The Retail area of Dynamics AX has a boat load of goodies embedded within it. One example of this is the capability to configure bar code labels for products that you can print at use for scanning and product identification. But just because it is configured through the Retail area it doesn’t mean that you have to be a retail style company in order to take advantage of it. All you need to do is get over the stigma of the Retail label and set it up.

I know it feels naughty to use the Retail area, but it feels so good to do it… Read More

Dynamics AX runs on data, and the cleaner the data, the less sludge you have in the system, slowing it down. A field that is not set up correctly won’t kill the system (usually) but it will probably cause a little extra work down the line. Fortunately Mandatory Fields Checks feature allows you to run a quick check on the data to make sure that every t is crossed and i is dotted. All you need to do is set it up.

It’s like having a multi-point inspection on your car without the hefty mechanics bill. Read More

Workflows are great because they automate the assignment of tasks to the right people at the right time like a well oiled machine. The only thing that they cannot control is that the people actually do the work that they have been asked to do though. If you have bugs within your people processes, then you can add feedback loops into your workflows though that allow you to make sure that all of the fields that you ask the users to update have actually been updated.

Now a failing grade on the task will be caught right away. Read More

The only thing worse that having a “Discussion” with Human Resources is to miss a “Discussion”, and have another “Discussion” created to discuss your poor time planning. To solve this, you may want to think about creating sending out meeting reminders when Discussions are created, which is just the click on the button within Dynamics AX.

Even if the discussion isn’t pleasant, then at least the creation of one isn’t. Read More

If you are putting your products into boxes before you ship them out, or if you are worried about the cube space that the order lines will take up when being shipped then you might want to get Dynamics AX to calculate them on the fly as you enter in the order lines. The package calculation allows you to define how many items of a product goes into a standard package, and then it will tell you how many of those packages will be used on the order. For example, if you can fit 4 items in a box and the customer orders 6 then it will tell you that you need 2 boxes.

Now you can optimize you packing regardless of the product. Read More

Sales Orders seem to have a life of their own. They are created and every time you look at them, it’s as if someone has been tinkering and changing it. If you want to be able to take a closer look at your orders and see who is making changes to them, and what they have been up to then you may want to enable a feature within Dynamics AX called Order Events which will track whenever anyone updates the Sales Order, or even creates follow on transactions associated with the order.

Watching your orders will be like having hundreds of Tamagotchis to watch and nurture. Read More

As you are typing in orders, rather than guessing how much money you are making on the lines, wouldn’t it be better to see the margin right on the order line. Luckily there is a setting within Dynamics AX that does exactly that. All you need to do is turn it on.

Now you don’t have to go to your manager’s office every time you try to sell a product.

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Discussions are a polite term for being called into a meeting with HR, but the creation of them does not have to be a painful affair – at least for the HR department. There is a mass creation feature that allows you to create a block of discussion appointments for a group of employees that makes this process a breeze.

Being called into the Principal’s Office has never been so automated.

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Workflows are great, but there are a lot of times that you want to run one version of the workflow in this situation, and another version of the workflow in a different situation. You could take the Sauron approach and create one workflow to rule them all, and embed in conditional tree at the beginning of the workflow that routes you to the right decision tree, or you can just create multiple workflows, and then use the Activation option to tell Dynamics AX when to use the variations of your workflows.

Now you can create an army of workflows that are all unique.

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The Export To Excel function within Dynamics AX is a powerful tool, because it gives you a live link back to the database, allows you to add additional fields, and also allows you to refresh the data. But for some people that is just too much power. For those users you can easily turn the Export To Excel from a power tool to a simple screen scrape utility just with a flick of a option flag.

I would never suggest that you do this as an April Fools prank…

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