Is unplanned equipment downtime draining your productivity? Or are you still managing maintenance schedules on spreadsheets?

It’s time to modernize your maintenance strategy with Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (D365 FO) Asset Management—a robust module that empowers organizations to track, manage, and optimize their assets throughout the lifecycle. Whether you're addressing unplanned failures with Corrective Maintenance or proactively avoiding them through Preventative Maintenance, D365 FO equips you with the tools to keep your operations smooth and cost-effective.

I. Preventative Maintenance: Plan Ahead, Prevent Downtime, and Stay ahead of the curve!

Preventative maintenance is a proactive strategy designed to avoid equipment failure by performing regular and planned maintenance activities. It is based on predefined time intervals, usage metrics, or condition thresholds, and aims to extend the life of assets, improve reliability, and reduce unplanned downtimes.

D365 FO enables organizations to automate these maintenance schedules, ensuring that critical tasks like inspections, lubrication, and replacements are completed before issues arise.

Common use cases include:

   - Monthly filter replacement on HVAC units
   - Quarterly lubrication of industrial bearings
   - Annual inspection of safety equipment
By investing in preventative maintenance, companies can improve asset reliability, reduce emergency repairs, and better plan resources and spare parts inventory.

II. Preventative Maintenance: Process

Create Maintenance Request Management (using workspace)

Navigate to Asset Management > Workspaces > Maintenance request management,

This workspace gives you an overview of different maintenance requests created, their current lifecycle, whether there's a work order associated with them and few more statuses as shown in the screenshot above.

Click on 'Create maintenance request' to create a new request.

Click ok to generate a maintenance request.

The maintenance manager can review before creating a work order by changing the maintenance requests' status.

Let's create a work order for this maintenance request.

On maintenance request, navigate to the 'Maintenance request' tab,

Click on the 'Work order' button under new to generate work order,

Under Maintenance Job Type, we are going to select 'Inspection' in this case. This will help determine if it's really broken and needs repair or something as simple as inspection would resolve the issue. Once you click 'ok'.

The maintenance request lifecycle changes from new to in progress based o nwork oder lifecycle state setup,

Click on work orde to navigate to work order for processing,

On the header view, we have a few details as below,

The current lifecycle state shows as 'New', work order type is 'Corrective'. And the expected start datetime of the inspection.

Let's head to line-view,

Anytime you create a work order, the system creates a subproject based on the setup, which can be seen at the line level. Also, you can add a forecast for any hours, expenses, and items.

Let's dispatch the worker from the work order line,

After clicking dispatch below form shows where you can choose diffferent options,

After selecting the worker, click ok.

This will update the work order status to 'Scheduled',

And change the work order status to 'In progress' status,

After the selection of work order status, the system asks for the Actual start date. Select the date and click ok.

Let's post some expenses against the work order.

add appropriate lines to hours and expenses and post journal (you can enter hours manually or copy from forecast).

Now let's mark the work order status as Complete.

Posted cost transactions can be seen against the project associated with the work order.

III. Corrective Maintenance: React with Confidence and Minimize the impact of breakdowns

Corrective maintenance refers to reactive tasks performed after an asset has failed or shown signs of malfunction. It is often unplanned, initiated by an incident or operator report, and is critical for returning equipment to a working state as quickly as possible.

This type of maintenance is crucial in scenarios where downtime directly impacts productivity, safety, or compliance. In D365 FO, corrective maintenance is handled through structured work orders, fault reporting, and activity tracking, ensuring clear documentation and swift resolution.

Common use cases include:

   - Replacing a burned-out motor
   - Repairing a malfunctioning sensor
   - Fixing broken equipment on the shop floor
The goal is to minimize asset downtime, document the incident, and ensure the failure does not repeat without corrective tracking.

IV. Corrective Maintenance: Process

Create a new maintenance request from the All maintenance requests screen.

Navigate to Asset Management > Maintenance requests > All maintenance requests.

Create a new request,

Click ok.

Let's create a corrective type of work order.

As seen before, as soon as the work order is created, the maintenance request status changes to 'In progress',

Navigate to the work order, and let's schedule a worker to conduct the repair work.

Click on 'Schedule' on the line level,

In this case, I am selecting Resource group as '4110' and Scheduling resource '999999', which I had set up under the resource group for this. and click ok. This updates the Work Order status to 'Scheduled'.

Let's change the work order status to 'In progress'.

At this point, you can create a purchase requisition, a purchase order, or production orders. Also, have the ability to post the journals. I will post hour, item, and expense journals.

Mark work order status 'Completed'. and subsequently 'Finished', which updates the maintenance request status as well.

Let's look at the posted transactions on the project as below,

Thank for visiting the blog. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!

V. Summary

Implementing a structured maintenance schedule in D365 FO is a game-changer for asset-intensive operations. It brings discipline to maintenance planning, reduces unplanned downtime, and extends asset lifespan. With preventive strategies in place, teams can shift from firefighting breakdowns to focused optimization. The combination of job types, schedules, and automated work order creation ensures nothing falls through the cracks. Forecasting helps teams prepare resources in advance and balance workloads efficiently. Corrective actions are better tracked, and preventative tasks are never missed. Integrated reporting delivers insights to refine maintenance strategies over time. Whether you're just starting or optimizing existing processes, D365 FO provides the tools you need. Don’t let maintenance be an afterthought—make it a strategic advantage. Start leveraging D365 FO Asset Management to protect your assets and your bottom line.