Dynamics 365 Commerce

Custom columns extension point for InventoryDocumentCreationView, most of the inventory views having the possibilty to define/reorder columns during journal creation but TransaferOrder In/Out (InventoryDocumentCreationView) lacks this option

Idea:

Extension point for custom columns in InventoryDocumentCreationView

A-Introduction

The D365 Headless Commerce engine (RCSU/CSU) contains more than 400 APIs packed with Business logic for B2C and B2B Commerce The APIs provide a lot of out of box B2C and B2B Commerce functions such as uploading orders from POS or E-commerce platforms to D365 F&O, redeeming gift cards, inventory lookup or customer credit check. This is interesting for Retail companies, Wholesalers and Manufacturers who sell their products through B2C or B2B commerce models. On top of this, the headless Commerce engine can be integrated into any E-comerce customer journeys to enable Omni pricing and used for any other Omni-channel scenario such as omni-channel returns, omni-channel refunds, and omni-channel pickup scenarios such as click and collect or drop shipment.

B-Microsoft Telemetry

Microsoft telemetry shows that more than 85% of the API traffic hitting the D365 headless engine relates to D365 POS (Store Commerce App). This means that hardly any customers are using the D365 headless Commerce engine and APIs today. For example to use the APIs in their online customer journey or to upload orders into D365 F&O.

C-Root cause

Multiple customers and partners claim that the under-use of the D365 Headless Commerce engine is caused by 3 reasons:

1. No promotion/marketing of headless use from Microsoft side
2. Lack of technical documentation on the use of the APIs
3. Using the D365 headless commerce engine requires E-commerce licensing which is assumed to be more costly than custom integration options - This is why leading partners in the market actively promote the use of custom integrations (like DIXF) which are often costly and risky also looking at OneVersion updates (1). On top of this custom integration options branch customers off from omni capabilities and future MSFT investment in Commerce (2).

To mitigate point 3, Microsoft give customers a lot of discount on the use of the E-commerce CSU, but since this pricing is not official, and may be subject to change after the discount period ends, customers and partners are hesitant to choose the RCSU/CSU route.

D-Current licensing models

On point 3: customers currently require a separate RCSU/CSU for in-store use and use in E-commerce respectively. The E-commerce licensing is organized by tiers and bands based on average order amount and number of orders. In my opinion model has 2 downsides:

1. The model does not fit the nature of modern Commerce which has an omni-channel focus and not a channel-specific focus
2. The model does not distinct customers who (1) use the Microsoft sales clients (Microsoft E-commerce frontend and/or D365 POS) and customers who are using non-Microsoft sales clients (2). Category #2 can potentially be a lot cheaper, because API traffic between their sales channels and RCSU/CSU will be significantly lower (1) and these customers do not need updates to Microsoft sales clients (2).

E-My Idea (please vote!)

My idea is for Microsoft to add a Headless commerce license with the following characteristics:

1. Enables using an RCSU or E-Commerce CSU for 3rd party sales channel integration and headless commerce use in general, such as:
2. Integrating orders from any OMS including Microsoft IOM
3. Integrating orders from marketplaces and social media channels
4. Using D365 headless commerce engine in any online customer journey
5. Integrating 3rd party POS systems
6. Cheaper than order line based integration through DIXF so partners and customers are incentified to promote using the RCSU/CSU route

F-Win-Win

I think this idea is a win-win for all parties involved:

1. Customers
2. Benefit from out-of-box and proven APIs
3. Benefit from high performance and continuity (the RCSU/CSU uptime is very good)
4. Benefit from omni capabilities to empower their frontend customer journeys and seamless data integration into D365 F&O backend
5. Do not require customisation/extensions in the D365 F&O backend
6. Partners
7. Can better position D365 Commerce headless engine for use in hybrid IT landscapes which will help in sales cases
8. Can keep D365 F&O backend more standard including the HQ commerce setup - This leads to reduced project risk and faster implementation
9. Can better explain the licensing model to Retailers, Wholesalers and Manufacturers who have B2C and B2B commerce models and may not necessarily be interested in the native D365 sales channels (D365 POS or E-commerce)
10. Have more options to serve the customers in their Transformation goals - For example by bringing AI innovation into non-MSFT sales frontends - This will help cross-selling F&O backend and other Microsoft services like Power Platform and Azure services
11. Microsoft
12. Will see more use of the D365 RCSU/CSU which is better suited for high API/order volume than D365 F&O backend - So this can potentially optimize margin for Microsoft
13. Can actively promote the use of D365 Commerce headless engine in non-MSFT ecosystems - This will increase product range and potential in the market which is now completely ignored
14. Can bring AI innovation into non-MSFT sales frontends which helps cross-selling other Microsoft products like Power Platform (with AI builder) and Azure services
15. Will improve the "Better together" story, for example for IOM and D365 Commerce in 1 landscape

When a sales order is cancelled in HQ the status of the order summary details in EComm are updated as 'FREE'.

On the order summary: Subtotal, Tax and Total are all displayed as FREE when they should be displayed as zero value.

The line-level details show a correct 'cancelled' status, also the pricing is correct.

This is not correct and misleading information to the customer.

As a retailer that deals with B2B orders using our retail stores, we would like to be able to fulfill an order created in AX where a serialized product has a quantity greater than 1. We would imagine this working similar to the inbound and outbound operations. If possible we would even want to expand this to allow creating an order with quantity greater than 1 then fulfilling it all from the POS. This is a common scenario we do multiple times daily.

we have an issue with duplicating phone numbers and customer's name in the customer’s account at the cashier in pos which confuse cashiers. When the customer enters a phone number or names that already exists, they are able to add another customer with the same information.

This duplication causes confusion, to reduce the confusion we suggest linking information with the existing customers accounts to avoid duplication.

D365 FO has a provision to define what operations can be performed by cashiers in POS and what operation requires manager privileges.

If an operation (like a manual discount) requires manager privilege, the system pops up a login window for the manager to log in (approve) so that the cashier can perform that operation.

The manager details who approved the operation are not captured in the POS transaction. This is required for audit purposes.

When store associates are performing order fulfillment operations (picking, shipping) in POS - barcode scanning should be enabled. Similar to scanning an item in a cash and carry transaction, the scan of the barcode confirms the item, rather than just selecting "pick", "pack" or "ship" for an item in the POS.

Many apparel items (colors/sizes) are similar and humans make mistakes. Scanning should be a part of the process when processing an outbound order.

Is there anything that can be done from a store level to inform the cashiers that they’re selling into a negative? We have an issue whereby the stores are selling into negatives frequently for a few different reasons and it would be good for them to have visibility at store level, instead of only on warehouse level.

We believe it would improve business performance to implement an inventory management system that provides real-time inventory updates which help cashiers see the current inventory levels based on on-hand information in HQ and avoid selling products that are not in stock within the system. An alert/notification would also be a good indicator to the cashier that the specific item being sold has no stock available from the system and it would be necessary to be addressed prior continuation of the sale.

As additional feedback concerning the new multi-outlet ordering feature planned to be released in Wave 1 2024, B2B customers have an other problem that is related and could/should be solved in this context, too.

This is concerning the mode of delivery!

Currently on the website you can only display all mode of deliveries that have been assigned to the retail channel, the products and the countries etc.

But in a B2B Scenario, we have the situation that we have default (and agreed) mode of deliveries for the CustomerOrganization type on the customer master data and/or the individual delivery addresses of a customer.

Therefore it would be of great advantage if we were able to control that only those mode of deliveries are displayed on the B2B website when the contact of the customer is placing an order.

The existing delivery addresses should be visible as well and when a new delivery address is created on the Website the contact should also be able to select the mode of delivery from the previously mentioned selection of modes of deliveries.

Currently nothing like that is on the Microsoft roadmap!

Some further additional and a bit more detailed thought, that we also provided to the Microsoft Product team directly: 

The current functionality might be sufficient for Call Center, POS and eCommerce B2C channels, but with B2B channels we think the business process is a bit different, because here the actual B2B customers are entering their orders directly and we need to refer to the previously agreed modes of deliveries only.

In a B2C channel you would offer more or less standard services like UPS Expedited, UPS Standard, UPS Express etc. to all of your customers for a channel!

But since multiple B2B customers are also ordering from the same B2B channel, you have different customer specific mode of deliveries, like for example with different truck forwarders, since most of the B2B customers have special rates with certain forwarding companies etc.

You can not simply show all the various modes of delivery to all B2B customers, because many of them would be irrelevant for the individual customers and would create lots of confusion.

The scenario is that a customer walks into the store to pay for the balances that are due on their account. However, the organization needs to charge a X% surcharge on the payment if it is being paid by credit card. So, it will be good to allow the cashier to add certain amount as a header charge on the transaction so that a portion of the amount that the customer pays goes towards the charges.