AX2012

Extensible Data Security examples – Secure by retail channel

When I initially learned AX 2012, before it got released, I was quite enthusiastic about the security changes and the organization hierarchies. Then also I learned about the eXtensible Data Security (XDS) concept. While working on one of my first AX2012 implementations, I also had to do a presentation for a Dutch community. The topic was about the Organizations and Hierarchies. While preparing the session, I suddenly got the idea to combine security role assignments, organizational hierarchies and XDS. After the presentation, I lost the demo and objects used at that time. For another presentation during the Summit EMEA in Dublin this year, also about organizational hierarchies, I decided to create a new demo. In a former blog, you can find the link for downloading the objects for this example. (Extensible Data Security examples for Microsoft Dynamics) 

In this blog, I will explain you how this “Secure by retail channel” works functionally and technically.

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Extensible Data Security examples – Secure by warehouse

In this post, I will  continue explaining the examples created with eXtensible Data Security. In this part, I will explain how I did think of a solution for restricting warehouse access for users. There were a lot of questions on forums in the past about how to secure this. So, for a presentation on the Summit EMEA in Dublin this year, I decided to step into the challenges that comes with securing access to warehouses and related tables like inventory journals or purchase orders. I created a demo which will be covered in this part of the XDS blog series. In addition, this is a good example how to deal with different assignment of groupings per user without creating a policy per group or user.

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Extensible Data Security examples – Secure by legal entity

In my last blog, I shared some code examples for eXtensible Data Security (XDS). In this post, I will explain how it works and also introduce a V2 version which will be more advanced in determine which legal entities will be visible for the user.

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Extensible Data Security examples for Microsoft Dynamics

The last few months, I did spend a lot of time on speaker sessions for the Summit EMEA, MVP Monday webcast and a coming Dutch Dynamics Community event. In the meantime, it was also extremely busy completing work. One of the topics I talked about recently, is eXtensible Data Security (XDS) in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Code examples

There is not that much written related to this XDS topic. You may find two white papers and some blogs posts on this topic. One whitepaper also describes an example how to restrict financial dimension values.

Developing Extensible Data Security Policies (White paper) [AX 2012]

Securing Data by Dimension Value by using Extensible Data Security (White paper) [AX 2012]

As there is in general not that much knowledge and experience, I decided to share my knowledge in this area on some events and now also using my blogs.

I did create and demo some examples what can be achieved using XDS. During the sessions related to this topic, I promised to share these examples. The examples created do have the next features:

1. Secure legal entities
   When you do assign security roles with organizations assigned, by default a user can still see them all in the Legal entities form. This policy has the ability to limit it to only those assigned to the user.
2. Warehouse security
   This example show how you can achieve some record based security on warehouses and sites. It uses a custom setup form to specify the warehouses linked to a user.
3. Retail channel security
   This example is combining the organization hierarchies, security organization assignment and XDS. Quite a powerful example which could be an inspiration for you.

Detailed information how to use these examples and an explanation how they are created will be posted in separate blogs. Watch them coming or come back on this page where the links will be updated. Also, the list with examples might grow in future.

At this moment, I can share the examples based on AX2012 and they reside on my OneDrive. The same features for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations will be added in the future. The location of the code examples might change in future, so ensure to bookmark this page to be able to find the examples anytime. Currently, you can find them on this location: My OneDrive DynamicsShare

If you want to explore these examples, feel free to download and use it. The software is provided as-is and you cannot obtain any rights if something is not working correctly. You have to ensure you will install the examples in a separate environment first and test it carefully. If you have questions or feedback, feel free to add comments or send a message.

That’s all for now. Till next time!

Conversion error in custom entity (AX 2012)

When Microsoft designed the Data Import Export Framework in AX2012 it provided some entities out of the box. In many scenarios you will be missing an entity. You can create your own entities in the development environment from scratch or you can use the wizard which will create the basic objects required for your new entity. Sometimes you might run into errors and you should start troubleshooting. This post will provide a walkthrough how to create an entity. When finished this entity has an error due to conversion of an enumeration field. A solution for this problem is also provided at the end of this blog.

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Troubleshooting Data Import Export Framework

As promised in my previous blog post, I would write two blog posts with a summary from my presentation on the AXUG European Congress. In this post I will provide some tips related to troubleshooting Data Import Export Framework issues.

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Tips about Data Import Export Framework performance

Last week I was a speaker on the first AXUG European Congress. This event took place on May 9 and 1o in Stuttgart. My session was about the Data Import Export Framework in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. The subject was related to performance and troubleshooting. I decided to write a summary of the presentation in two blog posts. In this post I will recap the performance thoughts. (meer…)

Sandbagging ERP implementations

Sandbagging

ˈsan(d)baɡ’ / verb: deliberately underperform in a race or competition to gain an unfair advantage

“You have the solution to this issue? So you were sandbagging us?”, the ERP manager said with a dark face while accusing me. “If you are open to an explanation, I can explain”, I offered, but sadly at that time he was not. And in hindsight I now know why…

Ability to execute

A few projects ago I was part of a large team of consultants and after a successful implementation of the finance module of Microsoft Dynamics AX2012 we then were charged with implementing the warehouse and logistic modules. However, we got stuck with a logistic procedure we didn’t know how to implement.

The solution was regarding the catch weight principle. However, at that time AX2012 was new and not one consultant had implemented nor was familiar with that concept. Which resulted in long meetings about a concept with a lot of Dynamics AX experts and logistic experts from the customer. Being in the meeting reminded me of a comedy named “See no evil, hear no evil”; the blind one and the deaf one trying to explain each other how the world works. So yes, with 15 years of Dynamics AX implementation experience, I didn’t know what Catch Weight functionality did in AX nor was I or the other consultants familiar with the principle. And yes time was wasted on architecting a solution that was not needed since there was standard functionality available.

Gartner did an analysis about ERP for product-centric midmarket companies in which Microsoft Dynamics AX was positioned as a visionary, but not a leader purely because nor Microsoft nor the partners have the ability to execute: “The growth of the market for the product goes faster than the creation of enough capacity of high-skilled business and functional people to serve customers globally. And as a partner we know this is true. Microsoft is leaving recruitment and education to the partners.  Partners are reluctant to invest since there is this looming ‘certainty’ that your employees will be contacted at least twice a year by a recruiter.

Form your own project team

To bring both stories together: there is a lack of Dynamics AX resources and those resources are scattered throughout the market. A few facts

* Most large Microsoft Partners have senior and junior consultants. Most likely in a 1:6 ratio

* The majotity of boutique partners do have very good senior consultants. Most likely in a 1:2 ratio

* ‘Good’ partners have ‘bad’ consultants and ‘bad’ partners have ‘good’ consultants.

* Most freelancers are medior or senior consultants, otherwise they wouldn’t freelance themselves.

* Some freelancers only have one loyalty: Money.

* Employees you are grooming will get poached, eventually.

* And consultants with >15 years of Dynamics AX experience don’t necessarily need to be aware of all the functionalities Microsoft is introducing.

So take all this as granted; if you want the right resources in your project team you have to select them yourselves. You do this when you hire them in your company, so why not do this when forming a project group. Especially if this project group is going to work on automating your business processes.

In my opinion it is quite ok to request resumes and tell the partner you don’t want certain individuals on certain positions. In my opinion it is also quite ok to tell partners that you want contractors or other consultants from other partners on your projects since they simply have better industry or functional knowledge or simply more experience.

Kaya Consulting, independent experienced consultants

Hiring Kaya Consulting consultants is of course another good way of securing the right consultants on your projects. And if we can’t deliver the right consultant we will tell you so.

But it is true; if you call tomorrow we probably cannot help you, since we are busy on other projects. And once we accepted a project we will never abandon it until successfully delivered. Because of this attitude we can proudly say that we have never been part of a failed project.

Contact us for more details and don`t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to receive our latest blogs!

How we saved an international retailer from bankruptcy! Part 2

So let’s recap… Previously on “the walking dead”

• You are clueless about where your items are, orders are not received on time or at all, vendors are not fulfilling their whole purchase order, nor do they deliver on time. The multi-million-dollar system you just bought gives inaccurate forecast and your in house made point of sale system can’t process items that are not on stock in your store and so on… Click here if you missed the first part of my blog.

How the Mobile Device capacity in AX2012 R3 fixed these problems

The next step was to ease up on all the regulations implemented and we disabled some automated functionalities and we gave some control back to the people on the floor. In practice we created a few simple apps using Microsoft Dynamics AX mobile device capacity:

• First priority: Count the warehouse. This should be simple: scan the location, scan the item, enter quantity. The catch here is that in AX we created an algorithm that dealt with ‘item and stock status’ or ‘items not or already present on location”. Once ready it took us one weekend to count all warehouses and all stores.

• Second priority: Give some control back to the people on the floor. If AX doesn’t know measurements of locations or items, or if vendors don’t deliver according to what they promise, then you have to be flexible. There is no way AX can tell you were to put the item based on wrong or none existing data. So let the warehouse employee decide were to put the item. This app should be as simple as scan the item, scan the “from location”, scan the location where the items should be placed and enter the quantity. Once again AX will take care of possible issues. Once ready, we cleared the inbound dock and were able to move items around within the warehouse.

• Third priority: Create crossdock functionality. Since most or part of the items were to be send right away to the stores it would be very beneficial to create crossdock functionality. With a small modification within AX it was easy to identify the items delivered and were meant for crossdock to supply the shops and meant for the webshop.

• Fourth priority: Create outbound functionality from the general warehouse and receive functionality in the stores. This one was tricky. Not so much what the functionality should do but simply because there was no AX and Wifi available in the stores. And this is why I love working at Kaya Consulting, we have a team available for just that issue! So we created a mobile app using windows phone and the 4G network and that matched the outbound license plates functionality with what is scanned in the stores.

Today, the AX issue backlog is clear. The system is upgraded to the latest CU and we’re still busy, but now we are implementing all those cool features that the company have on their bucket list.

And yes, I’m bored again. So if you have a mission impossible for me. Do give me a call!

Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below and don`t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to receive our latest blog content!