I just wanted to drop you all a quick note to show you something that I have been working on over the past 207 days.

Up until then I had been creating PowerPoint Slideuments that I used to document processes and save away all of my notes that I had been making. The problem was that in order to publish them I had to transfer all of the content by hand over to Word documents and then also try to keep all of the formatting consistent. For a typical walkthrough guide that I was developing this would take up to 8 hours of work and was not the most stimulating process because it pretty much consisted of:

1. Selecting PowerPoint
   
2. Selecting the image
   
3. Pressing CTRL+C
   
4. Selecting Word
   
5. Clicking on the next blank location
   
6. Pressing CTRL+V
   
7. Selecting PowerPoint
   
8. Selecting the text
   
9. Pressing CTRL+C
   
10. Selecting Word
    
11. Clicking on the next blank location
    
12. Pressing CTRL+V
    
13. Repeat 400+ times
    

I had finally got a little tired of this and I had an idea that I could automate the layout and typesetting of word documents from the PowerPoint documents that I had been creating and publishing up until that time. So on October 28^th, 2015 I created my first prototype:

Using a little bit of VBA I was able to take this PowerPoint:

And spit out a word document:

How cool is that. I definitely did that Dance of Joy (https://youtu.be/GfPg5LjGYz8) when this happened.

Since then I have upgraded this prototype, re-written it all in Visual Studio – stretching my already limited programming skills to the breaking point and also added a whole slew of bells and whistles to the add in for PowerPoint. Now I can take this storyboard:

And it will format the document every which way I like:

And to boot it will create training PowerPoints for me based on the content:

Yesterday I sat down and created an overview Mix (another great product from Microsoft that people don’t know about – http://mix.office.com) that shows how it works, and after realizing that no-one wants to sit through 50 minutes of me talking online I split the presentation up into 12 smaller lessons that are a little more consumable.

If anyone is interested in seeing how I use this tool to develop content in a whole slew of different formats so quickly then here is the complete set of recordings:

Part 1 – Formatting Your Content: https://mix.office.com/watch/3c2hn74ecj83

Part 2 – The Publishing Ribbon Bar lesson permission: https://mix.office.com/watch/1a86ptimptb6p

Part 3 – Creating Walkthrough Documents: https://mix.office.com/watch/wueq22nl9ibm

Part 4 – Creating Recipe Instructions: https://mix.office.com/watch/1s8r7otdesx7k

Part 5 – Creating Scripts: https://mix.office.com/watch/1s84prdhx49xh

Part 6 – Using Alternate Word Templates: https://mix.office.com/watch/hy3w6lcy6z4x

Part 7 – Creating Thumbnail Reference Guides: https://mix.office.com/watch/6by4gpmhl45i

Part 8 – Creating A Blog Post: https://mix.office.com/watch/cfwyiwf3dzk7

Part 9 – Creating A Print Ready Book: https://mix.office.com/watch/8hir29m3wumb

Part 10 – Creating A Kindle Ready Book: https://mix.office.com/watch/ik6xha11945p

Part 11 – Creating Companion PowerPoints: https://mix.office.com/watch/m1msrobh30rg

Part 12 – Creating Hiding Text In PowerPoint: https://mix.office.com/watch/1gnatgu5c35lz

I am going to be using everything that I show in these presentations to reformat all of the content that I have published on the www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com site into other consumable formats for you all including ready made PowerPoint training documents, more Mixes, and also raw content within Word so that you all can repurpose the content for your own training and marketing programs. So watch out for more richer content in the future.

I hope that this is interesting to you all and if anyone wants more information about the add-in then don’t hesitate to drop me a note.

The AXUG European Congress (http://www.axugcongress.com/home) starts is just under a week and if you are going, then make sure that you track me down, I will be speaking at a few of the sessions and I will do my best to entertain you all, and hopefully educate you on Dynamics AX along the way.

We are doubly excited because with the help of Kurt Mekelburg we have been able to also fully translate the latest guide on Dynamics AX – 50 Tips & Tricks for the New Dynamics AX into German and this would be a great memento for the event – even if you are not there.

Of course, if you don’t want to brush up on the Fatherlands lingo, you can still pick up a copy of the original book in English.

50 Tips & Tricks für das Neue Dynamics AX (German Edition) Das neue Dynamics AX beinhaltet große Änderungen im Vergleich zu vorhergehenden Releases. Ein Großteil der Modifikationen betreffen die neue webbasierende Benutzeroberfläche, die Art und Weise wie Sie sich innerhalb der Applikation bewegen und neue Sets von Werkzeugen, die ebenfalls ergänzt wurden. Diejenigen unter Ihnen, die mit dem älteren Benutzerinterface vertraut sind, werden eine Menge neuer Tricks lernen müssen, um das System wie ein Profi handhaben zu können, und neue Anwender der neuen Dynamics AX Umgebung wollen sicherlich soviele Tips wie möglich erhalten über all die “coolen” Dinge, die innerhalb der Applikation verborgen sind, so dass Sie sehr schnell zu meinem Power User werden. Falls dies der Fall sein sollte, ist dieser Ratgeber für Sie geeignet – wir haben alle unsere Ressourcen gebündelt, um 50 der nützlichsten Tips und Tricks für das neue Dynamics AX zusammzustellen, die für jeden hilfreich sind – unabhängig davon, ob Sie ein Novize in der Dynamics AX Welt sind, der die Anwendung kennenlernen möchte, oder ob Sie bereits mit den früheren Versionen gearbeitet haben, und sich jetzt die Nuancen des neuen Benutzer Interfaces aneignen möchten. Für weitere Informationen lesen Sie in der Guide hier: http://bit.ly/23gQRB4

50 Tips & Tricks for the New Dynamics AX (English Edition) The New Dynamics AX is a big change from the previous releases.  The majority of the changes are around the new web based user interface, the new way that you navigate around in the application and also new sets of tools that have come along for the ride. For those of you that are familiar with the older user interfaces then you may have to learn a couple of new tricks to get around the system like the pro that you are, and for new users of the New Dynamics AX environments then you will probably want as many tips on all the cool things that you are hidden away within the application so that you can quickly become a power user of the system. If that’s the case then this is the guide for you – we have scoured all of the resources that we have to compile 50 of the most useful tips and tricks for the New Dynamics AX and that will be useful to everyone, regardless of if you are a novice to Dynamics AX just trying to get around in the application, or have worked with the previous versions of the system, and are just want to learn the nuances of the new user interface. For more information check out the guide here: http://bit.ly/1TDrWVz

With Dynamics AX the best way to configure a demo environment is through a separate demo tenant (domain name) that is then provisioned and linked with AX.  The other option which is to demo AX using your corporate account causes logistical problems with that is we have multiple personas because you are logging into a browser and making sure that it is not inheriting our main account (for me @microsoft.com) for the authentication becomes troublesome.

Yesterday I sat down and this is what I did to configure my demo Surface.

How it works…

First I set up my demo surface so that I can log in as my tenant’s persona – to do this just create a Live account (account.live.com) that has the same email address and password as your tenant user, and then add it to the local users of the surface so that it shows up on the login page as a persona.

Now when I log in I have my own desktop where all of the credentials are isolated from my normal corporate logins.

When I go to Office 365 now I can see all of the applications under my persona – including CRM, and Dynamics.  LCS should also show up there.  Also notice that when I am in Delve then all of the demo documents that I am working on within any persona show up highlighting office integration – if you export a spreadsheet and save it to SharePoint (which you can now do) then they start adding color to the demo.

Something that I also did was that I changed all of the users within AX to reference my new tenant.  There might be an easier way, but I did them by hand.

Also (with the help of Jeff Einig) I changed the Admin user so that rather than being connected to Julia’s persona I added myself as a worker and connected that worker to the User.

Now when I go to the ESS in the demos it shows me rather than Julia (which is more acceptable in Alabama).

Other tidbits are that I connected up all of my dashboards within PowerBI:

And also I published the dashboards as content packs for the organization so that the other personas can add them to their dashboards without having to redeploy them.

Having a tenant also allowed me to configure e-mail for some (25) of the users.  So I can open my mail through the personas login.

I have configured CRM on my tenant as well so from my shortcuts I can log in (without typing in a second password).

As a bonus I can then connect the tenants CRM to Cortana.

And now the CRM opportunities show up within Cortana’s home page.

Also, this allows us to link the dashboards within Power BI to Cortana and they will show up when you query her.

I also embellished the SharePoint site a little – I will probably do a little more to colorize this site and also add some additional workspaces for documents.  I have started to put demo presentations up here as well since the persona is able to use OneDrive as a storage mechanism.

As I mentioned before now that I can connect up SharePoint to my AX tenant, when I save an export to SharePoint then the document libraries show up.

The one thing that took me the longest amount of time to so though was that I went into O365 and added all of the users from AX in as Active Users, and also assigned as many of them as I could (I only had 25 licenses) to Exchange and CRM.

I also added some others just because I could.

These users can now (because they have e-mail) be invited to the LCS project to add even more color to the demonstration.

This allows me to do something really cool in demos.  Now when I log in you can select different demo personas.

Each one is tailored to the demo persona, and also all of the login information and favorites are cached for that user.  No need to open up in browsing windows to keep everything straight.

We can also set up custom personas for the demonstrations.

These personas have their own desktops and themes to make them easier to recognize within demos.

They can have cut down menu structures because of different demo roles.

And also the look and feel may be tailored to the user as well.

Summary

How cool is that!

Last week we announced that we started working on publishing out as much of the content from the old Dynamics AX Companions resource site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com)
over to the new Dynamics AX Companions eBook
Store (shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) in preparation for the merging of the two sites.

Also along the way some of you picked up on a small note that said that if you were an eBook subscriber on the original website then you would automatically receive a Premium Subscription to the eBook store as well and not have to re-subscribe annually. Even though we buried the lead on that story at the end of the e-mail, a lot of people picked up on this and also took advantage of the current amnesty program and signed up for the eBook subscription to get all of the books and updates at no extra cost from that point on.

Also to thank all of the monthly subscribers that have also been supporting the project since it started off, we have given them all complementary Premium Subscription to the eBook store as well. We thought it was only fair since most of them have almost paid for an eBook subscription any way. It’s just our way of saying thanks.

But we realized that a Premium Subscription is not much use if there is only one guide to download so we have been furiously collecting all of the content from the old site and getting it moved over to the eBook Store and also making all of it available as a free download for anyone who has received the Premium Subscription to the site.

All 16 of the Bare Bones Configuration Guides modules,
and all 4 of the Tips & Tricks volumes are now available for download from the premium section of the website here: http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/premium

If you haven’t worked through these guides and taken the Bare Bones Configuration Guide challenge to configure your very own company within Dynamics AX from scratch and become a Bare Bones Configuration Privateer then now it your chance. It comes with bragging rights and a badge:

It’s also a great way that you can learn Dynamics AX from the ground up without having to travel to training, and also to do it on a shoestring budget. The current record for completing the 10 core guides as 13.5 hours. Something you can easily start on weekend morning and be finished in time for dinner, although we may suggest that you do it over two days.

If you don’t have a subscription, and want to grab the deal a deal on the books before all of the cutover date where the old site will be put out to pasture (which at the rate that we are publishing the content won’t be too far off) and the annual membership of $199 a year to access all of the guides will become the only way you can get all of the guides that we are publishing at once, then you can take advantage of the eBook amnesty
and subscription on the Dynamics AX companions site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) for perpetual license and be able to access the guides for life at no extra charge. It’s almost criminal that we are offering this.

Workspaces are a great addition to (the new) Dynamics AX because they allow you to have all of the functions that you need in order to perform a job task in one place. Out of the box, there are about forty workspaces that have been deployed, but that doesn’t mean that those are the only ones that you need to use. If there are some users within the organization that don’t quite fit into those roles, or if there are users that are a little more specialized, then you can easily create new workspaces for them through Visual Studio and tailor them just the way that you want.

This week I have been working through the process of learning how to develop the workspaces and I created this walkthrough that will show you how to do that as well and also give you a little bit of an introduction to the development environment to show that it’s really not that hard to use.

As a bonus this process will be done without a single line of code, so even if you are not a developer, you can still run through this process.

By the end you will probably be chomping at the bit to create more workspaces yourself.

We have created two different versions of the guides.

For the novice, or if you are just a mediocre programmer like me then we have created a Walkthrough Guide which has big step by step instructions on what you need to do so that if you don’t quite understand the description of the step then you can look at the picture and see what is going on.

For the expert that just needs a quick reference with all of the steps required to create the workspace then we have the Thumbnail Guide. This is a more concise version of the document – that you could actually print out if you like which gives you thumbnail (hence the name) views of the screens and still has all of the steps that you need to go through in order to set up your workspaces.

If you want to check the books out then here is a link to them on the Dynamics AX Companions Store: http://bit.ly/1pzgT6f

Also, if you are an eBook subscriber on the original Dynamics AX Companions website then there is good news. You all have been converted over to Premium Subscribers on the Dynamics AX Shop (shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) and if you log in there and click on the PREMIUM CONTENT menu item, then you will be able to download the complete walkthrough for free – I’m just telling you this so that you don’t e-mail us and ask why the book isn’t on the original site.

Anyone who also signs up for an eBook subscription on the Dynamics AX companions site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) between now and mid-year for the one time only fee of $249 will also get upgraded to the Premium Subscription and will sidestep the upcoming recurring annual membership of $199 a year to access all of the guides through the eBook store. That’s still a great deal if you ask me.

I hope this is useful – I know that I was excited when I was finally able to start developing in the new Dynamics AX, and now that I’ve got a teste for it I think I will be a coding fool for a while.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been working on tidying up the Dynamics AX Companions eBook store (shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) in preparation for the merge of the store and the sister resource site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) and I am happy to announce that we have made a little progress.

If you visit the eBook store (http://bit.ly/1ppjiA9) now you will see that all of the guides are a little more organized and also there is the ability to filter the guides by functional area, by Bare Bones Configuration Guide module, and also by Dynamics AX version so that you can see if any of the guides apply to AX 2012, R2, R2, and even AX7 – we are in the process of upgrading all of the guides to the new version of Dynamics AX so watch out for more news on these guides.

Also we have taken a play from the Beanie Baby franchise and retired some of the guides that are now obsolete or replaced with the newer (Second Edition) guides so that ther are not cluttering up the store and will make it easier for you to find just the resources that you are looking for.

The website content is now grouped by series to help you find what you need.

The Bare Bones Configuration Guides (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/series_bare-bones-configuration-guides) section contains all of the setup and training guides that we have been creating and the many of you all have been using for your own self paced training by implementing a blank instance of Dynamics AX yourself by either using a Azure hosted environment, or if you have enough horsepower, a local version of Dynamics AX that you can download from Customer/Partner Source.

One new filter option that you can take advantage of with the website is the ability to filter these guides by Design Layout of Walkthrough and Thumbnail guide.

The traditional walkthrough guides are formatted to give you a step by step guide with full screen illustrations of each of the steps to give you a visual guide as to where in the process you are. Each illustration is a great visual reference as to what you should be seeing on the screen and has a description of exactly what you need to do in order to complete the step. This is an ideal way for a novice user to step through the examples within guide.

The thumbnail guides are formatted to give you a step by step guide with thumbnail illustrations of each of the steps to give you a visual guide as to where in the process you are. Each thumbnail has a description of exactly what you need to do in order to complete the step, and is an ideal way for an experienced user to step through the examples.

Also, as we release out the Second Edition of all of the guides then you will also have the ability to access all of the guides as individual Labs which are perfect for student training guides as they are bite sized versions of each of the chapters in the original guides. You can see a couple of them on the site already but there will be more to come.

Additionally the Configuration Blueprints section (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/series_configuration-blueprints) contains all of the guides that are just a little too small to be included in the Bare Bones Configuration Guides or which are worked examples that may span a number of different functional areas.

And the Tips & Tricks section (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/series_tips-and-tricks) contains all of the morsels of information that are too small to even be Configuration Blueprints but too valuable not to forget. Over the next couple of weeks we will be transferring as many of the tips that were on the sister site over here for you all to download, with a big added benefit of indexing these by functional area so that when you are looking for information on Sales Order Management for example the tips will show up alongside all of the other big boy guides (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/functional-area_sales-order-management) so that it is much easier to track down just the information that you are looking for.

Just as a heads up, if you are an eBook subscriber on the original Dynamics AX Companions website then you will still be able to access all of the guides from there, but by mid-year (hopefully) we will make it possible for you all to grab all of the guides from this site as well. You all will be even luckier because we will be transitioning to an annual membership of $199 a year to access all of the guides through the eBook store, but anyone who has signed up through the eBook subscription on the Dynamics AX companions site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) will have a perpetual license and be able to access the guides for life at no extra charge. That’s a great deal if you ask me.

I hope that you all like the changes that we have made to the eBook store and that it makes it easier for you all to access the content that you need for your Dynamics AX Projects.

The date of 3/9/2016 will probably go down in history along with other milestone dates in software engineering like 1/12/1997 and 4/19/2011 because, as you all may know, yesterday was the official release date of the new version of Dynamics AX.

Some of you all may know it by its full name of Microsoft Dynamics AX 7, but just like many other superstars out there like Cher, Madonna, and Sting it has dropped the last name and will forever be known as just Microsoft Dynamics AX.  It didn’t go the full route and replace its name with a symbol like the Artist that was formerly known as Prince, but there is still time.

Last year I released a guide on the new version of Microsoft Dynamics AX to help you all see what all of the fuss was about, but in the three months since it was released there have been a lot of cool changes to the user interface and some more cool features have been added to the user interface that make it even better than the pre-release so I have updated the guide to include all new screen shots of the product and also a number of new sections for you all to learn from.

This is a great reference for you all if you are

• a consultant wanting to learn how the new Microsoft Dynamics AX works, or
  
• a customer wanting to know how to navigate through the New Dynamics AX user interface, or
  
• a Demo Jockey like me and are looking for scripts on how to get the most bang out of the new Microsoft Dynamics AX presentations, or
  
• just curious about the new Microsoft Dynamics AX
  

If you want to grab a copy of the guide then just follow this link: http://bit.ly/1mAzKf6

I hope this is useful for you all, and piques your interest in the new Microsoft Dynamics AX – I know that I am super geeked about this release and already am hooked on a lot of the new features that are not available within the 2012 release.  I’m sure you all will feel the same way once you start using it.

PS. Don’t buy the version on Amazon just yet – I haven’t had time to update the contents of the book so you would be ordering an older version – but I do have a number of other books there that you may like as well… hint… hint… http://www.amazon.com/Murray-Fife/e/B00G9CNJPQ

Workspaces are a great place to live within because they give you access to all of the key information that you may need all in one page. One of the new metaphors that are introduced with the Workspaces are the tiles which show up on the left hand side of the workspace and give you the ability to see a count of records that you may be working through and also allow you to quickly jump to the data by clicking on them.

The workspaces come pre-populated with a set of common tiles that you may want to use, but that is just the beginning, because you can add additional tiles yourself to the workspaces and add links to other data that you may be interested in seeing within the Workspace overview page to help you with your day to day work.

In this example we will walk you through the addition of the tiles to the workspaces and show you how they work.

How to do it…

To do this, start off by opening up the list page that you want to create a new workspace tile for. In this example we opened up the All Sales Orders list page.

If you want to filter the data, then just click on the fields filter dropdown list and enter in the filter criteria. In this case we selected the order Status field and then entered in Delivered into the criteria field.

Then click on the Apply button.

Now you have a filtered list.

Next, switch to the Options ribbon bar.

This will allow you to then click on the Add to Workspace dropdown menu.

Click on the Workspace dropdown list and select the workspace that you want to add the tile to. In our example we selected the Sales Order Processing and Invoicing workspace.

Then click on the Presentation dropdown list and select the type of view you want to create. We selected Tile in this example, but if you choose List then it will still add the view, but it will be in the List section of the workspace.

After you have done that, click on the Configure button.

This will open up an Add as tile dialog box of the right hand side of the form.

If you want, you can rename the Name on tile to make it more specific to the query. We named ours Delivered Sales Orders.

Then click on the OK button.

When you open up the workspace that you added the tile to then you will see that it is now available for everyone to click on.

Clicking on it will take you straight to the list page and filter out the data for you.

Review

Being able to add tiles to your workspace is a great productivity tool to have in your back pocket. Although you may want to see all of the data sometimes, usually people are working with subsets of the data, and addressing exceptions rather than all of the information. By filtering out the data to just the information that you want to see and adding it as a tile (or as a list) then you get a way to track how much work that you have, and also make sure that you are working on all of the items that you need to work on. There is nothing worse than hunting through pages of data to find the exceptions.

The tiles allow you to get all the information that you need to see all packaged up within a box – literally.

A few weeks ago I released out a new version of my Configuring a Training Environment for Dynamics AX 2012 guide to you which stepped you all through the process of provisioning a new training environment for Dynamics AX within Azure and also shows you how you can create the blank training partition which will be used as the base learning environment for all of the other books in the series.

Over the past week or so I have had the chance to expand out this guide by adding in a few new sections including how to install and configure a local version of the Dynamics AX 2012 Virtual Machine, how to license the virtual machines if they expire, and incorporated the second guide on configuring a base partition and legal entity into the guide as well. Here is the full TOC from the new version of the guide.

CHAPTER 1: USING LIFECYCLE SEVICES AND AZURE TO HOST DYNAMICS AX

• Signing Up for an Azure Account
• Registering for your own Lifecycle Services Account
• Creating Your First Lifecycle Services Project
• Linking Lifecycle Services And Azure
• Creating an Azure Hosted Environment through Lifecycle Services
• Accessing Your Virtual Machine From Azure
• Viewing The Lifecycle Services Methodologies
• Turning Your Virtual Machine Off

CHAPTER 2: CONFIGURING A LOCAL VIRTUAL MACHINE (NEW)

• Downloading the Virtual Machine Image from CustomerSource
• Decompressing the Virtual Machine
• Enabling Hyper-V
• Mounting the Virtual Machine Through Hyper-V

CHAPTER 3: MAINTAINING YOUR VIRTUAL MACHINE LICENSES (NEW)

• Relicensing the Virtual Machine for 180 Days
• Relicensing Dynamics AX

CHAPTER 4: CREATING A NEW PARTION

• Creating A New Partition
• Creating A New Shortcut To The Partition
• Initializing The Partition

CHAPTER 5: CONFIGURING THE SYSTEM FOR THE FIRST TIME

• Changing The Default Company
• Configure The Default Document Types Storage Locations
• Importing Default User Profiles
• Adding Your User To A Role
• Importing Additional Users
• Configuring Enterprise Portal Links
• Configuring Enterprise Search Server

CHAPTER 6: CONFIGURING YOUR ORGANIZATION

• Initialize the Organizations Number Sequences
• Importing Address Zip Code, City, State & County Components
• Configuring The Global Address Book Properties
• Configuring Default Address Books
• Configure Working Time Templates
• Configuring Your Organizational Calendar
• Creating A Default Email Template
• Configuring Your Default Workflow Parameters
• Configure The Alert Notification Parameters
• Creating A New Worker Record
• Associating Users With Workers

CHAPTER 7: CONFIGURING YOUR LEGAL ENTITY

• Adding an Address to the Legal Entity
• Adding A Logo To Your Legal Entity
  

This has expanded the guide from 188 or so pages to around 420 pages, and is now a complete reference for people who want to set up their own version of Dynamics AX 2012 for testing and training, and also shows how to configure the base system in order to be ready to move through all of the Bare Bones Configuration Guides that I have developed.

If you haven’t seen any of my guides, then this walkthrough guide is formatted to give you a step by step guide with full screen illustrations of each of the steps to give you a visual guide as to where in the process you are. Each illustration is a great visual reference as to what you should be seeing on the screen and has a description of exactly what you need to do in order to complete the step. This is an ideal way for a novice user to step through the examples within guide.

If you have already picked up a copy of the original guide that I published a couple of weeks ago then don’t frett, you should have already received a link to where you can re-download the updated version of the guide. Being an early ready does have it’s perks.

I hope this is useful to everyone and that you all start learning Dynamics AX 2012 – then when the new release of Dynamics AX comes out you will be up to speed on that version as well because all of the business functionality from Dynamics AX 2012 applies to that version as well.

The New Dynamics AX is a big change from the previous releases. The majority of the changes are around the new web based user interface, the new way that you navigate around in the application and also new sets of tools that have come along for the ride.

For those of you that are familiar with the older user interfaces then you may have to learn a couple of new tricks to get around the system like the pro that you are, and for new users of the New Dynamics AX environments then you will probably want as many tips on all the cool things that you are hidden away within the application so that you can quickly become a power user of the system.

I have scoured all of the resources that I have to compile the most useful tips and tricks for the New Dynamics AX and that will be useful to everyone, regardless of if you are a novice to Dynamics AX just trying to get around in the application, or have worked with the previous versions of the system, and are just want to learn the nuances of the new user interface.

Filtering lists

The list pages are a great way for you to create simple reports directly from the application, but you probably don’t want to see all of the data. We have shown you how you can filter based off the main data, but you can also filter based on any of the fields that are shown on the form.

How it works…

To filter any of the fields, just click on the Down Arrow icon at the right end of the field heading to pull up the field options.

If you click on the filter criteria you will see that there are a number of different ways that you can filter including contains, begins with, etc.

Then type in the filter that you want to apply to the field.

And then click on the Apply button to apply the filter.

When you return back to the form you will see that the list page has been filtered to just show you the information that matches.

Want more?

If you liked this post and want to see more tips and tricks for the New Dynamics AX then I have compiled the 50 initial tips and tricks into a new guide for you all. If you want to get all of the tips and tricks in one place, then just follow the link: http://bit.ly/1mAzKf6

Also, if you are looking for more resources on Dynamics AX in general, then make sure you check out the Dynamics AX Companions site at www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com and also the Blind Squirrel Publishing site at www.blindsquirrelpublishing.com for more articles and books.

About the Author

Murray Fife is an Author of over 25 books on Microsoft Dynamics AX including the Bare Bones Configuration Guide series of over 15 books which step the user through the setup of initial Dynamics AX instance, then through the Financial modules and then through the configuration of 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 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 partner’s perspective.

For more information on Murray, here is his contact information:

Email:         mcf@blindsquirrelpublishing.com
Twitter:    @murrayfife
Facebook:    facebook.com/murraycfife
Google:        google.com/+murrayfife
LinkedIn:    linkedin.com/in/murrayfife
Blog:        atinkerersnotebook.com
Docs:        docs.com/mufife
Amazon:    amazon.com/author/murrayfife