Kofi Folson

In the previous versions of AX2012 and before the visible yellow bar for workflow was very clear to the user as soon as workflow was activated on any form.

With 365 it is still the case that the workflow menu presents itself, but because this is not  the same as the large yellow bar it can sometimes be missed, especially for first time users. 

Can we have the workflow option changed to a lighter colour ALWAYS, when it becomes available on any document (This seems to be the behaviour when you click it to either submit or take an approval action) or alternatively change to a consistent colour throughout (e.g. white irrespective of the colour scheme set by the user)?

In a number of implementations, once D365 has gone live the activity of setting up users is a maintenance activity that will either go to a Support Administrator/ Security Administrator or potentially the System Administrator.

In a world where licensing is by Users, a large chunk of this activity will be setting up user as employees join and leave the company.

It is not uncommon to see the activity of setting up users involve placing them in 'User Groups' and 'Teams' to drive the solution.

Currently you have to navigate to 2 different places to do this in Org admin (for Teams) or System Administration (for User Groups).

The design of the User Group form means the columns cannot be filtered and searched as other places within the system. This makes is very difficult when the number of users in Dynamics is a lot, as the administrator will have to scroll down the whole list of find the relevant users.

The idea is to provide a one-stop area for who ever sets up users to do all the actions as required.

It would be a good idea to provide the 2 options next to 'Person' and 'Enabled' flags on the 'User details' fast tab:

1. User Group - This should allow multi-select of any number of user groups that's been defined.
2. Team  - This should allow multi-select of any number of teams defined. But as a requirement a 'Person' must already have been saved to the user record, if the 'Team type' demands a worker is already connected.

In AX 2009, with the PSA module installed, it had a very good mechanism for creating on-account lines/prepayments against a project which allowed you to enter a total amount, specified a start date, and state the number of periods you wanted. The functionality will then automatically create the required lines, split equally to the entered amount.

Can we bring back this functionality on the existing on-account form on Dynamics 365 FO, this will improve the user experience when creating many on-account lines. Again this is even more important, now that we have the ability for straight line revenue recognition. 

This can be very useful in subscription type businesses where you want to use fixed price projects as the engine for billing and revenue recognition. 

Summary of functionality as it was:

A button on the on-account form, 'new schedule', as an additional mass creation mechanism instead of manual lines. 

• The form held temporary values and allowed for the data to be amended up until the user was satisfied and then use the 'Write schedule' option which then created it in the on-account form.

• The form had the following field groups
  • Schedule type
  • Contract value

• Fields available on the form
  • Amount
  • Start date
  • Periods
  • Date interval
• Buttons available
  • Update
  • Reset
  • Write schedule

Field group options:

• Fixed - Allowed the split of the transaction to be based on equal amounts
• Percentage - Allowed the split of the transaction to be based on percentage.

Fields available:

• Amount - Allow the user to enter the total amount to split in the billing currency of the contract e.g. 360,000
• Start date:- allow the selection of the start date.
• Periods - Enter the number of periods desired for the amount to be split up. e.g. 3 means it creates 3 months, if the Date interval is set to MONTHLY
• Date Interval - available values MONTHLY,WEEKLY, YEARLY, QUARTERLY,

Buttons available:

• UPDATE - will create the lines in a simple grid in the form. The grid had the following column headings:
  • Payment date - The date for the invoice (this could then be amended individually)
  • Percentage - stage the percentage portion of the total amount,  if the line creation had been based off a the percentage option(will only display if schedule type is set to PERCENTAGE)
  • Amount - The individual amount for that line where the 'fixed' option in the 'schedule type' has been used  (will only display if schedule type is set to FIXED). 
  • Transaction text - Allows the user to manually populate each transaction text to write onto the on-account form as the description. 

• Reset - Deletes the lines that is in the grid for the process to be re-started. 
• Write schedule - write the displayed amount back to the on-account form and automatically closes the 'schedule' form (prior to writing it back to the on-account form there is a dialog box prompt which asks the user to confirm the write-back to the project). 

There were a few controls ie the system will not allow the total of the individual lines to be more that the total specified in the 'Amount' field. Where this becomes possible because an individual amount on the temporary lines had been amended, the 'Write schedule' button becomes unavailable.

Additional improvements

• Include a default transaction text on the header of the form that can be populated and used for all lines initially before the user gets the option to over type it. 

The Forecast Forms have no totals against them, unless you run a Control enquiry/report. Can total fields be provided on each form to see the total of the amounts in all the forms. 

• This should give ability to filter the form by a forecast model, which has lines on the form and the ability to also filter by dates. 
• Where the form doesn't hold either fields, nothing needs to be populated (e.g. the Fee forecast would not have Cost Amounts)

When I use billing rules as my billing engine I am not able to set a funding limit against a billing rule.

Can you  provide the ability to select  a 'billing rule' line within the 'funding limit' grid.

Provide ability to link an activity on a WBS of a linked project against a billing rule.

Once this is provided, if give the ability to create a funding limit which is linked to that Activity and becomes an engine for tracking fund limits against a billing rule.

Can we have a memo field for 'Project description' against each project. In addition to project name there needs to be ability to provide a longer description of what the project is. 

I know we now have the ability to add custom fields but this will be better out of the box. 

In Project operations Advance and Retainers are created on the Project Contract Header. This is not restricted in any shape to either a Contract Line or Project. This creates a scenario where when you have a contract where the customer has agreed some time and material lines and some Retainer elements, and you setup the Project Contract with 2 Contract lines. You still cannot have the Actuals related to the contract line setup for the purpose of the retainer being restricted to the Retainer lines setup on the Contract.

This request is to provide the ability to restrict the retainers/advance on the contract to a contract line. It already requires at least one project to be associated to a contract line anyway, before creating the retainer/advance lines.

Summary steps

1. Introduce ability to select a Contract Line when creating retainer / advance lines (optional)
2. Invoicing of advance or retainer lines will happen as normal
3. Posting of actuals will happen as normal to a project, which will be related to a contract line
4. Introduce the ability, at the point of invoicing (when creating the zero invoice) to auto pickup actuals which only relates to the contract lines associated to the retainer lines associated with the same contract lines.

This ensure that other actuals on the same contract, related to the second contract line, either on a different project or the same project, is till available to generate an invoice with the customer without considering the open invoiced advance/retainer.

In the absence of adding the restriction, the functionality should behave as normal. Reason for the restriction to be optional in step 1. of the summary steps.