Microsoft Dynamics 365: Finance and Operations Apps Solution Architect

A Datum CorporationOverview

A Datum Corporation is an energy copany that has office across North America and 3,000 employees.

Physical Locations
A Datum has the offices shown in the following table.

Network infrastructure
The office in Category has a 1-Gbps internet circuit. the offices in San Design and New York have 100-
Mbps internet circuits. The field site in Edmonton has a 3-Mbps internet circuit.

Departments
A Datum has the following departments:
1. Information technology (IT)
2. Project management
3. Marketing

Microsoft 365 and teams Environment ADatum recently purchased a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription that has the Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan add-on. All users are assigned Microsoft 365 E5 and Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan licenses and Calling Plans is deployed.
Azure AD has the default Cross-tenant access settings configured.
The Teams policies settings are configured as shown in the following exhibit.

The teams client is deployed to a non-persistent Virtual Desktop infrastructure (VDI) used by the project management department.
Allow guest access in Team is set to off.
The Microsoft Viva Connections app is deployed to all users.

Problem statements
A Datum identifies the following issues: An executive at the San Diego office report that video drop during Team meetings.
The Edmonton field site has limited bandwidth, and user report poor audio during Teams calls and meetings.
Users in the project management department report that they cannot give or take during teams calls and meeting while sharing their VDI desktop.

Background

Overview

CoHo Vineyard and Winery is based in the United States. The company has a single vineyard. The company distributes full pallets of wine worldwide and sometimes sells wine by using a private label. Grape growing and wine production operations are owned and operated by a third-party company. The company uses bottles, accessories, and other disposables from a company in China.

CoHo Vineyard and Winery opens a second location. This location manages inventory for Wine Club members and includes a wine tasting room. The location also includes a warehouse and distribution center.

The wine club currently has 200 members. The company hopes to increase this number.

The company holds events for club members in the tasting room and ships both full cases and individual bottles to members. The tasting room is not treated as a retail store. All sales to club members only and purchases must be made on-account.

Company structure

The following graphic shows the company structure:

Organization

The current organizational chart and roles are as follows:

Current environment

Coho Vineyard and Winery currently uses manual processes for most of its operations. The company stores names and phone numbers for club members and prospective club members in a Microsoft Excel workbook. The sales team currently tracks club membership in a separate system. Sales team stock awards are granted on a three-year basis. The solution for the sales team cannot be replaced for three years.

1. The types of wine, such as cabernet sauvignon and red blends are tracked as separate items. Each item will have a year associated with it, such as Red Blend 2017, 2018, 2019, etc. The items are updated for the year association annually.
2. Peak times for order entry could be in the hundreds. This typically happens when first and second shift workers overlap and all users are on the system, as well as orders imported in.
3. Packaging materials, bottles, and accessories are received in the warehouse FOB Destination from the manufacturer in China.
4. Each retailer has individual item numbers, barcode placement, descriptions and other additions such as pictures and details of the wine year and flavor notes.

CoHo Vineyard and Winery has outgrown their legacy ERP system and plans to implement Dynamics 365
Finance. CoHo wants to use out-of-the-box tools which are linked to the system where possible and not create new tools.

Requirements

Licensing and organization

1. Only the President/CEO, CFO, COO, Controller and VP Operations users must be able to access finance and warehouse features.
2. Warehouse users must only have access to warehouse function. All other users must have access to finance functions.
3. The distribution center must have mobile scanners for the warehouse. The tasting room will not have mobile scanners.
4. The inventory cost must be tracked separately by distribution center or tasting room.

Club membership and events

1. You must ensure the members created in their existing system are also customers in Dynamics 365
Finance and that the customers do not exist in both systems under multiple record numbers.
2. When tasting events are planned, text notifications must be sent out to the club members.
3. Text notifications must be sent out to non-club members to encourage the non-members to join the club.
4. During tasting events, CoHo will need access to place orders during the event but will not have the need for cash registers.

Warehouse and shipping

1. The system must be able to track inventory throughout the whole warehouse process.
2. A Certificate of Origin must accompany each shipment.
3. Private label items that are shipped to retailers must be stored and costed as a single item number at CoHo.
4. The system must be able to compare year-to-year performance of a single wine type.

Implementation

1. Business processes must be documented as step-by-step processes and must align with the process flows in a visual format.
2. Data will be migrated and is a requirement for order entry.
3. Data migration must be completed prior to testing.
4. You must track each step of process validation so that the users have ownership for their individual functional areas. The tracking system used should be integrated with the system where possible.

Issues

1. Users are struggling to understand the new system's processes.
2. CoHo is concerned that the go-live will may not go smoothly.

A Datum CorporationOverview

A Datum Corporation is an energy copany that has office across North America and 3,000 employees.

Physical Locations
A Datum has the offices shown in the following table.

Network infrastructure
The office in Category has a 1-Gbps internet circuit. the offices in San Design and New York have 100-
Mbps internet circuits. The field site in Edmonton has a 3-Mbps internet circuit.

Departments
A Datum has the following departments:
1. Information technology (IT)
2. Project management
3. Marketing

Microsoft 365 and teams Environment ADatum recently purchased a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription that has the Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan add-on. All users are assigned Microsoft 365 E5 and Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan licenses and Calling Plans is deployed.
Azure AD has the default Cross-tenant access settings configured.
The Teams policies settings are configured as shown in the following exhibit.

The teams client is deployed to a non-persistent Virtual Desktop infrastructure (VDI) used by the project management department.
Allow guest access in Team is set to off.
The Microsoft Viva Connections app is deployed to all users.

Problem statements
A Datum identifies the following issues: An executive at the San Diego office report that video drop during Team meetings.
The Edmonton field site has limited bandwidth, and user report poor audio during Teams calls and meetings.
Users in the project management department report that they cannot give or take during teams calls and meeting while sharing their VDI desktop.

Background

VanArsdel, Ltd. is a company that uses Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil in an on-premises environment. The company implemented the solution by using Sure Step 2012. VanArsdel, Ltd. plans to upgrade to Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Commerce using Proseware, Inc. as the implementation partner.

VanArsdel, Ltd. has implemented 13 other software systems for customer management and sales.

Current Environment

Methodology

VanArsdel, Ltd. deploys a proprietary methodology named VanPMP. The company plans to use VanPMP for all software implementations. The company uses a standard project template for all new implementations.

Solution

Microsoft Power Apps is used by the sales team to enter sales orders. The orders are then integrated with the current Dynamics AX 2012 R3 instance asynchronously once every hour. All sales orders are invoiced through the invoicing batch process at the end of the day. Sales are used for all business-critical scenarios.

The external systems include 12 integrations, such as Microsoft Power Platform, Office 365, Azure, and third-party systems.

One of the automated accounts receivable import integrations, named integration 1, generates revenue in a business-to-business (B2B) scenario that is supported by sales orders. The integration runs every night and is always the first integration to be tested.

All regression testing is completed manually.

Security

The company uses Dynamics AX 2012 R3 in all the countries/regions in which they operate.

Because VanArsdel, Ltd. operates within the United States, the company must comply with government financial compliance standards. Government compliance requires that VanArsdel, Ltd. manufacturing divisions must not be able to approve purchase orders. Manufacturing managers must not be able to access data in other manufacturing sites. The manufacturing divisions belong to a single legal entity with multiple sites.

Requirements

Licensing
The implementation requires the following Dynamics 365 licenses:

1. 120 Supply Chain Management licenses
2. 60 Finance licenses
3. 50 Commerce licenses

Methodology
The implementation must use the VanArsdel, Ltd. proprietary methodology for the Dynamics 365 implementation. The methodology in the project template must use the Microsoft-recommended approach.
Progress must be tracked in a central location for VanArsdel, Ltd,, Microsoft, and Proseware, Inc. to view.

VanArsdel Ltd. requires a sample methodology in Lifecycle Services (LCS).

The project must coordinate project dates in the methodology with any required Microsoft touchpoints to ensure that the project is on track and implemented according to best practices.

Solution
The sales order entry Power Apps integration must be configured by using out-of-the-box solutions.

Integrations
The company has the following integration requirements:

1. Four integrations must run asynchronously.
2. Eight integrations must run synchronously.
3. The integrations must be able to run after applying updates to the system.

All items must have their own item pricing. Each item must have an MSRP and a selling price that is determined based on the date and location.

Testing
The user reporting test case needs to be reviewed by using the same process in the test environment.

The Regression suite automation tool (RSAT) must be used to automate every critical scenario. All other testing must be performed manually.

Integration 1 must be deployed first. All data must be created and tested in the correct sequence to ensure that pricing is applied correctly to the item.

Security
Dynamics 365 must be rolled out incrementally by country/region. The implementation must go live in the United States first, and then continue to the other countries/regions over the next 12 months.

VanArsdel, Ltd, must assign access to new users based on the site of the users.

VanArsdel, Ltd. requires that Proseware, Inc. perform the following:

1. Objective
1. Determine the software licensing costs for the system based on the contracted costs determined during the start of the project.
2. Objective
2. Audit the security roles for users in the manufacturing division.

Issues

Some users report that too many fields are displayed when the users create records in the Dynamics 365 AX 2012 R3 instance. These fields often prevent users from being productive.

Statement of work concerns Before the project kickoff, several of the VanArsdel, Ltd. IT team members had concerns after reviewing the statement of work. The primary concerns were raised by the following team members

1. An administrator named Admin1 reports a performance impact on multiple large integrations with the Dynamics 365 AX 2012 R3 implementation.
2. An administrator named Admin2 reports a concern with environment management with the global rollout.

All concerns must be reviewed and scheduled with all solution architects in workshops.

Testing

The Dynamics 365 AX 2012 R3 instance experiences frequent issues due to users running reports for an extended period of time on the same Application Object Server (AOS) service. A user named User1 reports a delay retrieving the same report in Dynamics 365.

Background
City Power and Light is a publicly traded electric utility company. The company has a corporate office, four regional field offices, two subsidiary companies that produce solar energy, and one wind power subsidiary.
City Power and Light has 50 percent ownership in the solar energy company. The company fully owns the wind power company but operates it separately from other businesses.
City Power and Light currently operates with varying integrated legacy systems and has difficulty assembling company financials. Migrating these systems and workloads to a common platform would improve visibility into the business and inform decision making. The company plans to implement Dynamics 365.

Legacy systems
1. The legacy system does not have audit capability of configurable workflow based on business logic
2. The legacy paper-based purchasing system does not allow parent-child relationships for vendors. Two signatures are required for purchase requisitions.
3. Purchase orders are entered into the system manually based on signed purchase requisitions printed to PDF and then emailed to the vendor.
4. The legacy procurement system does not have a parent-child relationship for master data management.

Financials
1. All financial consolidate up to City Power and Light Holding, LLC.
2. The finance department employees are currently able to create as well as pay invoices.

Customers
Sales orders from the website are uploaded into the system manually once a day .
International and domestic customers currently post to the same receivable account. At the end of the month, these have to be separated into domestic and international receivable accounts.

Other information
1. There are multiple active acquisitions expected during trie implementation timeline.
2. The item master data for solar panel configurations has multiple variables and variants. As a complex.

General
1. Flexible implementation approach to support frequently changing business needs and requirements.
2. A phased roll-out is needed due to the complexity of the business.
3. Any offsite Travel meals submitted on an expense report without corresponding flight and hotel expenses need to be reviewed.

4. Ten percent of vendor invoices should be reviewed to ensure they meet company policy.
5. Testing of business processes needs to be automated.
6. Customer surveys must be sent out after email customer service interactions. Surveys must contain a rating system and a way for customers to add comments.
7. Employees require one central tool for internal communication, phone calls, and file sharing.
8. Sales representatives need an enterprise quoting tool for solar panel customers.

Technical
1. A cloud-based financial and operational system, accessible on mobile devices.
2. The ability to keep a legacy meter reading application with the ability to use the data in aggregated operating reports.
3. Business processes should be tested with different variables for the same process as part of the testing plan.

Functional
1. Establish and document business processes to assist with on-boarding new employees more efficiently.
2. Parent-child relationships need to be established for vendors with regional offices. Purchasing locations vary from invoicing locations.
3. The ability to create automated wire payments.

Requisitions
1. All purchase requisitions over $50 need to be approved by a manager.
2. All purchase requisitions over $1,000 require senior manager approval.
3. Multiple purchase requisitions to the same vendor should be combined.

Sales
The item master data for solar panel configurations have multiple variables and variants. This leads to complex quoting and sales orders.
Sales representatives must be able to create automated wire payments.

Issues
1. A limited number of users are available for testing.
2. User1 reports that the date fields are not saving during formula entry with saved variables functionality in the RSAT tool.
3. The purchasing department is seeing duplicate vendor records during data conversion.
4. Audit notes from the prior year indicate improvement is needed in roles and responsibilities related to financial management and security roles.
5. User2 reports that parts ordered on P0123 were never received and the vendor has said they never received the PO.
6. User3 provides feedback that important steps during journal entry are being forgotten and new users need hands-on guidance.
7. Service technicians report that they do not always have the appropriate tools or parts with them requiring multiple service calls.