If you are looking for a concise and simple explanation of Print management, this article may be just what you need. This is the first of two articles explaining some of the most common Print management features. Those of you who want to dive deeper into the topic can also read the second article, titled Print Management for the Curious.

A short introduction of Print management

Print management is a framework in D365FO that allows you to configure generation and distribution of common business documents, implemented as SSRS reports or Configurable business documents (using Electronic reporting). These configurations are managed centrally by administrators or power users. End users activate these settings during post and print actions by selecting the Use print management option.

Another way to activate it is to reprint from a posted journal using the Use print management button.

Print management framework is powerful but complex, and that’s why we wrote this article.

Print vs. Non-Print management reports

There are currently over 40 types of reports for which Microsoft enabled printing through Print management. Some examples are invoices, orders, quotations, confirmations…

Reports that can use Print management settings are often called Print management reports. All other reports are Non-Print management reports.

You can find Print management reports in the following modules:

• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Inventory management
• Procurement and sourcing
• Project management and accounting
• Transportation management
• Warehouse management

Print management document types

The article, mentioned above, lists all the document types, supported by Print management. In order to print a document through Print management, it must have at least the Original <Default> setting, as shown below for the Sales order confirmation report.

In addition to Original, it can also have one or more Copy settings. Its original purpose was to mimic the hard-copy system where you needed multiple copies of the original, and you wanted to keep one for yourself and send others to wherever needed (warehouse, accounting…). You can also use this feature to send the generated document to multiple print destinations while the report is printing. Such setting is used in the screenshot below.

The screenshot below shows Print management settings for Sales packing slip; however, the settings don’t exist yet. Trying to print this report using print management will produce a warning as you can see in the second screenshot below.

Print management settings

To find out which are the Print management reports, open the Print management form. For the Accounts receivable module, select the following menu navigation:

Modules > Accounts receivable > Setup > Forms > Form setup > Print management

The screenshot below is showing Print management reports for the Accounts receivable module for the USMF legal entity.

Now we will take a closer look at the settings for the Customer invoice and explain them.

(1) Settings configured for this document: Original, Copy and Conditional settings
The Original setting is required, the Copy and Conditional settings are optional.

(2) The Suspend printing for this document checkbox
Setting this checkbox to Yes, suspends printing of the current Print management setting and all of its child conditional settings. This may be useful during testing or troubleshooting the print management setting.

(3) Destination
This field presents a summary of the selected print destination (see next item).

(4) The Print destination settings button
Clicking Revert to default printer setup reverts the setting to default destination. Clicking Printer setup opens the Print destinations form.

(5) Report format
Lookup for selecting an active SSRS report format. It is possible to have multiple report formats, so you can use this field to select the one you need. If you are using Electronic reporting and Configurable business documents, you will also see the ER Format configurations, previously registered in the Electronic reporting workspace.

(6) Number of copies
As the name suggests, you can enter number of copies in this field.

(7) Footer text
Reports can also include footer text, entered through this field. For multilingual support, you can open the drop-down list and add translations for other languages if needed.

Original and Copy settings

In addition to a mandatory Original <Default> setting, you can add one or more Copy settings. Very basic use-case example, as described in Microsoft documentation, is to print a Sales order packing slip three times, each printout with a different footer text. For that, you would set up an Original and two Copy settings. But companies also use the Original + Copy configuration to print the same report to different Print destinations, for example to Email and File.

You add a Copy setting by right-clicking the Original <Default> setting and clicking the New button:

For documents, printed with the Copy setting, the word “Copy” or its translation in the report runtime language is added to the Document title.

Order of report execution for Copy settings

Whenever you have Copy settings in Print management settings, you should know that all Copy settings are executed in the same order in which they appear in the Print management settings.
You can simply move the settings up or down if you want to change the order of execution. If you right-click on one of the nodes a pop-up menu will open where you can change the order of the entries.

Naming the Copy settings

Each Copy setting has a mandatory field to indicate its name, so you can easily understand its purpose. However, the Original (default) setting has a fixed name that cannot be changed.

If you want to avoid the suffix “Copy” in the Document title of the printed document, check the Docentric goodies chapter in the second article.

Conditional settings

Print management setup have another powerful feature: Conditional settings. They allow you to specify exceptions to the Original <Default> or Copy setting. The condition, defining the exception, is provided through query.

The following screenshot shows one Conditional setting below the Original node. The Conditional setting must have a Description (see #1 below) and the CONDITION (see #2). The condition in this example is set for Customer group = 20. Whenever the report is printed for a Customer with this Customer group, this Print management setting will be used for report execution. Sales order confirmations for Customers in any other Customer group will be printed based on the Original setting.

Order of execution of conditional settings

Conditional settings are evaluated in the same order in which they appear in Print management. When a condition in the setting is met, that Print management setting is used and the remaining conditional Print management settings are no longer processed.

If all conditional Print management settings have been processed and no match is found, the Original setting is used.

The maximum number of all Print management settings for a single report is limited to about twenty entries.

Please note: while conditional settings and queries provide flexibility in your Print management settings, complex queries or many conditional settings can affect the posting performance.

The screenshot above shows the Original setting and three conditional settings. The first conditional setting checks if Customer group = 20 (Major customers). The second one checks if Customer group = 30 (Retail customers). The last conditional setting checks if Terms of payment = Cash.

If the current report has Customer group = 30, then the first conditional setting doesn’t find a match, and it proceeds with the second one. The second conditional Print management setting finds a match and is therefore executed. Since the match has already been found, the last conditional setting is never processed.

Suspend printing for this document

In the Original and Copy Print management settings, there is a Suspend printing for this document check box. As the name suggests, it disables the setting, including all of the conditional settings if they exist in child nodes.

Attempting to print the report using Print management based on the above setting would generate a warning as shown below:

Destination

This field contains the information about the Print destination to which the generated report will be sent.

Clicking the Destination button opens a drop-down menu with two options:

1. The first option reverts the settings to the default values, which is the Printer print destination. If this destination is not available or set, the Screen print destination is automatically used.
2. The second option opens the Print destination settings form.

The following example shows the Print destinations settings form with the Email selection. The Show Docentric destinations option, visible at the bottom of the form, is part of the Docentric AX Free Edition reporting solution, that significantly enhances print destination capabilities. For more details on these enhancements, see the Docentric goodies chapter in the second article, titled Print Management for the Curious.

Report format

Apart from the standard SSRS report format provided by D365FO, implementation partners typically create its copy and customize it to meet the client’s requirements. In that case, clients must select this new report format from the drop-down list of available formats. If you use Electronic reporting, you will also see the available ER report format configurations.

The screenshot below shows the drop-down list of available report formats. The two report formats highlighted in yellow are custom formats. The format highlighted in green is an Electronic reporting format. The last format is a standard SSRS report format, that is available out of the box.

Number of copies

The Number of copies field is enabled only for Printer and Screen print destinations. In case of the Printer print destination, it specifies how many copies will be printed, while in the case of the Screen print destination it is ignored.
If the Number of copies field is enabled, you can enter the value directly in the field. Alternatively, you can enter the number of copies in the Copies field in the Print destination settings > Printer form. This value is then automatically updated in the Number of copies field when you return to this form.

Footer text

Footer text allows you to print multiple documents based on the same Report format, each having a different identification/purpose as specified in the Footer text field. For example, for Sales order packing slip, you can set up footer text to print “Original” at the bottom of the original, “Customer copy” at the bottom of the first copy, and “Warehouse copy” at the bottom of the second copy.

Clicking the Footer text drop-down field opens a new form where you can enter the footer text in multiple languages, as shown in the screenshot below.

The generated document contains the footer text in the report runtime language.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has helped you to better understand the Print management. If you’re new to Print management, you now have a good foundation for further learning.

This article walked you through the basics of Print management:

• The difference between Print management and Non-Print management reports
• Original and Copy settings
• Conditional settings
• Suspended printing option
• Print destination selection
• Report format selection
• Number of copies
• Footer text

If you want to learn more, you can also read our second article, Print Management for the Curious, where you’ll find more advanced Print management topics.

Check also our other articles on Print management >>