The slipstreaming process in AX 2012 R3 CU8

The slipstreaming process in AX 2012 R3 CU8  Slipstream updates in AX 2012 R3 CU8:

If you are installing Microsoft Dynamics AX components for the first time and cumulative updates, binary Hotfixes or service packs are available for AX, you can incorporate the updates into the installation by using a process that's known as slipstreaming. 

When updates are slipstreamed, Setup automatically detects and applies them.  In this way, the time that is required to install the whole AX solution is reduced.  Note that components that were previously installed are not updated during a later slipstream installation. For example, an instance of the AOS -- if an instance of the AOS is installed on a server, later if you add updates to this installation source and then you also install another AX component on the same server, the AOS instance is not updated.  

You can slipstream the following kinds of updates: Cumulative updates, binary Hotfixes, help content updates, and service packs.  To find cumulative updates and slipstream them into your installation, go to Microsoft Dynamics Life Cycle Services, and after selecting your project, click updates.  In the updates to include with new installation section, select the slipstreamable update package that you want and download it.  

Once you download the update, you can create a shared network location with the Setup of AX.  The slipstreamed updates can then be included as part of this installation package under the updates folder.  Then when you run Setup and select the components to install, Setup automatically detects and installs the updates.

The Update Folder:

Before you install Microsoft Dynamics AX, you copy the DVD to a network location. This lets you modify the installation media to create a slipstream installation. Incorporate updates into the installation process by copying files to the Updates folder in the shared network location.

In the Updates folder, create a subfolder for each update package that you download. We recommend that you use the Knowledge Base article numbers of the updates as the names of the subfolders. For example, for the update that is associated with Knowledge Base article number 123456, create a subfolder that is named KB123456.

Extract each update into the appropriate subfolder. The following illustration shows an example of the recommended folder structure:

Any time that you apply a cumulative update package or a binary hotfix to your environment, we strongly recommend that you add the installation package to the Updates folder. This practice ensures that you can deploy new servers, clients, and other components of the correct version quickly. You should also make a copy of the updated installation media per your system recovery strategy.

Reference Link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh378076.aspx

Unable to shrink the transaction log in AX 2012 R3

Unable to shrink the transaction log in AX 2012 R3 ?

How to clear the transaction log in AX 2012 R3.

Simple steps>

1. Go to run (Windows Key + R)
2. Type in run window> SSMS 
3. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) will open
4. Open the query. Look below:
5. Type command sp_repldone NULL, NULL, 0, 0, 1 
6. And Done! :)

Happy Daxing!

Thanks & Regards,

Umesh Pandit

Microsoft Dynamics AX

http://msdynamicsaxtips.blogspot.in/

Mail ID: pandit.umesh@hotmail.com

Skype ID: pandit.umesh

Why choose Microsoft Dynamics AX over SAP?

Why choose Microsoft Dynamics AX over SAP?

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Systems has become parallel with business process management and data and so is the reason ERP is sorted most over all other business intelligence tools. 

Few of the most commonly deployed ERPs are Microsoft Dynamics AX, SAP and others. 

Though the claims may vary from business to business, industry to industry, here are few reasons why choose Microsoft Dynamics AX over SAP.

Employee Productivity

Dynamics AX users saw increase in employee productivity and easy business process management.  The usability of Dynamics AX enables employees to adapt to the system and thereby benefitting the business than before. The easy to use and fully integrated business management solution of AX, delivers a holistic approach to the development of the company as well as of the employees.

Low TOC

On the whole, Dynamics AX delivered better ROI when compared to other ERP solutions. Also AX lowered the TOC (Total Cost of Ownership). Panorama Consulting found that Dynamics users realized the benefits of AX to 81-100% over other major competitors SAP and Oracle.

Self Service BI

With the access to information and tools, the productivity of the business is invariably visible.  The same also exists with SAP but the one BIG difference AX and SAP is that, SAP requires deployment of SAP Business Warehouse which requires its own servers. The case is the same with the latter.  They do not require separate analytics program or expensive add-ons.

Deployment Flexibility 

Business process management is always a never ending one and so are the challenges that are faced by businesses. Dynamics AX ERP Systems provide you the angle of flexibility of deployment, which can be further upgraded in the future.

Ranking

Analysts have ranked Microsoft Dynamics AX, which strengthens the reason to choose AX over SAP.  Here are the few ranking of Dynamics AX.

Gartner, Inc>>"Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier-2 Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies"

Nucleus Research>>Lead in its Value Matrix, which is based on functionality and usability (May, 2012).

Forrester Research>>Leader as an Order Management Solution (August, 2010).

Proven Value/ROI

Statistics always remain an integral part of in determining the success of a product.

Here are the key factors which determined the success of Dynamics AX over other ERP Systems.

Dynamics AX customers saw	% by/Months
Increase in productivity	30%
Positive ROI	23
Improved operations and visibility	75%
Reduced staffing cost	75%
Reduced IT costs	44%

Initialize-AXModelStore Needed for CU8

Initialize-AXModelStore Needed for CU8

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj720267.aspx TN this helped me a lot

but the above link only shows to Initialize-AXModelStore for default AOS and DB,

For specific AOS and DB

Example will be:

Initialize-AXModelStore -Server DAXVMSERVER1 -Database MicrosoftDynamicsAX_model

Difference Between AX 2012 R2 and AX 2012 R3 for Developers

Difference Between AX 2012 R2 and AX 2012 R3 for Developers:

Find the excel here http://1drv.ms/1wKYJy9


TN at:

What's new in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 cumulative update 7:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn527179.aspx

What's new in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 cumulative update 8:

http://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/dn762135.aspx

Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 now requires Microsoft Visual Studio 2013

Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 now requires Microsoft Visual Studio 2013

It is important to note what this means.  Development work (ex. Enterprise Portal, SSRS) done in Visual Studio will now be with Microsoft Visual Studio 2013

Note when going to CU8

• Report Viewer 2012 runtime component is required

• Visual Studio Tools (for 2010) will have to be uninstalled via AX setup.exe > Install Microsoft Dynamics AX components > Remove components > under Developer tools mark Visual Studio Tools

• Install Visual Studio 2013 (Professional or higher)

• When going through CU8 installer note the Visual Studio 2013 Dev Tools selection

Download free trail version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718325.aspx

Learning MS Dynamics AX 2012 Programming by Mohammed Rasheed, Erlend Dalen

Learning MS Dynamics AX 2012 Programming by Mohammed Rasheed, Erlend Dalen

Develop and customize your very own Microsoft Dynamics AX solution quickly and efficiently!

Buy at:

https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/learning-ms-dynamics-ax-2012-programming

How to Reset production order status as created in AX 2012

How to Reset production order status as created in AX :

Here you go!:

void resetStatusToCreated(ProdTable _prodTable)
{
ProdMultiStatusDecrease  prodMultiStatusDecrease;
ProdParmStatusDecrease   prodParmStatusDecrease;
Args                     args = new Args();
;

if(_prodTable.ProdStatus > prodStatus::Created)
{
args.record(_prodTable);

select prodParmStatusDecrease where prodParmStatusDecrease.ProdId == _prodTable.ProdId;

if(!prodParmStatusDecrease.RecId)
{
prodParmStatusDecrease.clear();
prodParmStatusDecrease.initFromProdTable(_prodTable);
prodParmStatusDecrease.WantedStatus = ProdStatus::Created;
prodParmStatusDecrease.ParmId = NumberSeq::newGetNum(CompanyInfo::numRefParmId()).num();
prodParmStatusDecrease.insert();
}

prodMultiStatusDecrease = prodMultiStatusDecrease::construct(args);
prodMultiStatusDecrease.initParmBuffer(prodParmStatusDecrease);
prodMultiStatusDecrease.parmId(prodParmStatusDecrease.ParmId);
prodMultiStatusDecrease.run();
}

}

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 cumulative update 8 

http://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/dn762135.aspx

SSRS Subscriptions Setups for Email

Setting up Email Subscriptions in SSRS

One of many things that I liked very much for SSRS over Crystal Reports is “Report Subscription”. At work we use Crystal Reports as our primary reporting system. And to provide scheduled report deliveries via email we have designed our own little .NET application that allows users to create schedule and manage automated report deliveries via email. But if it was SSRS that whole thing can be just removed and we will not need to worry about that application anymore (and this was one of my WIIFM presentation when I was showing why we should at least consider working with SSRS) in addition to better management of reports. I think both Crystal Reports and SSRS have pros and cons, but I am not going to discuss them here because I use both and I am OK with both of them.

This post is about Configuring SSRS to setup email subscription for Reports. This will allow uses (or DBAs) to schedule automated report delivery via email. Before anyone ask, let me say that for this demo I've used SQL Server 2012 dev edition but this feature is not changed from previous versions.

First step to configure SSRS to use SMTP server. And just like almost all MSFT products you cant use basic authentication for SMTP. Which simply means you can’t use external SMTP servers (say Gmail or Yahoo). But fear not … you can use IIS and create Virtual SMTP server for the purpose.

So once you have SMTP server address, all you need is to feed it into “Email Settings” section of “Reporting Services Configuration Manager”. In my case I had a VM as SMTP Server called “SMTPServer”, alternatively you can feed IP address as well.

Next step is to setup report subscription using Report Manager for SSRS. For those who are not familiar with it, Report Manager is an ASP.NET application for managing and administering SSRS. To create subscription for any report just select any report. For this post, I choose a report I had previously created. Once “subscribe” option is selected it will open up a page showing “Report Deliver Options”.

In this page if you don't see “Email” option in delivery method then it means that you have not setup configured SMTP in Reporting Service Configuration Manager. Once “Email” option is selected it will show more options for adding usual items like To, CC, BCC, Subject, Body etc. In Subject you can select in which format you want report to be delivered (if Include Report checkbox is selected) say in PDF, DOC, TIFF etc. You can also choose to include link for report as well.

Next option is to set up schedule. If you have setup any schedule task in SQL Server Agent then you will see that this schedule setup is more like ASP.NET avatar of same scheduler. For this test I set it up to run at every morning 7A.M.

Once that is done you should see that, report gets delivered at 7AM in the morning. But what if you want to manually run that report at some different time ? (what ? you thought that I waited till 7 to make sure that my report get delivered at time ?) There is no direct way to run those reports “on demand” from SSRS administration interface, but you can actually run them from SQL Server Management Studio !! Actually when we create a report delivery schedule it creates a scheduled task in SQL Server Agent and yes, as you can guess timely execution of report is handled by SQL Agent (and one of the reason why we don’t have this feature in SQL Server Express, because it doesn't have SQL Agent). Anyways, if you log to SQL Server instance which holds report server database, and expand SQL Server Agent jobs you will see a job (or jobs) with cryptic GUID names, these are the ones created by report manager for report subscription. Unfortunately there is no visual indication of which job is for which subscription so you will have kind of go through each job and try to guess that job based on its schedule. In my case it was just a one job so it was easy to find Smile. Then, right click on that job and click on “start job at step” to run the job and you should see that report delivered to your mailbox.

Is it possible to kill AX user session after certain period of time? Yes!

How to set up auto log out in Microsoft Dynamics AX

Issue: Is it possible to kill AX user session after a certain period of time? Yes!

AX: AX 2012 R2
OS: Windows Server 2012
SQL: SQL 2014

Solution:

Open AX> System Administrator>users
select the user and click user option.  In the automatic shutdown, fill in the time you want to shut down when left un-use. The default value is "0" means no auto time out! 
You get to it through the user interface of AX.  
Path: Administration > Users > User options button > Automatic shutdown field.

 If set at 0, it will not auto-shutdown.

You can update by code also:
Code is
static void Job5(Args _args)
{
    UserInfo            userInfo;
    ;
    update_recordset userInfo setting autologoff = 15;
}

Question:
If the user is idle for 30 minutes he/she should auto off from AX after 30 minutes can be done by above methods. 

But how can you do this for all of my Users?
Answers: Automatic timeout shutdown value is stored in UserInfo table. 
Here’s the sample job that you can run to set the timeout to 30 minutes for all users:
static void User_Timeout(Args _args)
{
    UserInfo    userInfo;
    ;
    ttsbegin;
    while select forupdate *
        from userInfo
    {
        userInfo.autoLogOff = 30;
        userInfo.update();
    }
    ttscommit;
}
Where to write the code?
Go to AOT (Ctrl +D) -> Jobs -> right click on jobs and create new and then paste the above code and run (f5).


Happy AX Infra! 
Thanks & Regards,
Umesh Pandit
Microsoft Dynamics AX
http://msdynamicsaxtips.blogspot.in/
Mail ID: pandit.umesh@hotmail.com

Skype ID: pandit.umesh

Shortcut keys in AX 2012 Shortcut keys in AX 2012 R2 AOT Shortcut keys

Shortcut keys in AX 2012\ AX 2012 R2

Breakpoints

Command	Shortcut key
Remove all breakpoints.	CTRL+SHIFT+F9
Insert or remove a breakpoint.	F9
Enable or disable a breakpoint.	CTRL+F9
Open the Breakpoints dialog.	SHIFT+F9

Compilation and Help

Command	Shortcut key
Open the Scripts menu.	Scripts icon
Open Help.	F1
Show method parameter help.	CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR
Execute the current job.	F5
Compile.	F7
Compile and close a method.	F8
Stop method execution (break).	CTRL+BREAK
Insert a file.	CTRL+ALT+H

Delete

Command	Shortcut key
Delete from the cursor to the end of the line.	Use SHIFT+END to select to end of line and then DELETE
Delete word to the right of the cursor.	CTRL+DELETE
Delete the word to the left of the cursor.	CTRL+BACKSPACE
Delete the current line.	CTRL+X (with cursor in line, no selection)

Edit

Command	Shortcut key
Insert script.	<SCRIPT NAME>
Insert document header.	///
Comment selection.	CTRL+E, C
Uncomment selection.	CTRL+E, U
Convert selection to lowercase.	CTRL+SHIFT+U
Convert selection to uppercase.	CTRL+U
Display all methods and properties for a selected class.	CTRL+SPACEBAR
Copy selection.	CTRL+C (with text selected)
Copy line.	CTRL+C (with cursor in line, no selection

Find and Replace

Command	Shortcut key
Open the Find dialog.	CTRL+F
Open the Replace dialog.	CTRL+R
Start incremental search..	CTRL+I
Move to next incremental search match in method.	CTRL+I
Reverse the incremental search direction.	CTRL+Shift+I
Remove a character from the incremental search string.	BACKSPACE
Stop the incremental search.	ESC

Go To

Command	Shortcut key
Go to a specific line.	CTRL+G
Go to the next page.	PAGE UP
Go to the previous page.	PAGE DOWN
Go to the top of the code.	CTRL+HOME
Go to the bottom of the code.	CTRL+END
Go to the start of line.	HOME
Go to the end of line.	END
Move one word to the left.	CTRL+LEFT ARROW
Move one word to the right.	CTRL+RIGHT ARROW
Go to the method definition.	F12
Go to the next error message.	F4

Lookup

Command	Shortcut key
Look up a label.	CTRL+ALT+SPACEBAR
Show label text.	CTRL+L
Look up a definition.	F12
Show the syntax of a method or property.	CTRL+SPACEBAR

Save

Command	Shortcut key
Save the selected text to a separate file.	ALT+S
Close the current TAB, discarding all changes since the last save.	F6
Close and save the current code editor window.	F8
Close the current window.	CTRL+F4

Select

Command	Shortcut key
Select all.	CTRL+A
Cancel a selection.	ESC
Select columns.	ALT+MOUSE SELECT
Select a line.	ALT+L
Select one word to the left.	CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT ARROW
Select one word to the right.	CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW
Select text from the cursor to the start of the line.	SHIFT+HOME
Select text from the cursor to the end of the line.	SHIFT+END
Select the previous page.	SHIFT+PAGE UP
Select the next page.	SHIFT+PAGE DOWN
Select text from the cursor to the top of the code.	CTRL+SHIFT+HOME
Select text from the cursor to the bottom of the code.	CTRL+SHIFT+END
Indent the selected text.	TAB
Remove indentation.	SHIFT+TAB
Select area/column/block	ALT+MOUSE SELECT
Cancel selection	ESC
Show white space	CTRL+SHIFT+S

Undo and Redo

Command	Shortcut key
Undo the last action.	CTRL+Z (previous ten actions)
Redo the last action after an Undo.	CTRL+Y (previous ten actions)

AOT

Command	Shortcut key
Open the AOT	CTRL+D
Open a new Development Workspace	CTRL+SHIFT+W
Open a new Application Workspace	CTRL+W
Save all	CTRL+SHIFT+S
Select all application objects in a node	Select one or more application objects under a top-level node, and then press CTRL+A
Open the editor for an application object	CTRL+SHIFT+F2
Open the editor for a query or table	CTRL+O
Open the Comparison tool	Select one or more application objects, and then press CTRL+G
Compile an application object	F7
Go to the previous node	UP ARROW
Go to the next node	DOWN ARROW
Move the node up	ALT+UP ARROW
Move the node down	ALT+DOWN ARROW
Expand the current node	RIGHT ARROW
Collapse the current node	LEFT ARROW
Select multiple items	CTRL
Cancel the selection of an additional item	CTRL+SPACEBAR
Open the Properties sheet	ALT+ENTER
Open the Import dialog box	Select one or more application objects, and then press CTRL+SHIFT+I
Open the Find dialog box to find an element in the AOT	CTRL+F
Open the Help documentation for an element in the AOT	F1