A Shot of Business Central and A Beer Episode 15
Updated: Aug 17, 2021
A Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central podcast | S4E15 A Shot of Business Central and A Beer
Intro
The Business Central 2020 Release Wave 2, what new features will it have for us?
Hey everyone this is A Shot of Business Central and A Beer Podcast, brought to you by Solution Systems.
Today on the podcast we've got some key dates for the Business Central 2020 Release Wave 2, we'll be breaking down Business Central's Remote capabilities, we take a look at the popular Jet Reports solution, and drink a pretty strong beer.
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Segments
Intro and Beer Reviews
A Shot of Business Central News - Key 2020 Release Wave 2 Dates
Feature Segment: Business Central's Remote Capabilities
Featured App: Jet Reports
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A Shot of Business Central and A Beer Show Notes
Segment 1: Beer Review
ShortFuse Bee 33 by Short Fuse Brewing Company
Segment 2: Shot of Business Central News
1) June 3 - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central All Access Virtual Event on Wednesday, June 3, 2020.
Keynote regarding direction of Business Central as well as access to 15+ breakout sessions available on-demand beginning June 3, 2020. Dive in deep with sessions including:
Coding for performance
Managing customer environments in Business Central online
Interfaces and extensibility: Writing extensible and change-resilient code
Business Central and Common Data Service integration
2) Also on June 3, announcement of new General Manager of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft has named company veteran Mike Morton as the new general manager for Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Taking over for Mike Ehrenberg who took over Business Central management duties following the departure of previous GM Marko Perisic in November 2018.
Mike Morton has been with Microsoft for 24 years, mainly with SharePoint and Office Online teams.
3) Shared Numbers:
6,000+ deployments of BC Cloud
Apps: approaching 800
4) Next release(s) of Business Central per Morton:
2020 Release Wave 2 Materials coming in July.
Release plans are coming July 8th .
Early access to new features and capabilities will begin on August 3.
CDS integration improvements
While there is not yet a Teams integration story for Business Central, it is "the next big phase of integration" with Microsoft 365 and there will be new scenarios to demo in the wave 2 timeframe.
Also hoping to have more production environments available than the three currently.
5) BREP-to-CSP Offer for ERP customers: switch to a CSP ‘enhancement plan’ that licenses BC Cloud and retains downgrade compatibility with existing version of GP, SL, NAV.
Benefits:
Customer get’s a price point equal to their enhancement plan renewal price.
Customer can switch from annual enhancement plan renewal to monthly payments while retaining the same benefits.
And for the same price it gives those on-prem customers Business Central cloud subscription seats at a 1:4 concurrent to named user ratio for no added cost. (Even a better discount than the existing BREP to cloud transition program.)
Grants customers dual-use rights and downgrade rights. Get benefits of the BREP plan while transitioning to the cloud.
The offer is available from June 1 2020 to June 30 2021, and it is for a one year subscription with two year auto renewal option.
Customers can also continue to renew their enhancement plans through traditional methods.
Interesting thoughts by partners: https://msdynamicsworld.com/story/dynamics-365-business-central-partners-examine-microsofts-new-ep-csp-offer
Point of Sales Station (POS)
One device located in the Commerce location, used by any individual, for completing customer facing sales of goods or services.
Store Manager
One device located in the Commerce location, used by any individual, dedicated to performing the following tasks solely for that Commerce location. Commerce location or Store means a physical location (static or itinerant) operated by you when closing goods or services transactions with customers:
Managing and replenishing inventory
Balancing cash registers and processing daily receipts
Configuring and maintaining menu options displayed by the ISV Devices
Purchasing supplies and services required to run the Commerce Location results
Managing master data related to Commerce Location operations
Shop Floor data collection terminal
One device used for manufacturing shop-floor functions such as:
Clock-in and clock-out
Starting and finishing production jobs (including project activities carried out on the shop floor)
Reporting progress
Materials consumption and completion
Viewing documents and instructions related to production jobs
Viewing worker holiday balances
Warehouse Device (handheld scanner)
One device used for Warehousing functions such as:
Receiving
Putting-away
Doing internal stock transfers
Picking, packing
Capturing product attributes
Shipping goods plus performing inventory count checks in the context of warehouse management system
Posting output and materials consumption against production orders when captures as transfer of raw materials and finished goods between a warehouse and production line (all types of transactions are excluded).
6) Version 16.2
Migrate data from Business Central 14.x on-premises to Business Central 15.x online
Customers can migrate from Business Central 2019 release wave 2 on-premises to Business Central online. In order to reach a broader audience of on-premises customers, we add support to bring a customer from the version immediately before (Business Central April '19) to Business Central 2019 release wave 2 online without having to perform an on-premises upgrade first.
Update error telemetry in Application Insights for partners
Error recording (telemetry)
New URL parameter hides web client header
A new ShowHeader parameter is now supported in the URL to access Business Central so that developers and administrators can hide the Microsoft 365 header from the web client.
Ultimately increases your pages vertical viewing space.
Improved user experience to keep things from going wrong
Things added to help avoid issues before they occur such as:
Document Status – To make it easier to notice the status of a document so that you know if it can be edited, Microsoft has promoted and color-coded Status fields on documents such as sales and purchase orders.
Reverse Register – The Reverse Register action on the G/L Register page is now context-aware, so that it is available only when you can reverse the selected G/L register. Conversely, it is not available when you cannot use the Reverse Register action to reverse the specified G/L register.
Document line actions - Line actions, such as Item Availability, Item Tracking, and so on, on documents such as sales and purchase orders are now context-aware. For example, if a selected purchase order line is of type Resource, Item Charge Assignment, or Deferral Schedule, actions are not available because they only apply to the Item, G/L Account, and Purchase Order line types.
Mandatory fields on journals - The Document Number and Posting Date fields in journals, such as the general journal, now show a red asterisk (*) to indicate that you must fill in certain fields before you can post the journal. The same applies when journals are shown with more, or fewer, columns.
Use modern authentication to connect to the Common Data Service and Dynamics 365 Sales
Business apps often use data from more than one source. Common Data Service combines data into a single set of logic that makes it easier to connect other Dynamics 365 applications, such as Dynamics 365 Sales or your own application built on top of Common Data Service, to Business Central. For more information about Common Data Service, see What is Common Data Service?
Installing AppSource apps updates in the Business Central administration center
New Manage Apps page where you can see if action is required on your apps or whether there is an update available that you can install.
7) Dynamics Community’s “Community Summit” currently scheduled to be held at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville on Oct 6-9.
If Michael asks about SSI attendance, “assuming the event is held as scheduled, we would be sending a much more limited group than usual – depending on session speaker assignments and number of existing clients attending”
If it does switch to a virtual conference like so many others, may be a very good opportunity to expose more users to the type of content available at this conference – which is excellent as the best users and partners present alongside Microsoft BC team.
8) Dynamics Business Central partner conference, which was originally scheduled for May and changed to Dec 1-4, still scheduled for Orlando and we will have our regular number of attendees going (of course still ‘pending’ like everything else)
9) The Dynamics 365 Business Central — Accountant Hub has been in public preview in US, CA, UK, and DK. In the Release Wave 2, 2020 the Accountant Hub will be deprecated and replaced by a 1st party extension, called Company Hub. The Company Hub extension will require the user to have a Business Central license.
From July 1st, 2020, new users will no longer be able to sign up for the Accountant Hub. Active Accountant Hub users will receive an in-app notification, July 1st, 2020. Customer can export data from the Accountant Hub and import this to the new Company Hub when it’s available. We will not provide any additional migration tools as the Accountant Hub has been in public preview.
We will share more information about the new Company Hub functionality in the release plan for 2020 release wave 2.
10) Base and Attach Apps
Business Central (Essentials & Premium) is considered a Base App
Has two attach apps
Dynamics 365 Sales Professional
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional
The price per user for these attached apps is $20 per user.
Before you can qualify to purchase an attached app you must first purchase 10 normal licenses. For example, you have 15 Business Central licenses and you want to add 15 Dynamics 365 Sales Professional licenses. The first 10 Sales Professional licenses are regular priced and each license after the first 10 are the attached price.
Segment 3: Feature Segment - Business Central Remote Capabilities
What makes Business Central the ultimate tool for remote workers? Connected Data that is accessible at anytime from anywhere allowing you to be virtually paperless.
Financials
When you connect Business Central to a bank feed service such as Envestnet Yodlee you can keep track of your business transactions and support easy reconciliation of your bank accounts without having to do manual typing or manage a printed bank transaction list. With Bank Reconciliation being easier you can do it more often and from anywhere.
External Accountant
With Business Central’s Bank Integration and the included free External Accountant license you are also able to outsource payment reconciliation to an accountant by providing access to bank statements from within Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Supply Chain Automation
Inventory
With Business Central’s built in Artificial Intelligence the software can predict from when and what inventory you’ll need to replenish. This intelligence maintains the right amount of inventory by automatically calculating stock levels, lead times, and reorder points. You can then use this intelligence to purchase only the inventory you need from home.
Sales and Customer Service
Give sales people who are working remotely the ability to view Business Central information while working in Dynamics 365 Sales. Some examples are:
When a sales person is preparing a quote for a customer they can see the inventory levels and know whether or not they will have enough inventory to fulfill the order.
Sales people can see the price lists from Business Central when they create a sales order so when they add the item to the sales order line in Dynamics 365 Sales, they can see the inventory availability of the item from Business Central.
Honorable Mention: Business Central Internal CRM vs Dynamics 365 Sales
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) Integration.
Outlook
Example: Let’s say you receive an email from a high-priority customer who urgently needs an order delivered in a short time frame. Well, because your Microsoft 365 is integrated with Business Central, Outlook recognizes this email without leaving your inbox allows you to check inventory and create and send both a purchase order to the vendor and a quote to your customer.
Excel
Export data to make quick edits and then reimport data to Business Central all with a few clicks. For example, a controller is preparing the monthly profit and loss statement and he or she needs to edit multiple invoices at once so the controller opens the invoice list in Excel. Within a few minutes the controller is able to add a new batch of invoices and update the status of several others. Then with one click the controller published the data back to Business central where it’s automatically refreshed and updated.
Power BI lets you create, share, and view customized reports from anywhere. Spot trends, anticipate demand
The actual details of the integration between Business Central and Microsoft Teams have not yet been released but Microsoft is committed creating a seamless experience between the two.
Honorable Mention: Reinvent business productivity with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Office 365
IT Dependency
Reduce IT Dependencies
With Business Central and other integrated software running the cloud, non-technical people can better service customers, manage data, and stay connected without having to wait on IT for answers.
Upfront costs
Costs are reduced because there is not a need for certain hardware like a physical server. All of your information is stored in Microsoft’s Cloud known as Azure. It’s fast and has the best uptime in the business at 99.9%. You can also add or remove users as your team changes.
Business Central Updates
With Business Central in the cloud there’s no need to get your IT team involved with upgrades because you are always on the latest version.
Miscellaneous
Within the FactBox located on the side panel of most cards and documents in Business Central you can attach files, add links, and even write notes. These attachments stay attached to the card or document as it processed into other states like going from a ongoing sales order to a posted sales invoice.
These attachments will not show when printing or saving to a file.
PDF Attachments: The Business Central attach as PDF action captures the current document content as a PDF file and attaches it to the Factbox. For example, You can search for a particular Sales Order, select it, and then choose the Attach as PDF action. This will attach a PDF file with the current content of the Sales Order to the Attachments Tab in the FactBox.
Segment 4: Featured App - Jet Reports
What is Jet Reports? Jet Reports is a fast and flexible reporting solution that gives you a simple and easy way to create and run financial and operational reports directly inside of Excel. Jet Reports Software is owned by InsightSoftware who purchased the Jet Global Data Analytics company in 2019.
No Free Trial available for Business Central
Why Jet Reports?
You can pull any piece of data from Business Central’s tables or fields and build any report that you’d like.
Prebuilt Cubes and Dashboards
A cube is sort of like a departmental block of information that is made up of measures and dimensions and pulled into one place so that you can access quick and easy.
Jet claims that these tools will have 80% of all the information you need.
It has an information management system known as the Jet Hub
Report and Dashboard Repository where you can access, store, and share reports and dashboards.
Accessible from any device that has access to a web browser.
Customer owns and has full control of Jet Hub
Really good drill down capabilities right in Excel.
Able to work with Power BI | Honorable Mention: How Jet Powers Power BI video
Jet Reports claims that by removing the rigid restrictions in native Business Central data access tools you can cut reporting times by up to 50% immediately.
No coding or programming skills needed.
Reports are automatically updated with all Dynamics Upgrades. Build it once and use it for life.
Jet Reports has changeable and adaptable report templates that provide key information on areas like executive overview, income statements with actual comparisons, expenses by dimension, account status, budget to actuals and profit loss.
Overview Video: https://youtu.be/Rhc54GntTTI
Pricing - 2 different options
Jet Reports Foundation Package (1 connector, 1 Designer, 5 Viewers, Jet Hub)
$4,995 on-prem | $270 subscription
Jet Analytics Foundation Package (1 Connector, 1 Data Manager, 1 Designer, 5 Viewers, Jet Hub)
$12,795 on-prem | $710 subscription
Add-ons
Jet Budgets (add-on to Reports or Analytics) | Integrated with Excel to help you build budgets quickly.
Viewers
Designers
Connectors
·Training
Closing
Thanks everyone for listening.
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See you next month!