D365 Finance & Operations Copilot Capabilities – AI Summaries

 

  

Hello Everyone,

We are all familiar with the transformative potential of AI and generative AI across various platforms. This revolution extends to our area of keen interest—Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP. Specifically, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations introduces Copilot, a feature designed to leverage AI to enhance the capabilities of our financial and operational management across D365.

Microsoft recently expanded its suite of features with the introduction of AI Summaries in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Copilot. In this article, I will guide you through the detailed features of AI Summaries, the prerequisites for their use, and how to enable them in your system.

This article covers below topics.

Ø  Introduction to D365 F&O Copilot

Ø  D365 AI Summaries with Copilot             

·        Introduction

·        Features

·        Prerequisites

·        Feedback Option on Summary Pages

·        Capabilities of AI summaries with Copilot

·        References

Before deep dive into AI Summaries lets have an introduction on Microsoft D365 Finance and Operations Copilot.

Introduction to D365 F&O Copilot:

D365 Finance and Operations Copilot is an intelligent assistant integrated within the Dynamics 365 ecosystem. It leverages AI and machine learning to provide users with insights, recommendations, and automated processes, helping to streamline complex tasks and improve decision-making.

D365 Finance and Operations Copilot Capabilities :

•        Sidecar (Chatbot) – Copilot sits alongside the application as a sidecar and provides conversational support to the user. The sidecar is the primary Copilot interface in finance and operations apps. It provides a natural language chat experience that helps users work with application functionality and data. For example, the generative help and guidance with Copilot (preview) feature is provided as a sidecar.

•        Embedded – These Copilot features add intelligent capabilities to the application itself. In this way, they bring AI to the center of the application experience. For example, in the Confirmed purchase orders with changes workspace, AI capabilities that are built into the page help users understand and react to changes in confirmed purchase orders.

•        Outside – External agents help orchestrate across different apps and tasks. For example, users can use Copilot to ask questions about finance and operations data. For more information, see FAQ for finance and operations data on Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Now lets get into our topic D365 AI summaries with Copilot.

Introduction to D365 AI summaries with Copilot :

AI summaries with Microsoft Copilot are available on many of the most-used pages in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

These summaries provide a quick overview of the most important information that's

• Related to the current page / form / record
• Personalized for the current user.

Summaries can include information such as

• The number of lines on a purchase order
• The number of items in a warehouse
• The number of overdue invoices for a vendor.

The information that Copilot provides depends on the current page and user context. For example, the information can vary based on the other pages that the user works with the most, and it's limited based on the user's security roles and permissions.

The detailed Features, Prerequisites, enable / disable features, example summaries and feedback.

Features of AI summaries with Copilot :

Below is the Holistic view of AI Summary features in related business processes.

Copilot Summary - Products and Released Products :

Below screenshot shows the Product summary when you hover over on the item number on the sales order line.

Below screenshot shows the released product summary when you details page of items.

Copilot Summary - Vendors and Customers :

You can see a the below summary details on copilot summary fast tab of details page of Customers and vendors form.

Copilot Summary - Purchase Orders :

You can see a the below summary details on copilot summary fast tab of details page of purchases orders form.

Copilot Summary - Sales Orders :

You can see a the below summary details on copilot summary fast tab of details page of Sales orders form.

     

1-Filter to not fully picked lines : This function will filter the sales lines which are not fully picked which helps user to review them easily.

2-Filter to overdue or nearly overdue lines : This function will filter the sales lines which are overdue or nearing overdue which helps user to review them easily and can take necessary actions.

Copilot Summary - Warehouse Management App :

Warehouse Management mobile app insights are provided to warehouse workers when they sign in (depending on configuration) and are available on demand by going to the Summary page.

Prerequisites:

Below table describes the prerequires of D365 ERP, Power Platform & D365 feature management.

  

Note : All these features in D365 are enabled by default within the feature management workspace. However, if your customer does not need a specific feature and wishes to disable it, they can do so through the feature management settings.

Customers will be excited to explore these new features and may seek additional insights tailored to their business needs.

Feedback Option on Summary Pages :

In the all the Summary pages you have feedback options like / dislike. When you wanted the refined information in the summary pages don’t forget to provide feedback. Depending on the feedback given and in the next run or refresh the page will provide you more accurate results.   

Capabilities of AI summaries with Copilot :

• Generates natural-language summaries of information that's available on the pages where they appear and other related pages.
• Uses the gpt-3.5-turbo generative AI model to generate the natural-language content.
• Summaries and content are generated from data records that are stored in the system.

References :

You can find more information in below Microsoft learn pages.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/get-started/copilot-summaries-overview

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/faq-summaries

 Thanks,

Happy Learning 😊

A reference to Dynamics.Ax.ProcessAutomation is required to compile this module

Hello Everyone,

For our customer, we recently upgraded to version 10.0.40.

Version validation for business scenarios, integrations, and reporting went smoothly in the T-2 and PROD environments.

However, when attempting to upgrade the T-1 Development and Build environments, we encountered the following build error.

Issue :

The deployment of version 10.0.40 was successfully completed through LCS. However, when attempting to build the custom model, an error occurred: "A reference to Dynamics.Ax.ProcessAutomation, version = 0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null is required to compile this module."

Resolution :

When I checked our custom model for referenced models, I did not find the ProcessAutomation model.

After including the ProcessAutomation model, the build was successful.

Therefore, if you have not already referenced this model, you may encounter these issues.

Conclusion :

Include a reference to the ProcessAutomation model in your custom model to resolve the roadblock.

Mean while i was trying to explore what is Process Automation Framework and found below interesting information.

The process automation framework is a set of APIs that allows implement process automation processes.

Process automation is based on a system-critical batch job called poller that runs every minute and invokes various subsystems of the process automation framework.

Please read the below interesting blog written by Francisco Zanon on Process Automation.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/process-automation-framework-francisco-zanon/

Thanks for reading.

Happy Learning :)

Environment administrator for D365 F&O Production instance

Hello Everyone,

While provisioning D365 finance PROD instance in LCS, service accounts are recommended instead of named user accounts because of the following reasons.

• Environment cannot be able to access if the named user account is used as admin and user is not available.
• Some scenarios where only the Admin user can access an environment are:
  • First log-on after initial deployment to any environment – Only the admin user account can access the environment
  • First log-on to an environment after database movement – Only the admin user account is enabled
  • You will have to add the generic account to the LCS project as user in order to set it as environment admin
  • The Admin user is critical in some situations in the apps, such as when system batch jobs are run. These jobs must run with administrator privileges.

But in some cases, administrators realizes later after provisioning the environment with a named user.

Can change environment admin?

Yes, definitely you can change the environment admin user, but it may require a downtime. 

Impact : Causes downtime to the target finance and operations apps environment.

Prerequisites :

• You must be a project owner in the LCS project.
• The new administrator account must be a member of the same tenant that the environment belongs to.
• Plan for the downtime with appropriate approval in your organization.
• If you are going to change domain for the environment, you need to get new ISV license file(s) that references the new domain.

Update environment administrator :

For updating the environment administrator, please go through the steps explained in below.

1. In LCS, go to your project, and open your environment details page.
2. Select Maintain > Update environment admin.
3. In the dialog box that appears, select another Project Owner or Environment Admin user from your LCS project.
4. Select Save.

Please refer Microsoft docs LINK for more information.

Thank you 😊

Happy Learning.

Add or Remove fields to be available by default while using the Excel add-ins

Hello Folks,

Data management framework (formerly known as DIXF) is a powerful architecture in D365FO which supports for all integrations. Data entities which are part of DIXF is the only way (in most of the cases) to communicate with D365FO through an external system.

Recently I come across with a requirement where we need to have more default fields than the standard fields available when opened the entity data using excel add-ins. Using the excel add-in designer you can add but it may be difficult for end users to do this always and to find the required fields to add. In this post will take you through how to add or remove fields required to make defaults fields to use in the excel-addins.

In D365fo the data can be exported to excel using the “Export to excel” option which export the data for fields available in the grid, if required export more fields data you can add more fields in the grid using the personalization and insert columns.

But when you use the “Open in excel” option which uses the data entities available for the current form which can be used to manage the CRUD operations using the excel Add-in. This is a very good tool for business users to manage the data for their day to day operations. 

Coming to the main point of the topic if say customer wanted to add more fields or remove couple of fields by default when opened in excel.

For that you have to go to visual studio, open the data entity ( if the entity is standard, create extension). Go to fields field groups àAutoReport field group. Here you can see all the fields which are already showing on the excel. Now you can add or remove or change the order of the fields you want.

Once do the build, after the successful build, refresh your browser and run the excel add-in to see the expected changes.

Here I have taken the simple example of customer group standard entity, you can see the fields are already coming in excel.

Above screen shows the existing fields information, now will do modifications as follows. Here added three new fields as shown in below and you can see the results in excel after the successful build.

When the customer group opened in excel add-in, I see the change as follows. Here we see only one new field coming up in the excel sheet even though we have added three fields.

Don’t worry, there is a reason for not coming up all the fields.  There is a field property called “Access Modifier” on the entity field, by which we can restrict it. If its public then we can see the that field and if its private you cannot see the field. Out of three fields newly added, two are private and only one is public, that’s why in the new excel there is only one new fields shown.

In case, the restricted fields you wanted to enable for excel add-in for a standard entity, then you cannot change the property directly, in such case you can duplicate the entity and can make the property change to public to show it.

I hope its helpful, will come up with another interesting topic in the next post.

Thank you 😊

 

 

D365 FO Connector error : Could not retrieve values, Badgateway

Hello Everyone,

Recently come across with an issue with D365FO connector from an cloud deployed instance which was used to consume the Odata services from azure logic app and power app

Issue:

Recently got an issue with D365FO connector from an cloud deployed instance which was used to consume the odata services from azure logic app and power app. It was all working fine and one fine day all of a sudden the power app and the logic app stopped fetching the data from FnO and giving the error as “Could not retrieve values, Badgateway More diagnostics information:  x-ms-client-request-id is 'xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx'.

 

Root cause:

I started troubleshooting and tried to run the web instance and instance of FO is also not running with https and its only running in private. And realized certificates would have expired and checked the same in LCS and the certificates were been expired.

Solution:

I ran the Rotate certificates/Rotate Secrets using the LCS VM options, and checked for web instance which started working and the Bad gateway issue also has been resolved.

You can refer standard Microsoft documentation for the process to Rotate Secrets for cloud deployed D365FO instance.

Thanks.

Happy Learning !