Many companies around the world use Microsoft Dynamics 365 in a wide range of language regions. That is why Microsoft Dynamics 365F/SCM/C is provided with many language versions. To use the multilingualism it is necessary to plan and systematically set up a multilingual environment.
The basic setup is done when the system language is defined. Even though almost all designations of any process master data can be created in any language, some key values are still in system language only. To successful build up and keep your international master data a linguistic regulation must be found for the creation and/or data import of master data. Since this is an initial process at implementation time, it will not be explained further here.
Automated translation support for daily operations
The user interface, forms, reports, … themselves are translated into the supported languages by the manufacturer or an ISV and offer the user a good orientation in his native language. They can us Microsoft DTS (Dynamics Translation Service) to translate any objects as menu iems or form labels, etc. to any supported target language.
The focus of this blog is rather on how we can support the user with the Power Platform to prepare his data content (textual master data of products and services) for the required language regions.
All master data of products, services, identifiers, units, attributes, attribute values, categories, …. are to be prepared linguistically by translations in such a way that customers in the target markets are informed in their usual language. All too often we find that it is already a great effort to provide the quality of the master data in the “corporate language”. It becomes very difficult when the language of the international customers is also required in order to adequately present the products and services offered in the local language.
To make this process in day-to-day business a little easier and more efficient, we can create a solution with the Power Platform that uses cognitive services to automatically create translations in Dynamics 365 F/SCM/C of products and services master data once it has been created.
Regardless of the language in which the master data was created, the Microsoft Translator Service would also able to recognize the language.
Business Events
Based on these tools, the event warning function in Microsoft Dynamics 365 F/SCM/C can now be used to “report” almost any data asset to the power platform. If you use the “When a business event occurs” trigger in Power Automate (also in Power App and Logic App), in connection with a specific Dynamics 365 F/SCM/C instance, the associated endpoint is automatically created and is available in the instance.
The creation of the schema to use the triggerd information needs to be adopted to the type of message send from Dynamics. Here you find the process to setup Business Events inside Dynamics.
Alert on translation of products
The creation of alerts is a well known feature for personal usage from former verions, as we waited some time with AX7/D365 the alerts come back and can be used now with enhanced business logic also outside the ERP application. this is a great advantage for automating business processes inside and outside the organization. Creating alerts is as easy and can be found here.
If the warning for the creation of a new record is created in the form Product Translations, the creation of a new language record is now reported to the user in the Action Center (right upper corner) as well as to the Power Automate endpoint.
Power Automate triggered by business event
If the event occurs in the Power Automate, the defined workflow is now executed.
The workflow runs through simple rules and fetches a few parameters that are stored in the dataserve. Among other things, this involves the assignment of language identifiers, since the language specifications possible in Dynamics 365 F/SCM/C are more extensive than those of Azure Cognitive Translation Services independently..
To map the assignment of the Dynamics 356 language codes to the Translator language codes, a configuration table is created on Dataserve (from as Common Data Service). The user can access this directly in Dynamics 365 F/SCM/C and make the few details of the code assignment.
The Power App was directly integrated into the Form for product translations SysTranslationDetail.
Here the user can set the languages for which he wants to have product names and product descriptions translated by Translator. In addition, he can match the language codes between Dynamics 365 and the Translator, since they are not always identical.
So as the setup ist done and we create a new master source product description in your preferred language.
When the “new record” event is triggered in the article translation table, the workflow goes through a number of rules and checks
- If the source language is defined
- Are there code language code matchings
- Is the alert rule allowed for the workflow
- Are there possibly already translations
- …
Once these rules have been processed, the text to be translated is sent to the Cognitive Translator Service with source and target language and the response is received. The translated text is stored in the Dynamics 365 F/SCM/C entity producttranslation. This process is performed for each target language.
Depending on the batch server setting, configuration and recurrance for
- processing alert events and currently
- processíng busioness events
the events will be processed in Power Automate.
After he translations has finished we send an information mail to the Product Manager to inform him/her about the automatic translations.
Nevertheless it only takes less time to get the results insdie Microsoft Dynamics 365F/SCM/C without any further effort of people.
Depending on the industry you work in, a review of the translation may be required. In the same way, it is possible to use the Microsoft Teams application or to start an approval workflow for the generated translation. As Power Platform is a Cloud Service we can also include external Translations providers (people or services) instead of Microsoft Translator to execute the translation.
For more about using Power Platform in relation with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce you can read about PowerApps for Dynamics 365 for Operations (Part 1), Inventory on hand App (Part 2) or PowerApp performs Sales Order on Hand availability.
Furthermore you can also watch the video about basic configuration of AutoTranslate product description with Power Automate inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce.
This blog was fist released on http://dynamics3654operations.de