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Allow setup of Category hierarchy role associations per company
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In standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Products and Category hierarchies are global. This also means that role associations are setup globally. In the role association form a category hierarchy gets linked to a Category hierarchy type.

For some of the Category hierarchy types it's possible to link them to multiple Category hierarchies and some can only be setup once.

In larger organizations with multiple legal entities there is often a wish to setup Category hierarchies which only can be used within their own company.

To make this possible we implemented a new feature which makes this possible for all Category hierarchy types which allow setup of multiple Category hierarchies roles associations, for which companies it should be applicable.

Via the new menu item Category hierarchy role associations per company (Product information management > Setup > Categories) the role associations can be setup for the current company. It's still possible to setup the same role association also in another company.

When this feature is enabled (via Configuration key) a filter is added to the Category hierarchy role association form with the following options which determines which records of this form are shown to the user:

The field Global can only be set by users on which the User options parameter Show category hierarchy has been set to All. Global means that this record is applicable for all legal entities. When a global  category hierarchy type  is selected in the Category hierarchy role associations per company form it will not be possible to select a category hierarchy.

To assign a role association to a company first the role association needs to be created in the Category hierarchy role association form and marked as NOT global. Then in the Category hierarchy role associations per company form this role can be made company specific.

Based on this setup and the Show category hierarchy parameter setup on the user, the system will limited the number of category hierarchies in the category lookup forms.

 Important

When this solution is installed in combination with other solutions of HSO,, lookups to new category hierarchies role associations which have been introduced within these modules do not respect this company specific setup. An extension to this solution needs to be made on the project to make this work as Retail is not part of these solutions by default.
   

Setup

Configuration key

As this feature is a global feature it needs to be enabled via the System Administration > Setup > License configuration keys.

Enable configuration key "Allow setup of Category hierarchy role associations per company" which is a sub key under the node Retail.

When this key is enabled additional fields are shown in the Category hierarchy role associations form and a new menu item Category hierarchy role associations per company becomes active in the menu Product information management > Setup > Categories and attributes. In this form you can setup the role associations per company.

When this configuration key is enabled the logic In Price and Margin Management is changed to allow the setup of multiple hierarchies for:

 Important

By default the configuration key is not enabled. When enabling the default behavior of the logic and lookups will work as described. If you are enabling this feature in an environment with existing Category role associations, those records need to be marked Global in order to let the system function as before.
   

User options

Tab "Role associations per company".

Field Description
Show category hierarchy

This company:

  • When selecting categories only category hierarchies with category hierarchy types which have been setup for the current legal entity and the ones marked as Global will be shown
  • The user is NOT allowed to mark a category role association as Global.
  • When opening Category hierarchy role associations, the default filter value is This company.

As this value is the default setting, you need at least one user that is system administrator or has the user role Category hierarchy role associations per company administrator which can change this setting on the existing users.

All company:

  • All categories hierarchies will be shown
  • The user is allowed to mark a category role association as Global.
  • When opening Category hierarchy role associations, the default filter value is All

Category hierarchy role associations form

This form has been adjusted to enabled setup of role associations per company. First disable the field global. Then click on the New button in the Used in company tab, a record for the current company is inserted. To insert a record for another company, first switch company.

It's only possible to do this for role associations which allow multiple associations. E.g. in standard it's not allowed to create more than one record with the commerce product hierarchy role association and therefore it won't be possible to disable the global check box for these kind of role associations.

A filter Show has been added to help the user to see which records are global or per company.

User roles

The following user roles have impact on this functionality: