AI Builder Deep Dive for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Process

Hello the Community ! After seeing a lot of ERP projects I always -still - see some old fashion process where some AI could be really benefit to help users to be more proactive and efficient in their day-to-day process with the amount of DATA handle in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. How can we use and deploy for them an AI Model without to be a data scientist very quickly. How can we train the model and use Power Automate to take care of the rest and automatize the rest ! Yes true we will see a lot of use cases that we can handle with the Power Platform. Let’s jump in !

Dynamics365, PowerAutomateAurélien ClereSeptember 14, 2020AI, PowerAutomate, Dynamics365 Comment

Modern Datawarehouse Dynamics365 Finance and Operations

Hello the Community ! New global post on technical architecture for Reporting / BI and Analytics with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. Here I will present a new capacity to push data coming from Tables and Entities into an Azure Data Lake Storage in real time as well as how to use it after with Azure Synapse Analytics and PowerBI. How to build a Modern Datawarehouse architecture for your ERP and expose custom views & model for your business users in PowerBI. How to use DirectQuery mode with SqlOnDemand mode (pay as query mode - serverless) + Azure Analysis Services : Let’s jump in !

Dynamics365, PowerBIAurélien ClereAugust 25, 2020Synapse, Azure, Datawarehouse, BI Comment

Dynamics 365 Finance Insights

Hello the Community ! I was really looking forward to post this huge article after testing & being part of this new Dynamics 365 Apps for weeks now. As you maybe have seen in my previous articles, I am an AI Addict especially after being involved in multiple global projects with some Azure ML / Prediction model in Dynamics 365 implementation. So this new AI Apps with ERP System (aka Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations) was really my favorite preview so far, and really enthusiast about it. So in this article, you will find all my review / how-to configuration - technical extensibility / feedbacks - functional side also for Dynamics 365 Finance Insights, believe it’s worth it ….

Dynamics365Aurélien ClereJuly 21, 2020AI, Finance, Insights Comment

CDS Virtual Entities with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

Hello the Community,

In this article, I will talk about a new feature that will be in GA with the version 10.0.12 of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, coming in July 2020.

During MBAS 2020 in May, Microsoft already presented this new feature. I was really wondering how it could work well, especially since we already have the CDS DualWrite in terms of sync CDS with Finance and Operations Data. But you will see that it’s here to achieve completely different use cases and the configuration is very simple. How can you access in the Common Data Service, data coming from an external data sources like here D365 F&O without to sync it. How can you achieve that in order to use this Data like in a PowerApps Portal with the Supply Chain Management template, PowerApps CanvasApp or even PowerAutomate. Let’s jump in !

Dynamics365Aurélien ClereJuly 1, 2020CDS, VirtualEntities Comments

Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Reporting : DataLake and PowerBI Dataflow

Hello the community !

New article for you about a Technical Architecture optimized for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations about Reporting purpose - BI.

Here I will present with Azure Data Lake and PowerBI Dataflow how you can deliver a global Datawarehouse for your ERP D365F&O and also CDS or other data sources ; how you can achieve to propose an easy & comprehensive DATA model for end-users (business users) in order to let them built their own report in PowerBI Desktop….

Chatbot Power Virtual Agent with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

Power Virtual Agent will empower every organization to easily provide delightful, natural interactions with their customers and improve engagement and outcomes. This new feature in PowerPlatform can clearly help you building an easy chatbot with a lot of datasources, including of course the whole eco-system of Microsoft, but as well as the 300 connectors of the PowerAutomate. In this article. I will present in this article of course this AI feature connected to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. In the ERP, you could of course build a BOT for Commerce or Retail, Customer Service (Return product) or even Lead generation etc….

Power Virtual Agents empowers teams to easily create powerful bots using a guided, no-code graphical interface without the need for data scientists or developers. Power Virtual Agents addresses many of the major issues with bot building in the industry today. It eliminates the gap between the subject matter experts and the development teams building the bots, and the long latency between teams recognizing an issue and updating the bot to address it. It removes the complexity of exposing teams to the nuances of conversational AI and the need to write complex code. And, it minimizes the IT effort required to deploy and maintain a custom conversational solution. So… let’s jump in !!

Aurélien ClereMay 25, 2020Comment

Expense Management with AI Builder for Dynamics 365 F&O

One of the fundamental challenges with artificial intelligence is that it has historically been out of reach for the many. With limited access to highly sought after resources, drawn out development times, compounded with the added complexity of needing special purpose infrastructure to facilitate the AI development process, there has understandably been various barriers of entry for the broader user base to harness the types of capabilities that fall under the AI domain.

AI Builder is part of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to democratize AI, empowering users of all skill levels to build, train, and publish AI models in a no-code, guided, point and click environment. It’s now in Global availability state, anyone can infuse AI within their business applications with PowerApps, or add intelligence to automated work processes with PowerAutomate, especially like in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations use cases !

For example, do you have the idea of an employee being able to just quickly take a picture of his expense report without having to recreate all the elements in your ERP? AI Builder scans the expense report, with approval to his/her manager and all this generates the elements automatically in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, magic isn't it? Let’s have a look !

Dynamics365, PowerAutomateAurélien ClereMay 5, 2020AI, PowerAutomate Comments

Automate your tests for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

Automate your tests of all your business process before an upgrade or just before a rollout of a new package in production as ever been a mirage for you ? Well… in all of my previous experiences of deploying Dynamics 365, I have always had several questions about this. However the saving of time and therefore of money is stratospheric ! Believe me, spending your time testing all of your ERP processes every month before a monthly update, or even before a rollout is clearly still the majority of cases in companies. I will therefore demonstrate in this article all the capabilities possible with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations to generate automatic test cases and the interests of each. Take a break, a coffee before reading more, it will be long but rich in information….

Dynamics365, AzureAurélien ClereApril 20, 2020Test, ATL, SysTestFramework, RSAT, DevOps Comments

LCS API Database Movement with PowerAutomate

As a Technical Consultant for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations projects, you are surely using Lifecycle Services portal in order to manage your environments (package deployment, upgrade, database movement, monitoring etc…). As you maybe know we have now for few months an API to call LCS with just few methods but still… it’s a massive improvement because it will help you to setup automatic refresh database from production to an UAT Instance !

Here in this article, and also with my Github samples Flows, I will share with you some examples to call this API without any code in few minutes with PowerAutomate. Let’s go !

Dynamics365, PowerAutomateAurélien ClereApril 14, 2020LCS, ALM Comments

PowerApps Portal with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

If you have seen my previous article about Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations with the CDS Dual-Write, I especially highlighted that this feature will be used in order to have a bidirectional sync between F&O and CRM of Dynamics 365. BUT, we can achieve a lot more now, since all DATA for F&O can be available of course in the Common Data Service (CDS), we can NOW use PowerApps Portal to bring a private or public Web Portal on top of your loved ERP. Indeed, if you have been like me as an AX 2012 Consultant, you are still wondering how I will replace my Enterprise Portal that was part of the solution with a Sharepoint. So here we are, we can now do that in a faster & easier way, thanks to the PowerPlatform ! Let’s deep in….

Dynamics365Aurélien ClereApril 7, 2020PowerApps, PowerApps Portal, CDS Comment