Test supplier communications features (production-ready preview)

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[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

Learn how to test the supplier communications features of the Procurement Agent in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management.

The agent has two independent supplier communications features:

• Follow-up with vendors (writing reminders)
• Updates from vendors (reading vendor emails).

Test the feature you need first. If you plan to use both supplier communications features, start with Follow-up with vendors because it's easier to set up, configure, and test.

Test the "Follow-up with vendors" (writing reminders) feature

Use the user interface to set up the feature to fit your needs. Then test to make sure that the emails work as expected.

Test the "Updates from vendors" (reading emails) feature

The agent works by matching incoming vendor emails to existing purchase orders. To try this feature, your sandbox environment must have both of the following items:

• Purchase orders – Synchronize recent purchase orders from production to your sandbox environment.
• Vendor emails – Forward or send test emails that reference those purchase orders.

To ensure that you can continuously test in sandbox by using your latest purchase orders and emails, update the sandbox by using the following process.

Synchronize purchase orders between production and sandbox environments

When you test in a sandbox environment (Phase 1 or Phase 2 in the following section), the agent needs purchase order data to match against vendor emails. You can export purchase orders from your production environment and import them into your sandbox environment by using the Data management framework.

Note

This process exports and imports only the purchase order data itself. Related data isn't included. This approach provides sufficient data for the agent to match vendor emails to purchase orders, but it doesn't fully replicate the production data environment.

Export purchase orders from the production environment

Follow these steps in the production environment.

1. Open Data management.
2. Create a new export project.
3. Select the Purchase orders composite V3 entity.
4. Select the XML-Element format.
5. Create a filter by selecting the filter icon in the Filter column.
6. Add a range for the Created date and time field.
7. Set the filter value to (DayRange(-14, 0)). Modify the first argument (-14) to control how many days back to export. A higher value exports more data, which could exceed the import capacity of the sandbox environment.
8. Run the export in batch mode.

Prepare the sandbox environment (one-time setup)

To avoid number sequence conflicts when importing purchase orders, enable manual numbering for purchase orders in the sandbox environment.

1. Go to Procurement and sourcing > Setup > Procurement and sourcing parameters.
2. Select the Number sequences tab.
3. Find the number sequence that is used for purchase orders and navigate to it.
4. On the General FastTab, set Manual to Yes.

Import purchase orders into the sandbox environment

Repeat these steps regularly (for example, weekly) to keep the sandbox environment up to date.

1. Go to Data management.
2. Create a new import project.
3. Select the Purchase orders composite V3 entity.
4. Start the import in batch mode.

Forward emails

This feature requires more setup permissions, test email addresses, and multiple scenarios. Start small and then expand, as described in the following subsections.

Phase 1: Forward some emails to a testing email address in a sandbox environment

This phase lets you test the smallest possible scope. Start with a test email address so you can test without risk. It doesn't matter if you plan to use the purchaser's email in production or a common mailbox for the purchasing department.

• Ask your Microsoft Exchange admin to create the test email address.
• Connect that email address to the sandbox environment where you do the testing.
• Refresh your data (copy production data to the sandbox) or forward older emails so the system can match them.
• Forward emails in batches - for example, five emails at a time. Check results and note if there's anything unexpected, and continue until you have a good idea of how it performs.

Phase 2: Forward emails from selected vendors

Now that you have a few emails available on your system, start working with messages from those vendors that you communicate with the most or that have the most confirmations that you want the agent to handle.

• Use the same setup as before, but this time autoforward a set of emails from real vendor email addresses to the test address.
• Refresh data or import purchase orders and products before you do the test, especially if your testing should last for a few weeks. The agent can't match an email to a purchase order if the purchase order isn't in the system. Collaborate with one or more of your purchasers if you haven't already.

For this phase, you might want to involve one or more of your purchasers.

Phase 3: Use real email addresses in production

Now you're ready for the final test: testing in production. Set up the agent in production using real email addresses. Stop the agent from working in your sandbox.

Testing in production is safe. The feature doesn't interfere with standard business processes. At best, the agent does the work automatically. At worst, if the agent doesn't understand something correctly, the purchaser still needs to do it manually.

The supplier communications features of the Procurement Agent are production-ready preview features. They have the quality of generally available (GA) features and you can go live with them. The reason They aren't fully GA is that the Procurement Agent is under continuous development. By designating these features as production-ready previews, Microsoft can continue improving them.

For this test, use the following recommendations:

• Have purchasers work with the agent to do their daily tasks.
• Start with just one or a few purchasers.
• Optionally filter messages from a few vendors to start small.

Phase 4: Expand the number of vendors in production

Keep adding more vendors to the configuration so you can gradually increase the value provided by the agent.