User adaptability and ERP systems are not usually two things you hear together very often unless customisations are involved - which is something you normally try to avoid for different reasons, for example complexity, budget, software support, etc. Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations does however provide some helpful personalisation functionality for workspaces to adapt the system to each user’s benefit. Here is how you can use some of them and other personalisation features to make your day more efficient.
Saved Views is a neat feature where you can filter any form and then save it as a view, which enables the user to quickly swap between different views and get the information needed.
Example of Saved Views
These views can then be selected as the default view and can also be shared with other users in the company. They can be added to a workspace as counting tiles, lists or quick links.
Workspaces in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations are a collection of commonly used links, tiles, lists and jobs that helps users work more productively and efficiently in their roles of the organisation. There are many workspaces available within standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations for the different roles and functions such as Bank management, Project management, Cost administration, Customer credit and collection, etc. Workspaces can help users get a good overview and provide insight by comparing multiple sources of data. This gives users quick answers to the questions they might look for by displaying the correct columns in a list for example.
Example of a dashboard containing a subset of the standard workspaces that come with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations – Purchase related role
Here is an example scenario for you - As a procurement manager, you want a workspace where you can quickly view certain information. You want to see the total number of purchase orders and be able to drill through to see more details of selected orders. You only need to see the receipt date, the supplier account, status of the order and the amount. Lists showing the delayed receipts and pending receipts could also be useful as well as counting tiles showing total lines of such.
Example of the “Purchase order receipt and follow up” workspace
Note: As of April 2022, Microsoft released a change to vertically scrolling workspaces (previously horizontal), which does not really impact the user per se. However, if you are an ISV partner, this might have impacts on your products since it would need to be updated to be compatible with the new format.
If you feel like there is not a workspace that fits your needs out of the standard workspaces that are offered, you can also create your own customised workspaces where you can add any data that is available in Dynamics 365.
See below for a step-by-step guide how to do this.
Add Components to your new Workspace
Overview
Workspace name – This is what you name your workspace during creation
Summary pane – Add live tiles using Push from the relevant object/form.
- Navigate to a list page, click Options > Add to workspace, select your workspace > select Presentation “Tile”, click Configure, select display name, opt to count, choose your tile size, click OK
- Note: The name and size of the tile can be amended on the workspace later by right clicking and selecting personalise.
Data list pane – Add list items using Push from the relevant object/form
- Navigate to a list page, click Options > Add to workspace, select your workspace > select Presentation “List”, click Configure, select display name, columns to display, OK
Power BI tiles pane – Add Power BI tiles using Pull (from/to the workspace itself)
Navigate to the action pane on your new workspace, go to Options > Personalise and select Open tile catalogue
Links pane – Add links (to the Links pane) – using Push from the relevant object
- Navigate to a list page, click Options > Add to workspace, select your workspace > select Presentation “Link”, click Configure, select display name and group name, OK
- Note: If you want to add your new link to an already existing list Group name on this workspace, you must remember the group name and key it in manually. There is no dropdown for selecting it.
Further links pane – Add Power BI dashboards and reports using Pull (from/to the workspace itself)
- Navigate to the action pane on your new workspace, go to Options > Personalise and select Open dashboard catalogue or Open report catalogue
Whether you are organising your information to a view that helps you access key data quickly or creating a brand-new workspace that helps you to meet your objectives, you can use these out of the box personalisation features to help make your day-to-day use of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations much more efficient.
