Use this checklist before enabling Shop Floor Insight in a production Business Central company. It supplements, but does not replace, the complete Shop Floor Insight Install Guide. Review every applicable configuration area with your Microsoft partner or Insight Works representative before go-live.

Fundamentals

Why this is important: Shop Floor Insight configuration is company-specific. Confirming that the production company contains the intended setup and that every Shop Floor service connects to the correct company prevents transactions from being recorded in the wrong environment.

• In the production Business Central company, confirm that all required Shop Floor Insight configuration data has been loaded. For a new installation, run the Shop Floor Setup Wizard once and apply the Getting Started Data. For a migration, import the approved configuration from the source company or environment and review it before use.
• Do not rerun the Shop Floor Setup Wizard to repair or change an existing configuration. Review and update the applicable setup pages instead.
• Confirm that Shop Floor Insight is registered in the production company and that the registration provides enough Shop Floor Employee entitlements. See Registering Shop Floor Insight.
• Configure every Shop Floor web service for the production environment and company. A service connection is specific to one Business Central company.
• It is a good practice to provide separate production and non-production Shop Floor services. They can run on the same server, but must use different ports and clearly distinguishable URLs.
• Review every applicable section of the Shop Floor Insight Install Guide, including permissions, paycodes, activities, shifts, employees, work centers, client configurations, time zones, service installation, and smoke testing.

Scanning Stations

Why this is important: Compatible devices, browsers, scanners, and reliable network connectivity are required for scans to reach Shop Floor Insight consistently. A station problem can interrupt time collection even when Business Central is configured correctly.

• Supported operating systems are Windows, Android, and Chrome OS. iOS, iPadOS, and macOS are not supported for the Shop Floor web client.
• Use Chrome or Edge.
• Ensure each station has stable access to the Shop Floor URL. Wired networking is preferable where Wi-Fi coverage or roaming is unreliable.
• Provide a keyboard and mouse, or a suitable touchscreen, when users must enter consumption, output, lot numbers, serial numbers, or other values.
• Use a barcode scanner configured as a keyboard-wedge device. Wired and Bluetooth scanners can be used.
• Configure and test the scanner so that it sends only the encoded barcode value without an unwanted prefix, suffix, line break, or additional keystroke.
• Test all barcode types that will be used at the station, including employee badges, production operations, setup operations, project tasks, activities, work centers, consumption, and output as applicable.

For additional requirements, see Before You Begin with Shop Floor Insight.

Shop Floor Insight Licensing

Why this is important: Each unblocked Shop Floor Employee consumes an Insight Works Shop Floor Employee user license count. Confirming sufficient licensing before go-live prevents workers, approvers, or posting users from being blocked when employee records are enabled.

If you are not licensed correctly then all users will not be able to create new Shop Floor Time Cards, not just new Shop Floor Employees created that caused the over-use of licenses.

You can review the number of Shop Floor Insight employee entitlements on the Insight Works Registration page in Business Central. Select the Shop Floor Insight entry and review the employee usage information.

• Create one Shop Floor Employee record for every production-floor worker who will use the Shop Floor interface.
• Create a Shop Floor Employee record for each supervisor, approver, or staff member who will approve or post Shop Floor time cards.
• Only unblocked Shop Floor Employees count toward the employee entitlement.
• New Shop Floor Employees may initially be created as blocked. Review the employee configuration before unblocking the record.
• Shop Floor Insight prevents additional employees from being enabled when the licensed employee count has been reached. Correct any existing over-license condition before go-live.
• Direct requests to change the Shop Floor Insight employee entitlement to the customer’s Business Central partner.

Business Central Licensing for Scanning Stations

Why this is important: Shop Floor Insight connects to Business Central and processes operational transactions on behalf of shop-floor users. Appropriate Business Central licensing must be confirmed before production use.

A Business Central Device license is commonly used when multiple employees share shop-floor scanning stations. The required license type and quantity depend on the customer’s deployment, concurrent device use, Business Central features, and Microsoft’s current licensing terms. Manufacturing scenarios also require the Business Central Premium experience.

Have the Microsoft partner confirm the licensing design before go-live. See What licenses do I require to use apps from Insight Works? and Licensing in Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Permissions and Function Permissions

Why this is important: Business Central permission sets control access to application data, while Shop Floor Function Permissions control actions such as approving and posting. Correct permissions allow the service and users to perform their assigned work without unnecessarily broad access.

If you do not see any Shop Floor Employees while you are configuring the system for install or migration, but are certain they exist, then you as the configuration person are likely missing the “Post” flag setting on the Shop Floor Function Permission.  This bypasses all ‘Manages’ and ‘Reports To’ configuration and allows you to see all Shop Floor Employees.

• Configure the required Business Central permission sets for administrators (including yourself as the person configuring the system), the Shop Floor service account, supervisors, approvers, posting users, and any users accessing Shop Floor Insight from Business Central.
• Create Shop Floor Function Permission entries for everyone configuring the system and for the account used by the Shop Floor service.
• Grant only the functions required by each role.
• Test permissions by using representative user accounts instead of relying only on an administrator account.
• If you have a Shop Floor Function Permission entry set with the “Post” flag enabled then you will see all employees, even if you are not configured to manage them.

A Shop Floor Function Permission entry does not consume a Shop Floor Employee license, it also references a Business Central user record, not a Shop Floor Employee.

See Configure Special Permissions in Shop Floor Insight.

Paycodes, Activities, and Shifts

Why this is important: Paycodes, activities, and shifts determine how productive and non-productive time is categorized, rounded, approved, exported, and reported. Incorrect setup can produce payroll, overtime, costing, and attendance discrepancies.

The Shop Floor Setup wizard imports a data package that has common and typical paycodes, activities, and shifts.

Paycodes

• Define at least one paycode, even when Shop Floor Insight will not export time to payroll.
• When time will be exported, ensure the codes match the corresponding payroll-system codes.
• Review the Export setting for paid, unpaid, regular-time, overtime, and other paycodes.
• Configure paycodes before finalizing activities.

See Configure Paycodes in Shop Floor Insight.

Shop Floor Activities

Non-productive activities are configured on the Shop Floor Activities page in Business Central.  Shop Floor Activities can also be used to categorize time that can be used for later reporting, such as rework reasons, other reason codes, employee grouping. If you are recording re-work, make sure to create re-work activity codes.

• Review the activities created by the Setup Wizard and add the customer’s required activities, such as meetings, training, maintenance, cleanup, and breaks.
• Assign the correct default paycode to each activity.
• Enable Generate Barcode for activities that require a printed barcode or an entry under the Activities button in the Shop Floor interface.
• Use Generate Barcode Sheets to print the required activity barcodes.

See Configure Activity Codes in Shop Floor Insight.

Shifts

• Configure at least one Shop Floor Shift Pattern, even when advanced shift features will not be used.
• Assign a Default Shift Pattern to each applicable Shop Floor Employee.
• Review expected paid hours, breaks, rounding, overtime, shifts crossing midnight, and automatic time-splitting behavior.
• Test daylight-saving-time changes and operations that span midnight when these scenarios apply.

Shifts can support attendance reporting, rounded payroll time, overtime calculations, automatic breaks, and tracking shift changes. See Configure Shifts in Shop Floor Insight.

Shop Floor Employees and Supervisor Relationships

Why this is important: Shop Floor Employee records identify the person creating time and determine default shifts, source records, permissions, configuration assignment, reporting relationships, and licensing usage.

Create or review a Shop Floor Employee for every worker, approver, and posting user. Confirm the following as applicable:

• Name
• Blocked status
• Default Shift Pattern
• Source Type and Source No.
• Business Central User ID for supervisors, approvers, users with special permissions, and users who also work in Business Central
• Export or payroll identifier
• Shop Floor Group
• Employee-specific Client Configuration override
• Supervisor relationships

The supervisor and employee relationships are configured from the Shop Floor Employee Card by using the Reports To and Manages actions.

• Without the Post Function Permission, a supervisor sees employees and time cards according to the configured reporting hierarchy.
• With the Post Function Permission, the user can post time cards and can see all Shop Floor Employees and time cards. On the Time Card Approvals page, Only Show Managed Employees can still be used to narrow the approval list.
• A supervisor’s Shop Floor Employee record must have the appropriate Business Central User ID.
• Before creating employees, ensure the configuring user has the Post Function Permission or is immediately assigned as a supervisor. Otherwise, the newly created employees may not be visible to that user.

See Configure Shop Floor Employees in Shop Floor Insight and Ensure supervisors only see the time cards of their workers.

Employee Badges

Why this is important: Employee badges identify the worker to Shop Floor Insight. Printing them from the production company ensures the scanned employee number corresponds to the correct Shop Floor Employee in that company.

Print the Shop Floor Employee badges from the production Business Central company by using the Shop Floor Employee Badges report. Employees scan these badges to sign in to the Shop Floor interface and create or open their Shop Floor time cards.

Do not reuse badges printed from a sandbox or another company without confirming that the employee identifiers are identical. See Printing Barcodes in Shop Floor Insight.

Shop Floor Client Configuration Cards

Why this is important: Client Configuration Cards determine what each station or employee can see and do. Incorrect configuration can expose the wrong work, allow unintended actions, or send transactions to the wrong journals.

Create and review the required Shop Floor Client Configuration Cards. A common design includes:

• A default catch-all configuration for general cases. Give this configuration the highest Ranking Order number so that it is evaluated last.
• A configuration for each scanning station or station type, commonly filtered to nearby work and machine centers.
• Configurations for employee roles such as supervisors or quality inspectors when their requirements follow the employee rather than the station.
• Configurations for overview or display stations.
• The preferred and recommended approach when possible is that the Shop Floor Client Configuration cards be assigned by local IP of the scanning station.  When that is not possible then via the Shop Floor Insight groups and as a last resort (or to work around environment restrictions, or for special cases for specific employees),  via the Shop Floor Employee card. Using the local IP is the most common approach and the recommended approach when possible. This does require static local IPs on the scanning stations (this is a networking configuration in windows)

Shop Floor Insight first checks for an employee-specific configuration override. When no employee override applies, configuration rules are evaluated by Ranking Order using their Group or IP filters. Put more-specific rules first with lower ranking numbers, and keep a catch-all rule last.

Review at least the following settings on every applicable card:

• Filter Type, Filter, and Ranking Order
• Production and project dispatch filters
• Time Entry Mode and Time Entry Unit of Measure
• Inactivity Log Out Time
• Open-line and time-entry colors
• Output Entry behavior
• Consumption and Output Batch Names
• Default work or machine center, when used
• Manual-entry restrictions
• Automatic time-splitting settings
• Quality, license-plate, or other integration settings when applicable

If manual consumption or output will be captured, verify the journal batches and the Register Output To setting on the Shop Floor Setup page. The Output Batch on the Client Configuration must be different from the output batch used when posting time cards.

Configuration is cached in the Shop Floor interface. After changing a Client Configuration Card, refresh each applicable browser with Ctrl+F5 before testing.

See Configure Client Configuration in Shop Floor Insight and Shop Floor Client Configuration Cards Recommendations.

Shop Floor Work Centers

Why this is important: Shop Floor Work Centers connect Shop Floor Insight to Business Central work and machine centers. They are required when capturing production-order time and support output, consumption, rework, scheduling, time splitting, and costing behavior.

Create a Shop Floor Work Center for each Business Central Work Center or Machine Center that employees will use through Shop Floor Insight.

1. Open Shop Floor Work Centers in Business Central.
2. Select New, and then select Create Shop Floor Work Centers.
3. Choose whether to create records from Work Centers, Machine Centers, or both.
4. Apply filters when only selected centers should be created.
5. Review the generated Shop Floor Work Centers and their advanced configuration.

Shop Floor Work Centers are separate from the standard Business Central Work Center and Machine Center pages. If Shop Floor Insight will not capture production-order data, these records may not be required. See Configure Work Centers in Shop Floor Insight.

Production Order Job Card Report

Why this is important: The Shop Floor Production Order report provides operation-specific setup and run-time barcodes. These barcodes let employees clock directly onto the correct released production-order routing operation without manually searching for it.

Employees can clock onto production-order operations from the Production Dispatch List or by scanning a barcode printed on a production-order job card.

Shop Floor Insight includes report 23044108, Shop Floor Production Order, as a sample job card report. It includes a run-time barcode and a separate setup-time barcode for each applicable production-order routing operation.

The printed barcode identifies a specific company, production order, production-order line, and operation. Print production job cards from the production company in which they will be used.

To use the supplied report as the default job card, configure Report Selections – Production Order with Usage set to Job Card and Report ID set to 23044108. Many manufacturers use customized job cards; in that case, ensure the customized report includes the appropriate Shop Floor Insight barcodes. See Use the Shop Floor Production Order report as the default job card.

Project Traveler

Why this is important: The Shop Floor Project Traveler provides barcodes for project tasks and optional resource planning lines. It supports accurate time collection against the intended project task.

Employees who track time against Business Central projects can use the Project Dispatch List or scan barcodes from report 23044113, Shop Floor Project Traveler. The report prints project-task barcodes when those lines are included.

See How to Print Barcodes for Project Tasks in Shop Floor Insight.

Shop Floor Web Service Configuration and Time Zone

Why this is important: Shop Floor Insight web-service sessions commonly operate in UTC. The correct service-account entry, time-zone offset, and line work-date behavior ensure that login times, time-card entries, output transactions, shifts, breaks, and rounding calculations use the intended local date and time.

Open Shop Floor Web Service Configuration and create or review an entry for each account used by a Shop Floor service.

• The Web Service User ID must match the account used by the Shop Floor service to connect to Business Central.
• For Service-to-Service authentication, the value must match the User Reference configured for the Microsoft Entra Application in Business Central. Do not assume that the value must always be SHOP FLOOR INSIGHT.
• Set Time Zone Hours Offset to the work site’s current offset from UTC.
• Set Adjust Line Work Date to Adjust so the time-card line work date follows the configured local time.
• Update the offset when daylight-saving time changes. For example, Eastern Time commonly changes between -5 and -4.
• Also verify the time zone on Business Central users and scanning devices. A Business Central user’s time zone affects how times are displayed in Business Central, but it does not replace the Shop Floor Web Service Configuration.

If employees in the same Business Central company work in different time zones, separate Shop Floor services and configuration entries may be required. See Configure Time Zone in Shop Floor Insight and Shop Floor Insight Communication App Requirements.

Install and Validate the Shop Floor Service

Why this is important: The separately installed Shop Floor service hosts the scanning interface and communicates with Business Central. Validating its environment, company, authentication, certificate, network, and startup behavior prevents a site-wide interruption at go-live.

• Install a service for the production company and any required non-production environments.
• Verify the Business Central environment, company, service URL, port, and authentication configuration.
• For Business Central online, use a customer-owned Microsoft Entra application registration for S2S authentication when possible.
• When using SSL/HTTPS with Shop Floor Insight then confirm that the SSL certificate is valid and trusted by every station, especially when using self-signed certificates.
• Confirm that the Windows service starts automatically and that operational staff know its service name and server location.
• Verify that the scanning stations can reach the service URL and that the service can reach Business Central.
• Record the service owner, server, URL, port, authentication owner, certificate expiry date, restart procedure, and support contacts.

See Install and Configure Shop Floor Insight for Business Central Online or Install and Configure Shop Floor Insight for Business Central On-Premises.

End-to-End Production Smoke Test

Why this is important: A successful login proves only that the service can connect. A complete smoke test verifies configuration selection and the full transaction path through review, approval, posting, and the resulting Business Central ledger entries.

Use barcodes printed from the production company and representative production or project data. From every station type, test the applicable processes:

1. Open the production Shop Floor URL.
2. Scan an employee badge and confirm the correct employee and Client Configuration Card are selected.
3. Review the Production and Project Dispatch Lists and confirm that only the intended work is visible.
4. Clock onto and off a non-productive activity.
5. Clock onto production run time and setup time.
6. Clock onto a project task when projects are used.
7. Record consumption, output, scrap, lot numbers, serial numbers, license plates, or quality inspections when applicable.
8. End the employee’s shift and confirm that the time card and all open lines close as expected.
9. Review and correct the time card in Business Central.
10. Approve the time card with a representative supervisor account.
11. Post the approved time card with the intended posting account.
12. Confirm the expected capacity, item, value, project, or other ledger entries and journal entries.
13. Confirm that dimensions, employee, shift, work center, operation, quantities, time, and costs are correct.
14. Repeat the test for each materially different station, employee role, shift, and transaction process.

See Print Barcodes and Smoke Test in Shop Floor Insight.

Upgrading Shop Floor Insight

Why this is important: The Business Central extension and the separately installed Shop Floor service must remain compatible. Coordinating their upgrades prevents service failures, missing functionality, authentication problems, and interruptions to shop-floor time collection.

Do not rely on a version number embedded in this checklist. Review the Shop Floor Insight release notes and the customer’s installed versions when planning an upgrade.

• Have the Microsoft partner or another qualified technical resource perform Shop Floor service upgrades.
• Confirm whether the Business Central extension upgrade requires a corresponding Shop Floor service update.
• Schedule downtime when no employees are using Shop Floor Insight.
• Identify every production, sandbox, training, company-specific, and time-zone-specific Shop Floor service.
• Stop the applicable Windows services and back up their configuration and license files before replacing service files.
• Restart every service and perform the production smoke test after the upgrade.
• Verify the displayed client version, authentication, company connection, employee login, barcode scanning, time collection, output, consumption, approval, and posting.

See How to Upgrade the Shop Floor Insight Windows Service.

Daily Usage and Best Practices

Why this is important: Closing, reviewing, approving, and posting time cards promptly keeps labor, production output, consumption, costing, and payroll information complete. Daily monitoring identifies missed clock-offs and incorrect scans while they are still easy to correct.

• As a best practice employees must select End Shift at the end of their day. This closes their open lines and time card and prevents time from continuing to accumulate while they are not working, and removes all ambiguity about when their shift has actually ended while also closing the Shop Floor Time Card.  A closed Shop Floor Time Card can then be a signal to the supervisor that the employee has no more intentional work for the day.  This will also flag the employee as off-site.
• Supervisors or administrators should review Shop Floor Time Cards daily for employees who did not end their shifts. A time card can be closed in Business Central, but the recorded time may require correction.
• Review and correct time cards before approval. Approvals can be completed from Time Card Approvals or from an individual time card.
• Assign one or more people to approve time cards every day, typically after shifts close or early the following day.
• Post approved time cards promptly from the Shop Floor Time Cards page or individually when required.
• Post all Shop Floor time cards that reference a production order before changing that production order to Finished. Business Central does not allow additional production transactions to be posted to a finished production order.
• When correcting posted time, use an approved corrective time card process. Negative time can be entered in Business Central but not from the Shop Floor web client. Review the effect on time, output, consumption, costing, payroll, and the audit trail.
• Review any output and consumption journals created by Shop Floor Insight and ensure responsibility for posting them is defined.
• After changing cached settings, refresh the applicable scanning stations with Ctrl+F5 and retest the behavior.

Daily Exception Monitoring

Assign responsibility for reviewing the following every working day:

• Employees who did not end their shifts
• Open time-card lines that should be closed
• Unapproved or unposted time cards
• Time-card approval or posting errors
• Unposted output and consumption journals
• Unexpected dates, times, shifts, or rounding results
• Employees approaching or exceeding licensing limits
• Production orders approaching completion with unposted Shop Floor time cards
• On a semi-regular basis IT personnel or analysts with the responsibility of maintaining uptime to the Shop Floor system with access to the server where the service is installed could proactively monitor Shop Floor service logs looking for certificate, authentication, or connectivity warnings. After a go-live this should be done daily until system stability is confirmed. Once the go-live seems relatively stable moving to a more site specific suitable schedule.  The most relevant log files would be:
  • The Shop Floor Insight service logs (typically in c:\log\).
  • If your Business Central is Microsoft SaaS then Azure Application Insights presuming you have application insights logging enabled.
  • If your Business Central is On-Premise then the in the Windows “Event Viewer” under the “Windows Logs” in “Application” logs, looking for errors reported through the Business Central service.

Outage and Recovery Planning

Why this is important: When the Shop Floor service or scanning network is unavailable, labor and production data collection can stop across the production floor. A documented recovery and fallback process reduces missing time and manual reconstruction.

• Document how to identify and restart each production Shop Floor service.
• Monitor service availability, Windows Event Logs, authentication, certificates, server resources, and network connectivity.
• Define who should be contacted for Shop Floor Insight, Business Central, server, network, and scanner issues.
• Establish an approved manual time-capture method for outages.
• Define how manually captured time, output, consumption, and tracking information will be entered and reconciled after service is restored.
• Test the recovery process before go-live and after material infrastructure changes.

For current product information, review the Shop Floor Insight Knowledge Base and Shop Floor Insight release notes. For assistance, contact your Microsoft partner or Insight Works Support at [email protected].