Maintenance Manager for Business Central — Documentation

Overview

Maintenance Manager (the app is called Dynasys Maintenance Management in Business Central) manages the maintenance of machines and equipment inside Business Central. Everything is done in one app with these sections:

• Dashboard — open requests, completed work and hours for the period, overdue activities, upcoming schedules and total cost; team performance, requests by type and SLA compliance (on-time against late completions).
• Requests — maintenance requests from anyone in the company, converted into activities by the maintenance team.
• Activities — planned and breakdown work orders with their status, technician, materials, costs, work log and photos.
• Schedules — recurring preventive maintenance per machine.
• Gantt — the maintenance plan of all machines on a timeline.
• Inventory — spare parts and materials used for maintenance, with their stock.
• Machines — the machine register.
• Reports — activities, hours and costs for any period, by machine, team member, part or provider, with MTTR, MTBF and fleet availability.
• Setup — maintenance types, team, external service providers, part categories and units, production module, schedule automation, e-mail notifications and demo data.

Prerequisites

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central version 23 (2023 release wave 2) or later, online or on-premises.
• To install: the Business Central administrator role (or the Extension Management permission).
• Employees set up in Business Central for the maintenance team.
• For e-mail notifications: an e-mail account set up in Business Central.
• Optional, to link machines and block their capacity: the Business Central manufacturing module with machine centers.

Installation

Initial setup

1. 1
   Permissions. Assign the permission sets described below.
2. 2
   Maintenance types. In the app's Setup, create your maintenance types (for example preventive, corrective, inspection).
3. 3
   Team. Add your technicians under Maintenance Team, each linked to a Business Central employee, with an hourly rate and e-mail address.
4. 4
   External service providers (optional). Add the companies you use for outside repairs.
5. 5
   Part categories and units of measure. Set them up for your spare parts, then add the parts with their unit cost, stock and minimum stock under Inventory.
6. 6
   Machines. Add your machines under Machines. If you use Business Central manufacturing, set Active Production Module to BC Manufacture Module in Setup and use Import Machine List to create machines from your machine centers.
7. 7
   Schedules. Create preventive maintenance schedules (see below).
8. 8
   E-mail. Choose which notifications are sent (see below).
9. 9
   Demo data (optional). In a test or demo company, Create Demo Data fills the app with sample machines, schedules and activities; Delete Demo Data removes them again.

Permissions and licences

• Users with Dynasys Maintenance Requester see only Requests. They do not need a licence.
• Users with Dynasys Maintenance Full Access need a licensed seat.
• The trial starts automatically the first time the app is used in a company: 30 days, up to 3 full users. The first full users who open the app take the trial seats.
• A licence key is issued per company. Open License Setup (or search for Dynasys License Setup), copy the Company License ID and send it with Request a License, or to licenses@dynasys.tech. Paste or import the key you receive, choose Activate, and choose the users under Licensed Users.

Requests

• A new request records the machine and a description of the problem; the requesting user, date and time are added automatically.
• The maintenance team sees open requests under Requests and converts it into an activity to plan the work, or cancels the request.
• The requester follows the status and is e-mailed when the activity is completed (if switched on).

Activities

• Create an activity with New Activity, or from a request or a schedule. Choose the machine, the maintenance type, Planned or Ad-hoc (breakdown), the planned dates, the technician or an external service provider.
• Statuses: Open → In Progress → Completed, or Cancelled, or External Service when the work is done by a provider.
• On the activity, add the parts used (stock is checked and reduced, and put back if the activity is cancelled), log the work in the Work Log, and add up to three photos.
• The activity shows labour cost (hours × hourly rate), material cost and external service cost.
• Export to Excel downloads the activity list as a CSV file that opens in Excel.

Preventive maintenance

• A schedule names the machine, the maintenance type, the technician and how often the work is due (every so many days, weeks or months).
• Activities are created automatically by a daily job queue entry, which the app sets up itself. Schedule Lead Time (Days) in Setup decides how many days before the due date the activity is created (default 7).
• Run Now creates the next activity of one schedule immediately; Process All Due creates all activities that are due.
• With the manufacturing module active, a schedule can also register absence time on the machine center, so planning knows the machine is not available. Register Absence Time on an activity does the same by hand.

Dashboard, Gantt and reports

• The Dashboard shows the KPIs and charts for this month, last month, the last three months, this year or a custom period.
• The Gantt shows all machines and their activities on a timeline for the chosen period.
• Reports filters by period, machine, technician, part, status and provider, and shows KPIs, charts and a table, plus reliability figures: mean time to repair (MTTR), mean time between failures (MTBF) and availability.

E-mail notifications

Switch them on in Setup → Email Notifications:

• the technician, when an activity is assigned to them;
• the requester (or the technician if there is no requester), when an activity is completed;
• the maintenance team, when a new request is submitted.

E-mails are sent through Business Central's e-mail accounts; addresses come from the maintenance team records and the requesters' users.

FAQ

Support

E-mail info@dynasys.tech. We aim to reply within one business day.