Thursday, May 22, 2014

Things you did not know about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3

Here are 6 things you might not know about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3:

1. There are no longer extra GL entries generated from the two voucher item posting strategy
This corrects a design issue when the distribution framework was introduced in AX2012.  Fewer entries are made to the GL and the normal effect of posting a receiving to accrued purchases shows in a more sensible way.

2. There are now additional Inventory Storage Dimensions for Inventory Status and License Plate
Inventory statuses can also be tied to blocking features to only allow inventory that is truly available for immediate sale

3. The reservation Hierarchy determines how dimensions are used in the warehouse
The reservation hierarchy is the key to warehouse management and automation and can be configured differently for items that require more detailed manual reservation.  Understanding the hierarchy is important to the overall system automation and flow.

4. Items must be assigned to a storage dimension that is Warehouse Manageable from the beginning
Items must be associated with the correct storage dimension at creation.  Changing the storage dimension after transactions exist is not supported.  Microsoft will be introducing conversion utilities for existing customer installations post release.  Make sure to work closely with your account manager and solution delivery manager to plan your upgrade.

5. AX 2012 R3 will be available in the Cloud on Microsoft’s Azure server platform
Once released this could be the fastest and most cost effective way to deploy both development and UAT infrastructures for Dynamics AX.  There are still costs directly with Microsoft to run Azure servers but the overall speed of setup and the elimination of any hardware purchase make this a compelling offering.  And with Azure you only pay for server time used!

6. PowerQuery is a free download as an addin to Excel 2013 and 2010 that can integrate directly with your instance of AX2012 company data
PowerQuery allows an AX user to connect directly with Queries and Services exposed to the document framework of the Excel Addin. This allows easier creation of business intelligence reports on AX data directly connecting to the AX company database.  This does not require Office365 and can run standalone.



Copied from http://www.uxceclipse.com/pages/blog-detail.aspx?newslist=Blog%20List&itemId=19 just for reference.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Microsoft Dynamics AX report viewer control exception workaround

If you are facing exceptions in Event Viewer related to Microsoft Dynamics AX report viewer control like:

An unexpected exception occurred in the Microsoft Dynamics AX report viewer control. Contact your system administrator for assistance.
The type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Analytics.UI.ReportViewerMessages, Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' could not be found

OR

An unexpected exception occurred in the Microsoft Dynamics AX report viewer control. Contact your system administrator for assistance.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
System.NullReferenceException
   at Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportViewer.OnPreRender(EventArgs e)

Here is the simple workaround of these issues:

you have to comment out the ReportViewerMessages line in appSettings section in the report server web.config


So far, I haven’t seen any issues by commenting out this entry.