Copilot in supply chain – Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

Microsoft is working hard to incorporate the AI Copilot in Dynamics 365 Products. In this article we will  see how AI copilot can help a purchasing manager to handle a large amount of changes that may occur on Confirmed purchased order on Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

Prerequisites:

According to the Microsoft learn,

1 . You must be running Supply Chain Management 10.0.34 or later. – My environment is on 10.0.37 so I gat no worries.

2 . On feature management turn on : Review changes to confirmed purchase orders based on downstream impact. This is enabled by default on version 26 and later

 

3 . Enable the SQL row version change tracking license key.

Firstly put the environment on Maintenance mode on LCS then navigate to the License Configuration windows following the path on the screenshot below:

4 . Upgrade the Finance and Operations Virtual Entity solution

We need to update the mentioned solution on the powerplatform by logging to Power Platform admin center.

1. Go to Power Platform admin center.
2. Select the Power Platform environment that’s connected to your finance and operations app, and open the detail view.
3. In the Resources field, select Dynamics 365 apps.
4. Find the app that’s named Finance and Operations Virtual Entity.
5. If the status is Installed, you’re already running the latest version. If the status is Update available, you must update the solution by following these steps:
   1. Select the ellipsis button (…), and then select Update.
   2. Accept the terms of service, and then select Update.

5 . Install the Copilot application in Supply Chain Management on PowerPlatform environment.

 

6 . Enable required security roles in Dataverse.

The procurement officer needs to have some access on the dataverse : The AIB Roles and Finance and Operations AI security roles in Dataverse.

 

Sigh! Now that we have done all the setup , let’s move to Dynamics Finance and Operations App to see how the copilot interacts with the procurement module to make the job much more easier for a purchasing manager or a Buyer.

 

Let’s head to our new found love, the Confirmed purchase orders with changes workspace.

 

 

One of the likely challenge companies into sales, production face is when purchase orders have been confirmed and dependent sales order or production orders have been created and the vendor comes back with changes. It could be that the vendor will not be able to deliver the exact quantity or the delivery date would have to change. You will agree with me that, it will impact on the business. To have a better view of these changes, the developer would create some reports that both sales, purchasing department have to analyze these data.

The new workspace with copilot will not only identify these Confirmed purchases with changes, but it also classify them by the severity of impact; low or high on downstream orders.

• Low impact changes – This tile highlights changes to purchase orders that have no known impact on downstream orders that have been created by planning, also called pegged orders. A summary of changes is generated to help you review and validate the purchase orders.
• High impact changes – This tile highlights purchase orders that have known downstream impacts on pegged orders. These high-risk changes are summarized together with the detected impacts, to help you investigate further and decide what action to take.
• Impacted downstream orders – This tile summarizes impacts on pegged orders by the number and type of orders, and it shows the purchase order changes that cause each impact. This information helps you review potential downstream impacts based on the latest master planning run.

 

Order with low impacts can be confirmed since we can deal with the changes.

To disagree or communicate the impact of these changes to the vendor, copilot can easily help with a text or an email that can be sent by just clicking the Send Email button.

And the email is auto generated with the vendor’s email address as the recipient.

Copilot intelligently suggest a format with the number of lines on the Purchase order and you could easily modify before sending out.

Preparing to demo this new feature to our existing customer has been a great experience.

 

We hope to see such coming in Dynamics Finance which set to be generally available in early 2024.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/finance/accounts-receivable/collectionscoordinatorsummary?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5005271

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/finance/accounts-receivable/collectionsworkspace?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5005271