Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

By : Murray Fife

Buy this Book

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

By: Murray Fife

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Dynamics AX is built on a number of foundation products from Microsoft that are used to make it bigger, better, and stronger than the average business system. Taking advantage of these products will make your life easier. Use these tools to maximize the efficiency of your business management, taking advantage of a powerful and centralized tool set. "Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook" will show you how to use tools that you already have to extend out Dynamics AX and discover potential new directions. You will be surprised at what you can do on a shoestring budget. The book will allow you to streamline your work processes, and use the system's powerful and centralised features to the advantage of your organization. "Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook" will show you how to maximize the potential of Dynamics AX with common and popular tools to enhance your business management systems. We will begin by exploring how to extend Dynamics AX out with SharePoint. After this, the book will guide you through important elements in maximizing business management efficiency, focusing on key aspects like reports, dashboards, and workflows. The book will then finish by teaching you how to customize your management systems, achieving a comprehensive coverage of the most important extension processes relevant to you and your business with very little programming. This is a book for those of you that want to make the most out of Dynamics AX by using what you already have, and without breaking the bank.

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Extending Out with SharePoint

Introduction

Configuring a My Site host site

Using note boards to microblog from the Role Centers

Adding My Site profile links to the Role Centers

Creating shared document libraries

Linking document libraries to Dynamics AX records

Summary

Reports and Dashboards

Introduction

Creating a Power View report from Dynamics AX

Creating a Power View report from Power View cubes

Saving Power View dashboards and reports

Adding a Power View report to a Role Center

Exporting a Power View report to PowerPoint

Creating a PowerPivot gallery in SharePoint

Creating a PowerPivot data source for Power View

Creating a Power View report via the PowerPivot gallery

Linking Power View reports to Dynamics AX forms

Summary

Dashboards, Charts, and Scorecards

Introduction

Creating a Business Intelligence site

Configuring a PerformancePoint workspace to connect to the Dynamics AX cubes

Creating a scorecard in PerformancePoint

Adding scorecards to a user's Role Center

Creating an analytical chart in PerformancePoint

Adding an analytical chart to a user's Role Center

Using Decomposition Trees to drill into the analytical charts

Creating PerformancePoint dashboards in SharePoint

Summary

Communication and Collaboration

Introduction

Linking Outlook with Dynamics AX

Flagging Dynamics AX contacts for synchronization

Synchronizing Dynamics AX contacts with Outlook

Using the Outlook Social Connector to research Dynamics AX contacts

Communicating with contacts from within Dynamics AX

Using Lync to collaborate with other users directly from Dynamics AX

Summary

Using Cases to Manage Incidents and Requests

Introduction

Creating Case categories

Assigning tasks through Cases

Creating appointments through Cases

Defining the standard processes for Case management

Assigning Knowledge articles to Cases

Associating additional business entities to Cases

Creating projects from Cases

Creating collaboration workspaces for Case projects

Summary

Organizing Your Workflows

Introduction

Creating a new workflow design from a template

Adding task steps to workflows

Saving and activating workflows

Setting the default workflows

Submitting and using workflows

Adding conditional decisions to a workflow

Adding manual decisions to a workflow

Adding workflow status notifications

Adding text placeholders to workflow messages

Summary

Reporting in Office

Introduction

Creating a document data source

Creating a Dynamics AX document template within Word

Creating document template libraries

Registering documents to template libraries

Summary

Talking to the Outside World

Introduction

Adding login accounts for customers in Active Directory

Configuring customer accounts in Dynamics AX

Associating customer logins with customer accounts

Configuring a product catalog

Adding images and presentation information to product catalogs

Summary

Creating Help

Introduction

Creating a new help publisher ID

Creating a new help publisher content folder

Creating your help content

Creating a Task Recorder walkthrough

Turning a task recording document into a help topic

Summary

Web Services and Forms

Introduction

Creating a Dynamics AX web service

Creating a web service wrapper

Using a Dynamics AX web service in an InfoPath form

Creating custom OData queries to retrieve Dynamics AX data

Building InfoPath lookups using OData queries

Summary

Role Center Personalization and Customization

Introduction

Creating a new Role Center template

Creating a new Dynamics AX user profile

Adding cues to Role Center profiles

Adding cues through the Advanced Filter editor

Adding RSS feeds to Role Centers

Removing the ribbon bar from Role Centers

Removing the navigation bar from Role Centers

Embedding Role Centers into Outlook

Summary

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Introduction

SharePoint is one of the core Microsoft technology platforms which allows you to organize your files with shared document libraries, collaborate with others through shared task lists and calendars, communicate with others with blogs, and much more, all through a web portal. Something that makes SharePoint even more useful is that you don’t have to be a developer to configure these features.

If you have Dynamics AX up and running, then chances are you should already have SharePoint installed and configured, since it is also the foundation for all of the Role Centers and enterprise portals that are delivered with Dynamics AX. Although the Role Centers and portals are preconfigured and use a lot of the features of SharePoint, there are still more features that you can take advantage of in conjunction with Dynamics AX that will make your system even better.

First we will show how to configure the My Sites feature so that the users are able to microblog and maintain their personal information within SharePoint. Once you have this configured, then you are able to add content from your personal My Site, or links to other My Sites into the Role Centers in Dynamics AX. This provides a better collaboration system for the business, and also adds a social element to the application.

We will also show how you can create your own document libraries within SharePoint to allow users to store documents, such as scanned invoices, and then index and link them back to Dynamics AX. This is an alternative to the standard document attachments feature within Dynamics AX. SharePoint document libraries allow multiple records to be linked to the same document list, and also give you document management features, such as file check-in and out to control who updates the documents.

None of these examples are hard to set up or configure, but since they require you to add to your existing SharePoint sites, you will need to have administrator rights to SharePoint. Also, for the last two examples, there is some X++ coding required. Each has only about 10 lines of simple code, so even novices should be able to work through the examples.

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

By : Murray Fife

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

By: Murray Fife

Overview of this book

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

Introduction