One project that I have been working on recently is how to set up a simple training environment for Dynamics AX that multiple students are able to connect to at the same time, without stepping on each other’s toes, or even knowing that the other students are there. The other day I was able to devise a possible solution and I thought that I would share it with everybody just in case you all were wanting to set up your own shoestring budget bare bones configuration training environments.

How To Do It…

Step 1: To start off I created a new training partition within Dynamics AX and then created a number of test companies that you could assign to each of the students. In this example I thought that the Forbes The 25 Largest Fictional Companies would be a good place to start.

Step 2: I created accounts for the students to log in with through Active Directory. I separated the users out by the Company that they are going to be assigned to just to make them easier to track. Paul Atreides is the Muad’Dib that should be in charge of the Spice on Arrakis.

Step 3: Now we want to set up the user within Dynamics AX but before we do that we want him to be able to manage his company, and only his company. The best way to do this is through the Security profiles, but there is no profile that has access to all of the functions that we need. So start off by creating a new security profile called Company Administrator and then add in the other security roles to create one master security role that we can assign to the user – you will see how we use this in a second.

Step 4: Now we can import in all of the student users into Dynamics AX. When you do this, give them the Company Administrator role to limit what they have access to.

Step 5: Now we just need to click on the Assign Organizations button within the User’s Roles and assign the one company that the user has access to.

How It Works

Now when the user logs into Dynamics AX then they will only be able to view their one company that they have the rights to.

Because of the security role that they have been assigned they will also not be able to access any of the security information that will allow them to undo their security settings.

As the teacher though you will be able to have access to all of the companies and will be able to review all of the data that is being set up and possibly tweak some of the companies if you like.

How cool is that!

About The Author

Murray Fife is a Microsoft Dynamics AX MVP, Author of over 20 books on Microsoft Dynamics AX, and Solution Architect at I.B.I.S. Inc. with over 20 years of experience in the software industry. Like most people in his industry he has worked in many different roles during his career, including as a developer, an implementation consultant, and a trainer which gives him a great understanding of the requirements for both customers and partners. He is a regular contributor to the Dynamics AX community and in addition to hosting presentations for I.B.I.S. presents regularly for the AXUG and MS Dynamics World, has spoken at Microsoft Convergence and AXUG Summit conferences. If that was not enough, he works closely with Microsoft evaluating with their beta products and also is a Council Member on the Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance trying to help educate the new generation of consultants on Dynamics AX.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a note about the new Dynamics AX 2012 R3 image that you can deploy through the Azure Marketplace which is pretty darn cool: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/microsoft/microsoft_dynamics_lcs/?rnd=1

But the one thing that it was missing was a good training methodology to go with it.

To solve this problem I decided to convert the Bare Bones Configuration Guides (http://www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/barebonesconfig) into a custom methodology:

To make it even more useful I even attached the guides to the methodology steps for easy reference:

I wonder if this idea will catch on?

If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft have released out an Image for Dynamics AX 2012 R3 through the Azure Marketplace which allows you to deploy out the demo environment that everyone uses as the basis for presentations – myself included. All the information is on the Dynamics AX deployment page here: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/microsoft/microsoft_dynamics_lcs/?rnd=1

All you need to do is log into your Azure Account and you can start the configuration:

This will start the ball rolling and Azure will start configuring your system.

As a bonus you will also get a simple LCS project to track your evaluation process.

Now all you need to do is start learning Dynamics AX… a great place to start is the Dynamics AX Companions site: http://www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/barebonesconfig

Finally all of the pieces are falling together and everyone is able to learn Dynamics AX without having to jump through too many hoops.

Rock on!

I’m happy to say that I just finished the first of two books that I will be publishing on the Procurement and Sourcing module within Dynamics AX, and it is available for download.

The Procurement and Sourcing area within Dynamics AX not only allows you to manage and track all of the purchasing activities within your organization. It is also where you can manage all of your purchasing hierarchies, which allow you to organize all of your purchased products into more manageable groups. You can initiate purchase orders, manage the changes to the purchase orders, and even raise requisitions that can then work through approval workflows before you convert them into live purchase orders. All of these transactions then feed down into the Accounts Payable module, making the whole procurement cycle seamless.

Setting up the Procurement and Sourcing details are not hard either and this guide is designed to give you step by step instructions to show you how to configure the Purchasing area, and also how some of the basic parts work to get you up and running.

To help you all, I have published book #9 in the Bare Bones Configuration Guide series that lays the foundation for Configuring Procurement and Sourcing Within Dynamics AX 2012. The book covers all of these areas related to Procurement and Sourcing:

• Configuring Procurement and Sourcing Controls
  
• Configuring Procurement Categories
  
• Processing Purchase Orders
  
• Configuring Price Lists & Discounts
  
• Enabling Change Management On Purchase Orders
  

Hopefully this guide has given you a good foundation of knowledge of how the Procurement and Sourcing area of Dynamics AX works, and also some of the key features that are available for you that allow you to configure and manage your Purchase Orders.

We are still just starting you off on your journey through the Procurement and Sourcing module though. There is so much more that you can do including taking advantage of Requisitions, Requests for Quotation, Vendor Portal Management, Vendor Score Carding and even Vendor Onboarding, which we did not have space for in this guide. If you are interested in these topics then look for the second book that we will be releasing which will explain these more advanced features within the Procurement and Sourcing area of Dynamics AX.

If you want to get a printed copy of the book, or if you want an easy way to download a PDF copy then you can now get it from Blind Squirrel Publishing. For a limited time only you will get an additional 10% discount off the standard list price of this title. How generous is that? Just follow this link and it will take you directly to the book details.

If you want more information on this book then you can check it out on the Dynamics AX Companions website by clicking on the book icon below::

I hope this is useful, or at the very least interesting and don’t hesitate to drop me a note if you have any comments or suggestions on other cool things to do with AX.

Everyone is probably familiar with the Document Attachments feature that is built into Dynamics AX, but you may not know that there is a second document management function that allows you to drag and drop files into it and also add additional notes against documents. If you didn’t know this then don’t feel too left out, it is part of the Sales and Marketing module, and is only available on a handful of forms.

Why this is interesting though is because if you want to do some light configuration within Dynamics AX, you can easily add this to other forms and start getting the same drag and drop document management capabilities. You don’t even have to write a single line of code.

The question you need to be asking yourself is why not do this?

Getting Ready

To show you what we are talking about, just open up the Sales Quotations form and switch to the General ribbon bar. If you look in the Related Information group you will see the Documents button.

Before we can use it though there is a little bit of setup. So click on the Sales and Marketing Parameters menu item within the Setup group of the Sales And Marketing area page.

When the Sales and Marketing Parameters form is displayed, switch to the Documents page.

Click on the Document Type for Incoming Email and select the File option.

Do the same for the Document Type for Outgoing Email and Document Type for Other Documents fields.
When you have done that, click on the Close button to exit from the form.

Now you can click on the Documents button within the Quotations form and a new document linking form will be displayed.

To test it out, just grab a file, and frag it over to the Drag Files Here box in the form.

BAM! The document is attached.

How To Do It

To add this capability to other forms, open up AOT and then open up the SalesQuotationListPage form.
Expand out the Design section and then drill into the ActionPanel until you get to the button group containing the smmDocuments button. If you look carefully at it, it actually calls another menu item.

To add this to the Customers form as an example, open up the CustTable form and expand out the ActionPanel and then the General ribbon bar.Right-mouse-click on the ActionPanel and select the New Control menu item and then the ButtonGroup sub item.

When the new Button Group is created, change the Name to btngrpGeneralRelatedDocuments.

Then move the Button Group to the bottom of the list.

Now drag the smmDocuments button from the SalesQuotationListPage form over to the new button group that you just created. Remember to hold down the CTRL key to make sure that you copy, and not move.

After you have done that, click on the Save icon and let the form update.

Now when you return back to the Customers form you will see that there is now a button for the documents.

If you click on it then it will open up the document linking form.

Just drag and drop the files over there to link them with the customer account.

Now you can add notes to the document and update the description.

Conclusion

This is such an easy change to make, you may start doing it everywhere else in the system. What’s more, there are no coding changes required.

If you dig into this feature a little more you will find that there is a class associated with the smmDocuments form that allows you to add additional linking logic as the files are being attached. This allows you to change the default key fields that are used to index the document, which could be useful if you are wanting to do just a little bit of coding.

How cool is that?

About The Author:
Murray Fife is a Microsoft Dynamics AX MVP, Author of over 20 books on Microsoft Dynamics AX, and Solution Architect at I.B.I.S. Inc. with over 20 years of experience in the software industry. Like most people in his industry he has worked in many different roles during his career, including as a developer, an implementation consultant, and a trainer which gives him a great understanding of the requirements for both customers and partners. He is a regular contributor to the Dynamics AX community and in addition to hosting presentations for I.B.I.S. presents regularly for the AXUG and MS Dynamics World, has spoken at Microsoft Convergence and AXUG Summit conferences. If that was not enough, he works closely with Microsoft evaluating with their beta products and also is a Council Member on the Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance trying to help educate the new generation of consultants on Dynamics AX.