Business Central 2022 wave 1 (BC20) new features: Demo tool and demo data for manufacturing scenarios (Contoso Coffee Demo Dataset)

Hi, Readers.
The preview environment for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 release wave 1 (BC20) is available. Learn more: Link

I will continue to test and share some new features that I hope will be helpful.

Demo tool and demo data for manufacturing scenarios:

Business value:

To help partners demonstrate the premium capabilities of Business Central, we are making the demo tool and demo data available for manufacturing scenarios.

Feature details:

The demo tool and demo data set will be available for scenarios in manufacturing as an extension that you can install on any environment. Presales specialists can run the tool on top of Cronus or My Company and get the setup and demo data they’ll need when they demonstrate various scenarios in the manufacturing space. Both the demo tool and the demo data set are available on product media as source code.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2022wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/demo-tool-demo-data-manufacturing-scenarios

When we want to do a demo or test for manufacturing features, we need to create a lot of data manually every time because BC SaaS demo database doesn’t come with these data.
Some partners may have already created their own Configuration Package for manufacturing data.

Last year, we also discussed how to import Advance Evaluation Data (EXTENDED Package – Complete Sample Data) , more details: Link. This contains some manufacturing data.

Now, Microsoft has given us a new option, Contoso Coffee Demo Dataset extension.

Presales specialists can run the tool on top of Cronus or My Company and get the setup and demo data they’ll need when they demonstrate various scenarios in the manufacturing space.

Note:
This is not supported in W1 countries yet.

How does it work?
First of all this contains a setup page, Contoso Coffee Demo Data page.

The manufacturing data will be automatically installed when you create the environment.(except “W1 countries”)
For example, in US version: CRONUS USA, Inc.

Manufacturing Setup:

Items:

Work Centers:

Production BOMs:

The “Is DemoData Populated” field will be True on the Contoso Coffee Demo Data page.

And if the “Is DemoData Populated” field is true, you can not choose Create Demo Data action.

More details:

If you create a new company, there are two case.
Evaluation:

The Evaluation company does not contain any manufacturing data.

Now we can go to Contoso Coffee Demo Data page, run Create Demo Data.

Working on it…

When it finished, there was no any message. But when you reopen the page, the Create Demo Data action will be disable.

And the manufacturing data will be imported.
Work Centers and Items:

Advanced Evaluation:

Manufacturing data is included in Advanced Evaluation company, but this is not the same as that provided in Contoso Coffee Demo Data app.

You can run Create Demo Data action on the Contoso Coffee Demo Data page.

But this will cause errors very quickly.

Update 2023.03.14: Business Central 2023 wave 1 (BC22) new features: Demo tool and data for warehouse and inventory scenarios (Contoso Coffee Whse Demo Data)

PS:
1. Information from Microsoft Yammer:

Yammer : Dynamics 365 Business Central Development

Predrag Maricic – March 17 at 08:11 PM

Hi,

First, I owe you a huuuge apology for this delay. We had changes in priorities and due to that we had the reduced capacity for Demo tool/data in this release.

However, Wave 1 2022 won’t come without improved demo data. We actually prepared an extension, called Contoso Coffee Demo Dataset, that can be used to generate demo data in manufacturing area. More important, the extension will provide a good overview of design we want to use going forward, so your feedback would be valuable. The functionality will be available in the Company Creation Wizard and also from Contoso Coffee Demo Datapage.

It is important to understand that we want to cover two things:

– Demo tool – tool that will help user choose which area the tool should generate demo data for, but also to help user to define dependencies between different areas. For example, setup data is must for most of scenarios and most of other areas will need setup data.

– Demo data – we also want to provide sample demo data for the different product areas

What is in the scope for this release?

For this release we decided to define future design and release only Manufacturing demo data as an extension for all countries with Microsoft localization (so all, except “W1 countries”). Each of the modules will implement high level interface to generate:

– Setup data

– Master data

– Transactional data

The design will allow the following:

– Generate demo data against the latest version of BC (in this case manufacturing demo data)

– Code is extensible, so partners can customize demo data

– Allow partners to create demo data for only specific verticals. In this case, Manufacturing can be created on top of Setup company or Evaluation company

– Ensure that the process is stable enough and performant

– Ensure that dependencies between modules(features) are defined, so that user can easily customize as per need. For example, this would allow user to generate only setup data, or finance on top of setup and so on. The existing demo data will be split into separate modules. This will be available with the Demo tool that we will release soon.

– Ensure that localizations are also included and that demo data for local/localized features is created. For this release, all countries with MS localization will be supported.

What is out of scope for this release?

We came late with the demo tool, so we’d need some time to prepare it and polish for release.

As this is a first step, we also expect feedback from community before concluding on the current design and making next steps. The extension is already available in the Wave 1 2022 Preview.

2. The object list in Contoso Coffee Demo Dataset app (Version: 20.0.36751.0).

3. You can run the following command to download the source code of the latest BC20 Preview version.

Download-Artifacts -artifactUrl (Get-BcArtifactUrl -storageAccount BcPublicPreview -country jp -type sandbox) -includePlatform

4. This is not supported in W1 countries yet.
When a new W1 Countries environment is created, no data is included.
Although this app is currently included in the BC20 W1 Preview version, it will prompt an error when you execute it. So, for W1, please refer to how to import Advance Evaluation Data (EXTENDED Package – Complete Sample Data)

5. You can not create Advanced Evaluation company in W1 countries.

6. More details about Contoso Coffee Demo Dataset in MS Docs.

7. You can enable Install the Contoso Demo Data app on top of the default sample data when creating new company.

Update:
Business Central 2023 wave 1 (BC22) new features: Demo tool and data for warehouse and inventory scenarios (Contoso Coffee Whse Demo Data)
Business Central 2023 wave 2 (BC23): Demo tool and data for service scenarios (New demo data)

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Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU