Focus on fundamentals
The October ’18 release continues to expand supportability efforts for the community. This allows the community to build extensible solutions integrated with the Finance and Operations application. Microsoft manages the continuous updates of the platform and financial reporting with no costly upgrades required. Customers can opt for a fully data-resident online Finance and Operations subscription. All customer data and code will be contained in the data region of their choice. Data residency will be made available in Europe and then expanded to other regions.
- Improving the business user experience. Business users see fundamental day-to-day productivity gains by being able to save and share optimized views of data, group data based on a list of values, filter by date, and allow for Excel-like filtering by column headers. Business users want control of their experience. Personalization capabilities empower them to add/remove columns from a grid and hide any field to simplify and increase the speed of data entry.
- Increasing productivity, control, and auditability. Customers increase the speed and accuracy of their work with data entry enhancements. Additional controls for new master data provide companies insight into and tracking of their key business processes. Customers gain improved reporting, auditability, and drill-back with additional subledger data translated in multiple currencies.
- Extending global coverage. Global or regional customers with offices in United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia can start using Finance and Operations; this release supports regulatory requirements for these countries.
Intelligence and insights
Bringing intelligence and insights to the forefront for business users increases efficiencies and productivity for the organization. Microsoft has launched several new experiences that can stand alone or work better together with Finance and Operations.
Better together
Microsoft is improving the digital workspace by streamlining the power and experiences of business applications, allowing business users to be more efficient while navigating across applications.
- Sales and service integrations. Seamless integrations leverage the CDS data integrator support scenarios for Customer Service and Finance and Operations. These integrations continue to bring new experiences such as project-based travel expenses, work breakdown structure support to manage planning, and billing to support project managers. Field technicians using Field Service have insight to the inventory information stored in Finance and Operations, allowing them to update inventory levels and complete material transfer. In addition, companies installing or servicing sold goods will benefit from visibility to the full sales and service process.
- Dynamics 365 for Talent integration. The CDS data integrator provides two-way integration for employees who are using Finance and Operations and Dynamics 365 for Talent. Employees will experience a seamless transition as data is shared between these systems.
- Regulatory configuration service. The regulatory configuration tool (known as Electronic Reporting) is now an independent service. This service allows partners and customers using multiple versions of Finance and Operations and earlier Microsoft Dynamics AX versions (such as AX 2012 and AX 2009, for India only) to configure regulatory features only once and use one common service for various versions. The regulatory configuration service targets a no-code programming approach, allowing power users to configure frequently changed legal requirements for regulatory reports, e-invoices, payment formats, and tax rules, rather than writing code in multiple applications. Regulatory configuration service is the first component of regulatory services, providing regulatory functionality that can be integrated with any business application. This service allows developers building applications to focus on their core functionality rather than worrying about meeting the increasing number of legal requirements around the globe.