Alerts Are Back In Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

Since the initial release of Dynamics 365, change and date based alerts have been the most notable feature missing compared to previous versions. As the most requested Dynamics 365 feature on ideas.microsoft.com, it is clear that the alerts have been sorely missed by early adopters. Even though Microsoft stated that the feature was not deprecated, this assurance did not help those who relied on alerts to stay informed of happenings in their business.

Thankfully, in the newest April (8.0) release of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, alerts have been re-released and contain the same functionality as in Dynamics AX 2012. Though this feature may not be new to AX 2012 users, this is an all-new feature for the D365 community. Let’s take a quick look at how alerts can help you stay informed.

Change based Alerts

Change based alerts are triggered by an update to the record type specified. You can set up this alert to notify you when:

• A record is created
• A record is changed
• A record is deleted
• A field in the record is set to a value you specify.

For example, if a user has an important customer and wishes to be notified when a new sales order is added, a rule can be setup that will send an alert when a sales order is created for that customer.

To accomplish this, under any table you want to be alerted about, go to the options tab in the ribbon, and click “Create alert rule”. This will bring up the dialog box where the alert can be configured.

In this example, an alert is set to trigger when the Customer account field is equal to our specific value. The “Show pop-ups” and “Send email” flags should be toggled to be notified in the Action Center within Dynamics 365, and whether an email notification is included. Even a custom subject and message that will show in the alert and the email can be specified.

In order to receive email alerts, the email server should be configured first for the D365 environment.

After the alert rule has been created, click the “Manage my alerts” button, also in the Options tab, to view the alert rules. The rule can be edited or deleted from here.

Now, when a record is created or modified that meets the criteria specified, an alert in the Action Center and an email from the system will be received, both containing the configured message.

Due Date Alerts

The alerts can also be configured based on a due-date field, which will send a notification when the specified record is due or past due, or when the date has been changed.

Setup

It is important to note that the batch jobs must be setup first to process the alerts. This can be found under System Administration > Setup > Alerts. The “Change based alerts” and “Due date alerts” menu items allow users to set up both batch jobs. The configuration should be identified with recurrence to process the pending alerts at regular intervals.

Happy Alerting!

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