The forms standard forms like the Order Confirmation are a lot more dynamic than you may think. If you have standard notes that you want to include on every document, or if you need to add record specific notes to the header of the lines then they can be configured to pick up the document attachment notes all without a single line of code.
No more sticky notes on your documents.
With Convergence coming up I have been preparing for my presentation that I’ll be giving on the Friday of that week (UBAX002: How2: 40+ tips in 90 minutes in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012) – which if you are attending Convergence I would love to see you there.
In the process of planning it out, I thought that I would compile all of the content ahead of time and I converted it over into a small 400+ page book for you all, in case you want to get a sneak peek of what I will be showing (or if you can’t make it to convergence, then reading it will be just like I’m there… minus the New Zealand accent).
If your are interested in taking a look, then you can see it on the CreateSpace here: https://www.createspace.com/4661487 and it should also be available on Amazon within 5 or so days.
Sometimes you need to create a more traditional paper mailing for your campaigns, but that doesn’t mean that you need to jump through a lot of hoops in order to get it done. The Campaigns function within Dynamics AX 2012 has the ability to create mail merge exports directly from the application that can then be married up to Word mail merge templates. Once you have set this up, your standard mailings are just a matter of clicking a couple of buttons.
Let’s keep the USPS in business people.
The good thing about requisitions is that the users are able to ask for almost anything, although when they ask for something that you have never purchased before, someone has to source it. Dynamics AX makes this a lot easier, because you are able to create a Request For Quotation for any of the requisitioned lines directly from the Requisition itself that then automatically updates the requisition lines when a vendor quote has been approved.
No more off line quoting and manually tracking vendor quotes.
When you export data from Excel, by default it creates a temporary export file locally on your workstation, although there is an option that you can use that will allow you to automatically archive the export to a default directory. This has the added benefit that you are also able to archive the files then to SharePoint. If you would like to make your exports sharable, or would just like to have a place to go to see all of the exports that you have done in the past, then this is a great option to configure.
You’re not a data packrat if you do this…
The Campaigns feature within Dynamics AX is a great way to plan & manage marketing projects, but it is also a great way to market to your prospects and customers as well. Once you create your campaign, you can broadcast it through traditional methods like snail mail, or through e-mail blasts with the click of the button.
Getting the word out has never been so easy.
If you have linked Dynamics AX with your local version of Microsoft Outlook, then you have probably ran the synchronization that adds all of the appointments, tasks, and also the contacts to Outlook. But there is a more powerful option that allows you to synchronize not only from Dynamics AX and Outlook, but with Outlook back to Dynamics AX giving you an even more useful form of contact synchronization.
This is a great way to keep your contacts up to date, and also to populate Dynamics AX with all of your contact data without having to key in all of the people by hand, and also keep it up to date because it synchronizes both ways.
Remember, a contact does not become less useful if you share it with your friends.
Queries are like mining for gold, because everyone is searching for the motherload of data that is hidden within Dynamics AX, and once they find it, they mine it until it dries out and they have to start prospecting again. Also, the secret maps to that data are hidden away, usually on someone’s own personal hard drive, and are rarely shared with other prospectors. Office 365 and Power Query changes that because it allows you to share any of your queries with everyone within the organization, allowing everyone including the non-technical users that would never create a query.
No more claim jumping, there is enough data out there for everyone to mine.
If you want to publish out data to the users so that they can create their own reports, or run their own analysis, there is in a simple and secure way built into Dynamics AX. You can register your queries as Document Data Sources and then they automatically become available through the OData service within Dynamics AX. Additionally, all of the default security that you put in place around the data will be respected by the service because you are using Dynamics AX to create the query.
No more ODBC connections, or even worse… unsecured Access databases.
The document management function that allows you to create attachments that are based off a Word template. What makes this a super useful feature is that you can populate the document on the fly with data from the record that you are creating the attachment for.
Everyone has templates that they have squirreled away on their computer that they continually use for boilerplate responses. This takes it to the next level by creating all of these document for you based of the boilerplate documents… and they are not hidden on one persons computer any more.
Dynamics AX Tip Of The Day 