How NOT to send an order confirmation per e-mail

When utilizing configurable business documents (Electronic Reporting) in Dynamics 365, additional steps are required to dispatch various documents such as invoices, delivery notes (referred to as packing slips in the US), sales order confirmations to customers, or purchase order requests to suppliers. Begin as usual with Accounts receivable > Setup > Forms > Form setup, Print management. Select the appropriate Electronic Reporting (ER) configuration as a Report format.

It’s important to note that the conventional flexible print destinations outlined in Set up print management for a module | Microsoft Learn are not applicable for ER reports. Instead, navigate to Organisation Administration > Electronic Reporting > Electronic reporting destination. Here, for each ER configurable business document, create a dedicated line where you can specify Email as the destination under the Settings.

Programmable e-mail recipients

Here’s where it gets interesting: for each From, To, Cc address, clicking Edit provides you with the flexibility to choose between the traditional hard-coded method of extracting business party account details (+Add, Print Management email) or the Configuration email, featuring a low-code ER formula. When opting for the latter choice, Electronic Reporting grants access to the corresponding ER model.

The From formula can be a simple hardcoded text with the unattended e-mail address: "noreply@erconsult.eu". The mails will be sent via SMTP on its behalf, thus it must be a true Exchange 365 account.

The To = @Business@ field is employed to choose one among several electronic contact addresses (emails) of the party based on the electronic address Purpose. This configuration remains consistent with the classic Print Management setup.

For the Email source account for the To e-mail address, consider the following examples:

Configurable Business Document	Party	ER Formula to extract the account number
Sales order confirmation	Customer	`model.SalesConfirm.BuyerCustomerParty.Party.PartyIdentification.AccountNumber`
Sales order packing slip	Customer	Missing in the mapping; modify `model.BuyerCustomerParty`
Sales invoice	Customer	`model.InvoiceBase.InvoiceAccount.AccountNum`
Free text invoice	Customer	`model.Customer.AccountNum`
Collection letter note	Customer	`model.AccountingCustomerParty.AccountNum`
Purchase order	Supplier	`model.PurchaseOrderInquiry.SellerSupplierParty.Party.Reference`

The subject of the email can either be set as a fixed value, such as “Lieferschein / Delivery note” or dynamically constructed from components of the document model. This dynamic approach is particularly useful for the Body of the email. The FORMAT function with placeholders does not work. Instead, HTML tags must be concatenated sequentially. Thank you Ludwig Reinhard for this hint. Here is a sample:

"Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,"&"<br>"&"Attached you may find invoice "&model.InvoiceBase.Id&” for your order"&model.InvoiceBase.SalesId&".”&"<br>"&"Best regards, XXX"

Reprint documents safely

In the described setup, Dynamics 365 will automatically dispatch your configurable business documents to your business partners via email every time, even if you attempt to reprint or review the invoice, order confirmation, etc. The customers and suppliers will go nuts. Fortunately, a solution has been introduced since 2021: a feature known as Configure action-dependent ER destinations – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn. This feature responds to the button clicked by the user—whether it’s ‘Copy,’ ‘Original,’ or ‘Use Print Management‘—and redirects the document to a different destination, providing a more controlled document distribution process.

With the configuration shown below, reprinted copies of an invoice are directed exclusively to the screen. The ‘View‘ option corresponds here to the buttons Copy preview and Original preview. The ‘Print‘ action is initiated during every post-and-print action when the configurable document is initially generated. Additionally, the ‘Print‘ action is triggered when the user deliberately selects Use print management for reprinting.

Do not send pro-forma documents to your business partners

The electronic reporting destinations unfold their devious nature when the people first preview a document before sending. Dynamics 365 is going to send the document via email regardless of whether the user opts to Use print management or not, proforma or not a proforma. Namely, both generating a pro-forma sales order confirmation and posting a final sales order confirmation are considered Print actions. This aspect bears potential legal consequences.

The recent feature, “Allow ER destinations adjustment at runtime (Phase 2)“, introduced in version 10.0.36, may offer assistance. However, I consider it intrusive and unsafe as it opens an additional dialog window placing the decision-making in the hands of the user: humans make mistakes.

We’ve identified a somewhat unconventional but more straightforward solution by manipulating and corrupting the Email source account mentioned earlier. Consider the following example:

IF(LEN(model.InvoiceBase.Id)>0, model.InvoiceBase.InvoiceAccount.AccountNum, "FUBAR")

If the invoice number is empty, the system returns a fabricated account number; otherwise, it returns the legitimate account number.

When attempting to send a copy of a pro-forma invoice to the customer’s email address, an exception will be raised, stating, “The email address in the To field is not valid.” The Screen destination will still succeed despite this exception.

Electronic reporting blog series

Picking list journal: Inventory dimension Location must be specified

One – if not the – notorious error in Dynamics 365 related to production and warehouse management manifests itself at the “Production floor execution” terminal during reporting as finished (RaF). On the screen, the error message “An error occurred while processing the job…” is displayed.

In the activity center, you receive the following detailed error message:

Posting – Picking list journal
Inventory dimension Location must be specified.

This is due to the failed material withdrawal following the Finish backflushing principle (actual quantity = planned quantity, see The case of a missing flushing principle). The causes are diverse, with the most common being an incomplete warehouse work. This means that the materials haven’t been brought to the machine’s input location, yet someone is trying to report the finished or semi-finished product as complete.

This error pops up very often during the testing phase of the Dynamics 365 implementation. You may say: “Hey, let them finish the picking work first; this may never happen in real life, since the materials are going to be missing for the assembly! The sequence of production steps must be adhered to!”

It is not that simple. I’d say we are talking about a significant design flaw in the Dynamics 365 for SCM system.

Let’s conduct a thought experiment. In an MTS (make-to-stock) scenario, imagine 3 production orders planned for the same product on the same day. All of them get released at once early in the morning, all of them produce warehouse work for the picking of the same raw material. If they are not consolidated into one production wave, it may happen that the warehouse work for the PO3 has been completed much earlier than the warehouse work for the PO1, but the PO1 is started and finished earlier. There is namely no particular order or priority in the warehouse work. The material is going to be at the inbound location of the work centre, the machine operator does not care if it’s for the current or for the next order. Yet reporting the progress at the terminal fails due to the mis-allocation of the material.

Explanation

Presuming the Automatic BOM consumption parameter in Production control > Setup > Manufacturing execution > Production order defaults is set to Flushing principle, and the Post automatically is set to Yes, then the material consumption becomes an integral part of every RaF transaction at the Production floor execution terminal. If the picking list posting fails, the whole transaction is rolled back:

In reality, it is even worse than a clean rollback. On each failed attempt of Progress reporting, a new picking list journal is created. The mere presence of such a picking list prevents any further attempts because the open line(s) in the picking list journal block a portion of the bill of materials through a TransChildRefId identifier – a relationship between the journal line and the BOM line.

With the advanced Warehouse management in Dynamics turned on, the warehouse locations in the master BOM must remain empty. They are allocated during the Release or Release to warehouse phase in Production. If the Resource consumption checkbox is set in every BOM line, then the input location of the work centre is evaluated by the Warehouse management module at the run time as the picking list journal lines are getting created. While doing do, for some reason they are looking for the location in the picking warehouse work. If the particular inbound location is not reserved there in the InventTrans, or the work is not closed yet, the Location dimension in the picking journal is going to be empty:

Troubleshooting

The troubleshooting steps are as follows:

First and foremost, search for any open picking lists for the production order with the button View / Journals / Picking List.
Alternatively, use the list of all open picking journals in the menu Production control > Adjustments > Picking List using the order number. This list should actually be empty, meaning all picking lists should have been posted.
Select the open (not posted) picking list journals and delete them all at once.
Look for any open warehouse work for production, meaning the warehouse work for materials picking: Pick at the main warehouse, Put to the inbound location of the machine. Use the button Warehouse / General / Work details at the production order.
If there is open work, ensure it is processed on the mobile device.
If there is no open warehouse work for the production order, initiate the warehouse picking process again using the button Release to warehouse. A new production wave will be generated, and new warehouse work will be created in the background. If the materials and parts are already at the machine’s location, this warehouse work will automatically be closed, and the materials will be reserved at that location for the production order. The next picking list will have the correct location in all lines, and posting this entry will likely work.
This deals with the racing condition in the above thought experiment, too: the material already found at the location will be rearranged to the current order. However, any open warehouse work for the current order shall be cancelled first. This re-release of released orders may also be automated.
If the report as finished continues to fail at the terminal, the operator may forcefully reduce the quantity using the Adjust material button: click on Adjust material, enter a zero. Repeat this process for all BOM lines. Then confirm the Adjust material screen with OK. Reporting as finished should work now, while the excess material can be eliminated in a manual picking list journal.

If the error happens often, some drastic measures may need to be taken. The point in time for the consumption of materials must namely be changed to At location for most materials and parts. This de-couples the material backflushing from the Report as finished feedback.

Production and Manufacturing blog series

Consumable “Kanban” parts in D365 Warehouse management

Consumable “Kanban” parts in D365 Warehouse management

Low value parts such as bolts, screws, gaskets, clamps, and other fasteners, as well as small electric parts, are rarely retrieved from the main warehouse in the precise quantities by production order. Instead, they are stored in surplus at the workbenches, typically organized in boxes of various sizes. The usage of these parts is not actively monitored; rather, they are automatically deducted from the inventory based on the production bill of materials. Additionally, there is no manual counting of these items at the workbenches. Once the quantity reaches a predefined minimum level, the boxes must be promptly restocked, that’s why they may call them “Kanban” items.

The “canonical” solution in the Dynamics 365 Warehouse management is the Min/Max replenishment: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/warehousing/replenishment#minmax-replenishment The locations to replenish are the input locations of the resources. One box typically stores one item. One screw may be needed at multiple machines = locations. From the list of items at every location you derive the list of locations per item, and these become the fixed locations of the items at the production warehouse. In accordance with the Set up a min-max replenishment process – Supply Chain Management | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn guidance, you choose Replenish empty fixed locations (because a voluntary non-fixed location must have a quantity > 0 to get initially replenished, but this condition is not necessarily met) and Replenish only fixed locations.

In practise, this canonical solution does not always work well. First, the min/max replenishment must be set up to happen often, every 5-20 minutes to simulate an immediate response to the demand. Yet the processes in the Dynamics 365 Warehouse management are essentially PULL processes, and the replenishment is as fast as the warehouse personnel pulls the new work from the queue. It is a different sense of emergency as opposed to seeing a red Kanban card brought by the production worker. If the warehouse workers fall behind, the D365 system is going to detect the critical shortage and include the small parts into the regular production waves, and pick them for the production order(s) in small quantities.

Second, the min/max replenishment relies on the stock level monitoring in the boxes, and the backflushed quantity should better be exact. But the workers sometimes use more parts than stipulated in the BOM. The stock levels in the locations are going to start accumulating errors, and the actual quantity in the boxes is likely to be less than expected, while manual triggering of the replenishment is not possible. In the end, some sort of a spot counting will be needed.

Moreover, at the factory I am consulting right now some of the items are vendor-managed (VMI): a salesperson visits the factory regularly and replenishes the boxes; only a few days later the invoice for the goods is received by the accounting. This makes the internal stock level monitoring an impossible task.

One may suggest deleting these items from the BOM altogether, but this is going to (1) remove the “sink” for the quantities so that the stock levels will continuously grow, (2) distort the price of the product and (3) confuse the workers who use the BOM as a reference. Another suggestion was to make these items non-stocked [in the item model group], but a non-stocked item may not be added to a BOM in Dynamics 365. One may also declare a product not eligible to the Warehouse management, but this choice of the Storage dimension group may only be made once at the beginning of the product lifecycle, while the list of “Kanban” items undergo optimization often.

The below solution that really works relies on the negative picking from a non-advanced warehouse. The negative stock and the auto-consumption at the machine will deplete the stock. The usual purchase delivery note / VMI invoice will increase the stock. Sometimes the stock level recorded in D365 will be higher than the real one, sometimes it will be lower, sometimes it may even be negative, but the production process will not stop because of one allegedly missing screw. The replenishment happens outside of the system in a manual Kanban process triggered by the worker at the machine, or it may be vendor managed, or driven by the warehouse personnel regularly looking for empty boxes.

The setup is as follows:

Create a new warehouse (e. g. NA) where the mode Use warehouse management processes is turned OFF. Set some Default input and production input locations.
Choose this warehouse in the Default order settings of the item as the default purchase and inventory warehouse.
Create if needed a dedicated Item model group, where the Physical negative inventory = Yes. Apply it to the item.
At the released product, keep the usual options Flushing principle = Finish, Material picking in license plate locations = Order picking. You may also want to set the coverage group to Manual.
Make sure the production parameter Journals / Picking list journal / Pick negative is ON, because the negative picking is only allowed when both Physical negative inventory + Pick negative are ON.
In the BOM, use the “Kanban” items mostly as usual, but do NOT select the Resource consumption as we want to consume them from the virtual warehouse NA.

Refer to the blog The case of a missing flushing principle for more insight on the backflushing.

Author Archives: Eugen Glasow

How NOT to send an order confirmation per e-mail

How NOT to send an order confirmation per e-mail

Programmable e-mail recipients

Reprint documents safely

Do not send pro-forma documents to your business partners

Electronic reporting blog series

Picking list journal: Inventory dimension Location must be specified

Picking list journal: Inventory dimension Location must be specified

Explanation

Troubleshooting

Production and Manufacturing blog series

Consumable “Kanban” parts in D365 Warehouse management

Consumable “Kanban” parts in D365 Warehouse management

Production and Manufacturing blog series