Microsoft has always tried to listen to their customers and has continuously provided improvement to their solutions. In 2021 Wave 2, Microsoft has delivered features from some of the most requested improvements such as the finance and supply chain areas. In this blog, we will discuss our favourite features from the new releases from 2021 wave 2.
Application
Microsoft in Wave 2 has focused on better reporting, better management of dimensions, and other several improvements to the supply chain area.
In this category, Microsoft has added new features in “Account schedules“. This is one of our favourite features as it helps users get off to a good start when using account schedules to create custom G/L reports, Microsoft has added several new templates for account schedules. The ANALYSIS, REVENUE, and CASHFLOW account schedules are now available in demonstration and trial (setup data only) companies. The new account schedules are mapped to the chart of accounts that can be used for product demonstrations, but they can easily be adapted to any chart of accounts. Account schedules are a faster way for businesses to generate custom G/L reports. Microsoft has added even more templates to get users started. Set a filter on Budget Name and create an account schedule that reports on actual versus budgets for both a budget and a forecast (a second budget), which is often a reporting requirement for finance departments.
Bank and Payment Reconciliation are a major part of any business. In 2021 Wave 2 Microsoft have focused on Bank reconciliation Processes. They have enhanced the bank reconciliation page with the following capabilities:
- Bank ledger entries are can now be filtered so only ledger entries after the statement’s ending date are shown, making it simpler to get an overview.
- The layout of the test report has been cleaned up, making it simpler to read. The report will also use the statement date as a filter for the G/L account as well as the bank account so that the focus is on the period being reconciled.
- When applying auto-matching, the user can decide to not overwrite any of the already matched entries or to overwrite all.
- Many-to-1 matching is now possible, this means many bank statement lines can be matched against one bank ledger entry.
- When user’s transfer differences to be posted in a general journal, the entries will be auto-matched when users return to the bank reconciliation, reducing the redundant manual step.
One of our other favourite new releases in this category is the new addition to Business Central and Microsoft Data verse Integration. With the new feature, it decreases the number of synchronization jobs that are run in such cases, making synchronization of multiple records faster and users more productive. When users select multiple records, such as hundreds of customers or contacts, Business Central creates a single synchronization job per batch of selected records. This greatly reduces the load on the task scheduler that runs the background jobs and makes it easier for users to stay below the limits for queue entries.
Better with Microsoft D365
In Business Central 2021 release wave 2, we invest in better integration with Excel. We also further improve support for collaborative business processes in Microsoft Teams so that the users can bring Business Central pages into a Teams channel. One of our favourite features in the release is Sharing a record link to Microsoft Teams. The Business Central web client includes a new action to share with Microsoft Teams. This action allows users to type a message, choose recipients such as team members, groups, or channels, and send their message with a link to the Business Central record. Users can share to Teams from the most collection or details pages in Business Central. Like the Business Central app for Teams, the Share to Teams action in the web client is only available to Business Central online users.
Microsoft Excel has been an app for choice for most customers. Used for quick data analysis, sharing tabular data, bulk correcting, or entering records, Microsoft continues to mature Excel-related features for exporting to Excel and working with the Excel add-in, making them more easily discoverable and reachable through the new Share menu for Dynamics 365 Business Central Users. The 2021 release wave 2 introduces the Share icon and menu in which users will find the Open in Excel and Edit in Excel actions. Lists that are embedded in a part on a page can now be exported to Excel. For example, you can export sales lines on a sales order, list parts on the Role Center, or list in the FactBox pane. Like full-page lists, the Open in Excel action downloads a static copy of your list as an Excel file, applying for your filters and sort order. From a report request page, users can export report data to Excel. The Excel file will only include the raw data, not the report layout.
Governance and Administration
The 2021 release wave 2 delivers a set of admin and governance capabilities designed to help admins and IT pros set up, secure, manage, govern, and monitor customer environments. One of the features in this category is “installation and update of dependencies when updating apps in the Business Central admin center“. It allows to simplify and streamline the process of updating apps in the Business Central admin center by allowing the service to automatically install and update app dependencies. The Business Central admin center provides administrators with an overview of the apps that are installed for each Business Central environment and can help them identify which apps have updates (newer versions) available and install the updates at a convenient time. In this release, Microsoft has introduced an option that lets admins review dependencies before updating and automating any steps that are needed.
The other exciting feature is “Operations log enhancements“. This feature helps in Better traceability of the admin operations. The Operations log in the Business Central admin center provides an overview of the admin operations in the relevant Business Central online environments, such as restoring, renaming, installing, and uninstalling apps, exporting databases, and moving environments between different Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenants. In this release 2021 Wave 2, Microsoft has added more operation logs to this view. Administrators will be able to see the following new operations:
- Environment was created
- Environment was deleted
- Environment was copied
- Environment properties were updated
The administrators will also be able to truncate the log to remove old operations that are no longer relevant.
These were some of our favourite releases from 2021, Wave 2 Dynamics 365 Business Central Releases.
As a Partner Centric Center of Excellence, we work with Microsoft Partners and provide them with our services for Dynamics 365. We work with Microsoft Partners their clients from all around the globe. From our years of experience working in the world of Microsoft Dynamics and implementing over 200+ Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions across different verticals, we understand the business requirements and the functionality that businesses could benefit from the most.
To know more about our Center of Excellence email us at santosh@dhyey.com.
