Understanding Opportunities in AX2009 – CRM Module

Understanding Opportunities in AX2009 – CRM Module

One of the nice upgrades in AX 2009 is the addition of Opportunities in the CRM module.  During a recent AX2009 -CRM module training event, it became clear that the term “Opportunities” doesn’t always fit nicely into the way some organizations think about their CRM process.  Here’s a quick overview of Opportunities and how they fit into AX.

One way to think about Opportunities is your Pre-Sales Bucket.  This bucket contains everything you need to create, develop and close sales deals.  Opportunities pick up where Leads end.  In most organizations it is important for there to be separate definitions for recording and working with potential-sales that are unqualified (Leads), and qualified (Opportunities).  In AX2009, Opportunities keep up with:

·Communications

·Contacts

·Competitors

·Partners

·Products being quoted

·Quoted Prices

·Quantities

·Sales Stage

·Associated documentation

Opportunities are not necessarily companies, and they can contain multiple contacts.  From AX2009:

When your lead record has become an opportunity record, you can start to track more sales-related information such as quotations and competitors. Tracking the competition for the sale can give you valuable information about how to win the opportunity and gain another customer.

When you manage your opportunities, you can also give probability percentages and prognosis ratings to the opportunity and track the probability percentage, or chance that the opportunity will become a customer.

As soon as you have provided quotations and the contact at the opportunity has made a decision, you can track whether you won the opportunity and the reason why you won it. If you have lost the opportunity, you can list why and to whom you lost the opportunity, as this information might be useful later.

The slide below illustrates how Opportunities and Leads fit into the AX2009 – CRM flow:

Top 10 New and Improved Features of Project Accounting Module in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Top 10 New and Improved Features of Project Accounting Module in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012


With all the buzz and anticipation around the launch of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 later on this year, it’s a good time to review the new functionality of the Project Accounting module (to be called Project Management Accounting in AX 2012).

Why focus on Project Accounting module in particular?

Project Accounting supports a wide range of functions and empowers companies to meet the challenges of growth, while providing the necessary business insight for success in the increasingly competitive global environment.


Here are the top 10 new and improved features of the module:

1. Project Timesheets – It seems that improving the user experience has been the focus here. The timesheet comment functionality and the start/end dates are much more user-friendly in AX 2012. Most importantly, users will be able to create and manage favorites in Enterprise Portal allowing them to create timesheets in much quicker fashion, improving both user experience and productivity.

2. Advanced funding – this one is an attention-grabber! As a much requested feature, advanced funding in AX 2012 allows project funding to be shared amongst any number of internal or external parties, aligning your ERP configuration even closer with your actual processes. Users will be able to set up funding limits for one or more customers per category, category group or transaction type.

3. Collaboration workspace – for all of the collaboration enthusiasts, the new version brings even more excitement with the ability to create and add collaboration workspace in projects, campaigns and opportunities where project team members can quickly organize and share information within AX, making it the one-stop-shop for information while increasing the team’s efficiency and organization levels. The new options can be set up and default the collaboration work spaces for users.

4. Management of projects in Enterprise Portal – AX 2012 puts an end to the time and expense only entries in EP, allowing Project Managers to create and manage the entire projects in EP. Workers can enter daily working hours in a much improved manner and project managers can approve it directly in EP, which significantly speeds up the process and increases worker productivity.

5. Beginning balances – this is an improvement with a huge impact. In AX 2012, users will be able to enter a beginning balance for a project which will help in transferring projects to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 from legacy project management systems without affecting the general ledger. Let’s say you have been tracking a project in an outside application but managing costs and revenue in AX. You will now be able to transfer the project to AX, specify a beginning balance and then track all the information in one place.

6. Project revenue from free text invoice - AX 2012 makes it possible to track revenues which are billed though free text invoicing. This was a significant requirement missing in AX 2009.

7. Transaction adjustments - this feature will make correction of wrong project entries easier, allowing adjustments even after invoicing. Adjustment dates can be used as project dates for adjustment transactions (as opposed to transaction dates only). The relationship between the original, reversed, and the replacing transaction can be well traced now with information of what exactly the user adjusted.

8. Project budgeting – Microsoft has taken budgeting to a new level with major enhancements in this area in the AX 2012 version. Project budgeting will be available at the activity level. Project budget revisions can be created at various levels of the project and can be submitted for review and approval, which once approved would trigger an immediate change to the overall project budget. A complete history or audit trial of the proposed, original, accepted (approved), and rejected budget is available for review at any point of time. Original budget can be created to define a budget at various levels in the project hierarchy and it can be submitted for approval. It can also be allocated over a period of time. The project financial inquiry and the project financial status reports now presents details of the project budget also. If you are working on a multi-year project, you can carry forward project budget at the end of the year to the future year and make necessary changes to the general ledger accounts associated with them.

9. Item charges/costs in PO, SO and invoice lines will now be recognized in projects. Any taxes for the item charges will now be going to an expense account and item charges will now be recorded in project budgets and commitments. This is an important functionality which was not available in Dynamics AX 2009.

10. Progress billing, estimates and revenue recognition – the introduction of these features addresses the critical issue of ERP migration. When migrating from one ERP system to another, data migration is a serious issue. Bringing in the existing data into the new system is where all the hurdles arise. For example, ensuring that revenue continues to be recognized for the fixed price projects that are already underway. Since revenue recognition depends on the completion % of the project, the data must be migrated so that both % of work completed (actual cost) and the remaining work (cost to complete) are reflected in proper accounts.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 also promises to give a significantly improved UI experience across the modules with the introduction of new form controls such as action panes, fact boxes and fast tabs, allowing users to access critical project data in a single form without having to navigate to the related forms.

AX Scribe Services

AX Scribe Services



Error:

Solution:


Scribe account is locked out. Need to get it unlocked! 

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 AOS Troubleshooting tips, AOS Troubleshooting Tips and Techniques in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 AOS Troubleshooting tips, AOS Troubleshooting Tips and Techniques in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

·         AOS Configuration

·         Best Practices

·         Troubleshooting AOS issues

·         Finding Sessions and SPIDS

·         AOS Crash Maintenance

·         Tools for Troubleshooting AOS issues

AOS Configuration

·         Application Object Server Configuration

·         Database Tuning Tab

·         Tracing Tab

·         Performance Tab (Dynamics AX 2009)

·         Dynamics AX Server Configuration Utility

·         Configuration stored in Registry:

o   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Dynamics Server\4.0\instance\config name

·         Multiple AOS instances and configurations

Server Configurations

·         Each AOS instance listed

·         Each AOS has configurations

Application Object Server Tab

·         Configuration command to run at startup

·         Allowing clients to print from AOS printers

·         Enabling breakpoints

·         Fatal error reporting

·         Load Balancing

AOS Load Balancing

·         Number of client sessions

·         What is a load balancer

·         How connections work when using load balancing

·         Factors when deciding if you need a load balancer

·         Provides fail over ability

·         Balances number of clients between AOS’

·         Control the number of clients per AOS

AOS without clustering

·         With no options marked in the load balancing section each client will connect to the AOS in their client configuration

Each AOS balancing load
As a client connects to an AOS that AOS queries the database to determine which AOS the client will connect to

      AOS as Load Balancer

·         The load balancer makes the connection to the database and determines which AOS the client will connect to

·         This AOS will not accept any client connections nor do any processing

·         This AOS does not count against your AOS licenses

     AOS Load Balancer - Client Configuration

·         In the Dynamics AX 4.0/5.0 Configuration utility you will want to specify the machine name and port number for the AOS load balancer instance

·         Add AOS member instances after the load balancer

      If you do not use a load balancer then you specify all the AOS member instances in your client configuration.  If you do used the load balancer then specify the load balancer first and then the AOS member instances in case your load balancer AOS fails. 

      Database Tuning Tab

·         Max open cursors

·         Max buffer size

·         Allow index hints in queries

    Tracing Tab – Server Settings

·         SQL Statements

o   Queries issues to the SQL Database

·         Bind variables

o   Parameters specified for each of the SQL queries

·         Row fetch

o   Number of rows returned by SQL

·         Row fetch summary

o   Same as row fetch, and includes timing information

·         Connect and disconnect

o   Connections and disconnections to SQL

·         Transactions: TTSBegin, TTSCommit, TTSAbort

o   Transaction statistics, not necessary if X++ method tracing is enabled

    Tracing Tab – SQL Settings

·         RPC round trips to server

o   Remote Procedure Calls between Client and Server

·         X++ method calls

o   Method calls within the X++ language

·         Function Calls

o   X++ built in functions such as int2str

·         Number of nested calls

o   Depth of the X++ call stack when collecting traces

    Dynamics AX 2009 features

·         Performance tab

·         64 bit

·         Batching

·         Time Zones

   Best Practices

·         Separate AOS’

·         Separation of environments

·         Monitoring performance

·         Code deployment

·         Applying latest Kernel hotfixes

   Separate AOS’

·         Consider separating out the following processes / components  based on load

o   Additional Dynamics AX components

o   Third Parties

o   Batch

   Separate out environments

·         Servers for production environment should be on dedicated boxes

o   Server resources dedicated to production performance

o   Reduce risk of development code utilizing majority of Servers resources

o   Application of hotfixes

o   Additional components that need .Net BC

   AOS Baselines

·         Performance Monitor

o   Memory

o   CPU

·         Memory usage

o   Different times of day

o   When specific processes run

    Note:

    On Dynamics AX 4 memory limitation of 2 Gig for each AX32serv.exe process

•       If AX32serv.exe consistently around 1.5 gig of memory start evaluating processes and consider adding another AOS

•       If AX32serv.exe reaches 1.8 gig of memory you will likely see user connections to the AOS denied and possibly AOS crashes

   On Dynamics AX 2009 if running on Windows Server 64 bit editions the limitation is based on memory in server.

   Proper code deployment

·         Code promotion schedule

·         Promote code during down time

·         Determine if you will use XPO’s or layers to move code from development/test to production

·         Test code in environment that matches production before deploying   

   Apply Kernel Hotfixes

·         Improved Stability

·         Apply on all machines with a Dynamics AX components

o   Dynamics AX client

o   Enterprise Portal

o   SSRS machine

o   Any machine with .Net Business Connector

Troubleshooting AOS errors

·         Application event log

·         RPC errors

·         Connection issues

·         AOS Crashing

Application event log

·         Windows default event logging tool

·         Different types of events

o   AOS starting

o   User errors

o   Cache flushing

o   Crashes

Events related to connection

·         Lost connection to AOS

·         Cannot or lost connection to SQL

·         Lost connection to the AOS

Connection to AOS

·         Object Server 01: RPC error: Client provided an invalid session ID 75

o   This error message indicates that the AOS has crashed.  After the AOS crashed a client that was open when the crash occurred tried to connect to the AOS.  Since the AOS was restarted it does not recognize the existing client connection.

o   To resolve this issue the client has to be shut down and restarted

• Object Server 01: No ping from 77. Terminating the session.
• This error message indicates that the end user ended the client session before the AOS could return the requested results to the client. 
• To prevent this error message end users shouldn’t end task (ctrl –alt – delete) their Dynamics AX session.  Instead an end user should contact their AX administrator and have them end their session from the online users form.
• Object Server 01: SPID 57 for Session Id 77, is still present in the database. Please delete the SPID from the database.
• This indicates that the end user shut down their Dynamics AX client before SQL  finished processing the request.
• You can delete the SPID or let SQL finish processing
• If you don’t clean up the SPID it could cause issues such as blocking transactions, and open transactions which may lead to transaction log backup failures.

Connection to SQL

·         Object Server 03: Fatal SQL condition during login. Error message: "[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Login failed for user 'Corp\axadmin'.“

• This typically indicates the AOS service account does not have permissions to the database.
• Object Server 03: SQL diagnostics: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Login failed for user 'Corp\axadmin'.. Connect information was: Userid = [], Database = [DAX_Prod], Server = [server1], DSN = [], Other = []
• This is caused by insufficient SQL permissions.

·         Object Server 03: Internal Error occurred executing stored procedure when creating session for the AOS.

o   This indicates the AOS Service account does not have adequate permissions to the stored procedures in the database.

Connection to application files

·         Error in file: C:\Program Files \DynamicsAX\ Application\appl\prod \axsys.aod while reading in record 215B1D0
Windows Error: =  Error Code: 64 = The specified network name is no longer available.
Try again?

o   This error indicates the AOS has lost connection to the Application files.

o   To resolve this error message you need to restart the AOS.

Step by Step installation of AX 2009 on Stand Alone System

Step by Step installation of AX 2009 on Stand Alone System/PC/Laptop or on VMs.

Prerequisites are:


Prerequisites Software:

 VMware Work Station or Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.
 Image Burn (To create the ISO files from .exe or .msi files) SetupImgBurn_2.5.7.0
 Virtual Drive(To read the files from ISOs) SetupVirtualCloneDrive5450
 Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 DVD or ISO
 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD or ISO.
 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008 DVD or ISO.
 Microsoft Active Directory (This is with Server 2003 and 2008, runs on command as dcpromo).
 Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows Vista or Microsoft Windows 7 DVD or ISO.
 Microsoft SharePoint 2007 or 2010 DVD or ISO.
 Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and Microsoft SQL Server Analytical Services.
(While installation of SQL, these are the SQL components)
 Microsoft Internet Information Services (Part and package of Server 2003 and 2008).
 Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) for EP (Enterprise Portal)


Prerequisites Hardware:

 Laptop/Desktop with Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7.
 Internet Connection (for Online Training and Software or patch download).
 Headphones with microphone.
 Recommend RAM from laptop or PC: More than 3 GB.
 Recommend HDD from laptop or PC: More than 40 GB.
 Recommend Processor from laptop or PC: More than Dual Core (Intel or AMD)


Case One:

I have Laptop, I need to format and I have Windows Server 2003, need to install the AX 2009 over it.

Well in this case first Install the Windows Server 2003. Change the computer/server name to "AX2009" Once you installation is done and you see the computer name is "AX2009", go to run and type dcpromo to create the AD on the same system, since AX 2009 need AD for authentication.

Type domain name as corp.daxadmin.com as FQDN or normal daxadmin.com

If this not support, try to put on your internet connection via dongle. or if you LAN then it would be a great thing just have static IP.

Now once its done with AD for user Administrator  you need to input some complex password like p@ssw0rd.

Now you can enter the laptop or server with domain\user.
In your case it should be corp\administrator or daxadmin\administrator and the password you chose.

Now if all things are well and if you are able to get into the desktop view, now install the SQL 2003 or SQL 2008 R2.

Once done Install the AX 2009 with Microsoft AX 2009 Install documents.

Create user groups in AX 2009

Create user groups in AX 2009

In Microsoft Dynamics AX, permissions and user rights are granted to user groups. By adding a user to a user group, you grant the user all the permissions and user rights assigned to that user group. Before a user can access the product, he or she must be added to the list of product users and added to at least one Microsoft Dynamics AX user group.

By creating users and user groups, you establish who can access Microsoft Dynamics AX and what permissions users have when they are working in the application. Microsoft Dynamics AX requires that all users be listed in Active Directory directory services on your domain controller before they can be enabled on the User form. If a user is not enabled on this form, they cannot access Microsoft Dynamics AX. For more information, see Working with users from Active Directory.

Default

An administrator user and an administrator user group are created the first time Microsoft Dynamics AX is run. The user who opens the first client to connect to an Application Object Server (AOS) instance after installation is set to the Administrator user. The Administrator user is added to the Administrators user group. Administrators have complete access to all forms, menus, tables, reports, the Application Object Tree (AOT), and all security keys.

By default, Microsoft Dynamics AX also creates a Guest user account. The guest user does not have any permissions in the system, and is designed to give access to a public Enterprise Portal site. For detailed information, see Give users access to an Enterprise Portal Internet site in the Enterprise Portal Administration Guide.

Note:

Restrict the number of users who are members of the Administrators user group, which has access to all fields, tables, reports, and modules in Microsoft Dynamics AX by default. If users are made members of the Administrators user group, they can potentially view reports or data that they should not be able to see or change configurations and business logic in the system. Ideally, only those individuals who will configure and administer Microsoft Dynamics AX should be members of the Administrators user group. To further limit this vulnerability, you can create domain administrators, who have administrator rights only to their respective domains. For more information about domain administrators, see Create domain administrators.

Deciding on the structure of your user groups

The groups you create and the permissions you assign to user groups should reflect the structure of your organization. For example, you may want to create groups for Human Resources, Finance, Sales, and Production to name a few, and then set the appropriate permissions for these groups. Create user group names that describe the permissions granted for that group, such as Finance - Full, General ledger - Read Only, Accounts payable - Edit. In this manner you avoid confusion if you have to create additional groups.

Note:

When a user is a member of more than one group and the group permissions overlap (for example, a user is a member of two groups that have access to the General Ledger module), the user inherits the highest permission level between the two groups.

When you are setting permissions for each group, work with business decision makers in each department to determine what permissions each group needs and who should be included in each group.

We recommend that as a security best practice, you create a Developers user group to help minimize the number of users in the Administrators user group. By default, only members of the Administrators user group can make changes in Application Object Tree (AOT), the central repository for classes, tables, and other development elements in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Give the Developers user group access permission to make changes in AOT. Restrict the number of users in the Developers group.

To create a group and add users to that group

The following procedure describes how to add users to a group at the time that the group is created. You do not have to add users to a group when it is created. You can add users to a group later on the User form (see Create new users).

1. From a Microsoft Dynamics AX client, click Administration > Setup > User groups.
2. On the Groups tab, create a new group.
3. Enter an identification in the Group column (required). For example, Fin for Finance or HR for Human Resources.
4. Enter a name in the User group name column (required). For example, Finance Department or Human Resources Department.
5. Click the Users tab.
6. Select users in the Remaining users list and then click the left-arrow button (<) to move the selected users into the Selected users list. All users moved into theSelected users list are added to the current group.
7. Press CTRL+S to save changes.

Now that you have created one or more groups, you are ready to assign permissions. For information about how to assign permissions, see Manage security permissions for user groups and domain combinations.

Thanks & Regards,

Umesh Pandit

B.Sc.,MCA,MCP

Microsoft Dynamics AX Consultant

http://msdynamicsaxtips.blogspot.in/

Skype ID: pandit.umesh