Dynamics 365 Business Central – How to create a workflow that only requires approval from “one of” the defined Approvers

Gavin Whittaker2 Comments

Introduction

Recently I encountered a requirement for a workflow to be created that would send an approval to multiple users, however only one of the approvers needed to approve the request for the workflow to be fulfilled.

This post walks through how I achieved this using a Workflow User Group, and some tweaks to the standard Workflow.

Although at first I thought this would be relatively straight forward to configure, I did hit a bump in the road on way (see step 5 below). Hopefully this post will help others who encounter the same issue 🙂

Scenario

For the approval of Vendors its been decided the approval should be sent to two approvers, however only one approver needs to approve the request, for the approval to be fulfilled. Therefore, when one approver approves the request, all open approval entries for the other approver should be closed.

Step 1 – Workflow User Group

The first step is to configure a Workflow User Group with our approvers as per below:

As you can there are two approvers in the Workflow User Group, and I’ve entered a sequence number of 1 for each user.

Step 2 – Workflow Setup

To create the Workflow I’ll use a Workflow Template as per below:

I’ll then edit the workflow as described in the steps below.

Step 3 – Add the Workflow User Group to the Workflow

First, I’ll add the workflow user group as the approver type, and select my workflow user group I created earlier.

Step 4 – Edit the Events and Conditions

Next, I’ll change the “On Condition” for the second step to “Always” and also remove the third step:

The Bump in the road

At this point although the workflow would work, I found an approval entry is left open for the approver who didn’t approve, even though the record restriction on the Vendor was removed.

Step 5 – Add the additional response

In order to have the workflow close open approval entries after one approval you need to edit the second step and add the response “Approve the approval request for the record”

Conclusion

I found that without the additional Step 5 in the process of configuring the Workflow, one of the approvers would get a build up of open approval entries even though the Vendor would have been approved.

I hope this helps anyone else trying to configure a similar workflow.

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics 365 Business Central – Add the Notes and Attachments FactBox pane on the Customer Ledger Entries page

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This is likely common knowledge in the community however its something I only discovered recently so I thought I’d share in the hope it helps someone else :).

Someone requested for the “Notes and Attachments” FactBox pane to be added to the Customer Ledger Entries page so they could record notes against a customer ledger entry.

As this wasn’t available at first sight I assumed it would require development to add this, however a colleague advised its already there, its just hiding and you can expose it using standard Personalisation 🙂

Therefore to expose this FactBox pane you just use follow the steps in the clip below:

It turns out this is hidden on all sorts of other pages!

For example the General Ledger Entries page and the Vendor Ledger Entries page. Just follow the same steps above to add to those pages.

I absolutely love simple tips like this 🙂

Thanks for reading!

Dynamics GP Vs Dynamics 365 Business Central – Where is the General Ledger Journal Entry Number in Business Central?

Gavin WhittakerLeave a comment

Introduction

When you post a transaction in a subsidiary module in Dynamics GP, a journal is created in the General Ledger to record the transaction in the chart of accounts. The journal has its own unique journal number that groups all the distributions related to that transaction together and is stored in the GL table on all the lines.

Being a long time Dynamics GP user, when I started using Business Central, on posting a transaction I looked for the equivalent journal number in the G/L Entries, but couldn’t find it? Yes, there are G/L entries created, but I couldn’t find what I classed as a unique journal number that binds these together just like the Dynamics GP journal number.

In this post I’ll walk through what I regard as the closest equivalent to the Dynamics GP journal number in Business Central.

Dynamics GP – Journal Number

When you post a transaction in a subsidiary module in Dynamics GP, like a Sales Invoice for example, this is recorded in the General Ledger as a Journal Entry.

For example when I post the Sales Invoice below its recorded in the General Ledger using a unique Journal Entry number. The same journal number is stored on all the lines of the journal.

And here’s the Journal Entry recording the transaction in the General Ledger. The journal entry number is stored on all the distribution lines.

Therefore when posting one transaction in Dynamics GP, you get one Journal Entry with a unique number grouping all the distributions relating to that transaction in the General Ledger.

** Please note things like the originating document number and customer number are also transferred and stored in the GL table in Dynamics GP just like Business Central.

Dynamics 365 Business Central – G/L Entries

Going back to the example of a Sales Invoice, when you post a Sales Invoice in Business Central a series of Entries are created including G/L Entries.

Therefore if I were to post the Sales Invoice below

I’d get the following G/L Entries.

As you can see each line has a unique “Entry No.”. There is no obvious unique number from a GL point of view that groups all these lines together. (You can group them together using the “Document Number” but this is the Sales Invoice document number. There is no GL specific unique reference that groups these together in the G/L Entries table.)

Up steps the G/L Register

Although not obvious at first, whenever you post any transaction in Business Central, along with all the various entries that are created, a G/L Register is also created.

The G/L Register has its own unique number and encompasses all the entries that have been created by posting the transaction. It does this by holding the “From Entry No.” and the “To Entry No.”

Below is the G/L Register that was created by posting the Sales Invoice above

As you can see this has a unique GL reference. This is the “No.” column.

Therefore this is what I regard as Business Centrals equivalent to Dynamic GPs journal number.

Conclusion

Once I’d grasped this concept of entries and registers, I felt I had a greater understanding of the posting flow in Business Central.

Thanks for reading!

** Please note there is also a “Transaction No.” field stored on the G/L Entries which appears unique however I’ve found you can post one document number which can generate more than one “Transaction No.”. I blogged about this here