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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
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.
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Seitenzahl: 202
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook
Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: August 2013
Production Reference: 1190813
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78216-833-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Sandeep Vaity (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Murray Fife
Reviewers
Angela Buchanan
Kamalakannan Elangovan
Chris Merchant
Muhammad Amir Nazim
Acquisition Editor
Joanne Fitzpatrick
Lead Technical Editor
Antony Lowe
Technical Editors
Larissa Pinto
Amit Ramadas
Project Coordinator
Kranti Berde
Proofreader
Julie Jackson
Indexers
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Rekha Nair
Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
About the Author
Murray Fife is a Microsoft Dynamics AX MVP, a presenter, and an author with over 18 years of experience in the software industry.
Like most people he has paid his dues as a developer, as an implementation consultant, and a trainer. He has a hard-to-find blend of technical and interpersonal skills and spends his days working with companies solving their problems with the Microsoft suite of products, specializing in Dynamics AX solutions.
No ideas are ever created in a vacuum, and there were a lot of people that helped and inspired a lot of what is in this book. Some of the people that I need to thank in particular are Jack Payne, for letting me experiment with coding examples over the many years that we worked together; Larry Farley, for introducing me to Dynamics AX and giving me a whole new world of tools to tinker with; Ryan Kaul, for helping me with my first line of X++ code; Chris Hoer, for showing me all of the ins and outs of Dynamics AX, and for answering all of my many questions; and Andy Vabulas, for supporting me throughout the book.
About the Reviewers
Angela Buchanan is a Software Developer and Technical Consultant for Dynamics AX. She is currently working as a freelance consultant in the United Kingdom.
Angela began working with AX in 2001, while completing her Computer Science degree at The University of Waikato in New Zealand. After a successful implementation of version 2.5, and later upgrade to 3, the husband and bags were packed up and moved over to England to seek out bigger project challenges, and for a taste of world travel.
Since this move, Angela has worked on many AX implementations, specializing in business solutions design, X++ programming, reporting, and business intelligence. She is a Microsoft Certified Professional for AX: Development, Installation, and Configuration, as well as key modules: Finance, Projects, Production, Trade, and Logistics; and is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer for AX.
A big thanks to the author for all his efforts in writing this book and for inviting me to be one of the reviewers. I've learned lots of useful tricks through the process.
Kamalakannan Elangovan started his career in 2005 as a Technical Consultant in ERP for Sonata, where he played a key role in the development of Business Integration solutions for Microsoft. He later moved on to head the Business Integration Development Team. He spearheaded the development of a commodity trading vertical for a U.K.-based ISV. It is through his experience that Kamal picked up his passion for product development, and this passion has driven his career since then.
In 2008 Kamal joined InnoVites and led their product development team, creating one of the first verticals, such as cable and wires, for Dynamics AX on multidimension industry. Currently, he works with CuroGens, Inc. as a Development Manager overseeing the product development efforts. As a Microsoft Dynamics AX enthusiast and architect, he shares his insights by contributing to the Microsoft Dynamics community through his blog http://kamalblogs.wordpress.com.
I would like to thank Packt Publishing and the author for offering me the chance to review and read this wonderful book. It has been a great learning experience.
www.PacktPub.com
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Preface
Dynamics AX is a great application for businesses, but if you are just using it to track customers, sales, vendors, purchase orders, and inventory, you are not getting the most out of the system. There is a lot of free functionality that is built into Dynamics AX, and because it is also built and integrated with all of the other Microsoft tools such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, and the Microsoft Office Suite, there is so much more that you can use to help you make Dynamics AX even more productive.
This book will take you through a number of recipes that will help you extend and personalize your Dynamics AX installation with very little to no coding using Microsoft technologies that should already be available and configured as part of your default installation. As a result, it will just cost you a little elbow grease and a little investment in time.
Each recipe will guide you through all the configurations that you need to make to your Dynamics AX system, and also give you examples of how you can use them in the real world. Although you may not need the particular examples that we show in this book, it should be easy to find situations that you will be able to apply techniques and tools that we will show in this book that will make your life just a little easier.
What the book covers
Chapter 1, Extending Out with SharePoint, will show you how to take advantage of some of the features within SharePoint to help you augment data within Dynamics AX through My Sites and Document Repositories.
Chapter 2, Reports and Dashboards, shows you how to create your own ad hoc reports and dashboards by using tools that you are already using such as Excel, or by using PowerPivot and Power View to create interactive dashboards and reporting galleries.
Chapter 3, Dashboards, Charts, and Scorecards, will focus on how you can extend out Role Centers by using PerformancePoint charts and reports, and also how you can add external data such as RSS feeds and internal blog posts to Role Centers to get real-time information.
Chapter 4, Communication and Collaboration, will show how to link and use the productivity and collaboration tools such as Outlook and Lync to keep an up-to-date track on all your tasks and appointments, and also to contact others inside and outside your organization.
Chapter 5, Using Cases to Manage Incidents and Requests, will give examples of how you can use the new cases capabilities within Dynamics AX 2012 to manage and streamline your business processes.
Chapter 6, Organizing Your Workflows, shows how to take advantage of the in-built workflow capabilities in Dynamics AX 2012 to manage common business processes, and also how to develop your own workflows to manage the not so common processes.
Chapter 7, Reporting in Office, focuses on how you can use the Microsoft Dynamics AX Office Add-Ins to create report and form templates in Word and Excel that are then accessed through Dynamics AX, and also how you can use Visio to create unstructured dashboards.
Chapter 8, Talking to the Outside World, will show how you can use the Customer and Vendor portals that are delivered with Dynamics AX to share information with people outside the organization.
Chapter 9, Creating Help, will introduce the help authoring system that is built into the Dynamics AX framework, and show you how you can take advantage of it to build your own integrated help system and knowledge base.
Chapter 10, Web Services and Forms, will show you how you can use Microsoft InfoPath to create custom forms that are linked to Microsoft Dynamics AX, and also how you can use these forms to capture information for your business.
Chapter 11, Role Center Personalization and Customization, will review all of the user personalization that is available within Dynamics AX such as filtering, cues, showing, hiding and adding fields to screens, and also the creation of custom user menus.
What you need for this book
All the examples shown in this book were done with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 virtual machine image that was downloaded from the Microsoft CustomerSource or PartnerSource site. If you don't have your own installation of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, you can also use the images found on the Microsoft Learning Download Center. The following list of software from the virtual image was leveraged within this book:
Even though all the preceding software was used during the development and testing of the recipes in this book, they may also work on earlier versions of the software with minor tweaks and adjustments, and should also work on later versions without any changes. You can download this software from the links mentioned in the following table:
Sr No.
Software name
URL
1
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (both R1 and R2)
http://www.microsoft.com/
2
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
http://www.microsoft.com/
3
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (both Standard and Enterprise)
http://www.microsoft.com/
4
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (both Foundation and Enterprise)
http://www.microsoft.com/
5
Microsoft Office Excel 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/
6
Microsoft Office Word 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/
7
Microsoft Office Outlook 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/
8
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/
9
Microsoft Office Visio 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/
10
Microsoft Lync 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/
11
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Developer Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/
12
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8
http://www.microsoft.com/
13
Notepad
Who this book is for
Although in some of the recipes that we will show there may be some coding required, the code itself is very simple; so you don't have to have to be a developer, just be willing to get under the Dynamics AX hood for a short time.
And, although we will be using SharePoint and Microsoft SQL Server to configure some of the examples, you don't have to be a SharePoint guru or a DBA in order to make the changes; you just need to be willing to roll your sleeves up and make a few simple tweaks here and there.
Whether you are a power user looking to fill a need, a systems administrator looking for a inexpensive solution to a solve a business problem, or a developer wanting to try out other technologies rather than spend hours coding, this is the book for you.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "From the Organization administration area page, click on the Case workflow menu item in the Cases folder of the Setup group to view all the workflows associated with cases."
A block of code is set as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Then, click on the Save as HTML button within the Save group of the Microsoft Dynamics Help tab to publish the HTML files."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Extending Out with SharePoint
In this chapter, we will show you how to take advantage of some of the features within SharePoint, to help you add value to Dynamics AX through My Sites and Document Repositories. This chapter will cover:
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.
