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Dynamics AX

Dynamics AX 2012 now has a retail module that includes store management, and also the ability to set up Retail Point of Sales (POS) terminals to take orders, manage store inventory and also track customers. It may seem a little bit daunting to set up, but it’s really not that hard.

In this blueprint we will go through all of the steps that are required for you to set up your first retail store and then configure the POS register so that you can take orders through the touch screens.

The topics that are described within this series are:

The retail module is pretty darn cool, and being able to configure and deploy a Point Of Sales system that is completely integrated with your base system, without having to purchase any more software is a great benefit.  You could easily deploy registers out to PC’s and tablets without much additional work.

There is still a lot more that you can do though that we did not touch on yet within this blueprint.  After you have mastered the basics that we introduced here you may want to try:

  • Creating custom layouts for different screen form factors
  • Change the background image for the POS welcome screens
  • Create variations of the POS for different users

Setting up a store has never been so easy.

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The Task Recorder has always been a useful tool within Dynamics AX, but with the release of Lifecycle Services, it has been upgraded to become even more useful.  Now the Task Recorder includes the ability to group your recordings into separate frameworks for different purposes, and also allows you to create a hierarchy structure that you can use to organize your tasks and recordings.

In addition to being able to export your task recordings out to Word etc. for off-line documentation, it also allows you to package up all of the business process structures and import them into Lifecycle Services to use them for managing your project and also collaborating with customers and partners.  All of the task recordings are converted to process flow charts within Lifecycle Services to that you can adjust the standard business processes to match your requirements, and also all of the task recordings are viewable as live videos making them a centralized documentation tool for all the key business areas during and after the implementation.

In this blueprint we will show how you can set up and configure the business processes within the Task Recorder, create task recordings, and then import the business processes into Lifecycle Services to make them available through via the cloud.

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There are a lot of workflow templates that are delivered with Dynamics AX 2012, but that doesn’t mean that those are the only ones that you can use.  Developing new workflow templates and actions are pretty straight forward and you can easily extend out the system to incorporate other workflow scenarios that have not been added yet.

In this blueprint we will work through one example and show you how you can develop your own workflow process for product approvals that allow you to submit, track and approve the product review process.

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Built into Dynamics AX is a feature for managing the setup of new Vendors which allows users to request for new vendors to be added, for the purchasing group approval process by the way of workflows, and finally automatically create new vendor records.  Additionally, if you are using the Vendor Portal, the on-boarding process will allow you to co-ordinate the setup of the vendor users, and if you want to, you van also have the prospective vendors update and approve their information before they are approved to ensure that their details are correct, and that they want to do business with you as well.  This process is a great way to streamline the vendor setup process and is also a time saver because people are involved through the workflow process and all activities are tracked.

In this blueprint we will show how the vendor on-boarding process is handled through the Vendor Requests function within Dynamics AX.

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The Export to Excel button may not seem like the most impressive feature of Dynamics AX, but don’t be fooled. If you look closely, you will notice that the when the data is exported to Excel, the data is still linked to Dynamics AX through the Excel Add-In, which means that once it is in your workbook, you can refresh it at any time without having to re-export. Also, if you want to add additional fields after the export from AX, then you can do that directly from Excel. This means that you can export data from any screen within Dynamics AX and then create reports and analysis within Excel that you can use over and over again without any additional work.

In this walkthrough we will show how you can use the Export to Excel function within Dynamics AX to create live worksheets in Excel. Read More

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.

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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

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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