Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Part IV

I hope everyone had a great long weekend, and that you got a lot of rest, and ready to tackle the short week ahead.

Today, I wanted to post the final part IV, of Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, from guest blogger Brad Edwards. The following is a list of the previous parts of this four part series.:

• Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Part I
• Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Part II
• Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Part III

So far, Brad has really taking us into a good deep dive into some of the great new features around Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for Product Data Management (PDM) / Master Data Management (MDM) for products.

Brad wraps up his guest series, with taking us through intercompany implications, Product management for smaller organizations, as well as some closing thoughts. So, lets here what Brad has in store for us here.:


Intercompany implications

In previous versions, items must be carefully setup to be transacted via intercompany sales and purchase orders. With the release of AX 2012’s product hierarchy structure Released products are tied to one another via the Product number, eliminating the need for Company items setup, or External code setup to link items between companies.

Released products may still have different names in different companies. The Released product’s Item number may be changed by using the Record info > Rename function.

While this greatly reduces the time required to setup products for intercompany use, there are some potential drawbacks. As this is the only way to link Released products for intercompany use, it is no longer possible to link a Released product that is tracked by certain product dimensions in one company to a Released product that is not tracked by product dimensions in another company.

For example, if company A sells t-shirts in red, green, and blue under item number TSHIRT with color dimensions Red, Green, and Blue, and company B buys the t-shirts under the item numbers TRED, TGREEN, and TBLUE, AX 2012 will not support this type of setup. So it is important to consider the implications of the new product structure on intercompany processing for the organization in question.

Product management for smaller organizations

Thus far, all of the information discussed has assumed the creation and management of products at the instance level, and the release of products to individual AX companies. However, this structure would provide a large amount of overhead in smaller, single company organizations. However, the capabilities exist for users to create Released products directly in the Released products form. The user may do so by clicking the New Product button in the ribbons section of the form:



As with products at the instance level, the user must still specify the Product number, Product type, and Product sub-type so that the product may be created in the Products table. This method of Released product creation is much more suitable for smaller organizations that wish to manage products in a simpler manner.

Technical note

Thus far, the entire article has focused on the functional changes to the way in which products are managed. However, for the slightly technical users, there are some important technical changes to note. AX 2012 now makes use of table inheritance. This means that fields that appear on the Products form may not actually be on the products table, but on a parent table that the products table extends. Without going into too great of detail, it is important that functional users reference screenshots rather than table and field names when completing functional specs, to eliminate confusion during development.

Closing note

While this article has merely scratched the surface, its intent is to provide a high-level overview of the changes to come in the area of Product management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. It is important to note that the release from which this article was written was based on a public beta instance, and there is still the potential for changes to be made. I hope that you all have found this information useful. Enjoy working with AX2012!


Well I would like to thank Brad for taking us through Product Management review, for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. It's hard to work in writing to a already very busy schedule, and so thanks Brad!

From here, we will continue to dive into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, including diving deeper into some of the topics touched on in this series of blog post. For example taking and doing some real comparisons, with impact, for orgazations of varying sizes, and how PDM would be different for each.

That's all for now, but check back soon as more to come! Till next time!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Part I

As part of my continued effort to try and help grow the Microsoft Dynamics Community and Ecosystem, I have reached out to those peers of mine that I trust. The reach out, is an effort to get them to use their knowledge, and expertise to help the Dynamics community at large.

As part of this effort, Brad Edwards, Supply Chain Consultant with Sunrise Technologies, has agreed to do a guest post here on my blog.

With the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, a lot is changing. That means deeper functional depth, and more possible ways for customers to maximize their investment with AX.

Brad, in this series of guest post, takes us through the new possibilities with product management, for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.



With the release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 comes some rather large, but exciting changes to the way in which products are managed. In previous versions, item masters were kept at the company level by default, often times causing headaches for organizations that wished to share product masters between two or more legal entities.

While technically, the potential existed to share the Item master between companies, this option tended to result in more drawbacks than advantages. This typically caused organizations that desired such functionality to create jobs to synchronize items between AX companies. In AX 2012, products are now managed at the instance level, and released to AX companies as necessary. This series of post, will provide a high level overview of this change, as well as other changes in the area of product management.

Product creation and management
The first major change to notice, is that product management has been moved out of the Inventory and Warehouse Management module (formerly Inventory management), and into a new Product information management module.



Base product information is managed via the menu items highlighted above.

The shared product master can be accessed via the All products menu item.



The form shown above is the new AX 2012 Product master. This is DIFFERENT than the AX 2009 Item master, as this shows all of the products that are used across all companies in the AX instance.

The creation of new products is performed by clicking the New product button in the ribbons section of the form, or hitting CTRL+N on the keyboard. The user is then presented with the following dialog:



The first value that the user must specify is the Product type. Here, the user has two choices: Item or Service. This field is the AX 2012 version of Item type from previous versions of AX.

• Item type - This option will be selected if the product is an inventoried product


• Service type - This option will be selected if the product is a non-inventoried product


• Lack of the BOM type - AX 2012 has done away with the need for the BOM item type.

All Released products (company specific items…to be discussed later in the series of post) of type Item may now have a BOM, and the sourcing of the product is determined by its default order settings

The second value that the user must specify is the Product sub-type. Here, the user has two choices: Product or Product master. This field allows the user to choose whether or not the product will have any Product dimensions (Color, Size, or Configuration).

• Product master sub-type - Products of this sub-type must have a product dimension group that specifies the product dimensions that are active for the product (color, size, configuration)


• Product sub-type - Products of this sub-type do NOT have any product dimensions, and therefore do not have a product dimension group

This, in essence, is both a product master and a product variant

If the product sub-type is set to Product, the user need only fill in the Product number, Product name, and Search name (as with previous versions, the Product name, and Search name default to the value of the Product number).



If the product sub-type is set to Product master, the user must specify the fields shown above, as well as the Product dimension group, and the Configuration technology:




That is all for the first part, in the multiple part series. I would like to thank Brad for taking the time out of his busy schedule to share with us his deep dive into Product Management with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Check back next week, as the second part of this series is posted!

For reference, the following is Brad's Bio:
>Brad Edwards is a Senior Supply Chain Consultant with Sunrise Technologies. While his specialty is functional consulting in the areas of supply chain management, manufacturing, and warehouse management, he also has strong technical skills that prove to be very valuable during project implementation. Brad has worked on numerous AX implementations in the areas of Food & Beverage, Apparel, and Furniture. He resides in Atlanta, GA and is an alumnus and avid supporter of The Georgia Institute of Technology.

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

Expert SSRS with AX Tip from Michael Stashwick

One of the things I like to do, from time to time, is have guest bloggers appear here. This is to help bring more and more relevant content to you, the readers of this blog.

A new person, to the blogging ring this time is a fellow peer at Sunrise Technologies, that goes by the name of Michael Stashwick. He is a Senior Technical Architect, like myself, and have a lot of passion for AX and Technology.

One area that Michael seems to focus on a lot is BI and AX. I have wrote a lot over the years about BI, from concepts, to specific technical howto's. Today falls into that howto or technical tip area.

Without getting to much into the debate of how SSRS should be used with Dynamics AX, Michael choose for his first guest post to focus on using native SSRS reports with AX.

This is not the Dynamics AX SSRS Visual Studio focused reports, but rather trying to take and offer best of both worlds. So with that, I will give the "blogging stick" over to Michael.:
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A common debate in every Dynamics AX implementation is, “What tool should I use for custom reporting?” For many years, the battle was between using native MorphX reporting, and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), a widely used tool that can be used against any SQL database. In AX 2009, another contender emerged, AX 2009 SRS, which is a hybrid of the previous two choices.

AX 2009 SRS reports is a SQL reporting option that can access Dynamics AX business logic, as well as inherit AX security--and run natively in Dynamics AX, which is one of the best arguments as this reduces end user confusion in their search for data. Unfortunately, AX 2009 SRS reports void the great functionality found in Report Manager (report subscriptions, caching, file share, e-mailing, et al), which is one of the reasons to go down the road of SQL reporting in the first place.

With a little ingenuity, SSRS reports can appear to run natively in a Dynamics AX 2009 environment, which not only provides the most professional, native aesthetic, but in my opinion, make SSRS the best reporting option available.

First, open Visual Studio and create a new Dynamics AX Reporting project. Give the project a meaningful name, one that will ultimately be the same file name as the SSRS report.



Next, deploy the blank project to Dynamics. This will create an AX 2009 Report Library in the AOT.





This is the aforementioned ingenuity. Report Libraries reference files [only] in the Dynamics folder in Report Manager. The file name is the only connection between the deployed report and library.

Now all we have to do is create a SSRS report in Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) with the same Report Definition Language (RDL) filename as the Report Library, which is ExampleSSRS in this case.

Create a new SSRS report in BIDS, or preferred application. Remember that the SSRS report project can be any meaningful name, but the report file itself must match the name of the Report Library.



Upload the RDL to the Dynamics folder in Report Manager. If the proper target server URL is setup in the Report Server Project in BIDS, it can also be deployed to Report Manager from there.



Next, in AX, create an output menu object. Make sure that the object type is SQLReportLibraryReport, and that the object is the name of the Report Library.



Now, the menu object can be placed in an AX menu, or called via x++. Parameters can still be passed through the URL in an Args object, albeit rendering format, report values, or command parameters (refer to URL Access on MSDN MSDN - SSRS URL Access), just disclude the portion of the report server and name.

The following example runs the report, renders it in HTML, leaves the toolbar visible, but hides any parameters:



When the report is run, it will appear natively in an AX 2009 window, and no one will know the report was actually written in SQL.



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Well I would like to thank Michael for taking the time and sharing this nice tip. I hope that this is just the first from Michael, and we hear about many more tips and tricks when it comes to BI / Reporting related topics for Dynamics AX.

Here is Michael's Bio:
Michael Stashwick is a Senior Technical Architect at Sunrise Technologies. He has been working with Dynamics AX since version 3.0 in tandem with many Business Intelligence projects focusing on SSRS and SSAS for Dynamics AX.

Michael has a bachelor's degree in Business Information Technology with focuses on Decision Support Systems and Operations Management from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is also a Microsoft Certified Business Management Solutions Professional.

That's it for now. Make sure to follow me on twitter.: DynamicsERP on Twitter For next week, as I bring you live coverage of the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2011 Technical Conference. (#DAXCONF). I will also be creating a lot of new blog post, and guest columns throughout the Dynamics Community sites, based on the contect from next week. See you then!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

Merry (late) Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Well I am sure that most of you took some vacation, as did I last week. I realized I did not post a Merry Christmas entry, so here is a Late Merry Christmas! :-) Better late than never right?

Also I hope that it was a blessed Christmas for each of you, and that 2011 is the best year yet!

I have a good bit in store and a lot to do coming up. With a year end closing post, reflecting on a recent blog post on Dynamics and the cloud. Will hope close the year on a topic that we started it, 2010 being called the Year of the Cloud!

I also have some guest blog post coming soon, as well as coverage of the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2011 - Technical Conference. This is being hosted at the campus in Redmond. A LOT of great tracks!

So here to closing out 2010 with a bang, and welcoming the new year of 2011!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"