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.

I have a confession to make – although you all may know this already – like all struggling authors, my writing and curating the Dynamics AX Companions site is my second job, and the only way that I am able to do this is through the support of I.B.I.S. Inc.

So to return the favor back to them I am asking all of my community of readers that if you like what I am doing through the Dynamics AX Companions site, then show the love by creating a review for my benefactor on Pinpoint. For those of you that are not familiar with Pinpoint, it’s also a forum that allows people to comment on services and solutions that would be akin to online Business to Consumer sites like Yelp or Angie’s List.

If you want to help me out then just sign into to the Pinpoint site (https://pinpoint.microsoft.com), do a search for I.B.I.S. Inc. and then write a quick recommendation.

Apart from helping my benefactor, it will also butter them up and keep me in the good graces with them so that I can spend more time releasing out the remaining Bare Bones Configuration Guides that I have been trying to find time to finish.

Thanks so much.

Thanks for everyone that stopped by to see me at Convergence this year. It was great to see all of you in person and connect with you all in real life. I enjoyed giving you all the free copy of the book that I created for the conference – I don’t think that there were any left after the first few days.

For those of you though that did not manage to make it to Atlanta, Georgia for Convergence ’15 I thought that I would drop you all a note with a link that will let you download a free copy of the book that I was giving away all week – for free.

If you want then you can just use this OneDrive link and you will be able to download the eBook:

http://1drv.ms/1MGMn07

If you want the full PDF version as well, then I am making that available also to all of the Premium Subscribers on the Dynamics AX Companions project website. If you haven’t found the site yet, and would like some more information on it then click here for more details about what we are doing.

When you first start implementing Dynamics AX, it may seem like you have bitten off more than you can chew and it may seem a little overwhelming. Even though you know your business inside and out, you don’t know how this is supposed to translate into the setup and configurations required by Dynamics AX. To make it even worse when you talk to implementation consultants, initially it may seem like they are talking a different language because they know the application, and you can barely pronounce journal. In order to successfully implement Dynamics AX, you need to translate your business knowledge into terms Dynamics terms so that your business partners will be able to then find the best configuration for you to meet your needs.

The best way to learn Dynamics AX is to actually roll up your sleeves and start setting it up yourself, and there are a few options available to you to get there…

• You can get your partner to give you training on-site, which is a great option, except it is rather expensive and every time that you need to train someone then there is an additional cost, and also there is a lot that may be left unsaid by the trainers just because they assume a certain level of knowledge that you may not have yet.
  
• You could try to download the training material that is available on the Microsoft site, but this is very granular and usually focuses on a very particular topic and it also has an expectation that you know a little about Dynamics AX as well, so there is a learning hurdle that you need to get over before you can start using it to training yourself, and also there isn’t a clear path on where to start.
  
• You could buy some of the Overview books that are available on Amazon, but most of these are geared towards developers and tell you the minutia of how to program the system or on how to create a report, but it doesn’t show you how to perform a single transaction.
  
• You could go to Customer Source and try to try to use that to guide you through the setup, but that is even worse for a Dynamics AX novice because although all of the documentation there is technically correct, there are no examples, or screen shots to guide you on your way while you are travelling through the system.
  

All of the options initially look like this:

When what you really need is this:

The Solution

That’s where we come in. The Dynamics AX Companions project was developed to give people a resource that they could use to start building the foundation of knowledge about Dynamics AX starting right at the beginning, and also then build upon that foundation so that you can learn some of the more clever features within the system that you can take advantage of without overwhelming you.

One of the resources that we provide are the Bare Bones Configuration Guides for Dynamics AX which is a set of 19 hands on guides that take you step by step through all of the setup of Dynamics AX along with instructions telling you exactly what you need to do, where you need to do it, and also every step is illustrated with a screen shot so that you don’t have to guess where you should be, or what the screens should look like.

Each guide builds upon the prior guides starting off with the creation of a blank company, all the way through the configuration of all the main modules. When you are done working through all of them you should know 90% of what there is to know about setting up a simple company within Dynamics AX giving you a great jumpstart on learning how everything works.

In The Works

To make this a true training resource we are also reformatting the books as PowerPoint presentations that you can use as a trainer to guide the classes, and when used in conjunction with the Student Guides you have a classroom in a box that you can use yourself for performing your own in-house training.

Getting Access

Through the eBook subscription on the Dynamics AX Companions site you get access to all of Bare Bone Configuration Guides, plus all of the additional premium content that is delivered on the site through the Tips and Tricks for Dynamics AX, and also the Introduction and Configuration Blueprint Guides that fill additional training gaps that you might find useful after you have gained a level footing with Dynamics AX.

The Enterprise eBook Subscription allows you to give your entire staff access to these resources through one single subscription, which you can purchase in increments of 10 users and works out to be a 50% discount on the licenses.

Need More Information?

Web:         www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com
Email:         info@dynamicsaxcompanions.com
Twitter:    @daxcompanions

I just wanted to drop you all a quick note to remind you that the AXUG Academy Class that I am teaching on Accounts Receivable Configuration within Dynamics AX 2012 is coming up in two weeks. This is the third in the series, and continues on from the General Ledger, and Cash and Bank Management classes that we have held over the past months.   Even if you are one of the enlightened ones that have already started taking these classes, you can easily start with this class. Here is the link to the AXUG Academy website with more information.

Academy – AX Configuration Series – Accounts Receivable Setup

Friday, March 6, 2015 (12:45 PM) to Friday, March 6, 2015 (5:00 PM) (Eastern Time) 

I have been rebuilding the training material for this class and all of the students will get a new and improved version of the Configuring Accounts Receivable within Dynamics AX 2012 Bare Bones Configuration Guide Training Workbook which has been expanded (both page count wise and also physically) to make it easier to follow during the training. This book is not even available on Amazon yet (https://www.createspace.com/5327894)

All of the exercises have been reformatted to give you a quick reference guide, a thumbnail cheat sheet and also a detailed step by step guide with screen shots. Also we have improved the quality of the images so there is no more pixilation of the screen shots which makes is even betterer (I know this is not a real word).

Here is a quick summary of the class and also the areas that we will be going through:

Summary: The Accounts Receivable area is one of the three foundation financial modules within Dynamics AX that you will want to set up. It not only allows you to manage all of your customer information, post your invoices, and receive in your cash payments, but also allows you to manage your collections, track deductions, and much more.   It’s not hard to configure either and this class is designed to give you step by step instructions to show you how to configure the receivables area, and also how some of the basic transactions work to get you up and running and working with your customers. The individual topics that we will be working through over the four hour class are:

• Configuring Accounts Receivable Controls
  Overview: Before we start adding customers and creating invoices within the Accounts Receivable module of Dynamics AX, there are a couple of codes and controls that need to be configured so that everything else later on in the book will run smoothly. In this section we will walk through everything that you need to set up to get the basic Accounts Receivable features working.
• Configuring Customer Accounts
  Overview: Once you have all the base configuration done within the Accounts Receivable area, you can start getting to the meat and potatoes of the module, which is the configuration of the Customer Accounts. This may seem like a daunting task if you have a large customer base, but if you use the import tools, and features like the Excel Add-In for tidying up your data, then this isn’t very hard, and regardless of if you have 100, or 10,000 customers can be a breeze to load.
• Configuring Invoicing
  Overview: Now that we have the customers configured we can start getting down to business and doing some invoicing. There are a number of different invoicing options within Dynamics AX and in this section we will walk through the main ones.
• Configuring Collection Management
  Overview: Once you have your invoicing configured you will probably want to set up the Collections Management portion of the Accounts Receivable area. This will allow you to track your customer aging’s, pools for segregating customers, collection letters and much more.
• Configuring Cash Receipts
  Overview: Hopefully you won’t have to use the Collections Workbench very much and your customers will just pay their invoices on time, or before they are due. So the next area that we are going to look at is the Cash Receipts functions within Dynamics AX and show you how to record customer payments.
• Configuring Deduction Management
  Overview: Unfortunately customers don’t always pay the amount that you ask them to, and tracking the discrepancies can be a chore in itself, because you may have given an incentive to the customer that they are taking as a valid deduction, the customer may be penalizing you for one reason or another, or they may just be wrong. You don’t want to have the invoices sitting out there waiting to be investigated and cluttering up the aging’s though, which is where the Deduction Management feature comes into play. This allows you to record deductions as you are receiving cash and close out the invoices. Then the deductions are set them aside for someone to investigate them and decide if they are valid or not.

Along the way we will also show you a couple of neat things that you can do including

• Using the DIEF to import in all of your existing customers in bulk
• Using Excel to massage your data
• Maybe even how to write a little bit of X++ code to perform mass data updates

Here is the link for more information: http://www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/Bare-Bones-Configuration-Guides/Configuring-Accounts-Receivable 

Last two classes on Configuring The General Ledger and Configuring Cash and Bank Management class were a great success and I hope to see some of you at this next class on the 6^th. There is limited seating so reserve your place soon J

I absolutely love Power BI, and a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft snuck out a preview product which takes all of the good parts of the PowerBI that we like in Excel (which is pretty much everything – PowerQuery, PowerPivot, PowerView etc.) and packaged it up into a nice little standalone product that they call the Power BI Designer. And you can download it for free directly from your PowerBI portal within Office 365.

You can also post everything that you create within the Power BI Designer to the new and improved Power BI sites within Office 365, and from there you can use Power Q&A to search through your data and then create summary dashboards that combine information from multiple sources.

So when the AXUG asked me to host a webinar for them next Monday I couldn’t think of a better topic – especially since the new Power BI Designer allows you to create your own dashboards and analytics practically for free.

If you are free between 2pm & 3pm EST next Monday (Jan 26^th) then you may want to register, grab a cup of coffee and drop on by – here is the link: http://www.axug.com/Widgets/Generic?cobaltsrc=https://dciportal.cobaltsaas.com/Meetings/Registration/MeetingDetails.aspx?mid=23dcc690-348b-478c-b120-7a3b089be46e#tab0

Here is a sneak peek into what I will be showing you how to create directly from the Dynamics AX data

PS. If you are not an AXUG member, and still want to see the presentation then use the 30 day trial to register and sneak on in.

PPS. Even if you don’t have Dynamics AX, then drop on by – this product is great and you can use it to report off anything you like.

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.

I can’t make it to the Microsoft Dynamics Technical Conference in Seattle, WA this year from February 2^nd to the 4th but you can still make it. This is a great conference to catch up with all of your Dynamics AX and CRM colleagues and get inspired to you take your business further.

Microsoft will be showcasing the newly released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 at the conference, so what a great way to learn the new features added with this cumulative update. This year there will be nearly 100 sessions, including the latest developments in Lifecycle Services, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 on Azure, warehousing and transportation functionality, and omni-channel capabilities for Retail.

Also you can check out the
Deep Dive Workshops
to maximize your learning.

Here is a link to the registration form if you haven’t already signed up – register today!

Maybe next year there will be a couple of sessions that I host J

I just published out the draft copy of the Configuring The General Ledger Within Dynamics AX 2012 (Volume #3 of the Bare Bones Configuration Guides series) on the Dynamics AX Companions website.

If you want to take a peek at what I am working on then here is the link: http://www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/Bare-Bones-Configuration-Guides/Configuring-The-General-Ledger-Within-Dynamics-AX-2012