tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35671917794103838852011-09-28T11:15:55.554-07:00This blog is about Dynamics Ax and Microsoft in as far as Microsoft bought Navision on July 12 2002. The contents express my personal opinions and as such should not be construed as representing in any fashion whatsoever the opinions of any of my current employers whomsoever they might be. Have fun reading and commenting. /Sven JochimsenSven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.comBlogger641100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-3625559043499537422009-03-16T08:11:00.000-07:002009-04-10T13:43:50.444-07:00

Convergence just finished, yes I go to this Ax reunion rather than the Partner one now as I am officially on the customer side of the fence now.I noted a few presentations I found of interest notably one on my old bugbear performance issues, and the advice given I can only subscribe too, I just wish that they would consider doing some violence to the functional data model in order to enhance

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-91766590179032348112009-03-13T03:56:00.000-07:002009-04-10T13:42:52.865-07:00

I have been silent for a long time due mostly to being overworked, something I am sure we are all familiar with :-).Anyhow I have just completed a process whereby we have migrated our current core application to Ax 2009, it was less of a positive experience than I had hoped.During the upgrade touching the few objects that we had changed in our developments in Ax I noted some pretty silly little

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-56232101703790407942009-02-28T12:40:00.000-08:002009-03-16T07:56:38.177-07:00

We are all faced with doing an upgrade to the next version of Ax and when faced with this we have to review all of the customizations having been done to upgrade / change / remove them depending upon their relevance.This part of an upgrade project can from experience take between 10% of initial development effort all the way up to and including 100%+ of the initial dev effort depending upon what

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-5132088134815195022008-06-20T04:48:00.000-07:002009-03-31T13:01:05.693-07:00

After finishing this work on Ax V4 Ax V2009 was rolled out and my work should really start over again.However as I am lazy I will simply try to migrate the code and tell you more afterwards.Noted some interesting changes in V5 as regards multi threaded execution of processes using the new batch service.Will report back on this later in more detail./Sven

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-13267158960752551602008-05-28T11:07:00.001-07:002008-05-28T12:32:55.384-07:00

I have before written about my frustrations as regards Dynamics Ax’s lack of a status inventory qualifier.In order to somewhat help in this regard I have made an example project with the addition of a new Inventory Status table.The project is done in a Standard 4.01 SP2, to be precise it is :The Chinese Localization does not pose any issues as such as no elements touched are touched by the LOS

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-55940348826124568082008-05-26T00:47:00.000-07:002008-05-26T01:25:59.574-07:00

I have not noticed when exactly the change was made but when posting to the LedgerBalanceTrans and LedgerBalanceDimTrans the date is no longer always the first or last day of a financial period it is the equivalent of the Transaction date. Validated from V3 onwards.This has important performance impacts on reporting when you use financial dimensions actively.Normally you would expect to see a

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-20865773401074072002008-05-24T09:55:00.000-07:002008-05-24T10:05:48.487-07:00

Microsoft has recently gone RTM on Ax 2009 or version 5 and in so doing they have removed a few functionalities as opposed to the last TAP version I saw but not much and they are on schedule to make their next fiscal year interesting.This is the first version of Ax where all of the core development has been done in Redmond, it will be interesting to see where things go, some sources say the

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-59958520364704935702008-05-02T10:17:00.000-07:002008-05-26T00:42:46.313-07:00

I wrote on this subject a few months ago and a comment was made that perhaps a solution could be found by creating appropriate views and stored procedures.I have in several instances tried the problem is the sheer volume of information that the SQL db is asked to manipulate.Concrete example, the customer had built up a database of 24 million inventory transactions, there were 2,5 million lines in

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-43917500065443044332008-03-26T01:21:00.000-07:002008-03-26T01:30:26.015-07:00

I have managed to get hold of a TAP2 and TAP3 version of this software and wanted to give my first impressions of some of the new features.Likes:The Version control built into AxThe workflow wizards in almost all modulesThe Expense module (finally)Dislikes:The Site addition is not really well thought through as it adds another inventory dimension and the companies mostly needing this are heavy

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-34322004935606671442008-03-16T01:30:00.000-07:002008-03-26T01:52:57.103-07:00

I find that the impact of the datastructure choosen to implement Inventdimensions is too heavy performance wise and I would really like to see MS - Ax Team in the future revise this structure.In the product developped before called XAL the inventory dimension fields were present in the tables concerned that is we had the Warehouse as a field on the equivalent to the SalesLine, CustInvoiceTrans,

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-46865214611740018802008-02-21T03:01:00.001-08:002008-03-26T01:19:55.535-07:00

I had a little problem and could not find any reference to a way of doing this, I needed to check before hand if a method was implemented in a given class.After a little bit of searching I came to the sysDictClass which implements a method that enables you to call a method of a class.This Method is called InvokeObjectMethod it accepts a classid and a method name as a string parameter and invokes

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-56849529576282158912008-02-18T03:26:00.000-08:002008-02-21T03:36:26.195-08:00

I have a few months back found a solution.And as is often the case I found the solution in someone else's code :-).Columbus have developed an integration tool called Galaxy, and this tool imports data into a container and then presents that data using a mask in a form, the presentation top labels have exactly the same requirements as my size / color grid screen.That is as the user moves down and

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-82106809510061672212008-02-18T03:24:00.000-08:002008-02-21T03:25:47.569-08:00

I have been busy with a few too many concurrent projects and have therefore been silent for a long time I hope to rectify this now as I am coming up for air again and have a lot of subjects that I wish to get back to / add to the list of subjects covered here.Take CareSven

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-88233660111670863432007-08-23T20:18:00.000-07:002007-08-27T12:22:59.416-07:00

Just installed this on one of my installations and found much to my consternation that MS has continued to rename tables.Even in Service Packs !The Country as it was in V4 and SP1 is now AddressCountryRegion which is consistent with the rest however .....Anyhow enough said I have not found any others, so far./SvenCorrection:Palle commented that as far as he knew the Country had been renamed in V4

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-16655891622917472172007-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:002007-08-23T21:06:58.474-07:00

Was just going through Customersource recently and found an article deatiling the new MS support policy for Ax V3 etc. I found it rather disconcerting, it seems the time frame given to support is now around 17-19 months, from official release of the previous SP.Version Release date Support endsMicrosoft Dynamics AX 3.0 SP4 May 17th, 2005 April 10th, 2007Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0 SP5 February 28th

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-29689591237473585052007-07-20T05:36:00.000-07:002007-07-20T05:41:19.530-07:00

After a lot of further studying it seems that it is not Lock / unlock that have been disabled but the flag that deems whether the screen needs redrawing that does not get set by the fact of updating the labels of the columns in a grid so my problem may not be V3 to V4 related it may be general.Great, well I have a call in and I am trying all sorts of detours in order to get the form to update the

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-65431873188943121382007-07-19T04:06:00.000-07:002007-07-19T23:12:43.807-07:00

This is a subject on which a lot has been written by any number of people so I will concentrate on some small parts of the issues relating to this, and this is not meant as anything else but a starting point.Mostly when you have problems in Ax, as in most other ERP systems :-), it is related to some sort of contention that is concurrent access to key central information, or alternatively to large

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-82002104694292591042007-07-16T05:20:00.000-07:002007-07-16T14:23:24.827-07:00

It seems MS keeps on killing off the MBS leaders, well not really killing off but they all seem to move on at a pace which is not conducive to trust in a business area where turnover is frowned upon.Now we have Kiril Tatartinov as the new head of MBS.He is to replace Satya Nadella who left in March 07.Tami Reller was interim Manager, and is also leaving the MBS sphere, to take on new roles

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-55403791127717476592007-07-15T12:11:00.000-07:002007-07-17T13:22:53.510-07:00

At my last MS presentation there was a big part of the session devoted to the coming of this SP in June this year, and one thing they mentioned which I am very much looking forward to is that it should include some AIF methods allowing for updates of data.Today the AIF is purely an Insert or Send style interfacing tool.Of course this is not my only gripe nor others for more go to Dave's blog on

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-53756038586238610732007-07-10T12:39:00.000-07:002007-07-17T13:25:13.442-07:00

I have come accross a small change in behaviour from V3 to V4 which could potentially be rather adverse in its effects.In V3 if you want to update a screen f.ex. and refresh it in a uniform manner then you calledelement.lock()/*did all your manipulation of screen elementscalled redraw or refresh (if you needed to re-read the data)*/andcalled element.unlock()The functions are still there but they

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-41936144183794225542007-06-22T12:21:00.000-07:002007-07-15T12:38:31.473-07:00

I had an interesting experience the other day, actually I was pretty infuriated initially but now that I have done it I can laugh about it.I had to create for a fashion related business a "vertical" order entry screen as opposed to horizontal one as found in Ax.The project calls for the creation of up to 50 columns of size/Color/style related columns against which it is possible to enter the qty

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-2570551338370131252007-05-08T02:25:00.000-07:002007-05-08T04:22:24.955-07:00

I ended the previous message on this subject by discussing the inventdim and stating that the introduction of this element had caused quite a lot of heartache in many installations.In the previous product (XAL) the fields constituting the stock keeping unit as well as the stocking dimensions were found in all the relevant tables, from the sales order lines through the invoice lines down to the

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-90703250276616166902007-04-16T01:55:00.000-07:002007-04-16T02:14:41.777-07:00

I have one final gripe as regards this process, label files. Someone in their infinite wisdom decided to cancel the GLS and DIS label files and to integrate these in the SYS label file.Aside from the gargantuan task involved, I am sure somewhere along the lines some countries lost some labels, the above is a pain in the neck for anyone having used in their code references to "System" labels that

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-51115574327755147822007-04-12T08:29:00.000-07:002007-04-16T01:54:00.869-07:00

Someone in their infinite wisdom in MS has decided that any fixes to the product Dynamics AX 4.00 SP1 onwards will be distributed in an aod file directly.Why do I state that this is horrible ?Well all fixes will be lumped into one DIS file and new versions will be sent out as new fixes are added, so now we have 4 SP and DIS version number questions that need to be answered by support.When

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-14046362039710585262007-03-14T05:54:00.000-07:002007-04-16T01:55:11.675-07:00

Well here we go I carry on my run through of some of the obstacles I have faced in upgrading from V3 to V4.The CreateLine function on the SalesLine Table has an added parameter that controls credit checking behaviour, incosiderately MS have choosen to add the new parameter before the last parameter which is a string. This means that even though it is defaulted if you are using that last parameter

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-2966198097282093512007-03-13T06:00:00.000-07:002007-03-14T05:29:48.853-07:00

As stated in the earlier posting here is the continuation of my meanderings through the process of upgrading Dynamics Ax V3 code to V4.Several tables have been renamed completely unexpectedly.I have not found them all mind you just the ones that were used by the code I had the pleasure to upgrade.The SmmQuotation tables have been renamed SalesQuotationTable which is what everyone knows from the

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-49124343976055362322007-03-11T20:32:00.000-07:002007-03-11T20:50:33.732-07:00

I have recently been involved in some upgrade projects from V3 to V4 and frankly I am a bit put off by the degree of cavalier change that has been done in the App in V4.As an example I intend to go through some of the changes and evaluate them as being either positive or negative and also to discuss a little how you can get around them.As discussed earlier in V4 MS has reduced the usage of layers

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-88972366080697690452007-01-26T12:15:00.000-08:002007-07-20T04:36:07.272-07:00

I have long wanted to post something on this subject as it is the most often repeated question from customers.There are two main schools of thought :1. Do as little development as possible, and stick to the standard functionality.2. Start adapting Dynamics Ax as needed.The first options seems to be the most intuitively correct option, there is only one issue with this option, that is that Ax in

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-59029946151209389532007-01-21T03:45:00.000-08:002007-01-21T04:13:17.019-08:00

Now that the real V4 has come out, in the form of SP1 or 4.01 depending upon when you asked the question :-), what is it like ?What has changed compared to the buggy version brought out in June ?Well certainly most of the bugs that I have discussed here seem to have been dealt with but some have not and some new ones have appeared, in my estimation SP1 was rushed out the door. The proof of the

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-45835551452523375742007-01-20T08:02:00.000-08:002007-01-20T08:24:09.941-08:00

Well MS have recently announced that they are doing the country localisations in the GLS layer, so where does that leave things ?I am sure that unless someone is very very carefull we will see some strange issues regarding field numbers, for those who know skip my explanation.In Dynamics Ax all objects (Tables, Fields, Classes, Methods, Reports etc) aside from their names receive a number which

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-37091810445332827482006-12-23T13:49:00.000-08:002006-12-22T21:49:34.991-08:00

The manner in which layers were used in the old Ax was pretty clear, we hadSYS, SYP Used by the core systemGLS, GLP Used by the initial added modules which were bought in ( CRM from Hands Norway, Product builder from Aston (now Tectura) HRM from Circle Capital, Shop Floor from Thy Data Center ).LOS, LOP Used by some countries to add functionality ( US EDI connector, Germany Cost Accounting from

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-8491988406611567592006-12-22T12:51:00.000-08:002006-12-22T13:23:58.309-08:00

In Dynamics Ax two inventory dimensions which in most other cases are more or less similair stand out a bit or rather stick out like a sore thumb.One is the warehouse, it has attached to it a lot of functionality, such as quarantine handling or the Warehouse management functionality plus some other basic hookups such as the ability to define a default warehouse by item on Sales / Item / Purchase

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-73320710440590147702006-12-15T14:09:00.000-08:002006-12-22T12:47:52.677-08:00

Back orders in Dynamics Ax, and their treatment leaves a lot to be desired, basically the most advanced functionality availeable is to allow good to be reserved before arrival in order that the system automatically places a physical reservation against the stock that has arrived when it arrives.There is nothing intelligent to allow the treatment of a complete shipment of goods that is arriving to

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-71688664296974488992006-12-05T11:16:00.000-08:002006-12-04T15:39:35.447-08:00

One of the things that most customers wish for when confronted with the reality of the datamodel in Dynamics Ax is some means of attaching meaningfull default values at various levels of a hierarchy to which they attach information.An example could be the wish to dictate that a certain field f'ex the item group is set to a certain value for all items that belong to the category Oranges, as well

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-60539261898022714262006-12-04T13:14:00.000-08:002006-12-04T13:18:27.874-08:00

I am currently working myself into a new job and obviously as with all new beginnings there is a period when you are required more than 150% of the time by your current job and I am therefore finding it less easy to work on the blog expect me back in usual frequence next month, right now I am working up a back log of subjects that I want to address.If you have any subjects that you find are of

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-16322249836816697802006-12-02T10:55:00.000-08:002007-04-16T02:25:36.384-07:00

I often get asked by customers for a basic data model of the Dynamics Ax system and I always have to answer a bit shamefacedly that it does not as of yet exist.But then I manage to show the Visual Morphx explorer or the Visio tool in version 4 and explain that with 1,500+ tables a chart would not be a chart but a panoramic wall chart requiring the deforestation of Finland to create.Nevertheless

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-63329343086872189012006-11-29T03:17:00.000-08:002006-11-29T03:56:26.899-08:00

The pricing mechanism in Dynamics Ax, which was inovative when it was introduced in Concorde, the ancestor of the ancestor of Dynamics Ax, now seems rather dated.As a minimum what is needed in the Ax model is to remove the groups from being directly attached to the product and customer units, as well as opening up for the ability to create prices in one go for more than one product.But really

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-36167741268415655472006-11-28T03:17:00.000-08:002006-11-29T03:45:29.862-08:00

t aAnother thing often asked for in Ax when confronting the larger clients is a price buildup / decomposition possibility.What is meant by this, well really only the option to either by building from the purchase price and adding, f'ex. handling charges, internal stock fee estimations, margins etc etc getting a sales price or going in the other direction and using the sales price and decomposing

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-32676610757754855772006-11-25T14:12:00.000-08:002006-11-26T03:16:51.400-08:00

Dynamics Ax could really benefit from the introduction of some basic SCM functionality that allows orders to be treated as a unit and to be allocated as such.I have many clients in the wholesale business who desire the ability to work with complete orders, typically mail order catalogue businesses are an example, but really any business that delivers multiple parts in an order will desire this

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-21991136683997566922006-11-23T03:18:00.000-08:002006-11-22T23:01:22.498-08:00

I ended my previous post on this subject by reviewing several facts, basically Ax has had one new version in 4 years under MS, Nav has had 4 new versions, GP has had 3 new versions.Inspite of the above facts I concluded that MS had two options as regards choice of "The" product with which to replace the others, one is "Green" the other is Ax.Let me explain my reasoning for this.MS have a general

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-72741151948341264122006-11-22T09:20:00.000-08:002006-11-22T09:34:24.571-08:00

Just to conlude as I have been guilty of not being completely clear about what the rules were that we worked out with the clients in question.They are as follows, all localisation as well as any additional functionality added for one or more countries have to adhere to them in the customer implementation.1. All code added to be rendered contralable through added parameters in the corresponding

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-22901907559152899802006-11-21T08:53:00.000-08:002006-11-23T23:00:39.986-08:00

In my previous posting I posted that I believed that MS should introduce a new approach as regards all localisation developpment efforts.Max Belugin (a co blogger whose blog you can find in the links as well as the man behind a highly recommended tabax as well as featuring prominently on the axaptapedia site and running the russian Erpkb.com) was so kind as to respond by asking what I believe the

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-35650178833349698232006-11-20T09:30:00.000-08:002006-11-20T00:41:15.991-08:00

I promised in an earlier post to discuss what I see as the failings in the approach taken by Microsoft's Localization development team.Here goes at least for a start.The feature keys and their close cousins the security keys are a very underutilized tool in the product, they allow you in one case to disable entire parts of the system, that is to not even have a trace of the fields and tables in

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-85058407820880986212006-11-19T14:15:00.000-08:002006-11-20T00:21:51.791-08:00

Dynamics Ax should really have this functionality as Microsoft targets Dynamics Ax at companies of a size that typically create or have a form of commitment accounting for at least part of their purchases.In implementations that I have done / participated in we have often been called upon to create a commitment accounting process, whereby the customer would be able to budget for purchases, and

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-38975786305577915632006-11-18T09:25:00.000-08:002006-11-17T16:47:21.001-08:00

I concluded my previous post by stating that not a lot has changed from 2002 to today, and that is true from a market penetration perspective as well as measured by market share of each product in the various geographies that the products are sold in.As best gleaned from the number of re-sellers and the market perception as well as gartner analysis reports that I have had access to.However in one

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-30491979867518040942006-11-17T15:32:00.000-08:002006-11-17T09:24:54.131-08:00

This post is a bit of a provocation and at the same time a reflection upon the current situation, the past and potentially the future.How did the Dynamics product range as it stands today come about ?Microsoft announced the purchase of Great Plains in December 2000, just one month after Damgaard and Navision merged in November 2000, Great plains had itself in it's efforts at seeking inorganic

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-74360081146892203392006-11-16T00:31:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:32:38.394-08:00

I must admit to being puzzled by the strategy being followed by Microsoft in this domain.When the Damgaard brothers introduced the product in 98, there were 3 different price tiers with level 1 being limited to 10 concurrent users, the next level pricing AOS's expensively, and the last fully fledged pricing everything including a large qty of AOS's.Each level basically changed the price by about

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-40830588327030702412006-11-14T08:57:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:31:06.797-08:00

Dynamics Ax is very well stocked with functionality in the area of SCM, it has a good functionality set around this area.You can in a flexible manner configure whether or not you wish to use more or less "dimensions" to control any given items, where the dimensions denote either item dimension that are part of the SKU, or are so called storage dimensions whose purpose is to help you keep track of

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-49628440707743475052006-11-12T02:24:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:30:26.480-08:00

Miscellaneous charges are a great tool in Dynamics Ax in order to control the value of your inventory as well as to add any number of extra cost components / side entries during the posting process.As always :-) there is room for improvement in this functionality.One of the areas that would be nice to expand upon is to have the ability to create purchases of Misc charges and to have a means of

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-68844342874361039632006-11-10T03:14:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:29:52.116-08:00

Views in Dynamics Ax are a great tool to improve performance, simplify code as well as allow easier reporting.Historically views were introduced in version 3 in order to circumvent a scalability issue in the standard product as regards the updating of ledger transactions.Ledger transactions are as in any ERP a type of transaction generated by many processes in the product, f'ex. the update of a

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-77328766729494138972006-11-09T08:53:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:29:27.644-08:00

The layers in Ax are a great addition to the product they enable you the user to install and maintain code in distinct files and thereby to ensure that you get a more stable system as an end user.Where does the wheel fall off ?Well the problem is that there are any number of add-ons availeable for Ax and they all require a place to be stored, furthermore Microsoft itself is a big consumer of

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-59877047871465151382006-11-08T08:54:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:28:09.867-08:00

In Dynamics Ax there is a very nifty facility enabling you to almost do kitting that is to sell commercial Kits.I have seen quite a few projects where the functionality has been re-developped rather than take the functionality that is there and use it.The reason mostly is because people do not know the functionality is there, or that people rightly see that it does not function at the right time

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-13088481499409511532006-11-07T09:00:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:27:51.401-08:00

Adresses and Dynamics Ax.In Dynamics there is a very nice concept surrounding adresses that allows you to tie an address quite easily to almost any object.The adress management is also very nicely conceived in such a manner that the format used depends on the country to which an adress belongs, which allows for addresses being printed out in a controlled manner on documents without empty lines

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-17222270616474857012006-11-06T08:44:00.000-08:002007-07-20T06:11:15.990-07:00

It is possible as discussed elsewhere in this blog to share information / tables across companies, this is done using an AOT entity called a TableCollection.I had some trouble sharing some specific tables as you can see from the error report I made and I had to resolve the issue by manually changing the XPO file and importing it as it was not legal to do it in Axapta itself.Here is the error

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-21631447139637444162006-11-05T08:46:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:27:10.459-08:00

An often misunderstood part of Dynamics is it's ability to share information in between companies.Why do I say that it is often misunderstood ?Because it is presented as a solution to the much more complicated arena of multicompany / departments sharing in modern companies.In Dynamics there is no native mechanism that enables the control / setup of such entities in the product.You have to work

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-48123907553654697872006-11-03T09:44:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:26:42.285-08:00

If you follow some of my links on the sidebar you will eventually get to a site called Microsoft Business Framework, this site is the site of the "tools" people that are working on the next version of Dynamics in a general sense, and also providing tools for all the competitors of MS in the arena of developping ERP/BMS systems. The project was meant to have been used to create what in the press

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-7765331173452205422006-11-02T09:02:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:26:21.331-08:00

Again whilst doing a customer implementation I came across a bug in Axapta SP4 and SP5 which will be corrected I am told in SP6.The bug can be reproduced by the following means:Go to Accounts Payable / Periodic / Purchase Order Update / any of the optionsDo not select any orders just change the Quantity Parameters back and forth, after 2 goes you will get a message about a record not being able

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-9890351475278254512006-11-01T08:49:00.000-08:002006-11-16T01:25:42.579-08:00

Whilst helping a customer during implementation of their Axapta system I came across a bug, I have notified the support organisation and have been told it wil be fixed in SP7 which I find rather baffling as the bug steems from code introduced in SP4.Anyhow.If you are using IMTS, and have installed SP4 and are using physical valuation and you have activated the warehouse dimension then a bug /

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-63100357157481699012006-10-24T02:01:00.000-07:002006-11-16T01:25:11.295-08:00

Using std Axapta 4.0 with accounts not done incl. Tax.That is in Ledger Parameters / Tab Tax untick the include VAT and in the Ledger Journals do the same either at header or setup levels.Then create an intercompany link between two companies, with the appropriate setup.Add a line that posts an amount with a TaxGroup and a TaxItemGroup that gives a VAT rate.The system when checking the journal

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-38032763945825824402006-10-22T01:49:00.000-07:002006-11-16T01:24:44.335-08:00

Precondition, change V4 setup in demo database to work with not including Tax amounts.That is in GL Parameters Tab Tax remove including tax tick and do the same for the journal.When you create a Daily journal in the GL with only ledger accounts, and set 2 or more lines with VAT with one setoff line the verification process finds no errors but posting tells you that you have a difference.The

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-69343031490652127612006-10-20T09:38:00.000-07:002006-11-16T01:24:00.661-08:00

In AX V4 August release the following intercompany related bug has been found.It is possible to create intercompany Links between companies and Axapta will in those instances in V4 maintain information about the established invoices and will try to settle on both sides simoultaneously.This works well, except in the case where you decide to use an intercompany account but not to do the full

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-61966394758649325952006-10-15T09:35:00.000-07:002006-11-16T01:23:14.001-08:00

The good the bad and the ugly surrounding the release of this long awaited upgrade to V3.V3 was launched in September 2002 which means that it took Microsoft almost 4 years to launch a new version after V3.Version 2.5 was launched in Dec 2000 and 2.1 in 1999 and 1.0 in April 1998.It seems the product launch cycle is getting longer rather than shorter.One could ask the question what happened.If

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-72473877912755560032006-10-01T09:32:00.000-07:002006-11-16T01:22:31.345-08:00

Generally I like the product as such, which should come as no surprise to those who know me, I have been working with it pretty much since it was made and before that with it's predecessor etc etc.Anyhow notes :Like:AOS robustnessIn V3 the AOS could at times seem a bit fragile and if you stopped a server you were certain that all the users were thrown out / off the system. With V4 some new

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3567191779410383885.post-41697000131994628222006-09-05T09:27:00.000-07:002006-11-16T01:22:01.702-08:00

Hello this is just the initial installment of my blog on the subject of Dynamics Ax, I will be using it to relay my impressions of and around the product and generally also the actions of Microsoft in this market place.I do not have the time right now to say anything about who I am and why indeed you should waste your valuable time reading any of this but I hope to render it an interesting

Sven Jochimsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11295332540440064158noreply@blogger.com0