An element of uncertainty has existed ever since Microsoft announced the deprecation of the D365 F&O mobile workspaces. Yes, I know this was a long time, but until recently some questions remained unanswered. We could make assumptions with a high degree of assurance, but if you’re like me, you want to get your hands on something and see it for yourself before backing the horse too heavily. One of those questions finally answered, with confidence, is the replacement solution for the D365 Expenses Mobile Workspace.

What is it?

The D365 Expense management mobile app is a pre-built canvas app, leveraging OCR receipt scanning, that integrates to F&O using virtual entities on Dataverse. It has been in public preview since mid-2023, and GA since late 2023.

One thing I think it is worth clarifying at this stage is the misconception that a D365 Project Operations install is a pre-requisite for this solution, this is not required. (Despite Microsoft Learn implying this is the case with the route paths of the documentation).

Setup

There are certain system pre-requisites that need calling out first. Current Microsoft documentation states that the following system versions and associated quality updates:

  • 10.0.37 – 10.0.1725.171 or later
  • 10.0.38 – 10.0.1777.127 or later

However, the configuration steps and setup validation in this blog post were performed on:

  • 10.0.39 – 10.0.1860.72

The other major pre-requisite for the following is the presence of a Dataverse environment linked to you F&O instance. By default; all F&O environment deployments receive an initial Power Platform environment, but importantly this doesn’t include Dataverse. As such this step may be required if this is the first instance of extending your F&O environment with Power Platform.

Once you’ve validated and/or completed the above pre-requisites then you can crack on with the app setup steps and deployment.

Note – if you have previously deployed the expenses app components as part of the preview release then it is strongly recommended that any pre-existing components are deleted before continuing. Additionally, some of the steps previously required as part of the setup for the preview application are not longer required.

Setup Users

The F&O setup is fairly minimal and, unless you are deploying a fresh instance, is probably not going to be required, but for completeness; users of the app must exist as F&O users, have a worker party association and a default legal entity specified:

Enable Code Components for Canvas Apps

Navigate to power platform admin centre (Power Platform admin center (microsoft.com))

Select Environments>choose the environment linked to you F&O instance>settings>products>features:

Scroll down to the ‘Power Apps Component Framework for Canvas Apps’ and ensure ‘Allow publishing of canvas apps with code components’ is set to ‘Yes’.

Install the D365 expense mobile app

Navigate to App Source to the Dynamics 365 expense management app (https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-gb/product/dynamics-365/mscrm.msdyn_expense_mobile?tab=Overview)

Select ‘Get it now:

You will be taken to Power Platform Admin Centre to complete the process and choose the environment where the app should be installed. Select your chosen environment, accept the various terms, then click ‘Install’

The app will then proceed to be installed:

Monitor the status and once complete, move on to the next step.

Refresh Virtual Entities in Dataverse

Microsoft guidance status that this is an optional step. However, in the interest of completeness I would recommend it be performed to ensure the virtual entities are behaving as intended.

Following the app install, you should perform a refresh action on the following entities:

  • currencyentity
  • expensefieldsvisibilityentity
  • logisticsaddresscountryregionentity
  • logisticsaddresscountryregiontranslationentity
  • dimattributetrvtraveltxtentity
  • trvtravellocationentity
  • trvexpenseparametersentity
  • logisticsaddressstateentity
  • trvaddresszipcodeentity
  • trvexpmobilemasterdataentity
  • trvmileagerateentity
  • trvexpmobilereportapprovalentity
  • trvadmincustomfieldsentity
  • trvexpensecategoryentity
  • trvexpmobileactivitiesentity
  • trvexpmobileaddresscityentity
  • trvexpmobilecompanyinfoentity
  • trvexpmobiledocumententity
  • trvexpmobileexpenseentity
  • trvexpmobileexpensefieldvisibilityentity
  • trvexpmobileitemtaxentity
  • trvexpmobileprojentity
  • trvexpmobileprojlinepropertyentity
  • trvexpmobilereportentity
  • trvexpmobiletaxgroupentity
  • trvexpmobileexpenselineattachedtoreportentity
  • trvexpmobilereceiptattachedtoexpenselineentity
  • trvlogisticsaddresscountryregiontranslationentity
  • trvpaymethodentity
  • trvexpmobileattacheddocumententity
  • trvexpmobileunattacheddocumententity

To do this navigate to power platform admin centre (https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/), select Environments, and choose the related environment to your F&O application:

Click on the ‘Environment URL’ within the details section to open up the Power Platform environment:

Select Setting>Advanced Settings:

Select Advanced filter:

Choose ‘Available Finance and Operations Entities’ in the ‘look for’ filter and select ‘Results’.

Tip – order your results alphabetically by ‘name’ and be careful when clicking through the lists as I found the ‘back’ navigation didn’t operate as expected!

Select the entity, mark the ‘Refresh’ check box and click ‘Save’ to prompt the refresh.

Perform this for all the entities listed.

Grant Access to the Mobile App

Now that all the more technical steps are complete and the app is installed, the final steps are to grant access and share the app with users so that they can interact with it.

To do this sign in to power apps (https://make.powerapps.com/)

Ensure your chosen environment is specified, select ‘Apps’, select ‘Expense Management’ and click ‘Share’:

In the sharing screen add the users you wish to share the app with and click ‘Share’.

User access is granted in Power Platform Admin Centre (https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/):

Select the user(s) and then select ‘Manage security roles’:

Expenses app users must have the ‘Basic User’ and ‘Expense Mobile User’ security roles assigned to fully access and use the app. Select these roles from your list and click ‘Save’. If you are wanting to apply security on a broader scale, then it is recommended to use ‘teams’ to manage this. The following link provides more details: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/manage-group-teams#manage-the-security-roles-of-a-team

Other considerations

The app looks great, is simple to install and intuitive to use. However, there are still a few minor gremlins that will be worked out over time. One of which being the need for users to reselect their default legal entity within the app, even though its already specified, for the relevant data to be displayed. Broader integration with the wider F&O stack outside of Finance (e.g. project operations), also seems to be work in progress, but all indications from Microsoft are that these items are very much a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’.

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