The Storage Dimensions Groups form contains the data defining the details about the physical locations and status of the products in transactions. Based on the configuration done on this form these data will be available on the transactions related to the products being assigned.
Image taken from the Dynamics 365 F&O with standard demo data.
As seen in the image above there are few Storage Dimension Groups created. Based on the requirements these groups will be assigned to products. And also, other groups can be created.
So far there is nothing to be worried about. This all works fine if there is only one company set up in Dynamics 365 that will use the products assigned to these dimensions.
This becomes complicated when there are more than one company that will use these dimensions and there are products requiring different dimensions for the same products. Even though it may seem not an issue, this has caused a lot of trouble on some real-life scenarios I have been involved on. So, how do we work this issue out.
Here is one scenario.
There is the product containing the shared information across companies. And there are released products in each company. The main product is connected to the released products in companies.
When the product was first created, either manually or by importing from some other system, the Storage Dimension Group SiteWH was assigned to the product. Then the product was released to the company. This is all fine because the product is being used only in one company so far.
Then the product was released to some other company, but in this company, there were other requirement for Storage Dimension Groups such as Site, Warehouse and Location. In this case there is not possible to change the Storage Dimension Group because the released product takes the dimension from the Product master data.
This may cause a lot of headache to the users of the system. Especially to the ones that don’t know how to solve this and the ones that know but don’t have the privileges to do it.
Here are the solutions to this issue.
- When creating the product for the first time.
When the products are first created, leave the Storage Dimension Groups blank in the master data. So that whenever the product is released to a company, it can be assigned to any Storage Dimension Group as per requirements.
- The product has been in use in one company.
If the product in master data (Product shared data) has the Storage Dimension Groups assigned then it depends on the requirements of the Storage Dimension Groups. If the same group is used in the company where the product is to be released it will default to that group. If there is other requirement then the Storage Dimension Group assigned in Product master data, then it needs to be deleted and then assign the right Storage Dimension Group in the released item in the company.
Sometimes this issue may not be taken into consideration but I have seen it causing a lot of frustration on the users and on the consultants implementing the software. So analyzing the process in the right way and taking into the consideration various scenarios while implementing the software will pay off in the end.
Things always go wright until something surprises us.