Dynamics 365: Learn in doing

In this post, the focus will be on some basic setup which needs to be understood and implemented for having a functional AX Retail. Assuming that you have already installed the necessary AX Retail components beforehand. If not, Please go through the below links, which you can find already on Internet (no need for any Partner permissions) A nice Youtube video explaining Retail Topology - See here Also you can find the Microsoft's Retail Deployment Guide - PDF here So now let's focus on what all steps you have to take, settings which you have to configure at the AX Retail HeadQuater level in order to have a functional AX Retail. Kindly note that I am us   Configure and Validate Retail Headquarter settings: Initialize Base configuration for AX Retail Verify Stores Publish channels Retail store management and security Hardware profiles Configure Commerce Data Exchange (CDX) Verify Retail server configuration Check Infolog's generated for more information R...

When working on AX implementations, one main purpose of Analysis phase is to identify and estimate the License costs for the Customer. And a major part of the Implementation cost can go into "Purchasing licenses" During such a scenario, I found some helpful information on how to identify the Microsoft SQL Editions. If you want to check the SQL Version and/or SQL Edition of the installed product, you can follow the below simple steps: Connect to the server in which SQL Server is installed. Open SQL Server Management Studio from Programs/Start. Alternatively you can type 'ssms' in Run. Connect to the Database Open a new Query window and paste the below code select @@servername go select @@version go select serverproperty('edition') go Execute the query This will result in Three different output/resultset. The first provides you the "Name of the server", second provides you the "Version of Installed SQL" and the third provides you...

Clearly, we can see focus shift in the Microsoft product (Dynamics AX) towards Retail industry. In this post, I will try to put forward the understanding of Retail industry and map how Dynamics AX is placed in order to support Retail. What is "Retail"? Retail is the sale of goods to the public in relatively small quantities for use or consumption rather than for resale. Or we can also say, It is the process of selling consumer goods and/or services to customers through multiple channels of distribution to earn a profit. According to Wiki , the top ten Retailers are as below. Maybe this helps in understanding what is a Retail industry is all about. Worldwide Top Ten Retailers Rank Company Country of Origin 1 Walmart  United States 2 Tesco  United Kingdom 3 Costco  United States 4 Carrefour  France 5 Kroger  United States 6 Amazon.com  United States ...

Why? - Data partitioning enables us to logically separate all the business data (very few System data, like batch framework and AIF data are shared). With partitions we achieve the isolation of business data, partition specific, with in the same installation of Microsoft Dynamics AX. The business data can be still shared among companies/legal entities that are in the same partition. Microsoft Dynamics AX displays the partition key in the title bar of the client application. Quick Tip: If utilized properly, partitions can help use maintain two systems, for example, test and UAT in the same environment. We can create one partition for Test and another for UAT and provide access only to the Super users / Customers. This will help in utilizing the System resources more effectively and reduce unnecessary hardware costs. Pros and Cons to have Partitions in Production environments: For a production environment, if the Customer demands to completely isolate the data bet...

Hello everyone..  Very rarely you might encounter an issue during installation of an AX component/AOS, where you typically get just an error message: "Error 1001" and nothing else.  Reason: This is a generic issue, which seems to be caused with an improper uninstall. And the reason behind the scenes is that the corresponding registry entries are still present in the "CurrentControlSet" in Registry, even after you have uninstalled the components.  Solution: There could be many ways to clean the Registry entries (regedit). However, my suggestion is to use the tool provided by Microsoft for resolving such issues.  Link -  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17588/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed-or-removed You can download and follow the steps provided by Microsoft to fix the wrong entries in registry and should be able to continue in your next install attempt.  

AX7 / AX2015 / Rainier, we have heard many names for the upcoming and much awaited Microsoft Dynamics AX Product. Seems like Microsoft has settled with the name AX7 now. While looking out for information about AX7, I have bumped into this Microsoft Convergence Video: http://convergence.evo-td.com/library/CS15A000   . Although the site demands you to login, I think it is pretty easy to register. Check it out! Microsoft aims to release this product by End of 2015 and has clearly stated the Guiding principles for AX 7.0. To Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more To create more personal computing To Reinvent productivity and business processes To Build the intelligent cloud Below is some key information on AX Functionality enhancements from the above roadmap session. Productivity: Modern, web-based user experience based on HTML5 technology. The client is device-independent and has a panorama view / dashboard and next ge...

Microsoft has recently released Cumulative update 9 (CU9) for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 very recently and here some information around it. The Knowledge base (KB) article number is 3063879 and the Build number after installation would be 6.3.2000.326. There is lot of information on TechNet – here is the link . CU9 is the second Cumulative Update for Dynamics AX 2012 R3 after CU8 . It only applies to R3 at this moment. However Microsoft has made the Cumulative Update 8 for Dynamics AX 2012 R2.   There by enabling users of AX R2 customers to directly upgrade to AX7 in the near future. In addition to containing several hotfixes that have been recently released, CU9 also includes new features across several different module sets. The details on the new features can be found in the above TechNet article link - do look to the bottom of the page of the “What’s New” link to see the content that’s specific to CU9. Starting with Dynamics AX 2012 R3, you can now slips...

Occasionally, I ran into this issue in my Virtual machine - that the Harddisk becomes full and I couldn't find any specific huge file like, a over-grown database (.mdf, .ldf) files and neither do I have huge amount of backup files (.bak).   After a little searching, I found about the Windows.edb file has grown exponentially and was taking up all the hard disk space. This file is a result of Windows Search service. Below is the problem statement from one of the Microsoft sites:   Problem statement: In Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, the Windows Search Service may bloat the Windows.edb file. When this issue occurs, the Windows.edb file grows to a very large size and consumes lots of disk space. In some instances, the file size can be larger than 50 gigabytes (GB).   Resolution: To resolve this issue, install update rollup 2836988 for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. For more information about how to obtain this update rollup package, click the following arti...

Microsoft Demo VMs are really useful if you are aiming to quickly understand a particular AX component or even to quickly go ahead with a specific development. However, it comes with default settings and thus might cause some issues regarding few components around AX. Today, I have seen such issue with Reporting Services  in my AX 2012 R3 Microsoft demo VM.  Error received when I click "Create report folder" in "Report Servers" AX form.  The report server installation is not initialized Also when I checked in the EventLog, the below errors were logged.  Report Server (MSSQLSERVER) cannot connect to the report server database. & Web service request FindItems to Report Server http://bakedev02-1-1/reportserver/ReportService2010.asmx failed with SoapException. Error: The report server installation is not initialized. When I check the "Reporting Services Configuration Manager", everything looks normal. However, I could NOT successfully load the ...

It is quite often that you will run into issues trying to open Enterprise portal (EP) in Microsoft released DEMO VM environments. This is basically because of the change in IP addresses and also depends on which host the VM is installed (Hyper-V or Oracle Box or VMWare). The same happened to me and I have found posts by several helpful AX Tech people. Below are two such related links.  Here's how you can fix it. (intranet.contoso.com) (VMWare player):  Link EP is not working In AX 2012 R3 VM: Link How to use Set IP Utility: Link  (Needs PartnerSource access) However, My personal suggestion to you is to reinstall EP after you have setup your VM in order to have better results. Of course, this requires that you have the Setup file for the respective AX Version. Steps to follow: Download/collect setup file of the necessary AX Version (like AX 2012 R2 or AX 2012 R3..) Copy the setup files to the VM (or) use a Shared folder from your host Run as Administrato...

Sometimes, even during a simple task like Database backup and restore could be tricky because of a strange error. That is how IT works. During one such operation, I have observed that the Database was struck in Restoring state . And no SQL operations were working on the DB with the usual error message: " The database is not accessible for the user " and " The database is currently in use ". If you have a database backup, which most probably you will have if you were trying to restore the database - you can follow the below steps as a solution: Execute the dbcc detachdb (' Your database name ') The observation made here is that, the GUI way to detach the database does not work. However, when you run this command - you will receive an error message when you execute. However the database is dropped which gives you a scope to attach the database again. Now use the database backup with you to restore the database again. Maybe try to use RECOVERY while...