During their lifecycle, projects in Dynamics 365 Business Central often change and evolve. A new archiving function in the current version provides an optimized overview of all project data through audit trails and version control.
The archiving function for projects is similar to the functions already familiar from the sales and purchase areas. The projects can be set up to automatically store them in the archive. With automatic archiving, Business Central creates a new version of the respective project document when one of the following trigger actions is executed:
• The status of a document (e.g. quote) changes or the document is deleted
• Project document is printed, downloaded or sent by email
• Invoice from project is posted
Archiving can be controlled continuously. There are various configuration options for setting up automatic archiving on the “Project Setup” page:
• Never: Projects are never archived automatically. If required, projects can be archived manually using the “Archive document” action.
• Question: User query with the option of selecting whether a project should be archived if one of the above events occurs.
• Always: The project is automatically archived if one of the above events occurs.
Previous versions of archived projects can be reused if required. It is possible to create several archived versions of a project and restore them conditionally. For projects that have not yet been posted, archived versions of the project can be restored to the actual project using the “Restore” function. The last data status is then overwritten with the data status of the archived project version.
Dimension values that are attached to the project are not saved in the archive and therefore cannot be restored. If a project is restored from the archive, Business Central uses the standard dimensions instead.
The new archiving function for projects in Business Central is therefore particularly useful for restoring earlier project versions if required. It also offers a search option in the project archive.