Data Management Importing Tips for D365 for Finance and Operations: Part 1

Posted on: May 4, 2018 | By: Jarrod Kraemer | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365

Authored by: Chris Rusing

The data management workspace in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations provides functional users the ability to import a plethora of different data without the help of a developer.  However, many users may not feel comfortable using this functionality as they may not be familiar with it.  As with any new functionality, there is a learning curve to overcome and I’m hoping that this blog series will give you the tools to conquer the challenges you may face.  In this blog, I will highlight important and necessary configuration.  In part two, we will discuss common errors and how to troubleshoot them.

The first topic I want to touch on is financial dimension formats.  Go to General ledger> Chart of accounts> Dimensions> Financial dimension configurations for integrating applications.  This setup is vital to the success of your data management imports.  You need to set up and activate two dimension format types: default dimension format and ledger dimension format.

The default dimension format is for records like vendors, customers, items, and fixed assets in which they have a default dimension.  In my demo environment, I have two dimensions selected for this format.  So, in my import file, I need to specify a business unit and a department dimension that matches the information in my customer record.  Note: This is a global setting so all legal entities in your environment will follow the active format.

 

If I go to my customer record, you will notice I have a default dimension for my business unit (004) and department (023) financial dimension.

 

In my Excel upload template, you can see that I have these default dimensions called out for my customer record under the field ‘DefaultDimensionDisplayValue’.  If for some reason, you allowed blanks for the department financial dimension, you could change it to something such as 004-  You need to have the dash after the business unit because you previously selected two financial dimensions in your default dimension format.

 

After the upload, I went to the journal lines and clicked on Financial dimensions> Account.  You can see that my default dimensions have been imported for this customer account.

 

Let’s go back to General ledger> Chart of accounts> Dimensions> Financial dimension configurations for integrating applications.  We are now going to look at the ledger dimension format.  This format is configured for how you will bring the journal lines with ledger accounts.  As you can see below, my format is MainAccount and then BusinessUnit.  Obviously, most companies start their account string with their main account and then follow with any sort of financial dimension(s) needed.  You can select any of the financial dimensions available, but I would suggest that you order them in parallel to how your account structures are configured.  Note: This is a global setting so all legal entities in your environment will follow the active format.

 

We will now apply this format to our import file.  In my ‘AccountDisplayValue’ field, you can see that I’m specifying both my main account and my business unit.

 

After I imported the file, I went to the lines of this general journal batch.  You can see below that my main account and business unit imported correctly.  Please notice that there are extra dashes in the account string to indicate that there are more financial dimensions available.  However, I did not need to specify these financial dimensions (or the dashes for that matter) because I did not configure the ledger dimension format to include those dimensions.

 

The last thing I want to mention is set-based processing.  From the system administration module, go to your data management workspace and click on the Data entities box.

 

Find the general journal data entity through the search bar.  By default, set-based processing is checked.  This means that the vouchers within the journal are not automatically populated so you must populate them in your Excel file prior to import.  Populating the voucher number improves efficiency and speed of the import.  So, if you feel that your imports are taking too long, you may want to keep this checked.  If you uncheck the box, the voucher number will populate automatically during the import, which will result in lower efficiency and speed.  However, the differences in time depends on how much data you are importing.  If you have say 10,000 journal lines per import, it would be suggested to keep this box checked.  However, if you have less than 1,000 lines, you might consider unchecking the box.  This setting is up to your discretion, so I would suggest testing importing data for both.  As always, please import data in a test environment prior to utilizing the imports in production.

 

That is all for part one of this blog.  I will be writing a part two to discuss errors and troubleshooting!  For additional information please feel free to reach out to us at info@loganconsulting.com or (312) 345-8817. 

All the best!
Logan Consulting
www.loganconsulting.com



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