If you implement Dynamics 365, you have to master the platform and be creative before developing anything.

In this article, we are going to learn how the new ERP version, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (hereafter #MSDyn365FO), let us control and identify in a simple graphic way, counters inside Workspaces (tiles) to show us the real status for specific business scenarios without using Alert functionality, Microsoft Flow or any custom process by code.

This scenario happened in one of our deployments which we are currently working and we received the customer approval with the presented out of the box solution, so I think it's going to be really useful in your actual MSDyn365FO deployments (even whether you're final User or Partner).

The requirement was to control the certification expiration date in vendors, to advise them in order to renew them with enough time.

Well, to cover this requirement, we're going to use inside Vendor master data, in Vendor Tab the option Certifications (you can do the same example if you want to reuse data in other companies by Global Address Book in Common module).

From here, we are able to see 2 date fields really useful to this scenario:

• Due date: We have used this field to control when our vendors should start the renewal process with the certifying organization.     
• Expiration date: We have used this field to identify the actual date when the certification has expired.

The certification renewal process in this company is based on sending emails or calls to the vendors, 30 days before Due date. This requirement is perfectly covered by the counters in the MSDyn365FO Workspaces, so for this reason we are going to create an advanced filter in Vendors master data, based on this field (Due date) to show us how to do it.

To get the field "Due date" in this filter, we have to include the Table "Set up Certifications", and the way to do it is by Joins section, using "Add table join" (Join mode 1:n).

With this table available in order to filter, we can select the field, Due date, and the "trick" is to use a SysQueryRangeUtil method to get dynamics data. This functionality already existed in other versions, and it's extremely useful in this kind of business cases. From this link in docs.mirosoft.com you can find really good dynamic queries. To our example we are going to use the method ((LessThanDate(30)) in the Due date criteria to obtain a calculated date based on Less than 30 days from now.

If we execute this advance filter we can obtain 3 results (vendors) with certifications to review, so the last part is to include this counter in a workspace to identify very easy this status.

If this tile wants to have more attention from the user point of view, it's possible to include it very easy in the home page (dashboard) just clicking right button and Personalize / Pin to dashboard.

With just only one click, we can identify very fast our vendors with certifications are about expired.

"This article has shown a simple example where you can use the huge out of the box functionality that you have at your disposal in MSDyn365FO, but it's true you need to count on specialists to deploy this platform in the best way. All Partners could implement with more or less effort AX 4.0, AX 2009, AX 2012 R2 even AX 2012 R3, because it was very common to find redundant developments... that it was possible to deploy with standard functionality… but right now, with the update policy (" Every customer on the latest release, always."), with no overlayering, AZURE, LCS, PowerBI, CDS, extensions and the rest of Dynamics 365 products, not all the companies can afford to implement properly this product."

Thanks for your time and I hope you've found it useful.