Create Specials is a feature which enables the user to quickly create a new released product when adding items to orders. Please read the documentation of Specials Management before continuing. Specials Management is licensed separately. If this Specials Management is not part of your license agreement please turn off the corresponding configuration key.

With the integration of Specials Management into the Product Search solution it will be possible to create new released products while selecting them from the search index when adding them to the order.

Prerequisites and limitations

• Only Allow specials type Item (setup on specials tab on the commerce product hierarachy) is supported
• Products which do not existst yet in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
  • need to be present in the search index. Adding them to the search index can be done by leveraging the standard API's for Azure Search https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-what-is-data-import
  • each product should have category node in the search index which is mapped to a specials enabled commerce product hierarchy node.
• A released product will only be created in the current company
• For each special a new product will be created, it is not possible to use an existing product for which already a released product in another company exists
• Automatic creation of  product variants from Product Search is not supported
• Automatic population of product attributes values from Product Search search index is not supported

Process

Assuming the search index contains both products which exist in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and those which do not exist yet in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations . The user will open the Product Search form from the order and starts selecting the products which he likes to add to the order. He does not have to worry about whether the products already exist in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations or not. On completing his selection the system will try to add all selected products to the order. In case one or more product have been selected which do not exist, the add order lines dialog will appear indicating that which products do not exist in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations .

Based on the setup the system will try to find the specials enabled commerce product hierarchy node, if found it will be filled in the Category field on the add order line form. A summary of the selected data from the search index is shown in the External data summary field. Via the button External data the data which is selected from the index is shown in a json format. If the category is not found, the user can select one manually. As soon as the category is present and there is a json with data the Create special button is enabled. If the button Create special is not visible, please check the Add order lines setup whether the check box Create Specials is enabled.

For each line in the add order lines form, which contains a product which does not exist, the user has to created the product manually via the Create Special button. In addition to the standard functionality of Specials Management, which will create a product based on the data which has been setup on the commerce product hierarchy node and show this information to the user via de Specials dialog, the system will additionally fill the data from the External data (json).

A typical setup of data which is taken from the index could be:

• External item number
• Vendor
• Product Name
• Product Description
• Sales Price
• Purchase Price

Based on the specials field setup on the commerce product hierarchy node the user has to complete certain fields and a check on mandatory fields can be enforced. When the product is created it's added to the add order lines form and the user can continue till all non-existing items have been created and added. Then the user can add them all to the order via de add lines button.

Setup

First complete the setup of Specials Management which can be found here. Take notice to select Item in the Allow specials parameter on the commerce product category node.

Enable create special in add order lines

Please check the Add order lines setup whether the check box Create Specials is enabled, if not enable it.

Search configuration

Product information management > Setup >  Advanced Search > Search Configuration > Tab Specials

Field	Description	Remark
Source Index	Options: Use Default Specific	Determines which index is used to fetch the data from that will be used in the Create specials form.

Index

In case Source index option Specific is chosen this field will become editable

In case Product Search has been setup to support multiple languages, it will be possible to determine which one to pull the data from when creating the released product.

All setup related to specials is done on the commerce product hierarchy nodes. It is possible to use this hiearchy also as Product Search hierachy but it's not mandatory. If this is the case the Specials field mapping and Specials external category mapping can also be accessed via the Configure search hierarchy on the Category hierarchies on the Search configuration.

Specials field mapping

All setup related to specials is done on the commerce product hierarchy nodes. It is possible to use this hiearchy also as Product Search hierachy but it's not mandatory. If this is the case the Specials field mapping can be accessed via the Configure search hierarchy on the Category hierarchies on the Search configuration.

Retail and commerce > Products and categories > Commerce product hierarchy > Tab Specials field mapping

Product information management > Inquiry and reports >  Specials > Specials field mapping

In this form the setup can be done in a grid view instead having to navigate through the hiearchy structure.

This mapping controls which data from the index will be put in which field of released product. Technically it determines which nodes of the json, will be filled with which data from the index. This data is then being used when the user clicks on the create special button in the basked (add order lines form).

With the button load defaults a few base fields are added to the grid as we expect those will be needed as a minimum to create a product. The fields are mapped against the fields in the index which Product Search will create automatically when uploading products from Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations into the search index. It's just suggestion if you have setup the index differently, map any field that suits you.

Field	Description	Remark
Mapping Type	Base Field externalItemNumber externalItemText externalItemDescription productName Category Source Vendor isTemplate   Table Field	When a special is created a number sequece is used to generate the Product and Release product id. In order to be able to buy and sell the item via the vendor item number this field is used and when the special is added to the order the data is created in the customer and vendor external item table.       Please see description of the isTemplate functionality below.                    Table fields can be used to select a table and a field which needs to be filled from which field from the index.

Table name

Select the table which need to be populated with data from the index

 

One to many

Indicates whether multiple records could be created from the index

E.g. when a related table is selected which can contain multiple records e.g. ItemBarcode this checkbox indicates multiple records can be inserted.

Select the field which need to be populated with data from the index

Complex index field

In case of a one to many relation a complex field needs to be selected first before the Index field can be selected

Index field

On the General tab of released product there is function View example Json which creates an example json with data of the selected item. In the add order lines form there is a button External Data where you can modify the json and then use that data to test the specials item creation. This can be handy when testing the create specials from search index feature and not all the data is yet present in the index.

When the item is created the record in the index will be updated.

isTemplate

With the base field isTemplate it is possible to reuse the record from the index multiple times. Instead of updating the index record with the created product information, a new record in the index is created.

When the field isTemplate is setup in the specials field mappings and the field is found in the index and the value is "True" then the existing record is not updated but a new record is created in the index.

Specials external category mapping

Retail and commerce > Products and categories > Commerce product hierarchy > Tab Specials external category mapping

Product information management > Inquiry and reports >  Specials > Specials external category mapping

In this form the setup can be done in a grid view instead having to navigate through the hiearchy structure.

When the category nodes in the search index do not match the category nodes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations this mapping can be used to find the correct specials category node of the commerce product hierarchy.

Field	Description	Remark
Language	As it's possible to have multiple indexes (one per language) the language needs to be selected.

External hierarchy name

Enter the name of the hierarchy as defined in the search index which should be used to find the commerce product hierarchy category node

External category name

Enter the name of the category name from the search index which should be used to find the commerce product hierarchy category node

This mapping table has a unique index that validates that no duplicate external hierarchy/category combi (per language) can be added. As it's possible to have multiple indexes (one per language) the language also needs to be selected.

On each node in the commerce product hierarchy which is enabled for specials, a mapping can be setup. If nothing has been setup it will try to match on the category node name.