Dynamics 365 Business Central – A Closer look at the Free “Internal Administrator” and “Dynamics 365 Administrator” Licences

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

The most common Business Central licences are the Premium, Essentials and Team Member licences. These are the paid subscription licences that are manually assigned to users so they can work and process data in Business Central.

However there are also lots of other less common licences for Business Central which can be automatically assigned to users with certain roles in your Microsoft 365 tenant, two of which are the free “Internal Administrator” and “Dynamics 365 Administrator” licences.

In this post we’ll take a look at what these licence types are, how they are assigned, and why they are useful.

Licence Configuration

To view all the different licence types in Business Central you can go to the “Licence Configuration” page in Business Central. Below is a screen shot of this page showing all the different licence types.

Its unlikely you’ll see the majority of these in your Business Central environment, however I want to focus on a couple which are more common, and enable users who don’t have a paid subscription licence to Business Central to perform some very important tasks.

If you have a partner its likely you’ll see the “Delegated Admin agent – Partner” or “Delegated Helpdesk Agent – Partner” licence assigned to your partners users 😊

The “Internal Administrator” Licence

In the list of Licences above we can see the “Internal Administrator” licence. This is automatically assigned to anyone who is a “Global Administrator” in your Microsoft 365 Tenant when they click the URL to access Business Central.

For example here in my demo tenant I have a user called “Global Admin” who has been assigned the Role of “Global Administrator”

However they haven’t been assigned a Business Central licence

However when they have subsequently accessed the Business Central tenant via the URL they have been automatically created as a User in Business Central and assigned the “Internal Administrator” licence.

This is a free licence that gives the user the ability to do limited tasks such as manage users and create/assign permissions to users etc. (they also have read-only access to all areas of Business Central)

This is great as I don’t have to pay for a licence for an IT Administrator to do security related tasks in Business Central 😊

The Dynamics 365 Administrator Licence

The “Dynamics 365 Administrator” licence is automatically assigned to anyone who is a member of the “Dynamics 365 Administrator” role in your Microsoft tenant when they access Business Central.

For example in my demo tenant I have a user who has been assigned the “Dynamics 365 Administrator” role in my Microsoft tenant.

Again this user hasn’t been assigned a Business Central Licence:

However when they clicked the URL to access Business Central they were automatically created as User in Business Central and assigned the “Dynamics 365 Administrator” licence:

Again this gives them the ability to perform limited tasks such as managing users, assigning users permissions and creating new permission sets etc.

Its important to note that you clicking the option “Update users from Microsoft 365” on the “Users” page in Business Central won’t automatically pull these users in Business Central. Users with the roles “Global Administrator” and “Dynamics 365 Administrator” have to click the URL to access Business Central and they are then automatically created and granted the licence.

Conclusion

As we have seen administrators of the Microsoft tenant get some access to Business Central for administrative tasks. This is an amazing feature because it allows us to avoid paying for additional licenses for IT administrators while enabling them to take on administrative responsibilities for Business Central including assigning permissions and creating permissions sets.

As an additional bonus this also enhances the segregation of duties within our accounting system as we can remove administration permissions from all the day-to-day users of Business Central 😊 .

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics GP to Business Central – How to Control your General Ledger Code and Dimension Combinations using Allowed Values Filter

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

Due to the design of the General Ledger Account structure in Dynamics GP, its easy to control the General Ledger and Dimension combinations you want to use in transactions.

This is because the General Ledger code itself includes the Segment and Nominal code. Therefore if you don’t want a certain segment to be used with a Nominal code, you simply don’t create that General Ledger Code.

However when you migrate to Business Central those segments become “Dimensions” and are by default available to select with any General Ledger code.

In this post I’ll go through how you can enable the same control in Business Central using the “Allowed Value Filter” option when creating your General Ledger accounts.

How it works in Dynamics GP

Let’s say we have a segment for “Cost Centre” in Dynamics GP, and one of those cost centres is 500 for “Research and Development”. If we want to ensure that only the relevant expense codes are used with that Cost Centre, we simply don’t create those General Ledger Code combinations.

For example, I have an expense code for “Office Supplies” of 31010, therefore I don’t create the General Ledger Code 500-31010 in my Chart of Accounts.

However, I also have other Cost Centres for Sales (100), HR (200), IT (300) etc which I would create the relevant General Ledger Codes. For example I’d create the General Ledger code 300-31010 to record my Office Supplies for the IT cost centre.

This is a nice easy way to control postings and ensure incorrect entries aren’t posted.

The Business Central Approach

When you migrate to Business Central, your General Ledger (GL) accounts are consolidated based on the nominal code. For example, General Ledger codes such as 100-31010, 200-31010 and 300-31010 are merged into a single GL code, 31010. The Cost Centre then becomes a Dimension.

In my opinion, this a much better way to manage the General Ledger accounts, as it consolidates my chart of accounts, and I no longer have to create multiple General Ledger accounts every time I introduce a new Cost Centre like I would have to Dynamics GP 😊

However the question now is, how can I control which Cost Centres I can use with my General Ledger Codes in Business Central?

Blocking Dimension Values by General Ledger code

The solution to this issue is the “Allowed Values Filter” to limit the Dimension Values allowed on your General Ledger Account Card.

To do this open your General Ledger Account card and click “Account > Dimensions”.

Next choose the relevant Dimension, in this case “Cost Centre”, and click to select the “Allowed Values Filter”.

This only works if you select “Code Mandatory” for the posting which is usually ok for Dynamics GP migrations

Now I can untick the Cost Centres I don’t want to be used with this General Ledger code.

Conclusion

In this post I’ve shown how by leveraging the “Allowed Values Filter” in Business Central, you can maintain the same level of control over General Ledger and Dimension combinations as in Dynamics GP, ensuring only valid Cost Centres are used with specific General Ledger codes 😊.

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics GP to Business Central – How to easily convert your GP word templates to BC word layouts

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

Just like Business Central, Dynamics GP allows you to design your externally facing document layouts, such as Sales Invoices / Customer Statements / Remittance Advice, using Microsoft Word.

When migrating to Business Central, you might have lots of different layouts in Dynamics GP that you need to recreate in Business Central, which can potentially take lots of time and effort.

In this post, using a Sales Invoice as an example, I’ll show how you can quickly and efficiently migrate the structure of the layouts to Business Central, rather than recreating them from scratch.

Step 1: Remove Content Controls from your Dynamics GP Layout

The first step involves removing the existing content controls from your Dynamics GP Sales Invoice layout.

To do this extract your Word Layout from Dynamics GP, open it in Word, and you’ll see it has references to the old Dynamics GP fields as per below:

We need to remove these references, so press CTRL+A to select all, and then right click and choose “Remove Content Control”

This will remove all the content controls from the Word Document.

If the layout has headers or footers, ensure you remove content controls from any of those fields as well.

Step 2 – Import the Word Layout into Business Central

In Business Central, go to the “Report Layouts” page, and click “New” and enter the details as per below. Then click OK, browse to your Dynamics GP layout, which now has no content controls, and import it into Business Central.

Step 3 – Update and Export Layout

Now the report layout has been uploaded into Business Central, it will show in the “Report Layouts” page.

The next step is to select the layout and click “Update and Export Layout” which will download the layout and add the Business Central data set.

Step 4 – Open the Layout in Word and make the Changes

The final step is to open the layout in Word, select the Business Central data set via XML part, and start adding the Business Central fields onto the layout.

The great thing now is, you can methodically remove the text from the layout, and replace it with the relevant fields from the Business Central XML data set. This ensures you keep the original design, saving lots of time compared to recreating it from scratch.

Tip: I recommend keeping a copy of the original Dynamics GP template with its content controls intact, so you can easily reference the Dynamics GP data fields.

Conclusion

This blog outlines a straightforward process for rapidly converting your Dynamics GP layouts to Business Central in just a few simple steps.

Incidentally, this approach can be applied to any Word document you wish to adapt with a Business Central data set, though I’ve found it particularly valuable for Dynamics GP migrations.

Thanks for reading!