Get in the cockpit and build your own Workspace dashboard

One of the best features for D365 is Workspaces. Think supercharged AX2012 Role Centers that are much more user friendly to customize and personalize. Not only are their many great workspaces out of the box, but if it’s more a lot of work to hide existing forms and views on workspaces to tailor to users day to day, you can also create your own workspaces from scratch. Let’s walk through how we can use Advanced filter / sorts, saved views, and personalizations to create your own workspace and have a daily cockpit for activity.

We’ll start at the home page. I can see what existing workspaces I have access to.

Now let’s say I am a Receiving Manager and there are Purchase order related screens and queries I need access to, Vendor KPIs, receiving data, and other bits of information that currently are not handled by a single workspace. So, I’ll create my own! Right click in the area around the workspace tiles and click “Personalize.”

You should then be able to choose the option “Add a workspace.”

When you screen refreshes, you should see a Tile at the bottom of your D365 screen with the description “My workspace”

You can right click and personalize that workspace now as well to rename it:

Once the workspace is created, let’s start collecting and creating saved queries and views in the forms, reports, and anything else we need access to that should be visible in the Receiving dashboard. For example, first, I will navigate to the Open Purchase Order Lines page in Procurement and Sourcing, sort by delivery date, and add this saved sort to my workspace as a List (later, we’ll add other types to our workspace):

I’ll give that a name and click OK to add it:

Next, I want to add a link to all posted Product receipts, which I often need to auditing, so I will go to the Product receipts and add this as a Link type:

I also want to add a Tile that shows a count for the amount of open Work Ids related to Purchase order putaway to get a good idea of outstanding activities for my receiving personnel. However, I only want to do this for the Site and Warehouse I lead. I will navigate to the Open purchase work menu in Warehouse management inbound work, apply filters for my Site and Warehouse, and add a Tile:

In a similar vein of monitoring purchase order line statuses and what activities are outstanding, I also would like to monitor and make sure product receipts are getting posted in a timely fashion, so I need a Tile showing a count of PO lines that have been registered, but have not posted a Product receipt yet. Since we do not have a consignment process in my company where we may delay product receipt for ownership purposes, I would expect product receipts to be posted shortly after registration. This is an important step since Product receipts are what allocate a physical cost to a receipt transaction and currently you cannot post a Product receipt from the Warehouse management mobile app. To get the data I need, I will use the Transactions inquiry in Inventory management. I will then filter on the Reference column for “Purchase order” and in the Receipt column, I will filter on status = “Registered.”

I will then add this to my dashboard as well. I can go on and add additional tiles, lists, and links that I need, like inbound transfers, or Locations that are Empty that could be used to store product. I can create that filter using some of the new Location status functionality:

Now in any of these screens, I could have moved columns to the left or right, hidden columns, or even added fields that already exist in the form but may not show outright in the grid. Once I have all of the different view I want added as links, tiles, and lists, I can go take a look at my new dashboard:

Any saved workspaces, like other Personalizations, can be pushed to additional users to save time having to rebuild the same on multiple user accounts. Start building your KPIs and visual in Power BI for things like On time delivery and now we’re really talking!!! Happy building!