Warehouse release rule in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

The latest "Warehouse release rule" features of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management introduces new capabilities to control whether the release of partially reserved order lines is allowed by the system or not. It works hand-in-hand with advanced cross-docking functionality in scenarios where part of an order line might be marked against a supply source and part of the order line can still be processed in the warehouse.

In this article, we will review how to enable the feature and how it works within the system. We will also evaluate this feature alongside customer fulfillment policy and see how they work together.

Enable feature “Warehouse release rule”

To enable the feature, open the Feature Management workspace and search the feature “Warehouse release rule”.  The best place to search will be “All” tab of the Feature Management workspace. Enter the name as shown below in the search field or filter by Module. To enable the feature, refer my blog on how to enable a feature via Feature Management.

When a user tries to enable the feature, a message “The feature cannot be turned off once it has been enabled” is displayed to user. Once the feature is enabled, the feature is marked mandatory in the system.

The ‘lock’ icon is displayed on the feature to designate that the feature is now mandatory.

Once the feature is enabled, it requires reinitialization from the Warehouse management parameters. Navigate to Warehouse management parameters and click on ‘Initialize release to warehouse rule’. Once the rule is initialized, the link will disappear.

The “Warehouse release rule” adds a new field “Requirement for inventory reservation” on warehouse master. This field is only available for the warehouses that are setup as Advanced warehouse.

The field “Requirements for inventory reservation” has the following options:

• Not applicable - The warehouse release rule is not evaluated.
• Allow partial reservation - Order can be released to warehouse even if it is partially reserved.
• Requires full reservation - When set to “Require full reservation”, orders will not be able to be released if the total quantity is not either physically reserved or planned for cross docking.

From a system standpoint, the order is considered fully reserved if the following conditions are met:

• Item model group must not allow physical negative inventory.
• Item should not be Catch weight controlled.
• Cross docking template must not be setup for the warehouse.

So, in the future, be careful while setting up item as catch weight item, turn on physical negative inventory at item group level or setting up a cross-docking template for the warehouse as these may cause a different behavior on Warehouse release rule

Evaluate "Warehouse release rule"