The Viewfinder

Maximizing Business Potential: Streamlined Onboarding on Microsoft Business Central ERP

Author: Mahdy Ghane
Solution Architect, Data & Dynamics
Long View


 

Traditionally, emailing PDF application forms to newly onboarded customers and vendors was among our initial responsibilities. Upon receiving the completed forms, our team would carefully transcribe the handwritten information and manually input it into our ERP system.

At Long View, we offer comprehensive support for a wide range of Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office, Power Platforms, and Business Central. This article demonstrates how we leverage these robust tools to establish an automated onboarding process for customers and vendors.

Pre-Requirements

  • Microsoft Dynamics Business Central https://dynamics.microsoft.com/business-centra
  • Microsoft Power Automate (Flow) : https://make.powerautomate.com/
    1. License for Power Automate included in Business Central SaaS license
  • Microsoft Forms: https://forms.microsoft.com
    1. Microsoft Forms license included in: Microsoft 365 business basic, standard, and premium; Microsoft 365 A3/A5 and E3/E5; Office 365 A1/A3/A5 and E1/E3/E5; and Microsoft 365/Office 365 F3. For more information, check the Microsoft 365 business plan comparison, Microsoft 365 Enterprise plan comparison and Microsoft 365 Education plan

 


 

Step one:

Make sure to open all required apps.

 

Step two:

Decides which information you want to collect from your customers or vendors. For example, their name, address, email, etc. These info could be different for vendor and customer.

 

Step three:

Setting up Microsoft Form to collect the data.

In Microsoft Forms ( https://forms.microsoft.com) click New Form.

 

Business Central ERP 1

 

Enter a title for your new form.

 

Business Central ERP 2

For example: “Onboarding – Vendor”

Then upload your company logo.

Then select the style for your form.

 

Business Central ERP 3

 

Now start building the form to collect the information you have decided in Step two.

Business Central ERP 4

 

Make sure to mark “Required” info as “Required”. Also for Text do not turn on “Long Answer” to prevent going above character limit in your ERP system.

 

Business Central ERP 5

 

Below is the completed form.  Microsoft Form automatically determined how long it would take to complete this form. Also, notice that drop down option is used for Country/Region. This is to make sure data matches your ERP format.

 

Business Central ERP 6

 

Proceed to Form Settings and  select “Anyone can respond”. In addition, you can define a custom thank you message and receipt as well.

 

 

 

Click on “Collet responses”.

 

Business Central ERP 9

 

Then decides how you want to share the link with your vendor/customer. You can send a link, shortened link, QR code, etc.

 

Business Central ERP 10

 

That is it for this step. Just make sure to remember your form title. Also, you can create similar form for your customers as well.

In My Forms, copy my Vendor Form and update the title. Questions, and etc. Then saved it as Onboarding – Customer.

Business Central ERP 11

 

Step four:

Setting up Power Automate.

In Power Automate ( https://make.powerautomate.com/ ) click Create then select Build your own. Some older platform may have this function on top of the page and name it as Cloud Flow.

 

Business Central ERP 12

 

Business Central ERP 13

 

Then search for Microsoft Forms and select Microsoft Forms and for Trigger select “When a new response is submitted” then select Next.

 

Business Central ERP 14

 

Then for Action search for Microsoft Forms, Select Microsoft Forms, Get response details, then Next.

 

Business Central ERP 15

 

In the new page for Form ID select the Form you want (Like Onboarding – Vendor ) then for Response id select the Response ID from left panel. Then select New Step.

 

Business Central ERP 16

 

Search for Business Central or your ERP and select it.

 

Business Central ERP 17

 

Sselect Create record.

 

Business Central ERP 18

 

 

Select your environment name, Company name, API category (For Business Central select v2.0), and Table name (For vendor select vendor and for customer select customer).

Then start selecting each field and link it to the related question on your Microsoft Form.

 

Business Central ERP 19

 

 

After selecting all needed fields result is something like below.

 

Business Central ERP 20

 

Now you need to decide if you want to notify your team member about creation of new vendor or customer.

If you want to send an email then click on “New Step” then search for Email and select “Send an email”.

 

Business Central ERP 21

 

Then you can complete this step to send an email to your team. When you are done click save.

 

Business Central ERP 22

 

After Save make sure you do not get any error messages and receive the success message like below.

Business Central ERP 24

 

For your Customer you can choose Saves As and change all settings.

 

Business Central ERP 25

 

Business Central ERP 26

 

That is it. You are done. You can send your Microsoft Form to your customer/vendor and after completion of form customer/vendor will be created in Business Central.

Below is an example: Vendor received the link and populated like below and submitted the form.

 

Business Central ERP 27

 

Business Central ERP 28

 

Our team receives the email below:

 

Business Central ERP 29

 

And a vendor has been created in Business Central.

Business Central ERP 30

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.


No comments found.
Anonymous User

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *