Business value

In standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations for Retail, assortments:

• can be defined per channel
• are used for data distribution purposes to the Retail Channels (Stores, Call Centers, Online stores and Online market places).
• can be linked to one or more channels and it contains or excludes (line type) products based on Category, Product or even Variant (Size, Color) level.

But assortments do not have any effect on filtering products in the (retail) sales orders in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations client.

Order Entry Optimization adds the filtering of products based on assortments.

For mid to large size distributors and retailers it will be increasingly vital to be able to utilize multiple marketing and distribution channels that are highly effective, efficient and profitable. If we have to ask yourselves why this is increasingly vital it might already be too late. Your competitors are coming for your customers with a vengeance. They will have very clear and consistent messages that promises to deliver exactly what the need of your present customer and they actually have the means to deliver it! Even beyond the expectation of the customer.

One of the clearest messages is what one sells through a channel. Examples are best found online. The company Cool Blue sells through online channels like TVStore.nl where one can only find tv’s. Or digital camera’s through camerashop.nl. Cool Blue has more than 50 of these channels and they are not only online but also have physical shops. It’s clearly focused and highly successful. Another, more generic, example is the differentiation between the sizes of physical stores in categories. The smaller shops only sell the “core” product range and can be even specialized on some (local) brands. The bigge(r)(st) shops sell just about the complete product portfolio and even beyond that when they sell out of the catalogues of the suppliers. The alignment of the products to these channels out of the complete product portfolio is done through assortment functionality in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Within assortments one can include and exclude complete ranges, products and variants.

Assortment filtering

Order specific assortment based on assortments of multiple sources

In standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, we are only able to assign assortments to channels. We found that in many businesses it is useful to extend this functionality to other entities in order to sell or purchase products per:

• Customer assortment: Not each customer is allowed to order all items. E.g., only one franchise shop in the city is allowed to sell a certain brand.
• Channel assortment: Only one shop in the city is allowed to sell a certain brand.
• Vendor assortment: Not everything can be bought at each supplier.
• Staff assortment: Not every employee should be able to purchase everything or in sales, not every employee should be able to sell everything.
• Site and Warehouse assortments: A site or warehouse can also have its own assortment.

We added the ability to in- and exclude products on quotes, (retail) sales- and purchase orders by assigning assortments to customers, suppliers, employees, sites, warehouses and customer or vendor chain. In Quotes, purchase or sales orders the assortments, coming from the sources mentioned above, are combined into an order specific assortment tailored to the combination of channel, customer/supplier, chain, employee, site or warehouse.

Assortments intersections

Given a total product file in a company an employee, customer and store (or warehouse or chain) could all have their own NON-overlapping subsets (assortments) of this product file. Standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Retail functionality sets a default assortment in the header of an order or quote and that’s basically it. The list of products shown will be based on the set assortment. However, the total employee assortment may not be valid in combination with another assortment. For instance, the assortment of the customer or the channel might not overlap. When all assortments would have to be applied, very strictly, the items displayed in the order would only be the ones in the intersection of the three assortments:

(Non-) restrictive assortment hierarchy levels

As stated, in different words, above assortments can be useful in three ways:

• Helping or leading the operator in offering the correct products
• Filtering a large product file
• Restricting operators in offering or selling products they should not be selling (whatever the reason)

The user will be helped automatically by setting the correct (intersection of an) assortment and he or she can choose an assortment (see below for a further description) or remove the assortment filter. By which he gets to see the full product file. But what if the assortment should be applied very strict? This requires a setting which determines whether an assortment should be strictly applied or whether it is just a useful filtering mechanism for the operator.

Before the solution is fully described first the following: A total branch assortment can be set up containing multiple assortments. Besides, the same assortment can be just a help for one employee and restrictive for another and lastly a branch assortment can be a help for selling goods, but must be applied restrictive in case a user is acquiring goods that will go on stock for the branch. These facts lead to the conclusion that application of an assortments-“policy” (Non-restricting or restricting) is dependent on the entity the assortment is associated to and can be different when applied for acquisition or selling. In case a user tries to insert or types in an item, which is not part of the restrictive assortments, a message will appears telling him that is not possible.

Filters in orders

View items

If an assortment is present in the order header, only items within this assortment are feasible. If no product group is specified in the order header, all items (except for the blocked items) are visible in lookup and allowed in the line.

Inserting items

On the order line, items can be added in several different ways. In case of retail orders, OR when assortment is set on the order, these items are filtered. It should not be possible to add an item (or variant) which is not part of the selected restrictive assortment. Therefore, the authorization of the assortment field in the order header is important to guarantee that items are sold solely to customers who are an official dealer, etc.

Assortment policies

For this reason, on each entity two new fields have been added in the new field group assortment (except for the Retail channel as this is only applicable for sales orders/quotations):

• Purchase assortment policy
• Sales assortment policy

Both fields have the options:

• Non-restrictive (Default): Lookup of items will be limited to the applied assortments, it will be possible to enter an existing item id into the order line manually.
• Restrictive: Lookup of items will be limited to the applied assortments, it is NOT be possible to enter an existing item id into the order line manually.

The assortment policies can be setup on vendor, customer, worker, site, warehouse, channel and company chain.

Effects and changes when entering an item in an order

In standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations there is no assortment set on the order header. Now, assortments can be manually selected or are inherited to the header of the following order types:

• Retail sales order
• Normal sales order
• Sales quotation
• Purchase order

The lookup of products on the order line will be filtered accordingly: products can be only selected if they are part of the order assortment. On the sales order header, tab General, the field “Applied assortment hierarchies” shows all assortments that are applied to the order. In the lookup it is possible to see the origin.

When the user clicks on the lookup in this field a form with grid shows the following information:

• Hierarchy entity name: option field with the following options:
  • Customers
  • Vendors (Supplier)
  • Staff (Worker)
  • Site
  • Warehouse
  • Company chain
  • Store (Retail Channel)
• Assortment name
• Assortment policy: option field with the following options:
  • Non-restrictive (Default)
  • Restrictive
• Applied
  • Yes/No field (Always yes if the assortment policy has the value restrictive

For example, if we have three assortments applied: Customer assortment, Channel assortment, Employee assortment. The user un-applies the Retail channel hierarchy entity and closes the lookup form. The text in the field “Applied assortment hierarchies” will only state “Staff, Customer” assortment names and the shown product listing when the user searches should be restricted to the intersection of staff (employee) and customer.

Overview active assortments per order type

*   If Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations user is assigned to a retail channel then the retail channel assortments will be applied as non-restricted.

** On creation of an order the worker of the signed in user determines the assortment on the order header.

Nested assortments

It is off course possible to create assortments and assign it to one or multiple channels. But we often see hierarchies in assortments. Many companies have stores sorted into sizes. E.g. Small, midsize and big. With nested assortments one does not have to maintain multiple assortments but by setting the parent child relation the child assortment will inherit the assortment of the parent. Doing so will keep the maintenance effort to a minimum. Changes to a parent assortment will automatically be transferred to its descendants once forward published.

There are basically two approaches of building up a nested assortment structure.

Child assortment is a subset of parent assortment 

Start with an assortment that has all products in it and exclude in its descendants more and more products.

We have an assortment called Basic and it includes all the Electronics equipment. The company has 3 types of stores (small, medium and big).

We make the following assortments based on the store size:

• Assortment B: for the big stores, which will include everything in the Electronics category.
• Assortment M: it will have assortment B as a parent and will exclude Home appliances from it.
• Assortment S: it will have assortment M as a parent and will exclude Televisions from it. So technically it will have Televisions and Home appliances excluded. B will have 2 children (M and S), M will have one parent (B) and S will have two parents (B and M)

Child assortment is extended with extra products

Start with the smallest assortments and extend this in the descendants of this assortment by adding product nodes, products or variants. We can do the previous example in another way and have a Basic assortment that we have it in all of our stores and based on the size of the store we extend the assortment. Let us take a supermarkets chain as an example. They have basic assortments that will be in all stores (ToGO). Then they will extend this assortment for the normal supermarkets and will extend it more for big stores. We will have the following assortments:

• Assortment ToGo
• Assortment Supermarket: it is the child of ToGO but will have more products added manually
• Assortment Hypermarket: it is a child of ToGO and Supermarket and will have more products added to it manually.

Constraints

• An assortment can be linked with other assortments. The former will copy all product lines from the latter in its own product lines.
• In case of conflict or duplications the child assortment precedes the parent assortment
• Conflicts (in- and excludes for similar product lines) within an assortment’s product lines will in principal not be resolved (Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations standard).
• Copied lines can’t be changed. They can only be changed in the assortment where it has been copied from
• Exclusions precede inclusions (Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations standard), unless overridden with the setting Lower level inclusions precede higher level exclusions (described in setup).
• Circular nesting is prevented

Linked assortments

On the retail assortment details page a new section Nested assortments with two grids has been added. One grid shows the parent-assortments of the current assortment. The second shows the child-assortments of the current assortment.

When the assortment is in edit mode the user is able to add new parents:

• This will open a lookup form. In this form the user is able to choose the parent assortment through a lookup.
• The list of optional assortments is filtered in such a way that no circular relations can be set up.
• The moment a parent is inserted the product lines of the parent assortment will be copied into the current assortment and its child assortments and all the descendants of those child assortments.

The lines from parent assortments are indicated with a Lock symbol and cannot be edited.
If you want to override such a line you can add a new record with the same key and change the line type, on save it will hide the line from the parent. On delete of this inserted line the parent will be restored.

Remove parent

When the assortment is in edit mode the user is able to remove or delete a parent:

When the user does this, the product lines that were copied from the deleted parent, will be instantly deleted from the current assortment and the current assortment child assortments and all their descendants.

New children

When the assortment is in edit mode the user is able to add new children: This will open a lookup form. The user will be able to choose the child-assortment through a lookup:

The list of optional assortments is filtered so no circular relations can be set up.

Remove children

When the assortment is in edit mode the user must be able to remove or delete a parent. When the user does this the product lines that were copied from the current assortment must instantly be deleted from the deleted child-assortment and all its descendants.

Forward publish

With the button “publish” the user indicates that the current assortment can be processed. During processing the current assortment product lines get “exploded” (in a hidden table) into a list of items and variants that are either in- or excluded for that assortment.

A new button called “Forward publish” has been added.  

Clicking this button will trigger the publishing of the current assortment, its child assortments and all its descendants. If a child assortment or its descendants has multiple parents, it can only publish that child assortment if all its parent assortment are published!

Copied and current assortments product lines

Product lines that are copied from a parent assortment into the current assortment:

• Can’t be edited
• An indication is displayed next to that line in Source column mentioned that it has been inherited form another assortment.
• In case a user inserted a line that matches the inherited one, they will both merged together

Current assortment product lines

Product lines that are added from the current assortment:

• Can be edited and removed
• Are indicated that they belong to the current assortment with the Stylus (go to edit mode) icon
• When inserted, new “versions” of the current product line will immediately be added to the current assortments child assortments and their descendants.
• When updated (also the group members), all the copied “versions” of this product line in the current assortments, child assortments and their descendants will be instantly updated as well.
• When a product line is removed all copied “versions” of this product line in the current assortments, child assortments and their descendants will be instantly removed as well.
• In case of a direct conflict (on the same level *) the product line of the current assortment precedes the copied product line

*) For instance: If a category is excluded in the parent assortment and included in the current assortment. It should be prevented or corrected that the exclusion from the parent assortment exclude items based on this conflicting same level setup. This practically means that

• in case all group member values (Category, Product, Variant) of two product lines in the same assortment are the same and
• the line type of the copied version from the parent is exclude

the product line should not be copied or if it already exists it should be deleted from the current assortment product line list.

Combining assortments

The in- and exclusion rules only work within an assortment. This means that if for the same level (Category, Product, variant) is included in assortment A and excluded in assortment B and in a certain order these two assortment get combined the end result will be that this level will be excluded.

Summary

Inserted lines in the child assortment always have a higher priority than the inherited lines from parents.

Assortment status

Assortments can be in one of the following status: Published, Draft or Expired.

Assortment expiration

Retail > Retail IT > Products and inventory > Process assortments

If an assortment has expired all linkages to either parent or child-assortment will be deleted the first time the process assortment batch is run after the expiration date.

Setup

Parameters

Retail > Headquarters setup > Parameters > Retail parameters

Extra parameter fields:

Assortment setup

The user can setup assortments in Category and Product management. An assortment is a multi-level category structure with products.

Assortments can be set up on the following entities:

Human resources > Workers > Workers > sub tab: Assortment

Warehouse management > Setup > Warehouse > Warehouses > fast tab: Retail

Warehouse management > Setup > Warehouse > Sites > fast tab: General

Accounts receivable > Customers > All customers > fast tab: Retail

Accounts payable > Vendors > All vendors > fast tab: Retail

Sales and marketing > Setup > Prospects > Company chains (customer chain / vendor chain)

Retail > Channels > Online stores > Ribbon tab: Channel > View assortments

Retail > Channels > Retail stores > All retail stores > Ribbon tab: Store > View assortments

In an order line there are generally four ways to insert an item:

• item lookup
• item search
• add lines (sales order lines, purchase order lines, sales quotation lines, purchase quotation lines)  
• add products

The assortment is used for filtering the items in the lookup on sales orders, purchase orders, sales quotation, purchase quotation, sales agreement, purchase agreement. Specials are filtered out by default.
Specials are also filtered out by default on trade agreements, movement inventory journal, inventory adjustment journal, transfer inventory journal, counting inventory journal.

 The available products per assortment can be listed, by using the query View assortment products. Important to note here is that this overview will display all available products within the assortment, but does not show Variant details. When a Variant item is added to the assortment, then the product is listed here, but it is not recognized as a Variant (=standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations behavior). However, on the orders, the excluded variants will not be visible.