Relationships on GL Account Structure in MS Dynamics AX2012

Further to my last post on Relationship types in Organization administration module of AX2012, I came to know that in GL, on Account Structures, the Relationships form not only displays the relationships from Relationship types in Organization administration module, but it also shows you the relations developed as Organization hierarchies. Following procedure illustrates this:

In CEU Company of Contoso dataset, I created an organization hierarchy named “Test”:

Viewing the hierarchy, I then selected CEU as the LE and Administration (UK), Administration (US) as departments under this LE. Under each respective department, I then selected Advertising (UK) and Advertising (US) as cost centers as shown below:

Publishing the hierarchy makes it available to appear in the Configure account structure form:

I then edited the account structure and selected on Test record (Party A = Department, Party B = Cost Center). At this point, do select both Test records as it will end up showing no matches while doing the transaction entry. Activate the account structure.

For transaction entry, I used the General Journal and selected a Sales account (4***) on line. Now when I selected the Department segment on journal line as Administration (UK), the next segment which is Cost Center gives me only one value as shown below:

The system has automatically filtered out the cost center value for me considering the relationship that exists in the organization hierarchy where Cost Center “Advertising (UK)” comes under Department “Administration (UK)”. Same would have happened if I selected Administration (US) as Department on journal line where Advertising (US) would be the only choice to select from available cost centers.

This is really a powerful feature in AX2012, where organizations can leverage the operational hierarchy to control the transaction entry and draw a border line between accounting and operational aspects of the business.

Email templates for employee recruitment process in AX2012

In AX2012 HRM module, there are default email templates available to be used during the employee recruitment process. The templates can be used to send interview invitation, rejection, on board confirmation etc. emails. More flexibility has been provided using the application bookmark variables that can be used within the email body.

You can access the email templates from Human resources>Setup>Recruitment>Application email templates and the bookmark variables from Human resoruces>Setup>Recruitment> Application bookmarks.

Relationship types in MS Dynamics AX2012

A very powerful feature has been added into AX2012 to maintain relationships between different party records in the form of parent child relations. One can access the relationship types form from Organization administration>Setup>Global address book>Relationship types. For example, if I have created a relationship type using the following information:

ID = Child, Party A type = Person, Party B type = Person, Relationship A to B = Child of, Relationship B to A = Parent of

I can now use this relationship while maintaining the Personal Contact information for an Employee record in HRM module. In the personal contacts form, I can specify a person who is the child of my employee. The system will allow you to define the relationship of this employee with contact person using the relationship type.

There are other application areas where relationship type can be used to define relationships between party records like GAB in Home module, Configure chart of accounts in GL etc.

Vendor master data upload using office add ins

I was having really hard time importing the vendor master records using office Adonis for AX2012. Also sent a query to Microsoft to find out how I can use out of box service VendVendTableService in Excel, but I got the feedback that unfortunately one cannot use this service as GAB services are not yet supported with add ins.

I then used the individual tables like DirPartyTable, LogisticsLocation, DirPartyLocation, DirPartyLocationRole, and VendTable in Excel. I also had to create replacement key in respective tables before I could have used them in Excel to populate with data.

After couple of hiccups, it worked really well for me and I was able to create a multiple records of Type "Person" and "Organization" in AX using Excel data publishing. I will try to compile a working document and publish it in my next post.

Configuration Technologies for Products in AX2012

With the move from Manufacture-to-Stock to Configure-to-Order philosophy, companies are looking for a way in their ERP system to accomodate product variants while keeping a balance between stock levels with lead time. In AX2012, Constraint based configuration technology allows to configure products based on customer preferences at the time taking the order. This is different from the previous Product Model functionality in AX2009 as product designner does not have to be aware of X++, rather MS Solver can be used to develop the constraints. As the dependency on X++ is gone along with product model compilation, one does not have to purchase AX development license to configure the products.

Upgrade to MS Dynamics AX2012

With its latest version of AX, MS has given Source to Target model for upgrade. Using this model will help reducing the downtime for the actual production environment (single user mode) while upgrading from AX2009 or AX4.0. One will be able to execute the upgrade tasks on Source system (AX2009/AX4.0) without interrupting the user using the live system, and in parallel prepare the Target (AX2012) system for upgrade.