In a previous post, we discussed the benefits of moving from Microsoft’s Dynamics GP product to Dynamics 365 Business Central. If you’ve made the switch, you’ll likely want to make the most of it. Business Central is a powerful and intuitive tool, but, if you haven’t had any training there are likely some great features that you don’t know about. There is also a growing list of new features that may have arrived since the time you learned to use the software. We’ve assembled a list of tips and tricks that you may not have heard of, and some you may have heard of but aren’t using enough.
User Interface
The first set of tips revolve around how information is presented to you.
1. Personalize Your Dashboards
The ideal dashboard will provide you with all the information you need at a glance, so you don’t have to go digging for the data you need to do your job. The problem is that everyone’s needs are different. That’s why Microsoft made the dashboards in Business Central customizable. By right-clicking on any dashboard, you’ll be presented with the option to personalize it. From there, you can drag and drop the workspaces you use the most, or pin tiles to the dashboard for easy visibility.
2. Migrate Personalization
Now that you’ve got your dashboard all set up, you may want to share it with other users. This is particularly true if you are an administrator setting up dashboards specific to different user roles within your company. To make this process easy, you can choose the export option from the same menu you used to customize the dashboard. This will allow your personalized dashboard to be saved as an XML file, and loaded into any other instance of Business Central using the same menu.
3. Optimize Speed with Fast Tabs and Fact Boxes
Fast Tabs and Fact Boxes are both features of Business Central that can be expanded or collapsed. There’s no secret tip in the operation of these features, but there is a little known fact about how they are handled. These features only consume memory when they are expanded. If you are having problems with sluggish performance, or just want to optimize memory usage, collapsing these when they are not in use is a good performance trick.
4. Hide Sidebars
Frequently in Business Central , sidebars will slide out to allow you to enter data. The problem is that these sidebars obscure part of the view you were looking at. We’ve all had those times when we forget what we were doing almost immediately. If the information you need to refresh your memory on is hidden behind a sidebar, you don’t need to exit out of the process and start over. Just click outside the sidebar, and it will temporarily hide itself.
User Management
These are tips that everyone knows about, but surprisingly few businesses are good at keeping track of. Because proper user management is key to your company’s security, we wanted to emphasize them here.
5. Be Careful with Permissions
Being stingy with permissions can seem like a hassle. Doing so requires careful planning to determine exactly which features of the system your employees will need access to. Since nobody hires people they feel they can’t trust, companies are often over generous with permissions in the interest of saving time. But you should only allow employees access to the parts of the system they need to perform their duties. Anything more is a security risk that isn’t worth taking.
6. Offboard Old Accounts
When an employee leaves the company, they should no longer have access to the systems. This is a seemingly simple statement, but many companies either forget or otherwise neglect to remove old employee accounts from the system. Not only does this create extra bloat when you need to manage users, but it creates another potential security issue.
Workflow
This final set of tips is designed to make the time you spend working with Business Central more productive.
7. Don’t Be Afraid of Keyboard Shortcuts
This is another useful, but oft-forgotten tip. Everyone knows that keyboard shortcuts exist, but beyond the typical ctrl-c and ctrl-v for copying and pasting, few people take the time to learn them. If you think about how much more efficient you are with the copy and paste shortcuts, you’ll quickly see that the time it takes to learn the shortcuts for Business Central is time well spent.
8. Use Bookmarks for Easy Access
This is a relatively new feature, so if you’ve been using Business Central for a long time, you might never have heard of it. On nearly every page or report you’ll find an icon that looks like a ribbon-style bookmark. When you click on that to bookmark the information, it will be added to the navigation menu in your Role Center. Combined with custom dashboards, this feature will make finding the information you regularly need much easier.
9. Automate Workflows With Power Automate
Microsoft’s Power Automate is an add-on feature that works with much more than just Business Central . By allowing you to connect all your 365 software with other software in your technology stack, it unlocks a whole new world for Business Central . Once your software is connected, you can take the process further and begin automating your most repetitive tasks.
Enhance Business Central With StockIQ
Dynamics 365 Business Central is an impressively complete package. It even has a set of useful tools for inventory forecasting. However, it does not provide you with a complete supply chain management solution. You can further improve the utility you get from your Dynamics 365 Business Central license by syncing it with StockIQ, giving you more transparency over your supply chain than ever before. Contact us to learn more.
If you’re in the process of moving from Microsoft GP to BC, check out our tips on that process.
