10 Frequently Asked Questions About STAEDEAN’s Data Entry Workflow Solution for Dynamics 365 F&SCM

Do you or your team find master data forms in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (D365 F&SCM) overwhelming? Do you find it cumbersome to follow up with all the multiple users contributing to the same master data records? Do you have to find workarounds for customer forms before the financial details have been verified? Are your teams spending too much time getting approvals from different team members? If you face any of these issues, we have a solution that can help mitigate all these challenges.  

At STAEDEAN, we reached out to our customers to understand their data governance and management challenges in Microsoft D365 F&SCM. Over the last few years, we have built the Data Governance Solution that addresses different areas of master data management including data entry management – Data Entry Workflow for D365 F&SCM. We specialize in low-code/no-code solutions for Microsoft-based ERPs and have now also launched solutions for Microsoft’s Dataverse.   

We launched Data Entry Workflow in 2022 and have received feedback from customers that have been happy to use the solution to solve their data entry and validation challenges in D365 F&SCM. While we continue to talk to more prospects, we get asked several questions about the solution, so, we decided to put together a list of frequently asked questions to help our readers better understand our solution. But first, let’s start with an overview of our solution.  

What is Data Entry Workflow for D365 F&SCM? 

Data Entry Workflow for D365 F&SCM is a unique, no-code solution that helps you better manage and control the data entry process. Using our solution, you can considerably streamline the data entry process, as it allows you to design templates with parallel or subsequent steps.  

The solution helps you improve collaboration and simplify the data entry process as you can assign fields to employees with a time limit. You can also improve data correctness by adding approval steps to ensure data is internally verified by the right people before making it available to the external world.  

Designed for business users, our solution can help you simplify the data entry process, using just configurations and not development. And our solution integrates with other solutions in our Data Governance Solution, which are Data Quality Studio and Master Data Management Studio for Dynamics 365 F&SCM. 

For more information, do read our blog and watch our overview video below.

What are the most frequently asked questions about Data Entry Workflow for D365 F&SCM? 

Q1. Can we include external people as part of the workflow? For example, a vendor filling in bank information for a record, when a new vendor is created. 

To provide external people access to Data Entry Workflow, you would have to also enable them as a user in F&SCM and assign an appropriate license as they would contribute to data as an employee of your company would. As part of the licenses section from Microsoft, it is possible. However, it would require licenses from F&SCM. 

Alternatively, what would also be possible is to probably ask the vendor for some details to use some integration tooling to import the data to Dynamics 365 ERP. Imported data can also be enabled as Data Entry Workflow values.  

Q2.  Can Data Entry Workflow support sharing of master data between legal entities? And can the solution overcome the limitations of Microsoft cross-company data sharing and data mapping of customized fields? 

Data Entry Workflow cannot share the data between legal entities. For that purpose, we have built another solution called Master Data Management Studio and that can support sharing of master data between legal entities. It can not only distribute data from the master data management company to other legal companies but can also export master data to external applications. Also, since MDM Studio solution is built on our integration engine Connectivity Studio, it can map any field, any table. So, you are not limited to the data entities in Microsoft’s Data Management Framework and that makes cross-company data sharing easier. 

Q3. Does it support cross-creation for example initiating 100 items/workflows in one go? The workflows seem to be an individual Dynamics 365F&SCM product. Would the workflow be able to track multiple products? 

We offer solutions for data integration—Connectivity Studio and master data management— Master Data Management Studio. And using these solutions, you could also create 100 different workflow instances directly while importing the data in D365 F&SCM and then complete it. We have another backlog item for the future on our roadmap. We will also be able to support the mass creation and mass updates with just a single workflow for example, if you have products in multiple systems and just have one workflow covering all those variants in the application. 

Q4. Is it possible to integrate logic like when a customer is created then a VAT number is required and a number format is in a certain required format? 

There are some standard validations in the application which would check for the correct VAT number per country. There are some checks provided by Microsoft out of the box. Additionally, using our Data Quality Studio solution, it would be possible to check for data patterns or connect to a web service and then check for valid VAT numbers as well. There is an option in our Data Entry tool to make fields mandatory to be filled in, or conditionally filled in depending on a certain customer group in a different country. 

Q5. Is it possible to have different people approve the same workflow based on specific criteria? For example, any customer created for area A must go to manager A, and area B must go to Manager B for approval. 

That is possible by creating multiple workflow templates then we can assign steps to multiple users. Using Data Entry Workflow, you can make some assignments conditionally and then you can have one workflow depending on certain field values assigned to user A and user B. 

Q6. Can you add custom fields to a template? 

Yes, that is possible. Data Entry Workflow in fact supports all tables, and all fields but also custom tables and custom fields. It does not matter if you created them via Official Studio or if you used the configuration option via Microsoft for custom fields, they all work. 

Q7. What about distributing a released product's data to other legal entities with some rules such as which fields to copy and which fields with default data? 

That could be done using a combination of Data Entry Workflow and Master Data Management Studio where Data Entry Workflow is used to collect the data entry input from the user & Master Data Management Studio will be used to distribute that data.  
 
Let’s take an example to understand this. If you create a product with some base data or almost all the attributes in the master data legal entity, some data might be company specific. For example, VAT information or maybe a certain sales price based on a country, then it will be possible that the data will be distributed using Master Data Management Studio to other legal entities but at that time it will create additional workflow templates to complete the company-specific data for those products.  
 
Additionally, you can use the Dynamic field security feature of Master Data Management Studio to control and manage field-based security. 

Q8. Does it also work with non-standard fields like custom fields from ISV solutions? 

Our solution will support all fields at that moment that are available in the D365 ERP environment. So, along with the fields from Dynamics 365, if you want to record forms with custom fields then our solution can be used to also record those fields. It will record the field names for the tables on the Data Entry Workflow form for the user and also map it to the target table. 

Q9. If I were to update data on an existing customer, are there conditions that can be configured to ensure certain data goes through the workflow or not based on pre-configured conditions? 

If you want to prevent the creation or updates of existing master data or master data in the standard application via security, you can disable the standard options for creating and updating or deleting records. Use the Dynamics form options to provide the option for new updates. If you allow both, that means in the application itself, you can update or edit via the standard options and also edit via templates, then there is no restriction currently to prevent it. We are exploring how we can improve that experience. 

Q10. What is the cost of Data Entry Workflow? 

The cost of licenses for Data Entry Workflow includes a base fee and additionally the cost per base user. Please contact us for more details on the price. For more information, contact us.

Do you have more questions about Data Entry Workflow? 

We hope we have answered some of the questions you had on your mind regarding our Data Entry Workflow solution and also shared some information that will help you decide whether this is a solution that can add value and streamline your data entry process for your organization.  

If you do have any other questions, that we have not answered in this blog, please reach out to our experts. If you are interested in the Data Governance Solution, we recommend downloading our factsheet from the link below.