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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The Data Import Export Framework module is not just for getting data in and out of Dynamics AX through import and export files, it also has a nifty feature that allows you to copy data within your companies, so if you are configuring a new legal entity for testing or production purposes, and want to populate it with information from another existing company, you can replicate the data in a matter of minutes.

It’s like having your own personal Sketch-A-Graph, but not as much fun…

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The roles within Dynamics AX are pre-configured to restrict users from accessing areas that they usually don’t need to use, but you don’t have to stop there. You can tweak the security even more by restricting access to the field level data that shows up on the forms through the security role maintenance feature, allowing you to give people read only access, or not even show the field in the case of sensitive information. As an added benefit, if you restrict access this way, then the users will not be able to access the data through the reports, or through the Excel add-in.

If your users are already paranoid that they don’t see all of the data, then redacting access this way may push them over the edge. Read More

Although Excel is a great way to import base data into Dynamics AX, sometime you need to bring in the big guns and that’s where the Data Import Export Framework applies. This is a new module that makes importing data into Dynamics AX so much simpler, especially when importing complex data types that include multiple dependent tables. All you need to do is check the data that you want to import and the D.I.E.F. will do the rest for you.

On a side note, “dief” in Dutch actually means “thief”. Is this a coincidence, or is it a reminder that the D.I.E.F. stealing data seem so simple? Read More

The multi-company capability within Dynamics AX is one of the major selling points of the application, because you can easily switch between organizations with just a click of a button. But that does not mean that you want everyone to have free reign to perform transactions in any company, or even to see some of the other company data. If you want to simplify the users choices just to one or more select companies then that’s not a problem though, you can do that easily through the user administration.

It’s like putting your users on house arrest.

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The Dynamics AX Add-In for Excel is a great tool for downloading and updating data from Dynamics AX within a tool that everyone is familiar with. But not everyone is familiar with all of the valid values that are allowed for the fields. Don’t worry though the Excel Add-In has a nifty lookup function that allows you to find out what valid values are allowed.

No more searching for field values by trial and error.

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Not all decisions are made by just one person, there are a lot of times where you need to get multiple people involved as an internal check policy, or maybe you just love making decisions as a group and don’t want to leave anyone out. Doing this through workflow within Dynamics AX is a synch as well, because you can include as many people in a single decision process as you like and have them weigh in during the workflow execution. There are also a lot of different ways that you can allow the votes to be counted to speed up the process as well.

Everything is better when it’s decided by committee… right?

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With the R3 release of Dynamics AX, a small but incredibly useful feature was added that allows you to configure default notes against the customer and product records that will automatically copy over to the sales order as it’s created. This is a huge productivity tool, especially if you have particular shipping and handling notes that you have had to enter against orders in the past.

Now you can just set and forget all of those notes and reminders.

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