Ride the Wave – Wave 2

I always like to keep up to date with the latest releases and features in D365 SCM and D365 Finance. Luckily, Microsoft makes this very easy by providing the docs.microsoft.com website with the latest and greatest notes from the R&D team about what’s to come in the next months and year. Below are the changes coming as part of Wave 2 this year, all can be found here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2020wave2/

1. Planning optimization enhancements and support for MRP: Planning optimization has been one of the more recent large changes in supply chain that not a lot of D365 end users have been able to take advantage of yet. This feature has primarily been in preview. Planning optimization for MRP becomes Generally Available this fall. If you have not heard of this feature, it essentially enables master planning calculations to occur outside D365 and the related SQL database. This has led to a huge performance gain in reducing planning runs from hours to minutes. In the current previews, there have been gaps while waiting for development to include features such as Actions and Production related scenarios in MRP. Christian Rytt shared this update of the current features at EMEA UG Summit earlier this year:

2. Vendor submitted certifications: Vendor and customer relationship management has been continuously updated in D365. From vendor and customer workflows, collaboration portals that allow external users access to a subset of data related to their accounts, and other features, D365 keeps strengthening this area. Providing the ability to submit and maintain certifications through the Vendor collaboration portal provides flexibility to a variety of industries where the approval of their vendors and audibility of them is of critical importance.

3. Landed cost and inbound transportation management: This is something that has come up on countless implementations over the years. Companies need the ability to estimate, calculate, and capture all the costs associated with buying and receiving goods. While D365 has strong features in costing sheets to break out costs for purchased materials, there has never been a full fledged landed cost solution out of the box. I have seen some ISV solutions provide additional functionality, so it’s great to see something coming up in the MS toolset. However, this feature is currently not slated for Preview until February 2021.

4. Create and Transfer Orders from Mobile Device: The ability to actually create a transfer order from the mobile device rather than just process already created picking Work is a great little feature that makes a common situation much more manageable. Companies have both logical and physical warehouses setup in D365 to support business processes, so anything to make a mobile solution more efficient and flexible is a win.

5. Process Warehouse app events: This is perhaps the thing I am most excited about. New programs and technologies have been enhancing the Microsoft stack to leverage existing tools for low code-no code development. Many of the great Microsoft MVPs on Power platform talk about this stuff all the time. In the same vein, this new feature coming to preview next month adds a queue for processing events issued by the warehouse app. Batch jobs that run in D365 can use data from this queue to react as needed to the signaled events. These events are essentially responses to actions taken by workers using the app. What this really means is that partners and customers alike can extend upon the existing warehouse mobile app framework to provide even more functionality and solve business problems or gaps that currently are not met by the existing warehouse mobile app transactions.

Looking forward to seeing these new features in action!