Navigating with tiles in D365O
Tiles, which are an important navigation feature of D365O, are menu items that appear on the screen as squares or rectangles that you can click; they’re sort of like oversized command buttons. Clicking a tile usually takes you to another screen. (The concept of tiles was introduced with the Windows 8 operating system.)There are four types of tiles in D365O:
- Standard: Standard tiles have a title (label) but show no additional information.
- Count: Count tiles display a number that’s updated by a query that refreshes periodically.
For example, a count tile in the Manage Customer Credit and Collections workspace, called Sales Orders on Hold, shows the number of sales orders in the system that are in a Hold status. When you click the tile, you’re taken to a list of those sales orders that are on hold.
- KPI: Key performance indicators are metrics that you use to evaluate the status of important aspects of your operations.
For example, a key performance indicator for many companies is the number of orders shipped today or the total currency value of today’s shipments or this week’s sales, for example.
The KPI tile shows a summary or grand total for the metric it is tracking; for example, the total sales today KPI might read $25,000.
When you click a KPI tile, you’re taken to an expanded view of the KPI report.
- Link: Link tiles have a title (label) but, as with standard tiles, they don’t convey any information; however, unlike standard tiles, link tiles map to a URL (website address).
When you click a link tile, your web browser launches a new web page, taking you to the URL specified by the tile; these links can take you to an external website outside of Dynamics 365 proper.
Setting user preferences in D365O
User options allow you to tailor your D365O experience to suit yourself. User options range from the “nice to have” variety such as color themes to the more crucial settings of language and time zone found under the User Preferences tab.To set your user preferences in D365O, follow these steps:
- Click the Gear icon on the navigation bar at the top of the web page. It’s on the right side of the page.
Setting user preferences in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.A drop-down menu appears with the following choices: User Options, Task Recorder, and About.
- Select User Options from the drop-down menu.
The Options window appears.The navigation tab defaults to Visual; here, you can change the color scheme of the application.
- Click the Preferences tab on the left side of the web page, under the word Visual.
The Setup Default Preference page appears.
- In the Startup section, select the company that you want as your default company when you sign in from the Company drop-down list.
If your organization has multiple legal entities that are being accounted for in D365O, you can specify here which of these will be the default company that you’re logged in to when you sign in to the system.
- In the Startup section, choose the initial page you want from the Initial Page drop-down list.
Here’s where you specify which dashboard appears when you initially sign in to the system; your initial
- In the Startup section, make a selection from the Default View/Edit Mode drop-down list.
Select View if you want pages to open records in Read-Only (unable to be edited) mode. Normally, you would set this to Auto, in which case the system determines whether the page is locked or editable.
- In the Language and Country/Region section, select your preferred language from the Language drop-down list.
Language preference can be set at the individual user level, which is great because you can have two different users in the same company but have the screens displaying labels in different languages, to accommodate users’ language abilities and preferences.For example, after setting the language preference to Spanish the screens were automatically translated into Spanish.
The dashboard, showing the effect of setting the language preference to Spanish. - In the Language and Country/Region section, select your preferred options from the Date, Time, and Number Format drop-down list.
- In the Language and Country/Region section, select your local time zone from the Time drop-down list.
Be sure to set your time zone so that you view scheduling information accurately; the system displays universal times stored in the database in your local time zone.
- In the Language and Country/Region section, make a selection from the Country/Region drop-down list.
- Click the Save button.
The Save button is located in the top left corner of the web page.Your preferences have been saved.