MB-920: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals (ERP)

Dynamics 365 Finance manages the financial operations of an organisation. Key capabilities: general ledger (chart of accounts, accounting periods, journal entries), accounts payable and receivable, budgeting and forecasting, fixed asset management, and financial reporting. Legal entity: the basic organisational unit in Finance — each legal entity has its own chart of accounts, currency, and financial reporting. Consolidation: parent legal entity that aggregates financials from subsidiaries. Financial dimensions: tags like cost centre, department, or project that provide multi-dimensional financial reporting without creating separate accounts for each combination.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) covers procurement, production, warehouse, and transportation. Procurement: purchase orders, vendor management, procurement categories, purchase requisitions flowing through approval workflows. Inventory: warehouses, locations, item tracking (serial/batch numbers), inventory adjustments, counting journals. MRP (Master Resource Planning): calculates what to order and when based on demand (sales orders, forecasts) and supply (inventory, purchase orders, production orders). Planning Optimization add-in provides near-real-time MRP runs in the cloud without impacting the database. Warehousing: advanced warehouse management (WMS) with wave processing, work templates (picking/packing/shipping instructions), location directives (where to put/pick), and mobile device integration for barcode scanning.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources: employee records, compensation plans, benefits enrolment, leave and absence management, performance reviews, and integration with LinkedIn and Azure Active Directory for hiring workflows. Dynamics 365 Project Operations: combines project management (project scheduling, resource management, time and expense tracking) with financials (project contracts, billing, revenue recognition). Replaces the older Project Service Automation module. Common Dynamics 365 concepts: Power Platform integration (Power BI for embedded analytics, Power Automate for workflow automation, Power Apps for custom apps, Power Virtual Agents for chatbots). Dual Write: real-time bidirectional synchronisation between Finance and Supply Chain Management (Dataverse-based) and the Common Data Model. Lifecycle Services (LCS): implementation and operations portal for managing Dynamics 365 environments.

ERP purpose: eliminate data silos by integrating financials, operations, HR, and supply chain in one system of record. Dynamics 365 ERP applications are built on the same platform and share master data (customers, vendors, products, employees) — a vendor in SCM is the same record as in Finance. Implementation lifecycle: Analyse (gather requirements, process mapping), Design (configure the system to match processes), Develop (custom extensions using X++ or Power Platform), Deploy (user acceptance testing, data migration, go-live), Operate (support, monitoring, updates). Microsoft uses the Success by Design framework for Dynamics 365 implementations. Cloud versus on-premises: Dynamics 365 Finance and SCM run in Microsoft's Azure cloud (Software as a Service). Updates are continuous — no major version upgrades, only monthly quality updates and optional feature releases. On-premises deployment is available for Finance and SCM but loses some cloud capabilities.