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Acumatica 2021R2 Features: Preview

Summary

The new Acumatica 2021R2 features can be grouped as follows:

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  • Feature Benefits for Personalization:

    • Consolidated toolbar streamlines functionality

    • Automated updates without need for programming

  • Feature Benefits for "Managed Availability" Capabilities:

    • Simplified transactions with international currencies

    • Streamlined activity with the Microsoft Teams integration

  • Feature Benefits for Industry Editions:

    • Financials and CRM

      • Improved email tracking, deliverability, and scalability via an integration to SendGrid

      • Simplified reconciliation by matching bank transactions to multiple receipts and disbursements

    • Distribution and Commerce

      • New up-sell and cross-sell capabilities to boost sales and increase revenue

      • Improved fill rates and on-time order fulfillment with item substitutions

    • Construction and Field Service

      • Simplified project workflow via project drop shipments

      • Synchronized AP bills and sub invoices seamlessly with Procore

    • Manufacturing

      • Visualized production schedules to monitor utilization

      • Improved traceability and quality control

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SInce the Acumatica 2021R2 version will only be issued in Sept. 2021, these features have only be previewed during the Acumatica 2021 Summit in July 2021, and are not officially available yet. You can see some of these new features in the Acumatica 2021 Summit Keynotes.

Acumatica 2021R2 features overview.jpg

Description of Features

Feature Benefits for Personalization

  • Consolidated toolbar streamlines functionality

  • Automated updates without need for programming

    • State Workflow engine

      • The state workflow engine enables you to do the following:

        • When a condition (change of eg. status of a Sales Order) is satisfied or an action is taken, a new state/status/action or new screen/document is created/shown.

        • To create conditions/triggers, a visual diagram can be used to create conditions or actions, and to create new states/status/actions without any programming

      • In the demos below, you will see the following:

        • What you can do with the state workflow engine

          • A sales order gets a new sales order type called Research. This SO document looks now very different. It doesn't have actions like create shipment since only a research task (create a research document) has to be performed. The only action is Research.

          • Once the Action Research is clicked, two now CRM tasks are created: prepare research, and prepare research document

          • You can see the demo in the Acumatica 2021 Day 2 Summit Keynotes starting at time 17 min 36 secs.

          • Note that a new integrated email tracking application (Sendgrid) enables you to create HTML email templates, and see whether your sent email bounced or was opened or was read. It can track whether an attached document was downloaded , or  weblink was clicked on. This may trigger an invoice.

  • How to build a new workflow for the Sales Order document using the state workflow engine

A deep dive in the 2021R2 state workflow engine is available at: https://www.augforums.com/live/

The previous (2021R1) workflow engine has a training course at: https://openuni.acumatica.com/courses/reporting/w150-workflows/

  • Integration with Microsoft Teams

    • For instance in a support case, you see the customer contacts who created the support case. You can select a customer contact, click on the MS Teams chat icon or video icon besides the contact to start  a MS Teams chat or video call to discuss the details of the support case. This will resolve the support case much faster, and enable the customer contact to do his/her work again.

    • This integration is demonstrated in the Acumatica 2021 Day 1 Summit Keynotes starting at time of 38 mins 13 secs.

  • Interaction with Adobe PDF Documents

    • For instance in a project, you can pull up in a side panel an attached PDF document (for instance a contract or agreement) and make annotations to the PDF document. This will enable changes much faster so that the document gets completed on time.

    • This integration is demonstrated in the Acumatica 2021 Day 1 Summit Keynotes starting at time of 48 mins 46 secs.

  • Distribution and Retail-Commerce (B2C ECommerce

    • In distribution, the upsell, cross sell and the item substitution can be seen in the Acumatica 2021 Day 2 Summit Keynotes starting at time 30 min 38 secs, or see the video of Cloud9ERP below.

Ideally the cross sell, up sell and substitution should be presented in the ECommerce site (B2C or B2B). BigCommerce and Shopify may be able to handle this, and just pass the selected items to Acumatica via the connector. This way the customer him/herself can decide what they want to do.

  • Manufacturing and Construction

    • When a company manufactures a product, sells it, installs it and maintains/repairs it, a workflow is needed that requires all the departments to communicate with each other effectively and efficiently. The Acumatica 2021R2 feature enables now all this.

    • The demo at the Acumatica 2021 Summit shows a manufacturer of air conditioning units, that gets a call from the customer that their installed AC unit is not cooling anymore. The customer service manager creates a service order/appointment in projects to fix the problem. The field technician sees his appointment and issue on his mobile app., and  visits the customer. He takes a picture of the problem, and reports that the relay is broken. At the manufacturing company, the production manager checks which AC units use that same relay, and checks whether five relays can be produced on time to fix all 5 AC units at the customer. The production manager finds out that it can be done, and creates a project drop ship purchase order for the customer so that the field technician doesn't have to retrieve them from the manufacturing plant.

    • This is demonstrated in the Acumatica 2021 Day 2 Summit Keynotes starting at time of 47 mins 29 secs.

Discussion of Acumatica 2021R2 features in AugForums.com/Live

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Tim Rodman of AUGForums (Acumatica User Group) discusses the new Acumatica 2021R2 features in the video below. If you click on Youtube on the lower right bottom of the video, it will bring you to the video in YouTube where you can see the start times of each feature in the video. You can attend these  AUGForums live meetings virtually every month at: https://www.augforums.com/live/

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