Everyone has used Pivot Tables within Excel at one point in time to create simple reports against Dynamics AX, and some of you may have also used Power Pivot to create more elaborate dashboards and charts.  Recently Microsoft extended out the query and reporting capabilities within Excel with the Power BI suite.  In addition to extending the Power Pivot capabilities, they also added three more tools called Power Query, Power View & Power Map, and that means that you have a whole new set of reporting options.

In this presentation we will show you how you can use all of the Power BI tools to analyze your Dynamics AX data.

Read More

Perhaps you have heard about the new tool in Excel called PowerPivot, but wonder how it can enhance your use of Excel.

In this series we will show how PowerPivot can assist you with advanced data analysis and reporting, making those extracts from Dynamics AX to Excel even more valuable.

Here are all of the blog posts that are included in this series:

1. Using Pivot Tables to Analyze Dynamics AX Data
2. Using PowerPivot to Create Dynamics AX Dashboards
3. Adding Timeline Slicers to PowerPivot Dashboards
4. Creating Additional Calculated Columns into PowerPivots
5. Applying Filters to a PowerPivot Data Model
6. Creating Joins between Multiple PowerPivot Datasets
7. Using Functions to Create Calculated Columns in PowerPivots
8. Creating URL and Picture Columns in PowerPivots

PowerPivot is a great tool that gives you a lot more capabilities that the normal Pivot function lacks, and in this worked example we have shown how it also extends out to SharePoint giving you a number of new publishing and visualization options.

Once you have mastered all of the basics of PowerPivot, you may want to dive into some other features like:

• The creation of more complex calculations using the DAX Queries
• The creation of KPI’s based off the calculations
• Reporting hierarchies

Then you will want to start investigating the other tools that are included in the PowerBI suite (which PowerPivot is just one of). The other tools are:

• PowerView
• PowerMap
• PowerQuery

If you want to view the original post which may have additional content then click here.

With the R2 release of Dynamics AX 2012, a new feature was quietly snuck into the product that allows you to store document attachments from Dynamics AX within SharePoint rather than within an archive location, or within the database. This opens up a whole slew of possibilities when it comes to document management within SharePoint.

In this example we will show how you can create a document management structure within SharePoint that you can use in conjunction with the Dynamics AX attachments feature, and also we will show a few tweaks that you can make that may make managing your documents within SharePoint just a little easier. Read More

PowerView is a great tool for creating dashboards and analytics for Dynamics AX, and you can easily embed it into Role Centers to create summary dashboards, and you can use it to drill into offending statistics that you notice, and you can easily create new dashboards using the new Analyze button in Dynamics AX 2012 R2. But what would be even better would be having context sensitive dashboards built into the actual master data forms. Then you would be able to see statistics and trends against the data that you a focused on. Fortunately that is not very hard to do.

In this worked example we will show how you can easily create a new dashboard through PowerView and then embed it within the Dynamics AX forms to show you just the statistics that you are looking for. Read More

The Excel Add-In is an incredibly useful tool because it doesn’t just allow you to download information from Dynamics AX, but it also allows you to publish information back to the system without compromising the data integrity. You can use this for the initial data setup within Dynamics AX, quick maintenance of multiple records, moving data from one system to another, and even aggregating data through matrix fields. And best of all, this tool is included for free with Dynamics AX, so you don’t need to buy additional licenses in order to use it.

In this worked example we will show how you can use the Dynamics AX Excel Add-In to make updating data a breeze. Read More

Dynamics has a lot of little Easter Eggs of functionality built into it, and one of them that I just discovered is the ability to have the system automatically update all of your currency exchange rates through the rate authorities’ web services. There is no need to update these manually ever again.

In this worked example we will show how you can quickly configure the automatic updating of the exchange rates, and then never worry about them again. Read More

The Dynamics AX retail module has a Cross Docking feature that allows you to receive in products on a purchase order and then turn right around and transfer them out to other warehouses to replenish store inventories. This is great when you are receiving in products into a distribution center and then redistributing the stock. But what if you are a more traditional organization that needs to cross dock inventory to other non-retail locations?

In this worked example we will show you how you can still use the cross docking function within Dynamics AX without having to implement all of the retail module in the process. Read More

At the beginning of every presentation I do what is called a Cooking/Foundation/Orientation demonstration so that everyone is able to see some of the general features of Dynamics AX.

This weekend I sat down and recorded it just in case others would like to see a high level overview of Dynamics AX 2012 as well.

Below are the postings and links to the download on SlideShare just in case you want to take a peek:

Video
http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/dynamics-ax-2012-orientation

If you like the video, but want to download a higher quality version, then I have also posted it to SkyDrive:

Download
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=871CA0925E2E4A6!17114&authkey=!AFgZoCvaFlsN0rs

I just wanted to thank all of the people that have supported me either by visiting blog (www.atinkerersnotebook.com), by browsing my SlideShare account (www.slideshare.net/murrayfife), or by sitting through my demonstrations of Dynamics AX and inspiring a lot of the content. Over the past 6 or so months I have been retooling some of the more popular posts and have been able to turn them into a book which was published this week J

http://www.packtpub.com/extending-microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-cookbook/book

Thanks again for all of the visits to my site, and watch out for volume #2.

The Service Management area within Dynamics AX allows you to track all of your service order contracts and service orders for your customers, will track all of your time and expenses against the service orders, and will also pass along any chargeable items to the receivables department for automatic invoicing to the customer.

Service Management has additional functions as well that allow you to track the items that are being serviced, define the tasks that are allowed to be performed against a service order, and also track the symptoms, diagnosis, and resolution to service order issues, making it a great tracking and analysis tool.

In this walkthrough we will show how you can create service agreements and orders, and then how you can use the additional tracking features within Service Management to get a tighter handle on your service orders.

Read More