In the new AX the tool we use for work, development, test and build is Visual Studio Online(VSO). Now a mobile access to VSO is available in the Visual Studio Markedplace. It enables you to browse, monitor and engage in projects via your phone, It’s still in preview, but it looks very interesting.

Take a look at it here; https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sprints-for-vsts.sprints-for-visualstudio

For part II of the learning involves taking a look at a video from the Technical Briefing.

Microsoft Dynamics AX Integration: A Customer Perspective:

https://mbspartner.microsoft.com/AX/Videos/961

Happy DAX’ing

We have learned that today the RTW is officially released, but this is mainly for the “tier-1” countries. I’m a bit jealous on Denmark and Iceland that are in the first support release wave, and that Norway have to wait until H2 2016 to get country specific support. But when I dig into the AX RTW I will find much of the country specific elements already in place. They have been included in the transfer from AX 2012.

Only one small Issue. Microsoft have hardcoded that the unsupported features cannot be used. I guess (and hope) that it is for a reason. If you try to create an unsupported company for Finland, you get;

Many of the localized fields needed to run Finland is then hidden or disabled.

But there is a way to “Hack” this. Comment out your country from SysCountryRegionCode.onCountryRegionSupportedCheck():

Then compile and deploy. Then the fields related to Finland etc will open up.

I know I’m are moving into uncharted terrain, and this is disabled for a reason. But we start already now to promote and sell AX 7, and then we expect Microsoft to stick to the release schedule, and make the Dynamics AX ready for all countries as planned. We also have several customers that don’t need the localized company specific functionality, and they don’t want to be constantly reminded J.

Disclaimer; If you do this for a production environment you are on your own!

Hacking Dax’ing

Learn the word; ODATA. We will hear a lot of ODATA in the future, because it will change the way we integrate and how we exchange information between AX and other systems. A good starting point is the AX help wiki, that Kuntal Mehta created. I have decided to explore what the ODATA can do, and wanted to write a bit about my journey. Instead of trying to explain all technical details of data entities and how the architecture is, then let us rather just test something J

What you need to test what I’m doing is

1. An AX RTW environment deployed from LCS
2. Internet explorer
3. Good old notepad

Step1: What services is available?

To get all entities available to you use your Site address, and add “/data” at the end.

Then save the file you receive, and open it in notepad. (I have associated *.json with notepad). The file you get looks like this:

Each line here represents a data entity service we can use. The format of this is the JSON format, but that is not important now.

Step2: Show me the customers

In the file you may find that there is an entity/schema named “Customers“. I can therefore just add the “/data/Customers” to my URL

And then I get a JSON file of all the customers;

But this is a bit “cloudy” and I can further filer down what I want. Let’s say I just want to see all customer names. I can then add “/data/Customers/?$select=Name” to my URL

Now it returns a JSON file with only the Name.

If I wanted to add one more column, like the Payment terms, the syntax would look like “/data/Customers/?$select=Name,PaymentTerms“, but this would not work because the comma cannot be used on a URL. I therefore need to replace the comma with %2C, that is the URL representation of comma. For multiple columns I therefore add “/data/Customers/?$select=Name%2CPaymentTerms”

You see some strange “@data.etag”, and here is an explanation. It is for caching.

Step3: Can I read this in Excel?

Yes. Excel can import OData, and format it like we would.

Then fill in the /data URL, select schema, and then select fields.

And then you may read directly into Excel all entities made available in AX RTW, even without the AX connector.

Step5: Show me all !

Sure. Try to add the “/data/$metadata“, and AX return All schemas, fields and relations. It take a long time, but nice to explore.

Step6: Can we use DIXF to import directly from OData feeds ?

This is what I would love to see. But I have not found it yet.

Happy DAX’ing 😉

When downloading the AX RTW local VM from connect, you often want to disable some configuration keys. (Like catch weight etc). But now you will see the following warning;

“This form is read-only unless the system is in the maintenance mode. Maintenance mode can be enabled in this environment by running maintenance job from LCS, or using Deployment.Setup tool locally”

This warning is to prevent that configurations are enables/disabled, and that the system is set in maintenance mode. There are 2 ways of dealing with this.

1. The proper way; Use the Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Deployment.Setup.exe command; (Credits to Joris de Gruter)
   Run this from command line:

   \bin\Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Deployment.Setup.exe –metadatadir –bindir –sqlserver . –sqldatabase axdbrain –sqluser –sqlpwd –setupmode maintenancemode –isinmaintenancemode true

    

    

    

   Here is an actual example J:\AosService\WebRoot\bin\Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Deployment.Setup.exe –metadatadir J:\AosService\PackagesLocalDirectory\ –bindir J:\AosService\WebRoot\bin –sqlserver . –sqldatabase AxDB –sqluser axdbadmin –sqlpwd ******* –setupmode maintenancemode –isinmaintenancemode true
   

   and then run the command with “false” at the end to turn if back off.

2. The Hack way; Use the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, and edit the following record in the table dbo.SQLSystemvariables ; CONFIGURATIONMODE
   

After that, you can change configurations. But make sure you never
EVER do this in a production environment!

Hacking DAX’ing J

In Dynamics AX, we have been blessed that we can have most of the data in one system, and in one single database. But I sense a shift, where systems are breaking up into more loosely best-of-breed components. We see the introduction of Omi-channels, SaaS, RESTful Web services and ODATA as accelerators into this area.

The generic topic of Master data management(MDM) is much less about technology and much more about understanding how business processes are supposed to work. The principle of MDM is applied whenever two or more business processes must view or share (master) data. This means that all companies have a need for the discipline of MDM, meaning that it must be driven by the business, a business case, and supported/enabled by IT. This includes governance and data quality, and MDM cannot be established without them.

In my profession, when working with our internal EG-Retail model we are covering the Master Data Management processes from life-cycle data management to data distribution to POS-systems. As you see, there are not much directly related to the functionality of Dynamics AX, but more against how to create work processes that maintains and secures a company’s master data.

Master data lifecycle

The most common area where life-cycle processes are used are on products. Products are introduced, created, maintained, discontinued and finally archived or deleted. A lifecycle also involved different roles and departments, and the responsibility and master data ownership is changed through the lifecycle. It could be visualized like this, where effort in the processes is shown.

In terms of responsibility I also see the benefit of separating the roles of Master Data owner and requester, and introducing clear formal processes.

Create master data

Master data are the critical nouns of a business and falls into four groupings: people, things, places, and concepts. Further categorizations within those groupings are called subject areas, domain areas, or entity types. For example, within people, there are customer, employee, and salesperson. Within things, there are product, part, store, and asset. Within concepts, there are things like contract, warrantee, and licenses. Finally, within places, there are office
locations and geographic divisions.

The process of identifying additional Master Data elements should be a formalized process and an ownership process must be in place.

Creating master data is the process of collecting the accurate and persistent data related to each master data element. It is not only important to just enter the data, but also to identify
the source of the master data. In a data maintenance scenario, the process and master data owner may return to the source to collect more details. When creating master data, the completeness must be defined. Define what Master Data elements are mandatory and optional. What related master data must be in place to correctly create the master data.

As described above, all Master Data will have a life cycle. When creating, often only a minimum set of mandatory data elements are required. The life cycle and status should reflect the completeness of the master data.

Master data may originate from many different resources, roles and process participants. Timing is also relevant, because different data elements may only be needed on a later stage. An example is that certain set of data elements is needed when purchasing a product. When selling the product another set of data needs to be in place before this process can start.

A more formal process of handling Master Data will ensure that the quality and relations are taken into consideration. The following process should include both a requester and the master data owner, so ensure the formality.

When the master data is complete enough to be used for selected processes, the master data must be released and available in the systems where it is used. Examples are the procurement process where only a small subset of information is needed to initiate the purchasing process. But in order to receive the product at the warehouse, the product must be released to the warehouse management system. This require additional information and timing. In integrations, the release process of master data must be controlled and tracked. Before release of master data, the required completeness and data quality must be decided and confirmed.

Maintain master data

As requirements is expanding and changing, the master data will also have the need to change. Maintaining completeness and quality of master data becomes a central part in the life cycle Master Data management. Typically new markets and countries will request the need for new prices, VAT/Tax compliance and translations. Establishing maintenance processes will not only be essential for growth and expansions, but also to support day-to-day processes. The key principle is to centralize master data update around specific roles and processes. The generic maintenance process is reflecting this.

Discontinuation of master data

Deleting Master Data is generally not recommended. The reason is that the master data often have been used and related to transactions, and often in other systems like WMS, eCommerce etc. A better approach is the discontinuation process. If master data still should be deleted, it is important to analyze the consequences, and to initiate clean-up processes.

The discontinuation phase begins when the maintenance phase ends. Master data discontinuation is often a planned process, where the date of the discontinuation is set in advance. The discontinuation can also be related to specific processes, like a product is discontinued for procurement, but not for sale.

It is recommended must implement a structured life cycle process on master data, to control the situations where a master data record is discontinued or replaced with a new master data record. In this future process, we expect that the participants are the Master Data Owners and the MDM Administrator. The main purpose of the process is to support the actual discontinuation or depletion of Master Data Records in the AX system.

The input to the process is an online request or need for discontinuation or depletion of a Master Data Record. The output of the process is an updated Master Data Record in AX with the specified data from the request.

The process diagram below outlines an example of the future process for the discontinuation or depletion of existing Master Data Records in AX. In this process, we distinguish between discontinuation and depletion. In relation to products, the discontinuation only applies for specific SKU’s whereas depletion applies for all. (Like flushing out master data from an integrated system)

If it is expected that the growth of the data will accelerate as more partners and stores is connected to the installation, then archiving and purging will be important to keep an optimized performance of the Microsoft Dynamics AX installation. Before a master data record can be archived and deleted, other data (such as purchasing documents) that refer to the master data must themselves be archived. Both the purge and archive operations depend on a carefully determined hierarchical relationship of related tables based on both master data, settings and transactions. The archiving and purging process is too complex to be manually handled, because of the many relationships that exists to master data. It is therefore recommended to look into tools like the Microsoft Dynamics AX Intelligent Data Management Framework (IDMF) that can be used for this purpose.

IDMF have the following process.

Taking easy on master data processes can result and complete failure of your system and processes. When implementing Dynamics AX, make sure that enough time is invested to create a clear strategy, and good processes.

Happy DAX’ing J

When working with new clients, I just love to show Life Cycle Services, and all the new tools and gadgets now available to us. Prices on licenses and Azure services are beginning to come into light, but there is one “unknown” factor. How much would it cost to in time to setup and implement all the tools and services?

I will not
give you the estimates, but I can give you the sequenced task list of what to do

..Ok… the number is 42… but what was the question ?

The new Dynamics AX have some very powerful capabilities to show exactly where time is spent. You would like to explore more about what is happening behind the scene, try adding the “&debug=develop” to the URL. This will bring up a small timer that shows how much time was spent on opening and showing the current form.

If you click on it, it will give more performance details. Like if I open the all customers in the Contoso form, my system gives me the following.

I see here that the loading the customers took 366 ms, where 131 ms was from the AOS loading the data. You also see a color coding (green/blue) that indicates at what sequence the time was spent.

There is also a section to show what the server is doing, and it also shows you the exact SQL call that was the longest running SQL statement.

At the bottom of the performance screen we can also see something interesting;

And when I click on this Session ID, I get;

I have no clue what that is J, but could this be a tool for external monitoring ?

When opening the new Dynamics AX client, you see that we have a nice set of navigation menus and options in the top of the screen.

But if you would like to limit the navigation options for the user, try to add the “&limitednav=true” to the URL.

As you see, the menu-bar is then changed, and the user cannot see the menu buttons, search and settings any more. We have a limited navigation.

Let’s further extend this ability by also adding the “&mi=action:WHSWorkExecute“. For those that have not heard what WHSWorkExecute is, it is the form used for simulating a Warehouse Mobile Device. The form existed in AX 2012, and it also exists in AX 7.

In the AX ‘7’ preview demo environment try the URL:
https://usnconeboxax1aos.cloud.onebox.dynamics.com/?cmp=usmf&mi=action:WHSWorkExecute&limitednav=true

You then have a quite nice RF device without the navigation options. Simple can often be the best J

Happy DAX’ing

This is a guide I have been looking forward to publish, but due to the NDA restrictions I needed to wait until the new Dynamics AX was made public preview, and today it is J This blogpost is not about AX licenses prices, or implementation costs, and if you were looking for that, you have to google again. It’s about what product sales price and discount options that exists MSDAX – “out-of-the-box”, and it’s not about product sales price tactics and strategies, but how to apply them into AX and most of the presented information here can also apply to earlier releases of Dynamics AX.

Summary

Pricing and discounts is a science, and the number of variations and combinations is amazing. When I talk to my customers I like to show the following overview of the most common used pricing strategies available in AX. Here I have tried to put “retail names”, and exemplify what they mean.

The Microsoft documentation on TechNet visualizes quite clearly the relationship between prices, discounts, channels and programs with the following many-to-many relationship diagram;

It basically means that you can combine and mix pricing elements to achieve the strategy you are aiming for. The combination of these gives us the functionality we are looking for, but we have also realized that not all combinations are practical or possible. Remember that much of the pricing possibilities became available with the introduction of Retail, Call- center and in some cases the lean-modules. Some pricing options will therefore not work in combination with each other, and also not across the Omni-channel.

Product prices and RRP (Recommended Retail price)

RRP, or Recommended Retail Price is a very common and known concept. It is very often used on, when the sales channels are more complex, and includes producers, distributors, partners and resellers. Often the ownership structure of the sales channel is fragmented and differentiated. The recommended retail price is therefore often specified based on geography, currency and channel. The RRP if very often just the baseline on which prices are built on, and as the name suggests, just a recommended price. In Dynamics AX either the standard (single currency) sales price on the released product or having a “All/Group” sales trade agreement (multiple currencies, dates, quantity) is sufficient to make this work. One restriction to make this work within AX, is that the product must be released, in order to do this. If a more “Global recommended retail price” is wanted, I suggest reading my blogpost on this subject, where prices are made global, and distributed to all legal entities.

Price/discount matrix’s (Trade agreements)

The price discount matrix has been available for AX users since the beginning, and handles most requirements in a B2B scenario. The setup is quite easy, and involves setting price or discounts on groups, or in relation to specific entities like product or customer accounts.

In the following example we have different sales price on a single item, but it differences per customer price/discount group.

In AX ‘7’, you will just create a trade agreement journal, and create the necessary lines to reflect the different prices.

Discount matrix

Maintaining sales prices on the item-level per customer group, or per specific customer can quickly be a maintenance nightmare. The different combinations quickly end up with so many price points, that oversight is lost. A customer of me had 4000 products, 6 currencies and 12 different account selection options. This would mean that they would maintain 288.000 price points. That was impossible! The option was to use discounts instead, and just maintain recommended retail prices per currency. This resulted in 24.012 price points to maintain. With the use of smart rounding, and generic currency we reduced the number further down to 4012 price points. A discount matrix would look like this, where the combination per item price group and customer price group resulted in a discount.

In AX ‘7’, you will just create a trade agreement journal, just like for prices, and create the necessary lines to reflect the different discounts.

If you want to test a sales price, with all the different combinations, you can use the “Find prices” feature. Here I have a specific customer belonging to the price group “Retailer”, The item belongs to “Apparel”, and the combination of this gives me a net amount of “127,5”.

Generic currency and smart rounding

As seen in the example above, I have specified prices for different account selections, but only in USD. If multiple currencies are used, and you don’t always want to maintain currency based pricelists, then the generic currency option is a nice feature. The first step is to specify what is the generic currency, and what exchange rates that should be used. Also if smart rounding should be applied after currency conversion. In the setup of smart rounding you also need to set up member currencies that belongs to the smart rounding.

Enabling this, will open the “include generic currency” option on the trade agreements, and when creating sales orders in a different currency, the sales order. Here we have a sales order, converted from USD to €, and then the automatic smart rounding is applied.

Trade agreements and Retail/Call center in combination

As shown here we, the trade agreement matrix can solve quite a few price requirements, but in a retail scenario it would not solve the all requirements we see. We are missing elements like retail channel, categories and more advanced features. Going deeper into retail functionality shows that there are many additional possibilities that opens up. I have met quite a few companies, that have advanced price and discount requirements, but they have never thought about enabling the retail module. Many thinks the retail is for POS, but the retail module is for Omni-channel. This means that we can also use this in traditional sales orders (The “call center module” enabled retail functionality to be used in traditional sales.)

But there are some elements in AX, that you should be aware. I often see good old AX consultants getting confused when they start looking at retail discounts. Let’s say we have the following scenario; We have item 0001 with a recommended price of 150 USD.

And then we have a 15% discount on the customer;

You would then expect that when using the retail module, it will just use these values. But it don’t ! It actually calculates the discount amount, and not the percentage. Keep this in mind, because it will confuse you later.

When using the retail discounts, they will work together with the traditional trade agreements, but not exactly as you would expect. To better understand the actual code executing, then take a look at the class\RetailOrderCalculator.saveSalesOrder(). The CRT (Commerce Run Time) engine returns quantity, price and total discount amount. Based on this, the unit discount amount is calculated. I’ll also show the actual source code on this, because when we are talking about discounts, we are most likely going to think in percentages, and the same are customers and users.

And one more thing. The CRT will not apply both the trade agreement discounts and the retail discount. It will select the best of them.

The use of Retail Discounts in Sales orders

Let’s take some scenarios, that is common in the retail industry, and I’ll try to link them to what you find in the standard Contoso demo dataset. In AX ‘7’, the retail module mainly has 4 discount types of discounts, and a price adjustment;

1. Just an ordinary discount product
   

Let’s say you just want to have a discount on a single item.

First step is to use the retail discount rule.

Periodic discounts on categories

“50 % off on accessories this week” can be a strong trigger to make the customer open the wallet.

To create such discounts, we can use the same screen.

PS! The Retail discounts have a “discount code” field, but I have never managed to use it in the call-center sale order screen. But in POS, it works J

Happy hour J

Happy hours are an efficient way of attracting and breaking customer’s shopping routine. It’s also fun, and can give retailers a lot of attention. This feature is excellent also for Black Fridays.

The validation period has an advanced setting, that opens up the field “Discount period number”, and select a discount period. I have here created a happy hour between 12 AM and 1 AM for early birds.

We can further specify the valid periods here, so that more period based discounts can be given. Just remember that the valid period is current time +/- the offset time defined on the retail channel. In the AX ‘7’ CTP 7 version, the call-center channel details screen is not showing the time zone, like it does for retail stores, and this could have some implications on using “Happy hour” in an installation that works across time zones. A small service request to Microsoft have been created, and I’m sure they will fix this J

Coupon discounts (Call center)

Coupon discounts seems to be very popular in US, and we also see an increasing use of this in Europa. Especially in relation to mobile coupons.

In Dynamics AX 2012 there are two ways of working with Coupons. One solution for POS, and one solution for Call-Center. And these two don’t work in common. It is a bit sad, because it means we have a GAP in the Omni-Channel offering. But with enough push on Microsoft, I’m certain it will merge in future versions.

Call-Center Coupons, can be defined to be an amount or a percentage, and may have valid period. The coupon can be a unique, and a one-time use, and

It can have item rules attached, that specifies what products the coupon can be used with or excluded from.

So solve Coupons for Retail/POS, you can see that all discounts have the option to apply a “Discount code”. I have not found a way to make this discount code to behave as a unique and on-time code. Even though AX-Sales orders not can use CRT as the price engine, there are no places, where the discount code can be applied to a sales order. It therefore only works on POS/eCommerce scenario’s It is a bit sad, because it means we have a GAP in the Omni-Channel offering.

Dynamics AX for retail have a GAP in relation to coupons to solve “One-Time” coupons, and in future versions I hope to see more features, like Store coupons, Manufacturer coupons, Mobile/Cell codes and promotion codes.

Trade discounts

Trade discounts is a most common way of creating discounts. 3 very common discounts are

• Employee discounts
  
  This can be solved by using affiliations in Dynamics AX, and works for both POS and AX sales orders In order to leverage the Affiliation functionality at retail POS, the following must be setup:
  Price group(Retail)
  

  Affiliations, and link the Affiliation to the Employee price group.
  
  Discounts, and link to the price group “employee
  
  Each employee must be a customer, that is linked to the Affiliation, and you mark the customer with the relevant affiliation. When this customer in POS or in AX creates a sales order, the discount will apply.
  

  Affiliations can also be used for senior, military or any other groups.

  

• Discount category
  
  With discount category I mean that we can have a discount on an entire category of product. Let’s say “Digital SLR camera” sale, as is exemplified in the Contoso demo data. We then don’t have to assign a discount to a specific product, but just refer to the retail category. When adding products from the category the discounts will automatically apply (after running some periodic jobs, and distributing the prices to the channels.)
  
• Loyalty discounts
  
  To use the loyalty features, then a lot needs to be setup. But in relation to prices, it just means that you need to assign a price group to the discount. If we take the example of the “SLR” discount, we can associate it with a price group called “LP-FabGold”, meaning that all loyalty customers in the “Gold” tier will get the discount.
  
  

Mix and Match discounts

• Mix/Match
  
  A mix and match discount gives customers a discount when they purchase a specific combination of products. In the Contoso demo data, take a look at the “30% off 3” discount. Here a 30% discount is given, if you select 3 of the specified products. Here we use the “Mix and Match discount” form.
  
• BOGO
  
  A BOGO price is basically “get 2 for the price of one”. We also use the “Mix and Match discount” form for this, but we use the “Least expensive” price option, and give a discount of 100%, and specify that 2 units are required for the price to “kick-in”. In this case, the lucky customer gets 2 camera’s for the price of one J
  

  Other options also exists, like a 50% discount when selecting 2 of an item, or use line Spec and Product category feature in Mix and Match discount

• Buy 3 pay for 2 promo
  This can be solved just like BOGO, but where the number of products are increased to 3.
• Free item A if item B
  For this, we can take a look at the “Water Bottle Promo” in the Contoso demo data. We use the Mix and match discount, but use the “line spec” discount type. Then we create a “Mix and match line group, to specify that we need to have at least one item in the selected category/product, for the price to be active.
  

Quantity discounts

A quantity discount is a discount that is given to customers when they purchase a particular quantity of a product. For example, you can set up a 5 percent discount for the purchase of two products of a particular category or brand.

• Buy 2 items get 5%, Buy 3 items get 10%, Buy 10 items get 40 %
  

Threshold discounts

A threshold discount is a discount that is given to customers when the total for a transaction reaches one or more specified amounts. For example, you can create a discount that gives a 5 percent discount for purchases over 100.00 or you can specify a fixed discount amount.

– Buy for 100 $ get 5%, Buy for 200 $ get 10%, Buy for 900 $ get 40%

Price adjustments per channel

• Online gives 5% discount, In Store gives 2% discount
  Channel based discounts are solved by assigning channel specific price groups to a channel, and then assign the different price adjustments to each price group.
  

Loyalty cards

The loyalty module in Dynamics AX is a large module with a lot to offer.

But there are some small GAPS you should be aware of, and that is to use loyalty points for payment in the call-center sales order. It could be I’m wrong, but I have not been able to efficiently use the Dynamics AX sales order screen efficiently with the loyalty module. A good blog for loyalty is available here.

Smart Rounding

Smart rounding is a feature that have no direct effect on retail pricing.

But it can adjust trade agreements, that indirectly works with retail. Also remember that it is not “automatic smart rounding”, and the smart rounding is applied to a price discount journal. A good blogpost on smart rounding is this one.

Recurrence and discounts

The ability of creating recurring sales is not directly related to Retail/POS. In AX there is a feature called continuity programs where delivery schedules can be setup.

I don’t think this modules works very nicely with POS and eCommerce, and is mainly a tool for call-centers and selling recurring items. More information is available on TechNet.

B2B Discount agreement

Price agreements is not working with retail-POS, and is not very good supported through the CRT. It is mainly used for B2B orders, and features exists both for sales and for purchase.

• Yearly agreement to buy 1200 pcs, and get them for 450 $ per pcs.
  In this example I have an agreement to buy 1200 units, and I get the price of 460, until 12/1/2016. In this case, it is a product quantity commitment.
  

  

  Other types of commitment also exists like

  

  This makes it possible to create several different types and combinations. It features also contains Ok formletter that is confirming the agreements. Take a look at the following blog for additional information.

If you are installing a ISV solution into a Contoso environment, and you suddenly see that you cannot synchronize, and you cannot see why:

Here is a tip that works for me;

Disable the track changes in the specified tables;

Then the synchronization is able to perform. After synchronization you can enable it again.

If you want to switch on/off in SQL, then this is the script for Switching off;

To switch them on again;

Happy Daxing !

Dynamics AX 2012 R3 have truly evolved into an enterprise solution, and the functional width solves most requirements that any customer “really need”. But there is always the 80% / 20% rule that applies and there are requirements that is not solved by the standard Dynamics AX. We often see extended domain specific requirements in relation to finance, sales, procurement, logistics and production. To solve this, customers have the option to create customizations or to try to find VAR/ISV solutions that solves this. (VAR= Value Added Reseller. ISV =Independent software vendor) Creating your own large customizations can result in high risks, and the option to buy a “ready to use” ISV solution then becomes interesting.

What I wanted to give to the Dynamics Community is my list of how I evaluate ISV-solutions as a VAR. I basically just use a word document with a set of chapters, and the topics to evaluate here is from a consulting perspective. The idea is to have a formalized way of making evaluations, and also use the ISV/representatives to fill in the information for you.

1. Executive summary
{Yup. There is always someone to report to. }

2. Product Introduction
{Then I write a brief introduction to the product, describing the overall area that it solves.}

3. Background for evaluation
{Here I write why this product was evaluated in the first place.}

4. Vendor/Distributor information – general
{Then I record some general information about the company that offers the solution. Just to be sure that the company behind the solution will exists in the future. The following table can be used}

5. Vendor/Distributor information – product
{The ISV-“mothership” may be large, but it is interesting also to check out the team that is organized around the product. I therefore have a secondary evaluation around the team developing and maintaining the ISV solution}

6. Pricing
{Describing product pricing, enhancement and also flexibility. Also include a case study with implementation. }

7. Marked/Cost savings potential
{ Describing the current marked potential, also reflect according to existing customer base. I also use a calculation sheet to show investment, potential, margins, number of sales each year, training costs, start up issues etc}

8. Known Competitors
{Describing any known competitors to the ISV solution and what the main advances this product have.}

9. Versions and language
{Describing supported versions and language of Dynamics AX. I also want to record how support is handled as new versions and upgrades go along}

10. Access to software
{Describing how the product is accessible from the ISV and how it is distributed}

11. Technical Installation guide

{Describing the quality of the installation guide, and I also try the installation to check how easy it is}

12. Application setup guide
{Describe the quality of the application guide, and I also try the application to check that it actually work}

13. Scenario testing
{In this chapter, we will test the different functional aspects of the product. The processes that is tested is the most common scenarios that we expect and have experienced in the field. Normally divided into a section per feature.}

14. Solution footprint
{The solution footprint is very important to evaluate, because this tells us how costly upgrades and applying hotfixes will be. We want to see high footprint on SYS elements for Dynamics AX. A way to easily evaluate this, is to count the number of SYS overlaying’s that exists and how many new elements that have been introduced. I therefore use a table like this}

{If there is a high number of SYS objects customized, I know that cumulative updates from Microsoft will be more costly.}

15. Best practice deviations
{To evaluate the coding quality, then evaluating all best practice deviations that can be found. Dynamics AX have building tools for this, and if there is a high amount is BP errors and warnings, it means that the code quality it not where it should be. }

Also get any documentation if the product have a CfMD certification (Certified for Microsoft Dynamics)

16. Support and training
{Describe how the product is supported from the vendor. There will always be questions and issues, so we need to know how this is handled. Often ISV solutions are purchased from VAR’s, and then it is good to know how this financially is handled. Also if there are any training included in the offering.}

17. Internal requirements
{Describe needed competence and needed training needed internally to implement, deliver and use this ISV-solution. }

18. Road map
{Show what plans there are for the product, what their priorities, what are their policies around upgrades, etc}

19. Marketing
{If you are a VAR, that want’s to include a ISV solution offering, it is important to understand how the ISV will support you in promoting the solution. Show what marketing material the ISV have and how you can use it. Do they have marketing insight they in the local market. Also find out how the ISV will support and drive market campaigns, participate in events, demos, etc with people and or marketing funds (money)}

ISV solutions play a big role in unlocking all of the possibilities that Dynamics harnesses. When analyzing your Dynamics ERP investment, it’s imperative that you also analyze your ISVs so that you can make the best decision for your business, both in the short and long-term. These topics will lead you toward making better evaluations while looking for an ISV solution. Feel free to use them, and extend them when needed.

The simplest definition of “hub and spoke” is that it is a model for integrating the ERP system used at a company’s headquarters with the systems used by its subsidiaries and branch offices. This blogpost discusses approaches on how to benefit from the fast innovation cycle that Dynamics AX have, without starting a new big-bang ERP implementation project.

Implementing any ERP system is a huge investment. It is not uncommon that thousands of hours is required before you can start to see the benefits. The cost of performing a large scale upgrade simply cannot be justified. It is therefore common to see companies implementing Dynamics AX, and then waits a few years before they take the effort to upgrade to newer releases. In my experience I see that it is most common to jump over a major release.

The innovation cycle that we see with Dynamics AX, new ground breaking technology is being released every year. Much of this new innovation is directly related to new possibilities in having true Omni-channels. The Dynamics AX Retail solution became mature in release AX 2012 R3. But there is a lot of companies still using AX 2009, any they have a well working systems for financials, procurement, supply chain and order management. They don’t want to upgrade, but they are still missing the ability to benefit from becoming a true Omni-channel retailer. The challenge is that the competition will be stronger and more mature.

I have met several customers that are implementing AX 2012/AX7 only for the Omni-channel, while keeping their AX 2009/legacy system taking care of the traditional ERP-processes. This approach focuses on limiting the implementation scope to only cover the Omni-Channel Retail vision. The idea is to only use AX 2012 on the retail channels. This means that retail stores, WEB, retail hierarchies, call-center is features that the AX 2012 (green) is covering. Then an integration between the legacy system (AX 2009) and AX 2012 is done using DIXF, that seamlessly connects the systems.

What I like about the Dynamics AX retail, is that what we currently have in AX 2012 is a very stable and is built for supporting a much faster implementation cycle. This means we can faster take advantage of new technologies. The AX for retail support the N-1 approach. This means that we can upgrade the AX 2012 parts to AX7, without making changes to the POS or the e-commerce systems. We can also in a timely fashion roll-out updated version to new channels, without being concerned of disrupting the existing channels.

I can share a personal experience with this approach. A customer came to us that had Dynamics NAV as their legacy system, and wanted to roll-out Dynamics AX POS to several countries. From the time we did the kick-off, and until the first store was up and running it took only 8 hardworking weeks. We used the Hub-and-Spoke approach, and it shows that it is a quick and achievable way to get return-on-investment fast.

So my advice is; Start your Omni-Channel journey today. Don’t wait until you have upgraded your legacy systems, because you can do that later.

Happy DAX’ing friends, and thanks for reading my blogposts!

In AX we have the following datatypes we can use in table fields.

But in MS SQL server there is a XML data type. With the XML data type we can store XML documents in the SQL Server database. And we can create columns and variables of the xml type and store XML instances in them. we can also create XML-indexes that speeds up searching on the XML contents. As seen here, I have manually added a XML column, and a XML primary index.

The Xml datatype allows us to perform several operations on the xml data from within t-sql. Although this is not very fast, it’s often better than round-tripping and doing the xml parsing in an application like Dynamics AX. Take a look at the following blog-post for a sample SQL- Querying XML attributes from XML Columns.

Why would this be interesting for the Dynamics AX ?

Let’s say we want to have the possibility to dynamically add new fields and information to an item/customer/BOM, but we don’t want to make customizations. One possibility would then be to have a XML field or a related table that contains a XML datatype column. In this column new fields and values could be stored inside the XML. By having some generic code that is extracting the XML values into fields or computed columns, would mean that we could provide a generic way of letting the user interact with dynamic fields, and that the user could add the fields as wanted on the fly without customizations. And still have the search, sort and filter capabilities.

I would like to use it for storing metadata like searchable retail product attributes. Since the XML format is a bit generic additional actions and events could also be stored inside the XML document. This could be functional triggers and workflows to be executed. It could even be specified down to the lowest record level.

So what is the difference from having XML’s in an ordinary text field ? One difference is the ability to use XML indexes, and to have search, filter and sort capabilities on the values stored inside the XML, without parsing the entire XML. More information on this is available here. Then the user could work with dynamic fields as it was real fields.

The first step in exploring this possibility is to have XML columns and XML indexes available in AX.

So my question to Microsoft is “Can we get the XML datatype and the ability to create XML indexes in AX 7.X ?”

At least I think it is an interesting idea for the future.

The Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Data Import/Export Framework(DIXF) is an AX module import and export data in Microsoft Dynamics AX. We often use it in data migration projects to load legacy data from old systems. I was wondering if I could use DIXF as an automated integration, without any customizations. I wanted to see if I could have a folder where new customers are dropped in a folder, and then the DIXF automatically picked up the file, and imported it.

My first step is to have a small and minimalistic Excel sheet, that users can paste in the new customer records. This is how my Excel sheet looks like:

Most of these customers exists from before, but the last record is a new customer that don’t exists in my database.

The recommended process of setting up an import/export process is described here.

The first step is to create a source data format:

I then determine what entity to use, and create a target entity

When I do this, the mapping is done automatically for me, and I don’t have to understand all the database related complexity.

My next step is to create the processing group

I then click on the Entities in the processing group, and I select my created entity and that I want to use my created Excel source data format. I also select a sample file to see if the mapping is OK.

I then just check the mapping from Excel to the staging format, and make the necessary corrections.

My next step is to go back to the processing group, and to make the necessary batch job for automatic processing.

As you see here, I set the “type” to Directory, that DIXF will scan for new files. I also specify directories for processing, completed and error. I have therefore created the following directory structure for each integration:

The other important thing is the “Execute target step”. This this used for also executing the step that transfers data from the staging table to the target tables.

I then want this to be work in batch, so I enable the batch processing.

And then I need to wait for an entire minute……… I then saw that the file was moved from the 1_new folder, and ended up in the ¤_Completed folder.

I also see in the execution history, that the files was imported into the staging tables, and then imported into the target tables.

In my customer overview, I now see that I have a new customer, but is also made sure that other related data as addresses, and phone etc was created.

This concludes how you can use DIXF to automatically import data. What I can now do to import data, is just to create my Excel file, and then dump it into the right folder (.\1_New), and then the batch system take care of the test.

If you wonder all entities that are “out-of-the-box” supported from Microsoft, then take a look here. If still something is missing, you can always ask a developer to assist in creating the DIXF entities you need.

Happy DIXF’ing J

Both ePOS, mPOS and the upcoming AX7 CloudPOS have a built-in feature for showing small reports and KPI’s directly on the POS. These reports are not running against the Dynamics AX database, but against the retail channel database connected to that specific terminal.

The great thing about these reports, is that it does not require any heavy development to define these reports. They are just XML report definitions, that queries the database for specific columns or stored procedures. This means that we easily can create new reports based on the direct reporting requirements. In the report, shown below a report called “Sales by staff” is shown. Here the staff name, number of transactions, sales amount and average sales amount is shown.

The report can also be shown as graphics.

The report definitions are located in the RetailàSetupàChannel report configuration.

We see here the report definition, and it can look a bit cryptic. But let’s format the XML to better understand the definition. We here see that the retail report basically have 3 sections. The dataset, parameters and the reportcharts.

As we can see here, the dataset is referring to a stored procedure, with 3 parameters; Channel, start-date and end-date. If we open the SQL stored procedure we can see the exact implementation of it.

We see here that the actual source tables are an inner join between retailTransactionTable and retailStaffTable. We can also see that the amount is “retailTransactionTable.paymentAmount”. This amount is the amount of what the customer is actually paying inclusive taxes.

But a US-based customer of me asked if it is possible to make some minor changes, and just show the reporting exclusive taxes. To do this, it means that we must do some changes. We cannot use the existing standard stored procedure. We could surely create new stored procedures, but rolling this out to hundreds of terminals would take a lot of time. But we have the option to use an actual query in the report XML definition instead.

The first step is to try to create a SQL that retrieves the sales amount minus taxes. As far as I have interpreted the table retailTransactionTable, it seems that the field I can use is the -1*[NETAMOUNT]. Here is the query tested directly in SQL Manager, and I have “yellowed” out the differences compared to the script used in the stored procedure CRT. GETSALESBYSTAFFREPORT

It seems to be working, and the next step is to create a new XML report definition. I therefore took the report “101 Sales by staff”, and created a “101_US Sales by staff”, with the following XML report. Here I have colored the differenced to the original report in yellow. As you can see here, I use a query, instead of a stored procedure.

I also localize the labels in the report

To have the new report available to the users, I need to run the CDX Async job to send data to channels.

1. In AX, go to Retail > Periodic > Data distribution > Distribution schedule
   

1. Select job 1110, click Run now
   

1. Wait couple of minutes for the job to finish
   

I then have the new retail report available.

Then I get my POS report, where the amounts is without taxes J

Happy DAX’ing !

When upgrading the Contoso AX 2012 R3 CU8 to AX 2012 R3 CU9 and then trying to open the ePOS, you might get the following error. “Database version mismatch. You must either apply a Retail POS hotfix or upgrade the Retail POS database”

In the event viewer you might see the following:

A TechNet article gave me some indications that the issue was related to the CreateDatabase.dll in the Retail Channel Utility.

My trick to make this work again was to open the installation folder for CU9, and apply the retaildatabaseutility.msp

This upgraded the CreateDatabase.dll to include upgrade to version 6.3.105

When I then re-run the Retail Channel Configuration Utility on the channel database and on the offline database

After successfully upgraded the channel database, when trying to startup the POS, I get the following error; Could not load type ‘Microsoft.Dynamics.Retail.Notification.Contracts.SignatureCaptureConfirmation’ from assembly ‘Microsoft.Dynamics.Retail.Notification.Contracts, Version=6.3.0.0, Culture=neutral..

And the POS screen shows no login, just the following “corrupted” screen.

I raisted a service request to Microsoft, and I got my answer today. It is related to All .NET applications will check first if the required assembly is available in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) before searchin in the AppBase folder.

If we look at the C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\assembly\GAC_MSIL we see the following

The date is older than the CU9. Microsoft explained me that this issue occures, because we have a “one-box” installation, and As we didn’t redeploy the Online Store after upgrading to CU9, the old assemblies were still in the GAC, causing the error. This would not come up in a real situation where all components are installed in separated server, but with this being an all in one environment we had this side effect.

The solution is therefore to uninstall the assembly from the GAC.

1. Check that GACUTIL is located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\bin\NETFX 4.5.1 Tools in the VM-image

2. Run the command “gacutil /u Microsoft.dynamics.retail.notifocation.contracts”

You may need to do this for all Microsoft.dynamics.retail.* in the GAC_MIL folder

Then you can start the ePOS as expected J

Thank you Microsoft J

In the newest cumulative update for DAX, Microsoft have included a Pricing simulator:

Now you can “simulate” a retail POS sale in AX, and see how prices are calculated in CRT, and uses a new class to perform the price simulation

This will certainly make the testing of retail prices much easier.

Thanks Microsoft.

Hi friends.

I’m happy to announce the first release of a new free codeplex solution; Global Retail.

The solution covers:

1. Global Product price templates – The ability to assign a price template to a product, that will quickly enable retail prices available in different countries and currencies.
   
2. Global Product pricing – The ability to set recommended retail prices directly on products. Global prices are posted in price journals to price agreements in all legal entities.
3. Global Product barcodes – Assign and maintain product barcodes, and it will automatically synchronize to all legal entities.
   
4. Simplified Product translations and simplified local pricing screen. Multi dimensional retail hierarchies for filtering, search and availability. Full price log and the use of case management for price change processes.
   
5. Simplified file import and export of products, retail hierarchies, barcodes, prices, translations, availability, counting journals. (Excel, csv, xml)
   

Take a look here > https://ax2012globalretail.codeplex.com/ (more documentation will come later)

PS! This is the real-deal !

I’m really looking forward to meet you all at the Microsoft Technical Conference 2015 2-4 February in Seattle. We will learn, network, influence and set directions. All sessions will be delivered by Microsoft Dynamics R&D team members who will share their knowledge and expertise with us.

I hope to see you there also J

(Picture is borrowed from Robin Dickinson)

In the AX-Ecosystem we see that blogging, sharing and networking is strong and open. Colleagues and knowledge friends find each other across company borders and culture. Quite a lot business is actually created through this community. And those that is not here will struggle to get into position. Some people ask me: “Why are you doing this ?” This quick answer is: “Because I like to, and because it is fun”. But there are more to it than that. Here is the “secret two line” business model of sharing.

• Give away some ideas, components/code, wisdom and experience – for free – and hope that the dynamics ecosystem (the crowd) will use it.
  
• Then do our best to make sure that some of them want to buy more of our ideas, our know-how and our hard-earned wisdom and experience.
  

Some companies talk about the value of protecting their IP-rights, and they have IP-rights on everything. Down to the little small code samples. But an IP-based business model have some fundamental issues:

• Revenue is often based on licenses and yearly support fee’s.
  
• Requires substantial costs on sales, presales, support and R&D efforts to meet standards and expectations.
  
• Keeping it on the “pricelist” have a cost.
  
• Customers expect components to be compliant with new Microsoft versions and releases.
  
• Bug and Issues are expected to be fixed free of charge.
  
• Risks quickly becomes expensive
  

The assumption is that the revenue must be higher than the costs of maintain and keeping the components on the price list.

However, what we see is that Investments stops. No innovation. Very difficult to find for the customers. Knowledge is lost, and IP based components are often not profitable in long term.

So, what kind of things are we talking about ?

• Small ideas, that would never be a product.
• Potential reusable components.
• Customer financed customizations.
• Basically things we cannot build an ordinary business model on.

One alternative is to use Codeplex as a business model.

• The Dynamics ecosystem is small. Very easy to get high visibility.
• Sharing is a very positive message. Can strengthen the your brand.
• Can increase service revenue. New customers seek knowledge from the sources.
• Triggers customers “Pull” behavior instead of “Push”.
• Reach new potential employees that take a pride on sharing their knowledge and ideas.

A few days ago, I wanted to test this approach, so I blogged about a very small code piece I gave away, and wanted to measure the effectiveness, and here is the effect after 2 days.

How much would it cost in traditional marketing and brand building to achieve this reach ? Surely more then the small hour I used to publish it. I can also assure you that by giving away some of your work though sites like codeplex do build brand value and do generate a profitable and golden future.

(*From the Coca Cola dude)

The fall is high season for Dynamics AX projects, and we can often feel the pressure to make sure we can go-live. We have tons of different tools and suggestions to help us reach our goal. Like SureStep, RapidValue, LiveCycleServices, InfoSource and all kinds of methods to be in control, agile and lean in our projects. There is one project tool that is underestimated for successful implementations; Having fun !

Here are some project statements that can help us through the milestones; Enjoy!

And remember; Creativity is intelligence having fun (Albert Einstein)

I have been looking into a concept called Dynamics AX “Retail Essentials”. Retail essentials is a retail-centric configuration option for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Retail essentials provides a simplified, streamlined user experience that is optimized for organizations that use only the retail management functions of Microsoft Dynamics AX. Retail essentials is ideal for companies that have less complex requirements, and that have to manage only brick-and-mortar stores. In this configuration, access to typical Microsoft Dynamics AX functions is limited. Additionally, omni-channel retail capabilities such as e-commerce are not available.

To enable the Retail essentials, there is a configuration key that must be disabled.

So the change is for all companies, and applies to the entire installation.

What then happens is that the menu structure and screens changes dramatically. Only the «Retail essentials» menus are available. No other menus!

Also forms like Sales order and Purchase order changes quite a bit. Here is an example of what happends with purchase orders:

In total the following forms is “retail essentials” enabled:

CustTable, EcoResProductCreate, EcoResProductDetails, HcmJob, HcmPosition, HCMWorker, LogisticsPostalAddress, PirceDiscAdm, PurchCreateorder, PurchTable, RetailParameters,Vendtable. And also the list pages related to this.

Personally I like the idea of having a reduced the complexity in the store. But I don’t like that this is an “on/off” feature for the entire Dynamics AX 2012 R3 application.

If you would like to differentiate this on/off feature based on user/company/access rights etc, there is a central class that controls this behavior : RETAILSMB.

There are surely many other pitfalls, but it may be worth a try. It can surely make our retail store implementations easier for the store end users.

Happy DAX’ing

In DAX 2012 R3 we have received a new module for Warehouse and Transportation, that Microsoft acquired from Blue Horseshoe. In time it is expected that this will replace the WMS-II module that have been existing in Dynamics AX since version 2.0.

But there are some limitations that you need to be aware of. You should not enable both WMS-II and the new Warehouse and Transportation management configuration key. If you do so, then the following “red” issue will appear:

I asked Microsoft if they could come with an official statement regarding this issue, and here it is:

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 includes new Warehouse and Transportation Management modules that are enabled by a single configuration key, along with the previously released Warehouse Management II module. Users should enable the configuration key for ONLY ONE of these modules, but not both, in a single-instance, single-partition deployment. Although technically feasible, enabling the configuration keys for both of these modules in a single-instance, single-partition deployment is not supported by Microsoft. This combination may result in a serious loss of data or the creation of incorrect data, which could block or interrupt business processes, impair future upgrades, or cause other adverse effects to your system or business operations. Microsoft is not liable for damages that result from your use or enablement of both of these modules in a single-instance, single-partition deployment. If you use or enable, or attempt to use or enable, both of these modules in a single-instance, single-partition deployment, Microsoft’s maximum, aggregate liability for this unsupported configuration is limited to direct damages in an amount not to exceed US$1.00. By downloading, installing, using or attempting to download, install, or use Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, you have agreed to these terms, which are a supplement to the Software License Terms for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3. See License code and configuration key reference for more information about enabling the configuration keys for the new Warehouse and Transportation Management modules or the Warehouse Management II module. The Warehouse and Transportation management configuration key is enabled by the Trade and Logistics license code, and the Warehouse management II configuration key is enabled by the Warehouse management II license code”

What this means technically is that the two following configuration keys should not be enabled together:

Since the “Warehouse management II” is locked, it means that you need to remove the licensekey for Warehouse management II.

I have also been asked by customers, what is the WMS II, and what would we loose if we want to use the WAX/TRAX ? And here is a list of features that is depending on WMS-II.

1. WMS-forklifts
   
2. Picking locations on warehouse items
   
3. Location blocking causes

   

4. Shipping templates
   
5. Outbound rules
   
6. Shipment reservation sequences and reservation combinations
   
7. Store zones

   

8. Store area’s
   
9. Pallets and pallet types
   
10. Pallet transport handling
    
11. In addition everything related to consolidated shipping will also be removed, and just order picking will remain.

If you want to be support compliant, you need to take a clear choice of WMS-II or WAX/TRAX before starting any implementation or upgrade.

To install and use Dynamics AX R3 on Azure is easy to setup is ready within 15 minutes.

All you have to do is to log into https://lcs.dynamics.com/

Then create a project, and click on the “Cloud hosted environments(Beta)”

Then click on the “plus” to deploy the image, and give it a name.

Let it run for 15 minutes, and the image is now available in the Microsoft Azure portal.

Then Click on the “Connect” button, and you will receive a RDP-file you can use to log into the image.

PS!

Here is some small tips for improving performance:

1. Change the power plan to High Performance
2. Set performance options in the VM to “Best performance”
3. Run index rebuild/re-organize on both data and model database, as described here.
4. I also “pimped-up” my VM images with 8 CPU and 56 Gb Ram, to get the best possible performance.(But it cost!)

Congratulation you are now “certified” for deploying Azure demo images for Dynamics AX 2012 R3:

A customer of me wants to perform consolidated picking, but do want to control on the shipping template if the picking routes should be split per picking area.

So the solution was to create a boolean parameter for this on the shipping template:

Then this can be controlled in the consolidated picking creation process:

That’s it.  Shipping template based Zoneless pick achieved in a consolidated picking scenario.

Happy DAX’ing

In R2 there are several steps and places that picking routes/Picking lines are created, depending if you have an order-based picking or consolidated picking.

The fundamental element for a picking route is output orders, that acts as the basis.

And Output orders are created through the class\WMSOrderCreate:

As soon as the WMSOrder is created, it can try to attach itself to a shipment (consolidated scenario)(Also WMSOrderCreate)

If you follow the trace in the wmsOrder.autoAddShipment() you will get to the code where the WMSOrderTrans is created.

WMSOrderTrans is created here

And here :

The final step is the creation of the WMSPickingRoute, that happens in the shipment reservation.  And inside this method you will also find the creation process for the picking route.

So the sequence and steps for creating a picking route is the following :

1. WMSOrder is created

2. WMSShipment is created

3. WMSOrderTrans is created

4. WMSPickingroute is created

Also remember that the structure of shipmentId, PickingrouteID’s is very loose entities, and is not strongly anchored to inventTrans. So it is possible to move wmsorderTrans transactions between pickingroute and shipments quite easily by using X++.

Happy DAX’ing

I just wanted to say happy DAX’ing.

More R3 blog-posts on WMS and TMS is on the way

The following post, is a bit advanced, and I guess that 90% of all implementations never encounters any issues related to this. But if you struggle with open inventory orders that “locks” your sales orders, then this post can bring some lights to it. It is valid for both AX 2009 and AX 2012.

In Dynamics AX you can split up the picking of a sales order (or any other issue-based orders) by using output orders (WMSOrder) and picking lines (WmsOrderTrans). The picking line lines can be “split” into several lines, if the quantity needs to be picked from several locations. As seen in the example below, you see one output order with 2 picking lines.

The quantity of the output order that is included in a shipment can be seen as this:

If I open the shipment related, I can see the same lines:

When you manually delete one(or all) of theese from the shipment lines

Then we see in the output order that if changes:

But the inventory transaction (inventTrans) does not change.

I often see people struggle in such scenario’s, because they feel “locked” by this marking on the inventory transaction. Often warehouse workers wants to make the “deleted” lines free and available to be places on a new picking route.

There is a way out of this, but it requires a small code change.

This will reduce the quantity on the output order, and making the inventory transaction “available” again to be reserved, and even to create a new picking route on the deleted lines.

Happy DAX’ing.

Rumors says that in the upcoming AX 2012 R3, the entire library of X++ code will be available for Partners and Customers. The Dynamics community embraces this approach and says that this makes it possible for new solutions and ideas to be built 100% integrated with the Dynamics AX platform. Microsoft have even make it possible for others to share, using the codeplex.

A business analyst describes what’s happing as:

“All too frequently, SMBs and enterprises deploy expensive closed ERP systems, not realizing that significant cost savings and flexibility can be realized through the use of openness of Dynamics AX. And coupled with a near-instant deployment using Azure will allow many more companies to realize the benefits of ERP-systems with an open and available source code.”, says Kurt Hatlevik, a Dynamics AX nerd.

Competitors has described this approach as a “cheap” way to build a DAX-community and ecosystem. They argue that their own approach for proprietary closed systems is the only way forward to maintain a high revenue stream and customer dependence.

This is not a April’s-fool, but a Aprils-fact J

Update: Dynamics AX has always had an open X++ source code.  This post was a April’s-joke.

The Dynamics ecosystem love to complicate things. And now with the AX 2012 R3 it can really get complex, with the biggest codebase ever. The more functionality we demand to get into Dynamics AX, the better it will become, and the more we can sell, right?

Wrong.

Simplicity wins. Every time. (iPod, anyone?)

As a Dynamics AX “expert”, I get to hang out with other Dynamics AX “experts” (and we act all clubby and hip and cool like it’s some secret club – but it really is). In those circles I get to see and hear a gajillion awesome features that allows us so solve ANY problem. (Basically because the solutions is sets of LEGO-bricks we are selling, and you can build anything with LEGO)

Oftentimes, many of the solutions is over-complicated complex. For the ones that isn’t, the difference between a winning or losing solution invariably comes down to simplicity and elegance.

The Fix

Look folks – if we want to win in the ERP-marketplace, we must focus more on simplicity (twitter’s 140 characters anyone?). A few things to think about:

– What EXACTLY is the problem we are trying to solve? Do a lot of people have it and want it to go away?

– What’s the CURRENT way our customers treating the problem? THAT’S our competition – it’s their next-best alternative relative to your proposed solution. THAT’S what your solution has to beat (both from a capability and cost standpoint including accounting for switching costs).

– What’s the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM solution you need to put on the market to solve the problem? BUILD THAT and validate you have a solution that works.

Stop making solutions so hard, complex, and confusing. We are wasting investment dollars that instead could be used for marketing and scaling our much simpler (and cheaper to build) alternative solutions.

Create solutions that only require a few weeks of implementation time, and that is so easy to use that it can be trained in minutes.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
– Leonardo da Vinci

With the WMS and voice pick for Google Glasses you can revolutionize your supply chain and warehouse processes. Google glasses will

• You will have both hands free
• Directly connected to your ERP system
• Support real time transactions like receiving, picking, counting and shipping
• Guide the warehouse worker in all the processes both by voice and by visual graphics
• Voice pick, scan barcodes using the built-in camera or use Bluetooth connected barcode scanner
• Connect directly with vendors and customers when working with issues or questions

The only problem is that such a solution does not exist. The google glasses are still in the experimental phase, and it will still be a while before it is available as a commercial consumer product. But Google Glasses has been opened for commercial actors to create such applications and possibilities.

Who have the willingness and the resources to create such a solution ?

January is the traditional month for counting the inventory, and I hear from many of my customers and business partners that this is taking place right now.

Here is a link to a more untraditional inventory counting at London Zoo.

(Picture from BBC)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25577921