Add Fields To Summary Tabs For Easy Reference

You might have already noticed the summary fields that show up in the tab bar whenever you open up forms.  These allow you to see the values of some of the fields in the group, even when the tab has been collapsed, which reduces the number of clicks that you have to use to find the key information that you are looking for, and also means that you can collapse a lot of the tabs down so that your are not scrolling through multiple pages of information.

You are not limited through to the summary fields that are enabled by default though, you can add almost ay field that you like to the summary tab line just with a couple of clicks.  This allows you to see at a glance all of the information that is important to you.

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Set The Number Of Autocolumns To Match Your Screen Real Estate

Just like people, the screens that everyone uses to access Dynamics AX comes in all shapes and sizes.  Some are lean and petite with just a modest screen resolution, whilst others are a little bit more bulked up, with more DPI than should be legal.  Luckily, when Dynamics AX builds it’s screens for you, it not only re-arranges the fields to best match the size of the application window, but it also allows you to specify how many columns it should use when it’s trying to lay out the information.

So if you have a smaller screen, you can trim down the screen to show all of the information in one column so that you don’t have to scroll left and right in order to see all of the information, and if you have a larger screen, you can use more columns so that you can see more information on the screen and not have a lot of wasted white space.

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Clean Up The Navigation Pad To Show Just The Modules You Need

The good thing about Dynamics AX is that you get all the available modules automatically.  The downside is that you get all the available modules automatically.  You may not want to see the General Ledger, or Accounts Payable modules, all you may be interested in may just be the Distribution modules.

You can quickly make your life a little less cluttered just by editing your Navigation Pad and hiding all of the modules that you don’t need.  You can still get to the functionality, just you don’t need to wade through the other modules when trying to get to the menu items that you use every day.

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Make the Dynamics AX Role Center Your Outlook Home Page

The Role Centers are web pages that you can run independently of the client, and are designed to give you a lightweight way to access most of the functions within Dynamics AX.  Since they are just web pages then they can also be embedded in other applications that you may use all of the time, like Outlook, to give you another way to view the status of the organization.

This is a great way to let users that are not normally accessing Dynamics AX all of the time view the status of the organization, since they cannot avoid opening up Outlook.

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Find (Almost) Anything Through The Enterprise Search

Have you ever spent time searching through the menu system, trying to find a particular form that you need to run?  Or have you ever looked for a certain piece of information in Dynamics AX like a customer, only to realize after searching and searching that it is actually a prospect? Dynamics has an feature called Enterprise Search that should save you a lot of time.  All you need to do when you are searching for something is type it into the Search button in the top right corner of the Dynamics AX client, and it will suggest where you can find it.

Next time, just use the Enterprise Search, and let Dynamics AX to the searching for you.  It’s so much easier.

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Teleport Directly To Maintenance Tabs Using Shortcut Keys

If you live and die by the keyboard, and only touch the mouse as a last resort then opening up a maintenance form within Dynamics AX 2012 is probably killing you because there are all of the tabs that you need to open in order to access the grouped data fields if you haven’t learnt the shortcut key to jump directly to the tab.  All you need to do is press the CTRL key and the tab number that you want to access, and Dynamics will take you directly there without the use of the mouse.

Now you can jump with ease between the different data tabs like you had your very own mouse TARDIS.

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Update Product System Templates After They Have Been Created

Product templates are a great time saver because they allow you to use an existing product as a example of how to set up other products, making product setup more of a cookie cutter production line rather than a laborious hand crafting of each record.  But as your business changes, you will probably find that you want to update your product templates so that you don’t have to continually tweak fields here and there that have changed over time, or maybe you want to remove templates that are now obsolete so that the users don’t see them when they are creating new product records.

Don’t worry, you can do this directly through the Record Template maintenance form within the Home Area page.

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Hack Form Selection Criteria For Mass Updates

Every now and then you may come across an update that has been designed to be performed one record at a time, and you have 10’s, 100’s, or even 1000’s of records that you want to update at once.  Even though it seems like all hope is lost and that you are going to end up with carpel tunnel syndrome from too many mouse clicks, it’s not a bleak as you think.

There is a way that you can usually hack the selection query that is used by default for the form to widen up the range of records that will be updated at once.  And it’s pretty easy to do as well.

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