AX 2012 - Report Layout and Style Templates

In a recent post, I talked about AX 2012 and Diving into BI Analytics as a starting point back into a series of post around The BI Story for AX 2012. The point of this series of post, is to drive understanding of the BI options in Dynamics AX, and therefore driving value around making the most use out of your investment.



To help continue this series, I will start to dive into more and more specifics around AX 2012 & BI, specifically around creating BI artifacts with the out-of-the-box tools.

To that end, recently I was working with a long time client, and one of the things that was brought up was the use of Report Templates, in reference to how these could be used in Microsoft Dynamics AX MorphX reports in the past.



Just to be clear on this point, you have the ability to have Layout Templates as well as Style Templates. As I've done in the past with such articles, I would like to start this deeper dive, with referencing what Microsoft has provided for us on MDSN. As I've also stated in the past, Microsoft has been doing a great job with the release of AX 2012 around documentation and this topic is covered with some nice resources.

The following is that resource list:

• Using Report Layout and Style Templates [AX 2012] - Home on MDSN for this topic
• Predefined Layout and Style Templates [AX 2012] - A very detailed listing of the predefined templates in AX 2012, including the desired report type in which each can be applied.
• How to: Create a Layout or Style Template [AX 2012] - A nice how to article on creating layout & style templates
• How to: Apply a Layout or Style Template [AX 2012] - A final how to on applying layout & style templates in AX 2012

Now with these resources in hand, we have the ability to start making use of layout & style templates, understand the value, and create our very own if so desired.

To a point of use for these, for example, say in an Auto Design scenario you would like to have the Company Name, Page information, etc on the header of your auto design reports. This was very common need with MorphX reports. Well in order to do this, you could follow the how to on applying Layout & Style templates, and use that to apply the ReportLayoutStyleTemplate which has said information as part of the header.

Further, you can create your own custom layout and style templates that might contain specific design elements, or parts of Header information that help create a specific an uniformed rendering of reports that can go very far with the user base.

The point to be taking, is it's still possible to achieve this same need as it was in AX MorphX reports, with the new reporting model of AX SSRS.

With that, I will end this post and thought process for now. I hope that as we continue down this path, you will see more and more the flexibility and depth of Reporting and BI artifact creation that exists out-of-the-box for AX 2012. Till Next Time!

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Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - MorphX Drag and Drop, but no fields?!

Alright, so one of the cool things that I wrote about recently, for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, was around the new Type Hierarchies, and the Type Hierarchy Broswer and it's use.

In looking at this, however, I was questioned about the ability to be able to say, create a new Query object, and being able to drag fields over from the table, into the new Datasource. To help bring this topic home, lets look together and one of the new datasets in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, the EcoRes* tables.

If we go to the EcoResProduct table, right click and go to the type hierarchy browser for this table, we can see, that it extends from common, and from it extends the EcoResDistinctProduct table object.



Now, lets take and open an AOT window, and browse to the EcoResDistinctProduct table object, so that we can see what kind of fields we have to work with, directly from the object within the AOT tree itself.



As you can see from above, we have no fields actually, within the AOT object, that represents the EcoResDistinctProduct table, to actually reference directly or work with directly. So what can be done then, for dragging and dropping fields, on datasources for example?

To show this off, we will need a new custom Query object. This will be the same, however, for any datasource for a form, report, etc. etc. So lets take and create our new custom Query object. Once we have that, take and drag and drop the EcoResDistinctProduct table from the AOT window, into the datasources of the new custom Query as shown below.



In doing this, we see that we now have the EcoResDistinctProduct table as our datasource, and again no fields, when expanding the fields section under the Datasource node. Now here, you could manually add a new field, but that's no fun, now is it? Enter the power of AX 2012, and the continued use of MorphX!

Simply go back to the AOT window, and expand the fields of the EcoResProduct table, and drag over, say the DisplayProductNumber field. Drop it into the fields section of the EcoResDistinctProduct datasource, and bang! We now have the DisplayProductNumber field, for the EcoResDistinctProduct datasource and table, and not the EcoResProduct table.



Looking at the properties, below, you will see this is actually the case, as Morphx and the power of AX 2012 still handles this for us, and understands that we want that field, for the Distinct products, and not the products itself.



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



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Some blog spotlights: AX and the Cloud Example, AIF Error and AX 6.0 Xpp Editor Updates

I have been really busy, and I have some good post that I hope you will enjoy coming up soon, including a new article I will be writing for MSDynamicsWorld.com.

With that said, there have been some really great post over the past several weeks, and I wanted to make sure and highlight them.

The fist is DAXGuy's entry, on an AX example for working with the Cloud. As I wrote about early this year, What can the Cloud offer you in 2010?, 2010 for sure is going to be the year of the cloud. DAXGuy took this further with all the talking, and gave us a really good walk through example of how to get a service in the cloud up and running, and make use of it with Dynamics AX. That post can be found here.: AX on Cloud 9



From the post.:
"Lately there has been a lot of activity related to cloud computing with introduction of Windows AZURE. It truly is an interesting technology providing businesses wider opportunities. Well I decided to explore AZURE a bit and did a small POC on AX integration with AZURE... ... I was consuming a AZURE WCF Service from Dynamics AX. There is a lot of potential in this. Maybe in next generation AIF , developers will be able to generate Cloud AIF directly from AX."

Next in line, we have Dianne Siebold's weblog about AIF. Recently, she posted about the discovery of a very unintuitive error message that you might get and how to start troubleshooting it. That post can be found here.: “Request Failed” Error in AIF

The request failed with the following error: The element 'SalesTable' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/SalesOrder' has invalid child element 'LanguageId' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/SalesOrder'.

List of possible elements expected: 'QuotationId, ReceiptDateConfirmed, ReceiptDateRequested, RecId, RecVersion, Reservation, ReturnDeadline, ReturnItemNum, ReturnReasonCodeId, ReturnReplacementCreated, ReturnReplacementId, ReturnStatus, SalesGroup, SalesId, SalesName, SalesOriginId, SalesPoolId, SalesResponsible, SalesStatus, SalesTaker, SalesType, SalesUnitId, SettleVoucher, ShipCarrierAccount, ShipCarrierAccountCode, ShipCarrierBlindShipment, ShipCarrierDeliveryContact, ShipCarrierDlvType, ShipCarrierExpeditedShipment, ShipCarrierFuelSurcharge, ShipCarrierID, ShipCarrierResidential, ShippingDateConfirmed, ShippingDateRequested, smmCampaignId, smmSalesAmountTotal, StatProcId, TaxGroup, totalBalance, TotalCashDiscount, TotalInvoice, TotalMiscCharges, TotalSalesTax, TransactionCode, Transport, URL, VATNum, SalesLine, DocuRefHeader, MarkupTransHeader' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/SalesOrder'


This is actually a very helpful tip and post when working with AIF and you start getting some strange error messages that's hard to discern what is really going on.

Finally, Vicent, who posted last October about some update highlights to the X++ editor in Dynamics has some new material up, for a part II on what's new in the X++ editor. I wrote about part I, here.: Dynamics AX 6.0 - aka 2011 - X++ Editor

Well you can find his latest entries, by going to the following link.: Dynamics AX6 – The new X++ editor (part 2)

"In a completion session, holding the ctrl key will make the drop-down dialog transparent, so you can see the code underneath:"





I want to say thanks to each of these fine bloggers for sharing their information with the rest of the Dynamics Community. It's because of such efforts that the Dynamics Community continues to grow, and is able to help those looking for solutions.

That's all for now, but as I pointed out in the start of this post, I have some really nice entries coming. Check back soon, and see you then!




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Dynamics AX 6.0 - aka 2011 - X++ Editor

I saw on twitter today, a link to a blog post done in October of last year now, about some screen shots of the Dynamics AX 6.0, aka Dynamics AX 2011, X++ editor.

Here is the direct link to that blog post.:
Vincent's Blog - Dynamics AX6 – The new X++ editor



From the post.:
"This editor is based on the same framework than the Visual Studio editor... ...The line numbering and the gradient marking are the first visible signs of a new UI. The rendering is WPF based, so that gives some opportunities for cool graphics."



And...
"Things to notice, that are new relatively to the existing editor are:

-Support for multiple fonts and styles (comments are in a different font in italic).
-Differentiated coloring of strings and numbers.
-Operators coloring (in pink here, but don’t worry I’ll most likely change it before we release !).
-Change tacking margin."

So it looks like we have some good updates coming to the X++ editor, including being based on WPF rendering. This means, a move more and more to Visual Studio?? Possibly having X++ editor, be a part of Visual Studio in the next couple of releases?

I thought this was a good post, and though it's from October, I have not seen these anywhere else yet, so good stuff to note.

It also seems that the following.: multiple methods in the same window, outlining, screen split, comment away multiple lines, snippets, Ctrl+Space to complete partly written code.. etc.

Are in the works as well, which makes X++ editor more and more like Visual Studio.

That's all for now, thanks Vincent for sharing!




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