A Tinkerers Notebook

Enabling Customers Access to Dynamics AX through Self Service Portals

I spent today trying to get the Customer Self Service portal configured on my demo AX2012 system, and after a few false starts, the corruption of a user account, and a little help from a collegue, I was able to get it all up and running.

So that others don't make the same errors that I made, I thought that I would post the complete walkthrough on how to configure remote users, and the customer self service catalogs here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/configuring-customer-self-service-portals-in-dynamics-ax-2012

Once it's up and running it's pretty cool.

Using Lync In Dynamics AX To Speed Up Communication

Lync is my new most favorite application from Microsoft.  I didn't think that it could get any better until my collegue Chris Hoer showed me how to enable the Lync Presence Integration features into Dynamics AX 2012. 

 

This is cool.  If you want to see a complete walkthrough on how to enable, setup, and use the Lync integration, check out my post here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/enabling-lync-presence-integration-in-dynamics-ax-2012

Using InfoPath Forms with Dynamics AX

Ryan Kaul at Microsoft is my new best friend.  He helped me this morning with an example of how to create InfoPath forms that Update Dyanmics AX 2012, and in return, I created the following example from some of his code that uses web services to update Dynamics AX.  It's pretty cool if I do say so myself :-)

If anyone is interested in viewing the full walkthrough then I posted it here on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-dynamics-ax-data-entry-forms-with-infopath

Wildcards & Regular Expressions in Dynamics AX 2012 Make Filtering Easier

In one of my previos posts I showed how to create cues from queries in Dynamics AX (http://murrayfife.typepad.com/atinkerersnotebook/2012/01/creating-cues-in-dynamics-ax-2012-the-hard-way.html) and today I was trying to extend this out by creating additional filters on my data for an upcomming demo. Along the way I was able to learn some of the wildcarding syntax for AX.

If anyone is interested in seeing some of the examples that I came up with then you can see them on my SlideShare account here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/using-wild-cards-in-dynamix-ax-2012-filters

Creating Cues in Dynamics AX 2012 the hard way

Up until now, I didn't think that there was a way to create Cues in Dynamics AX 2012 for legacy inquiries where the option is not shown on the screen.  Luckily I was just shown how to do this through a backdoor option.  

Most of you may not care, but for the few that do, here is a link to the quick worked example: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-cues-in-dynamics-ax-2012-when-the-option-not-available

Adding Dynamic Drill Through in TARGIT using Navigation Bars

I watched a presentation the other day by TARGIT on the new Service Release 1 features, and one of the features that they showed was the ability to create Navigation Bars that dynamically link you through into other reports and dashboards.  This piqued my interest so I tried it our myself and they are pretty cool.

I posted a full walkthrough of what I was able to do on SlideShare if anyone is interested in learning more about this feature.  Here is the link: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-navigation-menus-in-targit

 

Use SharePoint Wikis to Integrate Tribal Knowledge into Dynamics AX 2012

Wiki's rock - the only thing that makes them better is when they are used in conjuction with Dynamics AX.

If anyone is interested in how I created the Wiki, and integrated it into Dynamics, I posted the walkthrough here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/using-sharepoint-wikis-in-ax-for-collaborative-knowledge

Give Users Their (Own) Space

I have tried so many times to get the MySites in SharePoint configured, and finally worked out the special step that I was missing in the process.  After getting them configured, I realized that there was so much I could do with them.

I posted a walkthrough of how I configured the site, and also how I used it for my demo here on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-sharepoint-mysite-sites

Twitter Is Even Better Inside Your Dynamics AX 2012 Role Center

I use Twitter all the time to find new topics and news.  So it's just natural that I should try to add it into Dynamics AX 2012 so that I can have all my Twitter searches fed to me automatically.  It's so useful that I though I would share it with everyone else.

If you want to see how to do this, then check out the following walkthrough: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/adding-twitter-searches-to-dynamics-ax-2012-role-centers

SharePoint + AX == Document Management

SharePoint is a great tool for managing and seraching for documents, espcecially for scanned files like invoices, purchase orders, and other paper based documents.  What is really cool though would be to access the documents directly from Dynamics AX rather than having to open up a seperate search window for SharePoint.  Luckily, with Dynamics AX 2012, this is not a big deal, and I just created an example of how to embed SharePoint in existing screens:

For a complete walkthrough of how to do this, you can access my presentation on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/embedding-sharepoint-into-dynamics-ax-2012-forms