The AXUG Summit starts in just a couple of days and here are the sessions that I will either be hosting, or sitting in on as a panelist. If you are attending then make sure you mark them down on your dance card and drop on by so that I’m not lonely.

Creating Your Own Product Information Management Processes With Cases and Project Management

Wednesday, October 14 • 11:00am – 12:00pm

Although Dynamics AX is not a complete New Product Development (NPD) and formulation system, as it does not calculate nutritional details or perform least cost formulation, it does allow you to manage all of your product, costs, formulations, nutritional details, and more. Additionally, it has a lot of capabilities to help you streamline management of the NPD/New Product Introduction (NPI) process. In this presentation, we will show an example of how you can use Cases, Workflow, and Projects within Dynamics AX to manage the entire NPD/NPI process.

Using Cases To Do Almost Anything Your Dynamics AX Doesn’t Do

Wednesday, October 14 • 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Step right up and dare to experience for yourself the one, the only, the world’s largest, strongest tool ever! It walks, it talks, it crawls on its belly!!! — We’re talking about Cases within Dynamics AX, of course. They are the ‘Swiss Army knife’ of Dynamics AX functionality, and if there is something you want to track that isn’t tracked already, you can probably do it through Cases. With Cases you can track incidents, record quality results, track projects, and even create custom workflows to track whether Cases are followed up upon in a timely manner. Cases are accessible virtually everywhere within Dynamics AX; you practically can’t open up a screen without seeing them. In this presentation, we will show you how to configure Cases and will walk through a few examples of how you can use them right now within your implementation of Dynamics AX.

Getting The Most Out Of Dynamics AX Data With PowerBI

Thursday, October 15 • 8:00am – 9:00am

Do you think the only thing better than PowerBI within Excel is PowerBI running within Office 365? Come to this session and we’ll show you why everyone needs to use the much simpler PowerBI Designer available within the Office 365-hosted PowerBI portal! PowerBI is a standalone dashboard designing tool that takes all of the great features within Excel like Power Query, Power View, and Power Pivot and puts them in one single place to make all of your reporting a synch. After you have finished building your dashboards, you can publish them to the new hosted Power BI portal, create your own custom dashboards, and even perform Q&A on the data just by typing in the questions you want answered. In this overview, we will look at this new tool and how you can use it to quickly analyze all your Dynamics AX data and blend multiple data feeds into one dashboard to view all the data you need in one place!

Challenge the AX Experts

Thursday, October 15 • 3:15pm – 4:15pm & Friday, October 16 • 1:00pm – 2:00pm

This is the session to get your answers! Join in on the fun in this fast-moving roundtable where the Microsoft Dynamics AX Experts will field all questions from the audience. There has to be at least one question you wanted answered while at Summit – and this the session to do it. No question is out of bounds, regardless of version, function, or technology!

Self Service Reporting Within Dynamics AX

Thursday, October 15 • 4:45pm – 6:00pm

Having Users perform their own reporting has been a dream on both sides of the organization. IT staff do not particularly like creating reports for Users when they could be spending time on cooler projects, and Users don’t particularly like waiting for IT to create reports because it’s not timely or exactly what they wanted.  The solution is found in the many tools built into Dynamics AX and productivity tools such as Excel and Word. In this session, learn how Users can easily create their own reports without having to get the IT group involved; it’s so easy they may not realize they are creating reports. Join this session and learn how everybody can win!

WOW – The 50 Best Tips and Tricks for Dynamics AX 2012

Friday, October 16 • 2:15pm – 3:15pm

Dynamics AX is full of features you can implement at the module level, but the true power of the product comes from the plethora of smaller features built into the User interface.  You can make Dynamics AX even more powerful by taking advantage of the other foundation products such as SharePoint and Office.  The real trick is to know what the capabilities are. Join us for this session. Even the most seasoned Dynamics AX User or Administrator should find a new tip or trick to make them look like a rock star!

Getting Things Done with Office 365

Friday, October 16 • 3:30pm – 4:30pm

In this session we will show you how you can use Microsoft Office tools like Outlook, OneDrive and OneNote to get organized, get things done, and even get your life back. We will show you how to free yourself from your desk because everything you need is also available on your tablet and phone!

Also, I am still on a one-man mission to help all of you learn Dynamics AX by doing. For those of you that don’t think that you can configure Dynamics AX yourself, here is a starter kit for you to get your feet wet, and realize that you can. It will step you through the first 2.25 guides in the Bare Bones Configuration Guides and you will learn how to create your own Dynamics AX learning environment, configure a new organization, and then set up the General Ledger controls. If you like what you see, then you may want to keep on going.

As an extra incentive, anyone who does complete the entire Bare Bones Configuration Series, then you will become a Bare Bones Configuration Privateer, and I am having merit badges created for you all. If that doesn’t make you just rush out and configure Dynamics AX for yourself then I don’t know what will – everyone wants merit badges 😉

If any of you catch me at the AXUG and promise to take up the challenge, then I will have some USB Wafer drives with the guide and also all of the resources that you need to start.

For those of you that are not able to make it to the Summit, for this week only, use this discount code – AXUGSUMMIT15 – and download the digital version for free.

I’m looking forward the Summit, and seeing some of you this week in Reno, NV.

Having users perform their own reporting has been a dream on both sides of the organization. The IT group don’t particularly like creating reports for the users when they could be spending their time on cooler projects, and users don’t particularly like waiting for IT to create the reports that they need to track the data because it’s never quite what they wanted, and also takes so long to get (because of the first reason) that it’s usually out-of-date. If only there was a solution…

Well there is, because there are so many tools built into Dynamics AX and also the productivity tools like Excel and Word that the users can easily create their own reports themselves without having to get the IT group involved. Everybody wins!

In this presentation we will show you how the users can do just that, it’s so easy that they may not even realize that they are creating reports.

Adding Additional Fields to List Page Views

One of the benefits of the list pages within Dynamics AX is that you can add additional fields to the views, so if there is something that you need for reporting and analysis that isn’t currently on the form then all you need to do is add it.

How To Do It…

To do this, just right-mouse-click on the data within the list page, or the heading in the list page and then click on the Personalize option.

This will open up the Personalization form and you will be able to see all of the fields that are currently displayed within the list page. To add a new field all you need to do is click on the Add Fields button.

This will open up the Field Explorer and you will be able to see all of the fields that are associated with the form and also any related tables as well.

If you expand out the Addresses field group then you will see all of the address fields that are related to the Sales Orders.

If you want to report off geographic information then you can click City, State, ZIP/Postal Code and Country/Region fields and then click on the Add button to add them to the form. When you have done selecting your additional fields then just close down the Field Explorer.

When you return to the Personalization form you see that the fields have been added with little green + signs beside them which mean that these are custom fields that have been added to the view. When you are done here you can close down the form by clicking on the Close icon in the top right hand corner of the window.

When you return back to the form you will notice that some of the fields have not been populated yet. Don’t worry. All you need to do here is press F5 to refresh the view.

Now all of the new data will be displayed on the form for you and all of the new fields are displayed on the list page as columns that you can use for your own reporting.

Summary

Not everyone wants the same fields to show up on their forms, and no-one wants the fields that everyone else wants cluttering up their list pages that they use every dat. This is a great way to get information that you need onto your forms without having to do any development and also a very fast way to add additional information that you may only need for a little while and then remove them later on.

Original

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About The Author

Murray Fife is a Technical Solution Professional at Microsoft and Author of over 25 books on Microsoft Dynamics AX including the Bare Bones Configuration Guide Series which contains over 15 books that show novice users host to set up Dynamics AX using visual walkthroughs.  These guides start off with the Financial modules of Dynamics AX and then progress through the Operational, Distribution, and then the more specialized modules like production, service management, and project accounting.  You can find all of his books on Amazon (www.amazon.com/author/murrayfife) and also even more on the independent BSP (www.blindsquirrelpublishing.com) site.

Murray is also the curator of the Dynamics AX Companions (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) site which he built from the ground up as a resource for all of the Dynamics AX community where you can find walkthroughs and blueprints that he created since first being introduced to the Dynamics AX product.

Throughout his 25+ years of experience in the software industry he has worked in many different roles during his career, including as a developer, an implementation consultant, a trainer and a demo guy within the partner channel which gives him a great understanding of the requirements for both customers and partners perspective.

He is also a great supporter of the Dynamics AX community and has hosted scores webinars for the AX User Group (www.axug.com) and MS Dynamics World (www.msdynamicsworld.com), and has speaks at Microsoft Convergence and AXUG Summit conferences regularly.

Having users perform their own reporting has been a dream on both sides of the organization. The IT group don’t particularly like creating reports for the users when they could be spending their time on cooler projects, and users don’t particularly like waiting for IT to create the reports that they need to track the data because it’s never quite what they wanted, and also takes so long to get (because of the first reason) that it’s usually out-of-date. If only there was a solution…

Well there is, because there are so many tools built into Dynamics AX and also the productivity tools like Excel and Word that the users can easily create their own reports themselves without having to get the IT group involved. Everybody wins!

In this series we will show you how the users can do just that, it’s so easy that they may not even realize that they are creating reports.

Use Edit in Grid as your Reporting Worksheet

Most of the list pages within Dynamics AX have a second version which is called the Edit in Grid view. This is a great way to have a master reporting form for the users and not clutter up the main list page with the extra fields that they may need to report off.
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