The Datahaven for Dynamics folder structure — think of Windows Explorer on steroids...
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The Datahaven for Dynamics folder structure — think of Windows Explorer on steroids...

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Right now, I'm on the vendor Progressive Home Furnishings. In the folder structure, up on the right‑hand side, Datahaven is showing the documents and folders for Progressive Home Furnishings. Reduce document search time…the contents of the Datahaven folder structure automatically update to display only those documents related to the current Dynamics record. When I switch records, the folder structure updates to automatically show me the documents and folders for the record that I currently have selected. Since Datahaven communicates directly with Dynamics, I always know that I'm showing the documents for the record that I currently have selected. Also, because Datahaven is embedded inside of Dynamics, I don't have to have a separate document management application running on my workstation. It's embedded inside of Dynamics. It looks as if it's part of Dynamics, and it responds to everything that I do in Dynamics in such a way that I know that I'm always viewing the correct documents and folders for the record that I have selected. The folder structure that you see here looks and acts just like a Windows folder structure. I can expand and collapse folders.


When I get down far enough it shows me documents that I have stored inside of the folders. The documents and folders are not available from a Windows file system where somebody can circumvent the security that's built into the document management system. The folders and the documents are all stored inside of a database which is actually a separate SQL server database from the Microsoft Dynamics database.


Reduce document search time…the Datahaven’s folder structures display a “roll-up” or “mash-up” of every document related to the current Dynamics record no matter where those documents are stored in Datahaven. When I expand the folders we can see that there's a variety of documents present underneath of the vendor folder structure. At the simplest level I'm showing documents that are linked directly to the vendor record. In this case because I'm on the vendor, London Postmaster, the documents that I'm showing right now are tied directly to that vendor. These are documents such as miscellaneous documents, W‑9s, contracts, or certificates of analysis that might be tied directly to a vendor record. But not necessarily tied to a transaction for that specific vendor.


We also have the capability to show related documents for whichever record we're currently viewing. When I drill down here, we see that it shows all the open invoices and purchase orders for this particular vendor that I have selected because invoices and purchase orders on the purchasing side have a vendor number associated with them. Then we're able to roll up and show documents and folders that are related to that vendor record. That's part of the power of Datahaven for Dynamics—the capability to show documents related to the record that you are currently viewing. This reduces the amount of navigation that you have to do in the system to find documents that are related to your NAV records. The folder structure that you see is highly configurable so that the folders contain exactly the types of documents and the organization of these folders that you choose for your company.


Moving down the folder structure here, we can see that here's a list of all the open invoices that we have for this particular vendor, London Postmaster. When I expand it here, I can see that this folder contains a document. When I go down to the next invoice, I can see that this folder does not contain a document for this invoice. What that tells us is that these folders are present because there's NAV records that are related to this vendor record. So the folders are not shown because there's documents present. They folders are shown because there's NAV records present that are related to the configuration that we have set up here.


Reduce time navigating through Dynamics…open a Dynamics record directly from a document stored in Datahaven. Further, we can also navigate to the record by clicking on the "launch NAV card." So what that's going to do is it's going to take me from this vendor list page and it's going to take me down to that individual invoice. So I'm able to navigate by using the folder structure without now having to go into NAV and navigate to this invoice manually. So now I see a much more simplistic folder structure because now we're on the invoice record. So the folder structure is changed to show just the invoice documents that we have for this particular invoice, which, of course, right now there aren't any. So if I want to get documents attached to this invoice, again, I could use the buttons that are down here at the bottom of our Datahaven for Dynamics component.


Don’t limit yourself to quotes, orders, and invoices—scan, import, drag/drop, and view documents on items, bills of material (BOM), and journal and ledger entries. We have some other examples of folder structures in the system. We can store documents against items. In this case, I have an item called Pilsner Malt. I can see any documentation that's associated with this particular item. I can see all the vendors that we purchased this particular item from, including their certificates of analysis and any other miscellaneous documents that are stored with that vendor. I can also see any formulas, which this is a production bill of materials. I can see any bills of material that include this particular item. Further, I can navigate to that bill of materials by clicking the launch NAV button, although I can't. We'll just cut that part out. And again, when I switch items, then it shows me now this particular item we purchased from multiple different vendors. So here it shows their certificates of analysis for three different vendors for this particular item, which is Howard Hal Hops. Then it also shows, in this case, a nutritional analysis and a spec sheet for this particular item.


So, you can essentially store documents against any kind of dynamics record regardless of the type. It's not just limited to the financials in the system. It's not limited to accounts payable or accounts receivable. You can also show it from items or any other type of custom record that's in Dynamics as well. If we switch over to the manufacturing module, we'll go look at a production bill of materials. And this just gives a different view of the same items that we were just looking at. So, in this case I chose my bill of materials. I chose my formula for October Best Beer. And when I drill down, not only does it show me all the raw materials that are used for this particular formula, it also shows me folders for all the batches they've finished and in process for this particular bill of materials.


So this gives me a full picture of all the steps that are associated with my manufacturing process, and it gives me the documentation that goes along with it as well. So if I were to identify an issue with a certain raw material. I can see all the batches that included that raw material and I can see any batch notes that may or may not indicate or back up the fact that there's a problem with that particular raw material.


Now, finally, another place that you can store documents in the system is related to journal and ledger entries. We're going to go over to the general journal. We'll go ahead and create a general journal line in the system here. We can see that our folder structure has not been created yet because we essentially haven't started keying this line. But as soon as we start entering information for this line...we're going to go ahead and put in today's date. We'll make this a refund. We'll give it a GL account. Actually, a refund would go to a customer, so we'll give it a customer. Now you can see that the folder structure is displayed now that we've started building out this record. Now I can attach a document, again, by using my import function or by using drag and drop or scanning.


Now I have a document associated with this general journal line. When I go to post this general journal line, the line disappears from the system because it's been posted. But the document will follow along with the posting process so that we can now find that document in other places in the system. In this case, we'll go find it in the GL register and we'll take a look at the ledger entries that are associated with the record that we just posted. Here's my attachment, viewable from the register entry that we just created as a result of that posting. If we drill down further into the general ledger entry for this, then the same document is available there as well.

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