SmartFlow APS & Production Scheduling FAQ
Does Business Central do finite scheduling out of the box?
No — with an important nuance. Standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central computes real, calendar-aware dates for each production order, but it schedules every order as if it were the only one in the plant: it never checks whether another order is already on the same machine at the same time. It has one narrow exception, a Capacity Constrained Resource flag that finitely loads a single designated bottleneck in isolation — off by default, and not shop-wide scheduling. See Business Central Is Infinite-Loading for the full mechanism.
What’s the difference between the planning worksheet and a scheduler?
The planning worksheet (MRP) decides what to make and roughly when, in quantities and dates. A scheduler decides which order runs first on a shared resource, down to the minute. They answer different questions on the same data — see Why MRP Is Not a Schedule.
Does SmartFlow replace the planning worksheet or MRP?
No. SmartFlow is downstream of planning: it works on production orders that already exist (Firm Planned or Released), sequencing and timing them against real capacity. It doesn’t create, cancel, or change the quantities on production orders, and it doesn’t touch BOMs, routings, or item cards.
What Business Central version and license does SmartFlow APS require?
Business Central 2024 release wave 2 (platform/application 26.0) or later, with your company running the Premium experience — Work Centers, Routings, and Production Orders are hidden by Business Central itself on Essential.
Does SmartFlow require an internet connection?
Yes, for the parts that solve. Run Finite Scheduler always calls a cloud service to compute the plan. The Sequence Optimizer has two modes: the built-in Quick Optimizer runs entirely inside Business Central with no external call, while the optional SmartFlow Engine is a cloud solver you can point at the publisher’s managed endpoint (the default) or, in On-Premises mode, your own.
Does Accept actually change my Business Central data?
Yes — that’s the point. Accepting a finite proposal writes the solver’s dates to your production orders’ routing lines; accepting an optimizer result writes the new sequence. Neither one writes anything until you explicitly click Accept, and both give you a Before/After comparison to review first. Reject discards the proposal and leaves your data untouched.
Can I override what the solver decided?
Yes. On the finite review panel, the proposed (“After”) board stays interactive — drag any bar to change it before you Accept, and your edit commits together with the solver’s plan. On the live board afterward, ordinary drag-and-drop rescheduling works the same way it always does, subject to the frozen horizon.
How is an exact solver different from “smart” heuristics?
An exact solver (SmartFlow’s finite scheduler and cloud sequence engine are both built on constraint programming) searches for a plan it can mathematically prove is optimal, or prove is within a known distance of optimal, within the time you give it. A heuristic produces a plan quickly using rules of thumb, with no guarantee about how far it might be from the best possible answer. See Scheduling Algorithms: From Dispatch Rules to Exact Solvers.
What happens if the solver can’t prove its plan is optimal in the time given?
It returns the best plan it found within your solve-time limit, and the review panel discloses the optimality gap honestly — how far, by its own measure, that plan might still be from a proven-best one — rather than presenting a time-limited result as though it were guaranteed best. You can raise the solve-time limit and run again for a tighter plan.
Does the finite scheduler minimize changeover time?
Not yet, in the same solve. Today, changeover is measured and reported by the Finite Setup Weight but minimized by the separate Sequence Optimizer instead. A joint solve of capacity, due dates, and changeover together is on the roadmap — see Sequence-Dependent Setup.
Does SmartFlow schedule people, not just machines?
Not in the finite solve today. When People Are the Constraint: Labor-Limited Scheduling explains the concept and where labor-aware scheduling fits on the roadmap.
Can I run what-if scenarios or get a delivery quote before I promise a ship date?
Not today. SmartFlow’s snapshot and restore feature lets you checkpoint a schedule state and roll back to it, which is different from comparing a hypothetical change against a live baseline before committing to it. See What-If Scheduling and Capable-to-Promise (CTP) for what that capability means and where it stands.
Do I need to configure the changeover matrix to use SmartFlow?
No — finite scheduling and the live Gantt work without any changeover configuration. The matrix only matters once you run Sequence Optimization. An unconfigured constraint type or an empty matrix cell is treated as zero-cost, not as “unknown” — so leaving it blank means the optimizer sees no reason to avoid that transition, not that it doesn’t know about it.
What’s the difference between the Quick Optimizer and the SmartFlow Engine?
Both minimize changeover using the same constraint types, attributes, and matrix. Quick Optimizer runs inside Business Central with no setup beyond the matrix itself. SmartFlow Engine is the optional cloud solver for larger or more constrained sequencing problems, turned on from the Setup page. Whichever one actually answered a given run is shown on the results panel by name.
Can I use SmartFlow alongside Business Central’s own capacity and load views?
Yes. Accept writes to the same standard routing-line date fields Business Central’s own scheduling calculations use, so the rest of Business Central’s manufacturing module sees the result as ordinary scheduled dates, not as data only SmartFlow understands.
What happens when my trial ends?
The Scheduler locks: the Gantt, drag-and-drop, snapshot creation/restore, both sequence optimizers, finite scheduling, and conflict detection all pause until you subscribe. Your underlying Business Central data — production orders, routings, work centers — is untouched; it’s the SmartFlow interface that’s paused, not your manufacturing data.
How do the finite scheduler’s tuning weights actually work, and do I have to understand them?
No — the Shop Advisor turns seven plain-language questions about your shop into a full set of recommended weights in about two minutes. The weights themselves are documented field-by-field in the Setup Reference if you want to tune them by hand.
Where do I get help beyond this guide?
Email support@dynamicspro.ca or call 416-843-6575, Monday–Friday Eastern Time. If something looks broken rather than just unfamiliar, check Troubleshooting first.