A while back I was tipped off about a tool from Microsoft called LightSwitch, and it looks like it has come out of Beta and is now an official product. So I took a quick look at it and was able to use it to easily create some alternative screens for Dynamics AX without a single line of coding. This is too cool.
If you want to see the walkthrough that I created, I posted it here on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-dynamics-ax-2012-interfaces-with-microsoft-lightswitch
I found this article on TechNet last month on Creating Cubes in AX 2012 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc622026.aspx) and was just able to take a look and work through the example. This is too cool - because you don't need to even touch MSSQL in order to create and deploy your very own reporting cubes. Within about half an hour I was able to create my very own cube and report off it.
I created a walkthrough on SlideShare showing the steps - but be warned, this is just a straight copy of the TechNet article with pictures. If you want to check it out though, here is the link: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-an-analysis-services-cube-for-dynamics-ax-2012-in-aot
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.
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
A couple of days ago I tinkered with the Expense Report submission process within Dynamics AX 2012's Employee Services portal. It is pretty nice, and also easy to use. The Employee Service portal is also a lightweight, and less expensive (user license wise) way to give some of the casual users access to the ERP system.
I created a full walkthrough of the Expense Report creation and approval process and posted it here on SlideShare if anyone wants to see it in action: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/submitting-expense-reports-through-the-dynamics-ax-2012-employee-services-portal
A while back I saw an example of using Visio to create data driven dashboards, and I finally got around to creating an example for myself.
I posted the worked example on SlideShare if anyone wants to do it for themselves: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-dynamics-ax-dashboards-using-visio-services
A while back, I can across this post on how to assign icons to menu items in Dynamics AX 2012: http://www.dynamicsaxtraining.com/knowledge-base-development/module-logo
This made me think if I could create a consolidated menu to save from having to move from one module to another, and here is what I was able to do:
If anyone is interested in seeing the full walkthrough, I posted the steps on SlideShare here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-consolidated-user-menus-in-dynamics-ax-2012
Yesterday I was tinkering with Dynamics AX and Office - looking at the different ways that users are able to create reports. I expected to be able to do something cool within Excel, but when I found out that I could connect directly to the AX data through Word and create reports as well I was overjoyed (small things like this make me happy).
If you want to see how to do this yourself, I posted the following walkthrough on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/creating-dynamics-ax-2012-reports-in-word
I just saw a post online talking about how to synchronize AX 2009 contacts with Outlook (http://www.dynamicscare.com/blog/index.php/setting-up-outlook-sychronization-in-dynamics-ax-2009), and thought that I would try this out in AX 2012. After a little bit of hunting for the right menu options because they moved between versions, I was able to get it all up and running.
If you want to see the worked example, I posted it here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/syncronizing-dynamics-ax-2012-with-outlook
Today I was working with the cubes that are delivered with AX 2012 in order to create some new reports, and thought that I would try to make a couple of changes. Surprisingly, it wasn't too hard to do, and my system still worked after the changes.
If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, and make their own changes to the cubes, then I posted a quick tutorial here: http://www.slideshare.net/murrayfife/tweaking-cube-structures
