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2Hello Community,
I am working on a requirement in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and would appreciate some guidance on the best standard Microsoft functionality/architecture for this scenario.
Requirement: Our customers send Purchase Order (PO) PDFs via email. I would like to automate the complete process as follows:
- A new email arrives with a Purchase Order PDF attachment.
- A Power Automate flow is automatically triggered when the email is received.
- The PDF attachment is sent to Azure AI Document Intelligence to extract the relevant PO information.
- The AI model returns the extracted information in JSON format, for example: PO number, PO date, Item numbers, Quantities & Other relevant fields.
- The extracted JSON data should then be stored in Business Central as an incoming/staging record before creating the actual Sales Order.
- The data should be validated against Business Central master data, such as: Customer, Item, Unit of Measure, Quantity & Other required fields.
- If validation is successful, the document should go through an approval process.
- After approval, the validated information should automatically be used to create a Sales Order in Business Central, with the original PDF attached to the Sales Order.
- Ideally, I would also like to maintain a relationship between the original PDF, the extracted data, the incoming record, and the final Sales Order for traceability.
My Questions
Does Business Central have any standard functionality that can be used to receive/store extracted Purchase Order information before creating a Sales Order?
Can I use the standard Business Central "Incoming Documents" functionality for this scenario? For example, can the Incoming Document be used to store the original PO PDF and extracted information, validate the data, and then use it as the basis for creating the Sales Order?
Is there any free/standard Microsoft functionality or connector available for this scenario, without requiring a third-party OCR/document-processing solution?
Is there a recommended standard approach using:
Outlook → Power Automate → Azure AI Document Intelligence → Business Central Incoming Documents/Staging → Validation → Approval → Sales Order
What is the recommended way to map the dynamic JSON values returned by Azure AI Document Intelligence to Business Central Sales Order header and line fields?
Should I create a custom staging/incoming document table and pages in Business Central, or is there an existing standard table/page, such as Incoming Documents, that can be used for this purpose?
Can the standard Business Central approval functionality be used to approve the extracted/validated PO data before the Sales Order is created?
What would be the recommended architecture if I want to keep the solution as close as possible to standard Microsoft functionality, while using AL extensions only where necessary?
How can I best maintain the relationship/traceability between the original PDF and the final Sales Order?
I would especially appreciate an example or guidance on how others have implemented the staging/incoming document → validation → approval → Sales Order creation process in Business Central.
Thank you in advance for your suggestions and guidance.
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