendor contact person is populated in a vendor request and after the information has been approved via a workflow process, a new vendor account is created.

Warehouse – Fulfillment policy added to full or partial batch release of transfer orders

The release to warehouse batch job is enriched by a fulfilment policy that is equivalent to the functionality for sales order, but now also includes transfer orders. You can batch release transfer orders according to a fulfilment rate policy. The policy can also be applied for the Manual release to warehouse form, as well as from the load release. It is also possible to override the default policy at a line level when releasing manually.

Warehouse – Tare weight used in containerization is included in the load's gross weight

This enhancement ensures that the tare weight of a container used in the containerization is included in the gross weight of the load. Some usability enhancements of the load header have also been added to better relate to the applied load template.

The volume of the container is now represented with greater detail, including gross volume, remaining volume, and the ability to capture actual volume.

These updated values are consumed by the rate route engines, as well as by the transportation tender.