AXPulse launches News Bar for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Stay up to date with the latest organization and business updates. Setup news for a specific legal entity or for specific date intervals using the standard MS Dynamics AX 2012 UI. You can also change news font color and size, order of displaying the news in news bar. The news bar is displayed and refreshed automatically on Microsoft Dynamics AX rich client work space, so your employees can get updated news every time they log into to Microsoft Dynamics AX.

More information can be found from http://www.axpulse.com/product/news-bar/.

AXPulse to launch News Bar - A product for Microsoft Dynamics AX

AXPulse is going to launch News Bar for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, a product that will let you stay informed of recent business updates, organization announcements from within the AX application work space. News bar is an integrated solution which is easy to deploy, configure and use.

Web: http://www.axpulse.com

Email: info@axpulse.com

Database Diagrams for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2

Microsoft has recently launched a new website that hosts 30 database entity relationship diagrams for tables of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2...Read more http://www.axpulse.com/database-diagrams-for-ax-2012-r2/

Enabling Withhold tax functionality in AX 2012

Some of you might know that Withhold Tax is a country specific (GB, TH, SA, IE) functionality (except for limited functionality available on AP side out of the box) in AX 2012 like AX2009. In AX 2012, if you have opened up an LE with address associated with specific countries and WHT configuration key is on, you will be able to use WHT both on vendor and customer sides. However, there is a price to pay when you want to use WHT functionality in countries other than what MS has already given the localization for. For example, if you want to use WHT functionality for a customer in Egypt, besides enabling the WHT configuration key, open up an LE with Egypt address, you also need to set CountryRegionCodes property for various EDT, table, form control objects with the country code for Egypt. To enable WHT specific business logic, validations in code, you have to add the specific region code in statements like this:

if (SysCountryRegionCode::isLegalEntityInCountryRegion([#isoTH, #isoSA, #isoGB, #isoIE, ..)
{

}

Overall, it is really hectic to get the above updated on number of places in the AOT, otherwise you won't be able to leverage the complete WHT functionality in AX 2012.

ISV vertical configuration using Rapid Start Services

In an effort to push data to custom developed functionality (could be an ISV solution) in AX 2012 through rapid start services, I found rapid start really useful and extensible. In order to prove the concept, I used a sample scenario where a health care customer needs to fill in the data into Patients table through rapid start. I created couple of relevant objects in AOT as seen below:

In Rapid Start, I imported the metadata from my current AX instance using the Administer page. In the Design area, created a new functional area in rapid start with a question group and one question of type "Table" in it. As I had to load the Patients data into PatientTable, I used the Table type question that gave me the option to generate a template. Next I published the functional area.

In order to use the functional area, I had to create a template. So created a template named "Patients" and associate the functional area with it. Once this is done, created a new project in Configure area of rapid start as shown below:

Next step was to fill in the base information for my LE as shown below:

After that I was presented with the question that was created earlier for Patients data. On this page, I downloaded the template, filled it with necessary data and uploaded it.

Now the project was 100% complete and the configuration was ready to be loaded into target AX deployment. See the log results below.

For cross verification, below is what I got in the AX Patients form as expected :)

 

Partitions in AX 2012 R2

With the announcement of MS Dynamics AX 2012 R2 release on December 1st, 2012, MS has given a powerful feature in R2 called data partitions. Now in AX, there is a element above the company called "Partition". Just like with every new AX installation there is a default company "DAT", now there will also be a default partition called "Initial". This is really powerful feature as the companies now have the leverage to use an installed AX instance across multiple deployment sites. Couple of features associated with partitions are:

• System data like batch, AIF, workflow is shared between partitions. This has been achieved by introducing a new table property "SaveDataPerPartition" on these tables.
• Business data like UoM, Address Book is shared among companies within a partition only. A company can be associated with multiple partitions with the same name.
• Users only belong to a particular partition.
• Some drawbacks like intercompany does not work across partitions and companies across partitions can not be merged are also there. Cross company queries might not work across partitions.

Unpublish standard template or functional area in rapid start services for AX 2012

I recently come across a situation where I had to modify the default data given with Account Categories template in Rapid Start Services. Even with the administrative rights for the user, I was not able to unpublish the template or functional area (GL in this case). I then came to realize that MS has not given permissions to update the contents of default (hidden) templates like account categories. One can unpublish his own custom template of functional area but not the ones that come as default and for which there is no question present in the question group.