AXUG Summit - A focus on BI

Well here we are, deep into AXUG Summit! What a great, and admittedly, tiring day yesterday. After giving an 8 hour class on Organizational BI: Report Development in AX 2012 yesterday, and then the great party I wanted to create a new movie called "Sleep Late in Seattle". This however will not due, because it's AXUG Summit week. That means we are just really getting fired up!



My main focus at this years summit, specifically on what I'm delivering sessions on is around Business Intelligence with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. I have the following session's for this afternoon.:

• Leveraging the Microsoft Stack for Business Intelligence with Dynamics AX
• Creating a System of Engagement (SoE) with Dynamics AX 2012

Make sure to stop by, attend, learn and share! Further on-tap for tomorrow, I will be delivering.: Understanding What is Available in Standard AX to Meet Your BI and Reporting Needs

The above session on Thursday is a round table format, and that means the focus is on the attendees really sharing. I will help get topics started, but the goal for that session is to share and share alike!

Load up your brain with plenty of caffeine and come join me for all three sessions. Further make sure to check out all the other great sessions, as well as the expo hall. So many great ways to connect, learn and share. That's the focus, the value and the point for AXUG Summit!

Check back soon and often, as I will have more updates this week, and further next week we "unleash the beast" as AX 2012 R2 comes into full focus. Till Next Time!
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AX 2012 - Understanding & Extending the Organization Model

I wanted to take the time today, and point out some great resources around the concept of extending the Organization Model in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.



Before we dive right into the mix of common task that are typically associated with customer implementations of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, I would first like to point out a great learning webinar around the topic of Modeling Your Organization with AX 2012. What I'm speaking about can be found here.: Modeling your Organization: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

The above link will take you through a nice webinar that really gives you a feel for the thought process of modeling an organization with AX 2012. This is the 'unified natural models' that Microsoft speaks about a lot. I should correct that really and say one of the unified natural models. See.: Enabling Agility through Unified Natural Models



When we start to think about extending the organizational model that comes out-of-the-box in AX 2012, there are two common task that are typically done for customers. The first task is around adding custom Operating Units. Microsoft has a done a good job at creating the following walk through.: Walkthrough: Create and Use a Custom Operating Unit Type [AX 2012] I will add that this walk through does leave out specifics, for example if you want the new Operating Unit to appear under the GL > Setup > Organization for management of said new custom operating unit.



The second most common extension that takes place for customers is around the creation of custom purposes. The following resource from Microsoft is a nice walk through as well, for this topic.: How to: Create a New Purpose [AX 2012]



Adding a new custom purpose for organization hierarchies helps further shape and allow customers to truly model AX as they run their business. Purposes for hierarchies can help relate policy and reporting needs.

With all of this one of the best resources for understanding how to implement and extend the organization model for AX 2012 can be found here.: Implementing and Extending the Organization Model in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Update: I wanted to take the time and update this post, to include the fact that InformationSource located at InformationSource.Dynamics.com has some good resources on this topic as well. This includes some video's, which the webinar is based on. Further a specific PowerPoint artifact that I would like to point out.:



The above PowerPoint has some good information around understanding the concepts of organization modeling, as well as common task involved with the process. Further it has common task typically associated with extending the organization model offering for AX 2012. It mentions further task around Security with XDS, and relating Master as well as transaction data.

Now With the above information and resources, someone familiar with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 can extend the organization model(s) for a customer. Further, if your an ISV there could be good reason to include in your IP offering extensions to the organization model offerings. Keeping in mind that a customer could have a need for several organization hierarchies in their instance. Powering everything from Operations, reporting, relating to security, workflow approvals and more.

That's all for this post, but check back soon as I will continue with my focus around BI for AX, extending the reach of AX with Office 2013 and more! Till Next Time!
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AX 2012 - EP Warranty Page Navigation

I hope everyone is doing well today, and have found yourself being productive in our Dynamics based world we all live in. I wanted to continue our series today on development with EP, and a focus on our functional scope, around Warranty Management.

Last we left off, we had created a new warranty page on our enterprise portal instance. We reviewed the steps of this process, which has its focus primarily on the side of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - site administration. The idea, for this first focus was around creating a home on EP, in which our functional scope for warranty management will mostly live.



In doing this, we selected the default template or style of our page, in which we will come back to later. Having our page created on enterprise portal is the first step for our new scope. Keep in mind, that in some cases for EP development, the functional scope might not drive you in the direction to have a custom page in which to house the new scope on.

However, with that said, the purpose of this series is to try and cover as much of EP development as possible, that you could possibly run into. Further, as I stated in the start of this series, it helps to add functional depth to such walk throughs.

Lets continue now our focus on this series, by adding navigation so that our warranty page will appear on the EP site. In order to do this, we will need to start by creating a URL menu item within Microsoft Dynamics AX itself. We do this by going to the AOT\Web\Web Menu Items location. In doing this, we will want to create ourselves a web menu item, that points to the URL for our new warranty page.



Now if you get an error message, when trying to create your web menu item, that states.: "Error in Url property error", then this is not a Dynamics AX issues, but rather a Windows issue. There is an older update needed, which my fellow blogging peer Joris point out in his article here.: Enterprise Portal Web URL Lookup Error

After having done this, we should be able to proceed with testing out our new web menu item, to see if we are pointing to the right location. In doing so we should see a screen shot, similar to the below.



Now having done this, we have a couple of options on how to proceed. We could place this as a link on the home page, but instead we want this to be it's own Web Module. We can create a Web module, for our Warranty scope, by now associating the web menu item, into our web modules group, as shown below.



You will notice in the above picture, we have placed are new web module, as a sub web module of the out-of-the-box, Home Web Module from the AOT. This will allow us to integrate nicely, our new scope, into the user experience that is expected when using EP for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. After doing this step, we can deploy our web module element, by highlighting, and right clicking on the web module itself. For good measure, as well as the same for the Home web module, as it's been updated.



A final step, after successfully deploying the web modules, is that an iisreset is required. If you do not do this, your new web module will not be displayed. This makes sense, through the nature of IIS and MOSS, however it's worth noting that it's required.

Now that we have deployed, without error, or the customized Home Web module, as well as our new Warranty Management web module, we should then see in our Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, Enterprise Portal Experience, a similar screen shot to the one below.



With this post, we have now created a navigation for our new warranty management scope, and have it deployed to our Enterprise Portal instance. We can now plan for our next steps, which is a focus around AOT management & deployment of the Warranty Home page, as well as start to add functional scope, and specific web functionality for that scope.

Well that's all for this post, I hope your enjoying our focus on EP development concepts - and that this is bringing value to your AX investment, no matter when you actually read it! Till Next Time!
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Introducing IDB Solutions - a new start!

It is with great pleasure, that today with the official start of #Conv12 I can introduce my new venture: IDB Solutions, LLC. Our focus is being a consulting firm that drives value for new & existing Microsoft Dynamics AX customers & partners.

We have set ourselves up in a way, that our customers are both partners & customers in the Dynamics Ecosystem. Being that our drive, and primary goal is around value for partners & customers connect with us, to find out how we can help you with your project needs!

The following is a list of services we offer.:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX - From Upgrades to AX 2012, helping with new implementations, Business Process Modeling, complex integration's as well as development & technical services.
• Business Intelligence - our deep understanding and focus around AX, IDB Solutions can help deliver the most value for you through correct definition, development and use of BI
• Cloud Computing - Focused on the correct use of cloud computing technologies for extending your AX solution.
• Mobile ERP / CRM - Implementing ISV Solutions & custom development for mobile solutions that deliver real value for your AX needs.

I'm currently at Convergence 2012, so make sure to connect with us and see how our knowledge and expertise can drive the most value for your project needs! Till Next Time!

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MSDW: What’s Behind Microsoft’s Discontinuation of Dynamics Mobile for AX and NAV?

Over at MSDynamicsWorld.com a recent article on Microsoft decision to discontinue development of the Microsoft Dynamics Mobile was published.

Reading this article, by Erik Herman, really can get you thinking about what is going on with this decision.

Erik brings up some thought provoking points.:
"Companies today certainly remain concerned with using technology to maximizing employee productivity. Mobile applications and architectures will continue to evolve and become more pervasive in general business technology terms and in the context of enterprise wide systems and environments. So it begs the question, what's Microsoft's thinking and impetus behind this course of action?

The discontinuation could mean several things both within Microsoft and for the larger Dynamics partner community. It could mean that Microsoft is choosing to focus on things they do best with their Dynamics product line, which is the development of the existing backend infrastructure tools, while allowing their client partners to handle the front end development of applications working against their Dynamics systems. Or, perhaps there's a forthcoming acquisition that will offer Microsoft a fully developed mobile product line (speculation alert)."

As Erik points out, that last option is a specilation alert, which should be noted, is a real possibility.

From what I understand on this point, there is a hybrid set of reason's for this decision.

1.) Most mobile applications for Dynamics AX are either running third party developed solutions or fully customized to the customer needs Mobile UI to DAX processes and business logic.

2.) There is a purchase a foot, that will lead to easier development of mobile applications for accessing and working with X++ busienss logic, and the DAX controlled data model.

3.) Microsoft is wanting their partners to continue to be the source for such developments and vertical offerings, and they want to provide, as usual the platform in which those vertical offerings are developed and delivered on.

So that is my understanding, from what I know, about this topic.

Thanks Erik for taking the time and adding such great value. This is a topic that we should all keep our eyes on, as the mobile front will only demand more and more applications, and need to access DAX business logic and data.




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