The April 2020 Wave 1 updates for Dynamics 365 Business Central include a great deal of fine-tuning and less of major changes. This wave focuses on service quality and accessibility. In particular, Microsoft has delivered major improvements through integration with Common Data Service to improve the ability to work with other Dynamics 365 products. Also, Microsoft has greatly improved the ability to deprecate legacy code to improve the future evolution of Business Central.
Microsoft continues to improve the client experience to enhance end-user productivity through improved data entry and key requested features. As in other waves, Microsoft continues to pay close attention to user requested features and ensures many of these are included in each wave.
A major improvement for those Microsoft mid-market ERP customers who are not using Business Central includes customer migration tools to help move customers from Dynamics GP and certain versions of Dynamics NAV. Microsoft is committed to using Business Central as a platform to drive migration from existing Dynamics GP and SL customers.
New Features in 2020 Wave 1
Recurring sales and purchase orders
Business Central now allows users to handle recurring sales and purchase documents by automatically inserting predefined recurring sales and purchase lines.
Improved Bank Reconciliation
Microsoft has added additional data space for processing bank reconciliations and improved the reporting process.
Specific Contacts for Sales and Purchase Documents
Specific contacts can now be set up for sending documents. As an example, customer statements could be sent to an accounting contact, whereas sales documents could be sent to the purchasers.
Attach to PDF
This new option allows documents to be printed documents to the document attachments function and made available through the fact box.
Receive more items than ordered
Users, subject to pre-set tolerances, are now able to receive a higher quantity of ordered items than were originally specified without requiring additional approval.
Reverse Qty. to Invoice when cancelling order
Invoice quantities on partially received orders can now be corrected by cancelling the invoices and resetting the Qty. to Invoice.
Resources can now be purchased
Users have been asking for this feature for years and it has finally been added into Business Central, even if it was too late for Dynamics NAV.
Migrations to Business Central Online
Dynamics GP
Customers on Dynamics GP can now take advantage of enhancements for migrating Dynamics GP chart of accounts to Business Central. All customers or only active customers can be brought over as well as vendors. Same for inventory items.
Business Central On-premises
On-premise customers on version 14 can now migrate their data to the online version of Business Central 15.
Changes to the Client Interface
There were too many changes in this area to list but the major ones include:
- Disabling the ability to export data to Excel where there are data security issues
- Improved load times for pages to improve system performance
- Improving user navigation and page optimization
- Adding a Find function on the Role Explorer and improving the use of filters
Improvements to the Application Language
Most of these are too technical for the scope of this article but there are two offering benefits to end users.
- Allowing users to access the camera on a device
- Tracking the location of a user, which would be extremely useful in any type of field application
Power Platform
Business Central has now been integrated with Common Data Service, which will greatly improve integration with the other Dynamics 365 products and especially the Power Platform products.
Improved Service
Administrators will now be able to see current database locks, see table sizes, see and cancel open sessions, check performance of web service requests, and set limits for reports and web service calls. The end users may not see these improvements directly but they greatly enhance the administration of the system.
Learn more here on Wave 1 of Dynamics 365 released in April, 2020, and please contact us here if you would like more information or need support.
*Should you buy your Dynamics 365 Business Central system from your IT provider? Read our previous blog here to learn the reasons why this is probably not a good idea.
