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Release Wave 1 of 2024 is coming in April, and the plans have been out since January. We’re gearing up for the update by reviewing the plans and testing features in a sandbox environment as they move into preview.
This is something we recommend all companies using Business Central do, too, because not too long after the release wave features become generally available, Microsoft automatically updates all Business Central environments to the newest version if they are not already transitioned. This means, ready or not, your system will get these updates. So, we want to be prepared.
Let’s review some of our most highly anticipated features, specifically for the Jobs module. You can check out Microsoft’s overview of the release wave plans for Business Central here, and we’ll link further documentation from the Release Wave Planning Tool for you to review if you want. We LOVE the Release Wave Planning Tool to help us prepare for release waves, and we suggest you check it out, too.
Check out our blog about the Release Wave Planner →
The Jobs module is getting a rebrand!
For a long time, Business Central (and formerly NAV) referred to project accounting features as “Jobs,” and as you know, this has the tendency to cause confusion. What’s in a name, anyway? So, from now on, in both the Business Central interface and in Microsoft documentation, “Jobs” will be replaced with “Project.” Job Journals become Project Journals, Job Planning Lines become Project Planning Lines, and so forth. They are not changing the underlying table and field object names, however. (Read more about these plans.)
When you search “Jobs,” Business Central will know what you’re talking about and serve you “Project” results.
Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Archive it
You may already know about and use archiving in the sales and purchase areas, and this functionality in Projects is similar. In the Projects Setup, you can set automatic archiving or you can do so manually on a project-to-project basis. If you set automatic archiving, you can either set projects to quietly archive or prompt you to archive a project when someone does one of the following:
Enable automatic archiving in Project Setup. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
- changes the status of a document or deletes it
- prints, downloads, or sends a document by email
- posts an invoice
If you don’t want automatic archiving, then you would set this Archiving Projects field to “Never,” which will allow you to manually archive projects if and when you are ready.
To archive manually, go to the Project card, click Related > Project > Archive Project. You can Restore from the archive, but if you do this, dimensions cannot be restored, and statistics will not exist for your projects in archive.
Here are the plans for Projects archiving.
Manually archiving the project. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Set default location and bin
Set a default Location Code and Bin Code on your projects! You do this on the Project Card, under the Posting Tab, you’ll fill in the Location Code and the Bin Code. After you do this, the location and bin will auto-populate on project tasks, project planning lines, and project journal lines for that project.
You’re still able to adjust the location and bin, but hopefully setting a default will eliminate most data entry for these fields, except for the outliers in the project.
Notes: This change will not impact purchase documents. You’ll also notice that the out-of-the-box Project Task Lines, the Location Code and Bin Code aren’t present. But you can change this with Personalization of the page, or admin can make this a standard (learn more about personalizing your workspace).
Here are the plans for default locations and bins.
Set the default location and bin code in the Project Card. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Improve inventory management with Assemble to Project
This new feature works similarly to assemble-to-order, but only when it’s required. You can also change the product into a set of components in the Project Planning Lines by going to Actions > Functions > Explode BOM.
Note that this does not affect billable parts of a given project. An assembly is included on sales invoices, but the components will not be. In addition, you’ll need to use a project journal to post full or partial usage. Output and component consumption will be posted automatically for the assembly order.
This feature will integrate with warehouse management so your whole assembly and shipping process is easier. Read the plans for Assemble to Project.
Create a Project you can invoice to Multiple Customers
Have you ever had a single project that involved multiple customers? If so, you’ll know that billing the right customers for the right project tasks took work. But now you can specify bill-to and sell-to customers on project tasks lines, so you can automatically generate correct invoices.
To turn this feature on, you’ll need to go into the Project Setup page, and find the Default Billing Method field. The default setting is “Per Project,” meaning the per-line fields will remain empty and un-editable, and not display at all on the Project Task Lines page. If you change this setting to “Per Project Task,” that’s when you will be able to edit the fields.
Read the plans for billing multiple customers on one project.
Project Planning Lines. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Exploding the BOM. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
Invoice a customer for multiple projects
In another bid for easier billing processes (and sort of opposite the last feature), you can now send just one invoice for multiple projects! This addition just makes sense, doesn’t it?
To do this, you’ll create a new sales invoice and set the “Sell-to Customer” and then any other needed field, like the “Bill-to Customer” and “Currency Code.” You’ll then use the new Get Project Planning Lines action, which will pop open a page showing all the billable project planning lines for the sell-to and bill-to customers you entered, plus the invoicing currency wherever there is a positive invoice quantity. From there, select the lines you want to add to the invoice, and click OK!
See the plans for invoicing a customer on multiple projects.
Adding lines from multiple projects to an invoice. Image courtesy of Microsoft.
The 2024 Release Wave 1 is scheduled for general availability in April 2024, and some of the features listed here are currently or soon-to-be on public preview. We highly recommend you test the update in a sandbox environment before these updates are applied to your production environment. To do this, perform your normal transactions and tasks to ensure that these updates do not cause bugs with your normal work processes, customizations, and extensions.
Want help with testing? Head over to our handy dandy Update Testing Checklist to help you test version updates. If Syvantis is your partner, we can also help you with testing one-on-one.
