If you work with a reasonable amount of companies per database (>20) then it might take nearly 1 minute to open form "Business relations details" by pressing button function "Convert to customer" or "Convert to vendor"
Creating the following index may speed up the process quite a lot. So check it out in your test environment first if you like:

“Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This mail message assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and the tools that are used to create and debug procedures.”

Table address

Index Name: RedIDDataAreaID

Index fields: RecID, DataAreaID

Important note: Please be aware that the filed sequence in the new index is important!

If you synchronize your customer DB from AOT to SQL server DB and you should receive the following message: cross-company "union all" query cannot contain both a company specific table and a global table unless the data area field is explicitly selected" when synchronizing view DirPartyView then check out this:
Open the view DirPartyView in AOT and check table properties for all corresponding tables. Have a specific eye on the table property: “Save data per company” if this might have been changed during customization. If that is the case then change it back to its original value and make sure that you do not have duplicate records in tables.

Once you have installed any new kernel or application hotfix make sure to run all steps in the “Software Update Checklist” from top to bottom!

Especially important are the following points:

* Run a full X++ compilation
* Run a full CIL compilation
* Run a AOT -->  SQL server DB synchronization
* Restart all of your relevant AOS servers

“Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This mail message assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and the tools that are used to create and debug procedures.”

Prerequisite: Make sure that a full X++ compile was run without errors before

1) Stop all relevant AOS server(s)

2) On your relevant AOS server(s) navigate to the following folder (default) using Windows Explorer:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\MicrosoftDynamicsAX\bin\XppIL

3) Make sure you create a safe copy of the XPPIL folder content to another new local folder on the AOS computer (example: C:\XPPIL_SAVE)

4) Now delete all folders and files inside the folder “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\MicrosoftDynamicsAX\bin\XppIL” but keep the folder “XPPIL” itself.

5) Start all AOS server(s)

6) Run a full CIL creation from AOT. This will create a fresh rebuild of all files/ folders inside the XPPIL folder

If you should face the following info log message: A generic errored in GDI+ when working with MS Dynamics AX 2009 SP 1 then check the following list with hints to solve it:

1) Apply the currently latest available kernel hotfix. You may find an updated list here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsupport/archive/2012/03/29/overview-of-ax-build-numbers.aspx

2) Test if really all *.auc file have been deleted using MS-DOS command: del *.auc /s for the AX clients in folder (default): C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local (Note: “MyUsername” needs to be replaced with your corresponding user name)

3) Check if Citrix terminal server or roaming profile settings might have an impact here?

4) Check if .NET Framework fixes (manual or via Windows update) might have an impact here by applying the latest fixes ?

Check out the following hint of form SysUserSetup should open rather slow in your MS Dynamics AX 2009 SP1 installation:

“Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This mail message assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and the tools that are used to create and debug procedures.”


1) Under menu Administration open license configuration

2) Uncheck the entry Electronic signature

3) Synchronize AOT --> SQL server DB

4) Restart your AOS server Services

If you create a backup of your SQL server MS Dynamics AX 2012 R2 database in Windows domain 1, copy it to Windows domain 2, restore the back there you will probably be able to start the AOS server in Windows domain 2 successfully (Note: Do not forget to move the MS Dynamics AX 2012 R2 model store database as well). However if you start an MS Dynamics AX client in Windows domain 2 then you might face the following message: “A user session on the server could not be created”

The solution here is to have a look back to your SQL server installation in Windows domain 1. There is a stored procedure called “createusersessions”. Script this stored procedure using SQL server management studio and apply this stored procedure as well on the SQL server instance in your Windows domain 2.

For more hints regarding what should be considered when you move a MS Dynamics AX 2012 environment from one Windows domain to another, have a look here if you like:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-components-postattachments/00-10-23-46-59/18914_5F00_AX2012_2D00_TechDomain_5F00_M05_5F00_MoveEnvironment.docx

There’s nothing I like more than curling up on the couch with a blanket and a good book.

The same cannot be said, however, for curling up on the couch with an instruction manual or in-product help. Even though my job as a technical editor makes me understandably biased toward the value of quality documentation, I’m realistic enough to know it’s not pleasure reading.

When we go to the Help menu or search for product information on the Internet, we’re not killing time or looking for a little light reading; we need help. We have a problem or a question, and we need an answer – the sooner, the better.

And it’s intimidating – and disheartening – when we think we’ve finally stumbled on that elusive answer only to be hit with a wall of words.

Certain that the answer to our question is buried somewhere on the page, we scroll and scan and search, words swimming before our eyes. Sometimes we’ll stick with it and eventually find the information we were seeking; other times, we simply give up because it’s not worth our time.

My coworkers and I sometimes call these articles “junk drawers.” My junk drawer at home contains everything from super glue to spare keys to Silly Putty; it’s difficult to know exactly what’s there and impossible to locate anything quickly. Unfortunately, a product’s help sometimes follows those same organizational principles (or lack thereof).

With some of our new and updated content for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 and R3, we’ve been working to clean out any junk drawer pages that exist and avoid creating new ones. We’ve been trying new formats to make information easier to find when you search, and easier to scan when you’ve found the right page. We’re also trying to anticipate some of your questions and structure our information in more of a Q&A format.

The Document management topic is just one example of a page that we’ve reformatted. Don’t care about the difference between document management and document handling? Skip it. But you can see right off the bat whether your question is included, and disregard the info you’re not interested in.

When you can find answers this easily, think of all the extra time you’ll have to clean out that junk drawer and curl up with that book.

How are we doing? Are we asking the right questions? Are we asking them in the right way? Tell us what you think. The AX Content: Tell us more! post explains how you can let us know what’s on your mind.

Expense report rejected, but it cannot be resubmitted after making changes....

I recently had a case where the user submitted an expense report via EP.  The company is a Canadian company and therefore needs all of the expense reports to be in CAD.  The expense report was rejected in order for the user to make changes.  At this point, it should have gone back to the user to make the change and resubmit. 

The user made the changes and tried to submit but got an error:  An unhandled error has occurred.  To view details about this error, enable debugging in the web.config file or view the Windows Event logs. This was not a very descriptive error message.

To be able to get a better handle on what was happening I started testing with the actual data instead of test data. 

One of the first things I did was to look at all of the posted transactions, then the pending transactions and finally the current transactions.  The expense report was in none of those buckets.  I needed to know if it was in the system at all. 

I figured out which tables were being written to by going to an expense report that was in on of the aforementioned buckets, and did a right click to find the tables.  Then, I opened up SQL management studio, selected the database, and ran a query to find out if the report data was in the tables.  First I ran these 2 queries,

select * from TRVEXPTABLE where EXPNUMBER = 'xx'

select * from TRVEXPTRANS where EXPNUMBER = 'xx'

Those showed me that the data was there and the report was there.  It also showed me that the report was in rejected status.  According to this information, there should have been no reason if we went into EP as that employee, we should not be able to see it and re-submit. 

I logged into EP as that employee that had submitted the report, and I could see the expense report, make changes, but could not re-submit it. 

It looked like it was “hung” up between statuses.  I needed to change the status back to created so that it could be re-submitted. 

I went into the table from the SQL side and changed the status from rejected to created by running these queries that be able to reset it to create status. 

update TRVEXPTABLE set APPROVALSTATUS = 1 where EXPNUMBER = 'XX’  --XX representing the expense report number

update TRVEXPTRANS set APPROVALSTATUS = 1 where EXPNUMBER = 'XX’  --XX representing the expense report number

After it was back to the created status, I was able to pull it up in EP and was able to submit. 

Best practice is to solve issues from the user perspective or UI, but in this case, using the SQL management studio did the trick. 

Updating data via SQL is not recommended but as a last resort it can be done in a test environment and then finish all transactions to the end.  If there are no issue the process can be done in production after a current backup is in place.

Beth H.

Join us at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington, DC, this week. You can find the Information Experience team at either at the Microsoft Dynamics booth located in Microsoft Central in the Expo hall, or you can attend our breakout session on Tuesday, July 15^th. 

• On Tuesday, at 2:30 EST we are presenting a breakout session, “Resources to help your team implement and support Microsoft Dynamics AX.”  Come join us to learn the key locations of product help, and to learn about new resources and how you can create content that addresses the specific needs of your customer’s businesses using Task Recorder and other tools.
• You can also find us at the Microsoft Dynamics booth in the Expo hall. Stop by and pick up a resource sheet and see some demos from our team of the available resources. We’re happy to answer questions, take feedback and ask you questions!

Hope to see you there!

Here is a tutorial on how to configure Dynamics AX 2012 to import a general journal from a CSV file. The steps below are using Contoso demo data.

1. Create a new folder on the root of the C: Drive and name it “DIEF”:
   
   
   
2. Navigate to Data import export framework | Setup | Data import export framework parameters. Click “Browse” next to “Shared working directory” and select the “DIEF” folder we created. Once selected, click “Validate”.
   
   
   
3. Close the “Data import export framework parameters” form.
4. Go to Data import export framework | Setup | Source data formats. Enter “GLJOURNAL” for the “Source name” and “Type” = “File. In the parameters on the right side, enter “File format” = “Delimited”, “First row header” = TRUE, “Row delimiter” = “{CR}{LF}”, “Column delimiter” = “Comma {,}”, “Text Qualifier” = “*”, and “Role separator” = “;”. Click “Application”, and then select “CostCenter”, “Department”, and “ExpensePurpose”. Enter “CostCenter-Department-ExpensePurpose” for the “Dimension format” value.
   
   
   
   
5. Go to Data import export framework | Setup | Target entities. Click “New” and enter “Entity type” = “Entity”, “Entity” = “Custom”, “Entity name” = “GLJOURNAL”, “Staging table” = “DMFLedgerJournalEntity”, “Entity class” = “DMFLedgerBalanceEntityClass”, and “Target entity” = “DMFLedgerJournalTransEntity”. Close the “Target entites” form.
   
   
   
6. Go to Data import export framework | Common | Processing group. Type “GLJOURNAL” for the “Group name”, Ctrl+S to save, and click “Entities”.
   
   
   
7. On the “Select entities for processing group” form, enter “GLJOURNAL” for both the “Entity name” and the “Source data format”. Click “Generate source file”.
   
   
   
8. On the “Wizard” form, click “Next”. For the “Display data” fields, select the following and put them in the following sequence: JournalName, JournalNum, LineNum, CurrencyCode, TransDate, Voucher, AccountType, LedgerDimension, AmountCurDebit, AmountCurCredit, OffsetAccountType, OffsetLedgerDimension. Click “Generate sample file”.
   
   
   
9. A .txt file should open, and save it to the root of the C: drive.
   
   
   
10. Click “Finish” on the “Wizard” form. Close the “Select entities for processing group” form. Close the “Processing group” form.
11. Go to General ledger | Setup | General ledger parameters. Click “Number sequences”. Right-click “Gene_10” next to “Journal batch number” and click “View details”.
    
    
    
12. Click “Edit”, change the “_010” to “JN”, and click “Move up”. Click the “General” fast tab and note the “Next” value, in my case “JN000421”.
    
    
    
13. Close the “Number sequences” form and the “General ledger parameters” form.
14. Navigate to General ledger | Setup | Journals | Journal names. Select “GenJrn” and right-click the “Acco_18” next to “Voucher series”, and then click “View details”.
15. On the “Number sequences” form, click “Edit”. In the “Segments” fast tab, click “Add”, select “Constant” for the “Segment”, and type “VN” for “Value”. Move this new segment to the top by clicking “Move up”. Note the next number in the series. In my case, “VN00000038”.
    
    
    
16. Close all forms.
17. Open Excel. Click File | Open. Navigate to the C: drive and select the “GLJOURNAL.txt” file (You may need to change the drop menu to “All Files (*.*)”)
18. On the “Text Import Wizard” form, click “Delimited” and click “Next”. Check the box for “Comma” and click “Finish”.
19. In line 2, enter the following values for each header:
1. JournalName = GenJrn
2. JournalNum = JN000421 (Value from step 12)
3. LineNum = 1
4. CurrencyCode = USD
5. TransDate = 8/19/2013
6. Voucher = VN00000038 (Value from step 16)
7. AccountType = Ledger
8. LedgerDimension = 110180-OU_1-OU_3566-Training
9. AmountCurDebit = 10
10. OffsetAccountType = Ledger
11. OffsetLedgerDimension = 110101-OU_1-OU_3566-Training
    
    
20. Click File | Save As. Click “CSV (Comma delimited)” for the “Save as type” drop-menu.
    
    
    
21. Close Excel.
22. Go to Data import export framework | Common | Processing group. Select the line for “GLJOURNAL” and click “Entities”.
    
    
    
23. Click the folder icon next to “Sample file path”, and select the .csv file from step 20. Click “Generate source mapping”. Close the infolog.
    
    
    
24. Close the “Select entities for processing group” form.
25. On the “Processing group” form, select the line for “GLJOURNAL” and click “Get staging data”.
    
    
    
26. A form for “Create a job ID for the staging data job” should open and populate with a “Job ID”. Click “OK”.
27. On the “Staging data execution” form, click “Preview”. Verify the columns are correct, and then click “Run”.
    
    
    
28. Close the infolog.
    
    
    
29. On the “Processing group” form, click “Copy data to target”. Select the “Job ID” created earlier, and click “OK”. On the “Target data execution” form, click “Run”, then click “OK”.
    
    
    
30. Close the Infolog.
    
    
    
31. Go to General ledger | Journals | General journal. Locate the imported journal, and click “Lines”.
    
32. Notice the values imported properly, and click Post | Post. The journal posts successfully.

Tyler L

Power BI for Office 365 is a collection of features and services that, together, enable you to visualize data, share discoveries, and collaborate in new ways. Familiar tools including Excel and SharePoint form the foundation of Power BI. The value of Power BI is how its features and services work together, and how the insights are securely, yet interactively shared.

Access data with Excel

The following features enable you to access data and display that data in interactive charts, graphs, and maps. Some of these features have been available before, some are new, but each is now integrated into Excel and into Power BI online services.

• Discover   Use Power Query to access data from public and corporate data sources. Power Query includes a new online search feature that helps you find public data on the Web.
• Analyze   Use Power Pivot to create analytical models in the familiar Excel environment. You can mash-up data from multiple sources and analyze large amounts of data.
• Visualize   Use Power View and Power Map to create interactive charts and graphs that help you explore and present your data visually in Excel.

Collaborate in Office 365

The following features help you share data and reports with team members who are anywhere in the world.

• Share   Create collaborative Power BI sites for your team to share and view reports. Larger workbook viewing is also supported so that users can view and interact with larger workbooks through the browser.
• Ask questions   Type your questions into the Q&A speech bubble for immediate answers in the form of interactive charts and graphs.
• Access anywhere   Access the latest reports posted to your Power BI site from an app on your mobile device.

Use Power BI for Office 365 with Dynamics AX

The following diagram shows how you can use the features of Power BI for Office 365 to access, explore, and gain insight from your Microsoft Dynamics AX data.

For details, see Microsoft Dynamics AX integration with Power BI for Office 365.

There was a scenario that was recently discussed when attempting to link sales agreements to sales order lines.  In this scenario, let’s say we created multiple sales agreements each having one line as referenced below.

     Sales agreement 1
          Line A
     Sales agreement 2
          Line B
 

To continue with this scenario let’s say we created a sales order that we’ll call Sales order 1 with a relation to Sales agreement 1 and added Line A which inherited the setting defined in Sales agreement 1 - Line A.  Line A would inherit the settings from Sales agreement 1 – Line A.  Now, if we added Line B to Sales order 1 and attempted to link this line to Sales agreement 2 as referenced below, the system would not allow us to.

     Sales order 1:Sales agreement 1
          Line A:Sales agreement 1
          Line B:Sales agreement 2

 
The reason for this stems around this scenario not being supported in the current design of AX 2012.  This is due to the nature of how sales agreements are linked to sales orders which are linked on the header level.  However, if we create a sales agreement with multiple lines as referenced below.

     Sales agreement 1
          Line A
          Line B

Then, create Sales order 1, define the link to Sales agreement 1, add Line A and Line B as referenced below.

     Sales order 1:Sales agreement 1
          Line A
          Line B

 
With this configuration, Line A and Line B will inherit the settings defined in Sales agreement 1 as expected.


John B.

The Information Experience team for Microsoft Dynamics AX invites business users who work in the Project management and accounting module to provide us with feedback about their experience with the module and with our online Help offerings.  We’d like to hear from you no matter which version of Microsoft Dynamics AX you use.

We’re collecting your feedback with a survey that you can use to:

• Let us know how you use the module in your day-to-day work
• Tell us about other relevant aspects of how you do your job
• Tell us about your experiences with our online Help offerings and what you think of them

We’re also offering opportunities for you to provide more feedback in the future, if that sounds like something you’d like to do.

The survey might take five to ten minutes of your time, but your feedback will help us understand how we can improve the information that we provide to help you use Project management and accounting in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

You can begin the survey here: https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_7U1nfsElIPe3nZH

The Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Demo Data is available for partners, and is very useful! Do you have all the resources you need?

• Download the Solution Demo VM from PartnerSource. On this page you’ll find the most up-to-date demo tools and materials. We also keep updating the content, so that you can have more demo capabilities to help you succeed in the selling process.
• On the Customer Implementation Readiness team blog
• Review the Demo Data What's new information
• Check out the Demo Data tips and tricks blog post

If you want to install the demo data in your own environment, use the Test Data Transfer tool Walkthrough to help set it up.

Send suggestions and feedback on the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 VM content and demo scripts to us at ax2012demovm@microsoft.com.​

In this post you can find an elaborated description of the Microsoft Dynamics AX Monthly webinars that were delivered in 2013-2014.

Each agenda point normally has a duration of 15-20 minutes, except SEPA which is 5-10 minutes. Each session has a duration of appr. one hour.

You can find too, a link to access the recording of a webinar.

To be able to watch the recording, please click on the “Submit” button.

Subsequently select the start button to watch the recording. You may have to register for the event itself, before you can click the submit button.

 
Monthly webinar, November 2013:

-     Intercompany invoice in Project module, released in CU7 for AX 2012 R2.

• Review of the concepts of borrowing and lending Legal entities, prerequisites and how Intercompany project invoicing works.

-     Diagnostics.

• A review of Diagnostics, how the packages work and the benefits of using Diagnostics.

-     AX 2012 R2 CU7, new tool – AxBUILD.exe and known installation issues

• All about the new tool AxBUILD.exe that enables you to compile many times faster and tips about known CU7 installation issues.

-     SEPA Latest information

• Latest KBs, latest reported issues and useful resources.

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=857499

Monthly webinar, January 2014:

-   AX troubleshooting, part I, determine which country features are touched by a particular operation.

• How to know which country features are touched, which can be useful when you develop, test, troubleshoot or upgrade.

-   Enterprise portal troubleshooting.

• SharePoint logs,
• Advanced errors,
• Business connector errors and known issues.

-   Enhancements in Work breakdown structure (WBS) in Project module in CU7

• A demo and review of what is new in the Scheduling engine.

-   SEPA, latest information.

• Latest KBs, latest reported issues.

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=862186

Monthly webinar, February 2014:

-  AX troubleshooting part II, which tables are updated by an operation in AX?

• See how a report can print a snapshot before and after an operation in AX.  
• Are the right tables populated after an upgrade?
• Are there unexpected results?

-  SEPA, latest information.

• Latest KBs, latest reported issues and information about DD schemes.

-  Tips from an Escalation engineer.

• Useful blogs and Issue search in Lifecycle services (LCS).

-  How AX content is organized.

• Where and you find AX content and how it he content organized?
• What content is exclusively for partners?

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=864246

Monthly webinar, March 2014:

-  AX troubleshooting part III, create as many journal lines as you like!

• A demo of a small tool that can generate a lot of transactions, like Ledger-, Customer- and Tax transactions. Useful when you need a large dataset to test
  performance on Inquiries/Reports, when you need to generate a payment file or whatever purpose.

-  Lifecycle services (LCS), Business process modeler.

• See what the Business process modeler is and a demo of the tool.

-  AX 2012 R3 Retail news and Retail monitoring.

• What is new in Retail tech
• Overview of the R3 Retail architecture
• Enhancements in Retail monitoring
• Central administration in System Center Operation Manager (SCOM).

-  SEPA, latest information.

• Latest KBs and latest information on reported issues.

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=866261

Monthly webinar, April 2014:

-  AX and Debug Diagnostic Tool 2.0 (DebugDiag)

• The tool is designed to assist in troubleshooting issues, such as hangs, slow performance, memory leaks or fragmentation and AOS crashes in any user-mode
  process. See how to use it – and where to get it.

-  AX 2012 R2 – Collection letter feature for EU countries (Collection agency), KB 2912713.

• See how to setup and use this functionality.

-  Account structure relationships: how to make end-users lives easier!

• Watch an example of how to define which cost centers can be used for a certain range of Ledger accounts and more complex rules.

-  SEPA, latest information.

• Latest KBs, no File system adapter for SEPA? and information on reported issues.

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=868283

Monthly webinar May 2014:

-  How to create a sales order via AIF.

• See what AIF can be used for.
• Get a brief description of the AIF architecture.
• How to setup AIF inbound ports.
• Demo of how to create a program in Visual studio to create sales orders and AIF troubleshooting.

-  Timesheet workflows in AX 2012 R2.

• General setup of Timesheet workflows and known issues after CU7.

-  Lifecycle services (LCS), Cloud powered support.

• What is Cloud support on LCS?
• How to  and why use it
• Create virtual environment and snapshots

-  SEPA, latest information.

• Which KBs are included in R3? Latest KBs and reported issues.

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=869738

Monthly webinar June 2014:

-  In-place upgrade to AX 2012 R3.

• Watch this to get an overview of In-place upgrade to R3 and a list of resources.

-  Warehouse Management and Transportation in R3 – getting started.

• Understand the configuration, design of locations, define processing templates and warehouse mobility. 
• Troubleshooting tip and useful links.

-  Lifecycle services (LCS), a recap of Cloud powered support and AX in Azure

• A walk through of the steps when a support incident is created.
• AX in Azure, Cloud hosted environments and what is needed for Demo- and developer environment.

-  SEPA latest information.

• Latest KBs, known issues and what has to be done after install of a SEPA KB.

Link to the recording:

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=874010

 In AX 2012, we have the ability to add indirect costs to a project. These types of costs could be expenses such as rent, office supplies, phone charges, and per diem expenses. Here is a demonstration on how to set up the indirect cost components in AX, as well as what the financial voucher looks like.

1. First, we’ll need to set up the indirect cost shared category. Go to Project management and accounting | Setup | Categories | Shared categories. Click “New”, and enter a “Category ID” and “Category” name. Check the box for “Can be used in Project”. Close the form.  
   
   
   
2. Next, we’ll need to set up the project category. To link the project category with the newly created shared category, go to Project management and accounting | Setup | Categories | Project categories. Click “New”, and select shared category we just created for the “Category ID”.  Select the "Category group” that contains the posting setup for this project category. Check the box for “Indirect cost component”, and “Active in journals”.  Close the form.
   
   
   
3. There are three forms for setting up indirect costs. The “Indirect cost component” maps the indirect cost component header (name) to the project category. Go to Project management and accounting | Setup | Indirect costs | Indirect cost components. Click “New”, enter a name of the indirect costs for the “Indirect cost component” and “Name”, and select the project category we created earlier for the “Category”. Close the form.
   
   
   
4. The next form is the indirect cost component groups. This form stores the calculation methods, rates, and rules for calculating the indirect costs. Go to Project management and accounting | Setup | Indirect costs | Indirect cost component groups. Click “New”, and enter a name for both the “Indirect cost component group” and “Indirect component group name”. Ctrl+S to save the record, then click “Assign indirect cost components”.
   
   
   
5. On the form that opens, click “New”. Enter a date that this cost component and rate is active for, and select the indirect cost component we created earlier for the “Indirect cost component”. Choose a “Calculate method” to specify how AX will calculate the value. “Unit rate” will calculate the indirect cost amount by multiplying the cost rate by the number of hours. Percentage will use the worker’s hourly rate multiplied by the rate we enter on this form as a percentage. Enter the value for the “Cost rate”, “Revenue rate”, and “Invoice rate”. Close the form. 
   
   
   
   * Open the Model rates form, where you can view the calculated hourly values for cost, revenue, and invoice amount for an indirect cost, based on the compounding rules and calculation method that you selected. You can also create compounding rules to increase the value added to a project for the selected indirect cost. For more information on compounding rules, see the following TechNet article:
   
   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh227384.aspx
   
   
6. The final form for indirect cost components is the indirect cost component group assignment rules form, which is used to assign an indirect cost component group to a worker, project, or both. Go to Project management and accounting | Setup | Indirect costs | Indirect cost component group assignment rules. Enter an “Effective” date, and select our cost component group that we created for the “Indirect cost component group”. You can specify specific workers, contracts, categories, projects, customers, or any combination to activate the indirect cost components. Close the form. 
   
   

To test the indirect cost component, I posted a project hours journal to project 10001 for Julia Funderburk:

 

When we look at the voucher for the hours journal, we can see the indirect cost posted for the $10 amount:

For additional information on project indirect cost components, review the following TechNet articles:

About indirect costs for projects:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh242374.aspx

Indirect cost component (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh208810.aspx

Indirect cost component groups (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh209621.aspx

Assigned indirect cost components (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh209589.aspx

Indirect cost component group assignement rules (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh227451.aspx

Compounding rules - Cost (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh227384.aspx

Compounding rules - Revenue (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh209617.aspx

Compounding rules - Invoice (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh242812.aspx

Model rates (form):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh227605.aspx

Tyler Lewin - Dynamics AX Senior Support Engineer

There are two types of accounting that take place in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 when an accounting entry is generated for a product receipt or a vendor invoice that contains stocked items.

• Part of the process updates accrued liability or liability accounts, and uses the new accounting framework that was added in AX 2012.
• The other part of the process updates the inventory cost and uses the same posting process that was available in AX 2009.

In AX 2012 R3, the resulting accounting entries from both processes are created by using the same subledger entry journal and voucher, so that only one voucher is created.

Accounting entries that add up to 0 (zero) for Purchase expenditure, un-invoiced will not be transferred to the general ledger. Accounting entries that add up to 0 (zero) for Purchase, inventory receipt will
be transferred to the general ledger in a single zero-amount accounting entry. This entry will represent the profit and loss relationship when sales tax is applicable, and therefore will be used in tax specification reports.

How to learn more                        

The Accounting for stocked items on product receipts and vendor invoices white paper illustrates the journal entries that are created in AX 2012 R3. You can
get the white paper from the Download center at Accounting for stocked items on product receipts and vendor invoices.

In AX 2012 R3 there is a new search feature that you can use to create sales order.  With this new feature you can search based on multiple options such as Sales order, Purchase order, and phone number just to name a few.  The option that will be discussed in this post is Keyword.

In order to use Keywords in your search you first need to define criteria to be included as keywords.  I will use the type of Customer in this example as we working with creating Sales Orders.

1. Go to Sales and Marketing > Setup > Search and click on Define criteria.
2. In the Type dropdown list select Customer.
3. Click new in the menu bar.  This will populate a new line where you can select the field you want to enable for keyword search
1. Some common fields that could be used to search on with keywords are:
1. AccountNum
2. City
3. Name
4. Address
5. State
6. Street
7. ZipCode
8. CustGroup
4. Once the fields are defined click the Refresh button in the menu bar.  This essentially saves and activates the criteria you have defined.  If you add additional criteria at a later time remember to click the Refresh button.
   
   

Now that the search criteria is setup it can be used when creating Sales Orders. 

For example let's say that you have criteria setup for Name and you need to create a Sales Order for a school but you cannot remember the actual name or the account number. However you do know that School is part of the name.

When you click to create the Sales Order, select Keyword as the Search by and enter school in the search.   The search will return results that have school in any of the fields you have defined in the search criteria. In my case Address is also set as search criteria, and since one of my Customers has School as part of the address, 2 results are displayed.

At this point you can mark the record you want, click Select Customer in the menu bar and continue to create the Sales Order.

Dave B.

A recently updated Microsoft Dynamics AX Retail resource page is now live on the Communities site: https://community.dynamics.com/ax/b/axresources/archive/2013/02/20/resource-page-for-retail-for-microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012.aspx

This resource page includes links and resources related to the Retail area of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Feature Pack, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2, and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3.

It includes the following information:

• How to deploy the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 demo machine on Azure
• PCI implementation guide for R3
• Best practices for maintaining your POS customizations
• Upgrade poster for R2
• New call center documentation
• New Retail essentials documentation
• Readiness pages and portals for Retail
• New troubleshooting information