Welcome back to another installment of our Reporting Tuesday blog posts. In this article, we will delve into the fundamental Data Transformation Techniques in Power BI. This exciting journey will enable you to harness Power BI's capabilities to transform and visualize your data effectively. To create powerful and insightful reports and dashboards, you often need to clean and shape your data to make it suitable for analysis. In this piece, we will explore some essential data transformation techniques in Power BI to help you get started on this enriching journey. Enjoy!

In our previous article, we created a new workspace for procurement supervisors. In this article we are going to explain how to add tiles to the workspace. 

When collaborating with customers, there is lots and lots of data, which can be complex and confusing. Sometimes it seems impossible to organize them. But there is a way of organizing them in D365 FO. 

Welcome back to our series of blog posts for #AI and the services provided by Microsoft to support artificial intelligence in Azure and Power Platform. In this article, we will delve into the foundation of every artificial intelligence software, Machine learning.

In the dynamic landscape of finance and operations, the relentless generation of data presents a formidable challenge. Medium to upper-mid-market enterprises, over the course of less than five years, amass an astonishing terabyte of data—a growth trajectory intertwined with a company's age and the annual surge of transactions. 

In this article, we're excited to introduce you to the latest addition to Power BI within Business Performance Analytics (BPA). This new visual, called FinancialReportVisual, is a matrix visualization that show promise to be a powerful tool for both reporting and in-depth exploration of financial data. Let's dive into the details and functionalities of this visual.

It can take a long time to correct mistakes that are made when journals are posted in the wrong company or the wrong ledger accounts and dimensions. D365 FO offers a great way to prevent this from happening by using journal control.

Understanding the concept of Artificial Intelligence #AI

Get on board with the revolutionary digital transformation that everyone is talking about - Artificial Intelligence #AI. In this post we will try to bring this subject closer to the end users by explaining what is #AI and the different concepts that #AI is based on.

A few months ago we discover the new functionality included in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Financial Tags, and as I was expecting this great tool is growing, nice!!

In this post, we will delve into the intriguing realm of Business Performance Analytics (BPA), a promising new feature that holds the potential to revolutionize reporting within D365FO. BPA aims to provide profound insights into various business processes, all within the confines of D365FO. Microsoft has intelligently transformed the application's data into an intuitive dimensional data model, promising an enriching experience for users.

In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, there are multiple ways to setup workflow and sometimes it is confusing which type to use. In our everyday life we have cases where one employee needs to submit, let say his timesheet for approval to a reporting manager, but expense report to a project manager, for the specific project he is working on.

We are in the period of holidays, but there is still a need to pay invoices and normal business continues. People will therefore be delegating their tasks to other people in this period. Instead of reassigning the whole workflow in D365, which will have a huge impact, you can delegate it to another person while you are on vacation, or you can delegate a workflow on another person’s behalf.

Once you start to define and configure your ERP Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, related to customer billing, there are several different options you can use to get a similar result. You can use free text invoices as a simple billing option, sales orders if you manage inventory or even project invoices if you want to control the WIP and revenues.

If you are a customer which is currently moving or planning to move to version 10.0.34 for Dynamics 365 F&O, you might experience the following error on your environments:

Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT) allows us to automate the validation of business processes in D365 Finance and Operations. The recordings used in RSAT are made with Task Recorder, a tool in D365, and then converted into a suite of automated tests. These automated tests are used for validation of data, elements, and business processes.

Work with the customer debt and manage all the collections has never been an easy task:  a customer agent usually controls multiple customers and every day execute several calls, emails, notes... related of each one of the invoices and contacted customers. For this reason in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance one of the most powerful workspaces is Customer credit and collections that includes all the information related to the customers that the agent control (customer pool) in one single place that the clerk can use for the daily work with the ability to do multiple tasks, as example:

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, where we explore Microsoft Fabric—a platform that has the potential to take your data processing to the next level. 

The use of product variants in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is a must for some business' where the same product can have multiple sizes, colors, configurations... because you need to create a Product Master and assign a Product dimension group with all the options available for the product without creating the same product multiple times.

Subscription billing is a relatively new feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and is a separate module, which also covers the old Revenue recognition module.  This module is really powerful for all types of subscriptions scenarios as we explained in this overview and example, but as we were expecting and really looking for, since the version 10.0.32 the new Subscription billing module is linked to the Project management and accounting. Finally the circle is closed, fantastic!!! 😍😍

This post will explore the setup of number sequence in Dynamics 365 (D365), and how to use Ampersand (&) in the setup of a number sequence in D365 and its limitations. First, we will delve into what number sequences are and why they are important in D365.

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, in this post we will explore the Key Influencers visual. This is exciting because it allows you to rapidly find statistical trends in your data. Enjoy! 

I love to check the every month the What's new in Dynamics 365 Finance to review the new features, modules and changes that Microsoft applies to the ERP, an one of the most expecting ones this year has been the Financial tags. I read several posts and articles about it, all super interesting and really promising, because it can be used in the financial reporting as a complement for the financial dimensions (my passion...) but you can edit the values after transactions are posted what it's not possible with the dimensions. If you want to learn more, you can check all the difference between the tags and dimensions in this link. 

Application Insights is an extension of Azure Monitor and provides application performance monitoring (APM) features. APM tools are useful to monitor applications from development, through test, and into production in the following ways:

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, in this post we will explore Smart Narrative in Power BI. This is exciting because Smart Narrative provides a quick interpretation of your data that you can share with others. It can help you make sense of complex information and explain it in a way that everyone can understand. Enjoy! 

D365 for Finance can represent data in many ways, such as in tables or charts. But sometimes customer wishes more specific user interface for certain processes, or we have a business requirement to be achieved in a certain way.

After a month closing is recommended to set the ledger period to On hold, so that no further posting occurs. This is also recommended for previous year periods and future periods.

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, in this post we will explore how to create a navigation bar in Power BI. This is exciting because it allows you to add user interface to your reports without losing reporting area. Enjoy! 

The total integration with Excel for Dynamics 365 Finance is one is the powerful tools that as user, consultant or technical we can use. I think it's amazing but, are you really using all the possibilities that the system offers? I wasn't until I read this great article Make your own Open in Excel Designer.

Since I read about this, I'm using it as much as I can, maybe too much 😅 but I'm really impress. Let me show you the step by step with one example:

Vendor ledger accounts in Dynamics 365 Finance are based on the "Posting profiles" that determine the balance account where the transaction, based on the type of movement and vendor group, is posted.

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, in this post we will explore how to combine multiple web sources to one dataset in Power query. This is exciting because it allows you to mark comprehensive datasets using web sources. Enjoy! 

In this blog post we are going to look at how to make a dataset in excel power query that combines data from multiple web sources. For this specifically we will look at how to get data from several stocks into excel and return it to one table. 

Here when we talk about a web source, we refer to a source of data that can be accessed over the internet using a web browser or a programming language. Web sources can include websites, databases, and other online resources that provide data in a structured format, such as HTML, XML, or JSON. For this we will make a list of stocks to track and retrieve the data from yahoo finance. 

First, we need to open a new excel document, and make a table with the following column headers: Ticker name, From, To, Interval, URL_hist, URL_summary and months of data. These will be used to collect data, and with proper setup you only need to fill in the ticker and the rest is done by formulars. 

This is how we will fill in the table:

How many times you experience, hear and read about "once you post a journal in Dynamics 365 Finance, it's not possible to change it or deleted, you need to post a voucher to reverse the entry"?? As a user this can generates a lot frustration and more when the data you need to change is internal, for example the voucher description. 

Financial reports are now an integrated feature of D365FO.The creation of reports is flexible and can include different hierarchiesof companies, which enables a view across companies.Once the reports are generated, the user can view the reports in different ways, as well as drill into the details, publish, print, and export. This article will focus on the options for export to Excel.

Power BI is a very powerful tool, however making a report that looks clean and still have usability in center can be difficult. In this article we will look at the possibility for using toggle buttons to help keep a report clean and simple, and still pack advanced features into it.

When managing multiple companies, monthly tasks such as depreciation can take time. D365FO enables depreciation across multiple companies. This feature can be setup to run in batch every month, if wanted. It is also possible to add workflow and post the journals automatically once generated. This article will walk through how to configure and run depreciation across companies. 

Microsoft Dynamics Retail (now Dynamics 365 Commerce) is the ERP solution that offers retailers the efficiency and flexibility they need. It delivers a fully integrated, mobile-optimized, omni-channel shopping experience. From point-of-sale (POS) store operations, merchandising, e-commerce, and marketing to customer care, supply chain, and financials, the modular solution can meet the needs of virtually any size retail business.

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, in this post we will explore the creation of buttons in Power BI. This is exciting because buttons make your Power BI reports more interactive and give your users more control over what they see. Enjoy! 

Periodcloseis an integrated part of General ledger. This used to be a separate module, but has been moved to General Ledger. This feature will help you keep track of all tasks that are related to closing a period. No matter if it is month, quarterly or year-end close, this feature can help reduce the number of days it takes to close periods. The setup is a one time and can then be copied to the next period.

Prepayment is a great feature in D365FO, but often customers and even partners are not aware of this feature. Prepayments are typically used when buyingabroad, where prepayments are required. In this article we will go through the prepayment in connection with the purchase order.This minimizes the risk of double paying vendor. 

Welcome back to a new Reporting Tuesday blog post, in this post we will explore bookmarks in Power BI. This is exciting because bookmarks are a great way to quickly access different parts or views of a report in Power BI. They can save you a lot of time and make it easier to explore and understand your data. Enjoy! 

The architect role in an ERP implementation ensures that the overall process is on track and that the strategy laid out by top-level decision makers is followed at all levels of the organization. Thus, Cittros architects work with the finance and functional decision makers in your organization to provide both strategic and operational insights and advice.

One of the first and most important steps of implementing Dynamics 365 Finance is currency setup for accounting and reporting currency. Let's understand the use and setup options.

For this third part of Power BI Web sources, we will explore the use of Partner API in Power BI. This can be done in multiple ways;however, you must add code to your solution. Since, this relies on code no matter what I want to take this opportunity to combine Power BI with python query. Doing this demands that you have a python client installed on the computer and that you have installed the libraries Requests and Pandas.

An important, but often overlooked part of incorporating new IT solutions in an organization is user readiness and adoption of the new solution. Whether you are moving to an entirely new ERP system or going through a Dynamics AX/D365 version upgrade, having a well-defined plan for preparing, training and enabling users is essential to a successful solution adoption.

We will share the most useful tricks and tips that you can take advantage of within Dynamics AX or D365FO.

This guide provides instructions on how to ensure that your implementation project provides the necessary input for any subsequent automated regression test as part of the on-going continuous updates of D365 One Version.

Prior to any automated regression testing, the following manually elements needs to be in place and approved as part of a go-live quality assurance process.

In the first part we looked at how to extract Stock data for Microsoft using Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance used to have their own API, today you can find third party APIs. However, because I want to go into the logic of an API, we will change to a different data set. First, we will look at covid tracking, that is an opensource dataset, and the process is exactly as we saw it from yahoo finance. 

Financial reports are now an integrated feature of D365FO.The creation of reports is flexible and can include different hierarchiesof companies, which enables a view across companies. There are multiple default reports delivered with D365FO.The following will provide an overview to enable you to start using these default financial reports in D365.

Personal experience working with data in larger projects with SharePoint.

More and more of our daily operation centers on data, and the aspect of sharing data is of great value. As a business professional you most likely use Microsoft office problems in your daily operations, and if you work on projects, you are likely to also use SharePoint to manage the sharing of documents.

Web scraping and using data from the internet open a whole new aspect of analysis. This open the option for adding real time data to your reports, web-based data sources can be either APIs or source code for a webpage.

Subscription billing is a relatively new feature in D365FO and is a separatemodule, which also covers the old revenue recognition module. This module is really powerful for all types of subscriptions scenarios.This document covers just a simple example of using the Subscription billing. You can see an overview of scenarios in previous article. 

Subscription billing is a relatively new feature in D365FO and is a separate module, which also covers the old revenue recognition module. There are now multiple scenarios covered in Subscription billing and more scenarios will be added in near future. The subscription economy has exploded in the last years with growing need to manage subscription unique demands. This document provides a quick overview of the new subscription module.

After loading data to Power BI, you have the option to transform the data, for some queries you might not use this at all and for other you might use it extensively. One of the things you can do here is to normalize a data source. You can duplicate a query and then remove redundant data to decrease the size of you report. It is also possible to add calculated columns, let say you have the value in local currency and the exchange rate to your reporting currency. Then you can make an extra column with the value in reporting currency.

In the previous post we saw how to obtain reports for general ledger directly in Excel from D365 Finance using the reports defined as Electronic Reports. In the Fixed Asset module, we have similar reports that can be used for the year end close or the auditors´ requirements.  Obtain these reports can save a lot of manual preparation because the reports include all the key information about the fixed asset transactions and their status.

Most people today know of or have heard of Power BI. Power BI is a simple software and with limited introduction you will be able to produce meaningful reports. It is then possible to dive deeper into the software and create very complex and beautiful reports, again with limited effort. This is one of the things I really enjoy with Power BI. It is an extremely powerful visualization tool.

In D365 Finance it’s possible to define mandatory fields for all the users in an existing form without development required, for example, for the users that will create vendors in the vendor master, modify the form to have all the required fields defined as mandatory by default to avoid errors and missing information.

Power BI is built up with a similar layout to Microsoft other products and when you open a power BI desktop session you will have the following 7 modules:

Cittros has a long-standing focus on the professional services industry. Our team understands the requirements of professional services organizations and the environment in which they operate, allowing us to deliver significant value to your business.

Why you should invest in solution audits

Cittros performs solution governance and performance reviews on behalf of Microsoft and directly for Microsoft Dynamics AX/D365 ERP clients.

Power BI is one of the biggest and most popular BI tools today and it is a central part of many companies’ business intelligence toolbox. Therefore, it is essential to integrate your ERP solution with your Power BI. This post will explore the method for retrieving D365FO data from Azure Data Lake.

We can generate from D365 Finance some standard reports really useful, printed in Excel with the required format for using during the month closing and even generate it for the internal audits.

There are two key reports in General Ledger that I recommend you configure and use it for your month closing or daily validations, let's see the details about the required setup and how to generate it.

Today, Microsoft Dynamics AX and D365 are gaining a continuously larger share in the ERP market for large, international enterprises. The complexity of implementing a new ERP system or upgrading an older version of Microsoft Dynamics in such multi-country organizations is not a challenge to be taken lightly. Although AX/D365 provides the functionality, stability and flexibility to support large enterprises, without having the right team, cost estimate, and time-to-deployment, the entire implementation process can quickly spin out of control.

Working within the area of business applications, such as Microsoft D365, keeps you on your toes all the time. New versions, multiple new features, unpredictable market changes year after year. On top of all these challenges, new approaches and methodologies emerge to challenge us as Microsoft solution partners on how we deliver the best solution for our customers. At Cittros, we constantly adapt to changes as well.

The latest wave of changes in managing D365 implementation projects, builds on concepts from lean-agile frameworks. In the world of Microsoft and D365, this typically means using Azure DevOps to manage the continuous stream of new features, like Power BI, Common Data Storage and new updates versions, dual-write, etc. We, at Cittros are still focused on our customers’ requirements. We keep the solution as closely tied in with the latest version from Microsoft, ensuring that no opportunities are missed – but also that no unnecessary hurdles are introduced. Azure DevOps serves as a tool and a way of working when we track progress on our joint journey. Leaving you to focus on how your organization adapt to future business processes and deliver on promise.

We put our long experience of working within Finance, Retail, Warehouse Management and Supply Chain into the equation as we move along. Using an approach for continuous deliveries and improvements we stay flexible, yet predictable. We have wrapped it up in a tailored, lean-agile approach to ensure a high-quality, continuous delivery. We call it Agility-on-Demand. We even used Azure DevOps and Agility-on-Demand to deliver our own solution, Contract Management by Cittros.

If you are about to embark on your own journey of upgrade to D365, please do not hesitate to contact us, should you wish an informal introduction to how we work.

When I was asked to record a session for DynamicsCon, I felt it was no big deal. However, as the timeslot for my recording approached, it was all I could think about. Was I prepared? Was everything working as it should? I started thinking about what I can do to make sure I was prepared and here are my tips I would like to share with you.

Great consultancy is all about knowing and understanding a client’s business, as well as ability to reimagine their business processes in the context of Dynamics AX/D365 features and modules.