Dianne Siebold's WebLog

Usability 101 – Don’t Make ‘Em Think

dsiebold — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:52:00 GMT

Recently, I've come across some good books and articles about usability. When I thought about it, I realized that usability is universal and its principles can be applied by many roles related to software - software developers, business analysts, testers, creators of any software documentation, web site designers, and so on.

The first book is Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

I really like this book. After reading it, I found myself in situations throughout the day where I'd realize that I'm thinking about something more than I should need to. For example, when I go to pay my credit card bill online. For each step in the process, I must stop, re-orient myself and think about what the site is asking me to do. In contrast, I can go onto amazon.com and order a book with hardly a thought at all.

Really using the advice in this book is tricky because it requires you to step back from the detail view of what you normally work on and view it holistically. We get so familiar with our own creation - whether it's a website or a UI form or a help topic - that to us, it's easy to navigate and use. It's difficult to see it anew as a user would that's seeing it for the first time.

Also, we can become somewhat attached to the idea that what we're doing is creating software (or UI or a website) that is user-friendly or is easy to navigate. We think that because our motivation is to help someone that what we create actually achieves that goal.

But sometimes the details of accomplishing the task in front of us are so consuming that we don't have the time to apply precision questioning as we go along and make inquiries such as: Does this really make my user's job easier? Am I really presenting the information in the best way possible? Are there multiple reasons that a user would end up on this form (or website or documentation)? As the user uses my form (or website or documentation), is there anywhere in the process where they need to think more than they should have to?

Usability analysis requires an awareness or a switch in perspective. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes so to speak. But it doesn't have to be an overwhelming all-or-nothing task. I have found the best and least overwhelming approach to usability is to gradually implement the principles. Select a few areas and then do some analysis. Make small, incremental changes.

A related article that really makes some great points is The Science of Great UI by Mark Miller. The examples he uses are taken from everyday user interfaces like a gas pump or elevator buttons. Really good stuff in this one, and the takeaways are simple and easy to understand.

After reading this article, I started viewing the user interfaces that I see every day (both software and non-software) with a fresh perspective. In my car, I'd think, "How handy is that, that they put the volume button on the radio so close to the station seek button?!" Or, "Why does the card swipe machine at the pharmacy make me use the keypad and then have to inconveniently switch to using the stylus?!" Or even, "Why does the publisher of this UI article make me click a link to see each picture whereas I can see the graphics right there on the page in the print edition?!"

If you create anything that other people use, I highly recommend giving these a read. You may find some ways to improve your customers' experience.

Dynamics AX 2009 & Communicator – Better Together

dsiebold — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 02:32:00 GMT

I just discovered that you can enable integration of AX and communicator such that you can see a contact's status right from within AX. To me this was so cool I couldn't wait to check it out and share the goodness.

You can see Communicator presence for any party type person in AX so it will work for customers, vendors, contacts, employees and so on. This would be any entry in the DirParyTable with a Type = Person. I tested this out with AX 2009 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2. Here's how you set it up.

Log in to Communicator.
Open AX and make sure the Presence Support configuration key is checked. To do this, go to Administration > Setup > System > Configuration.
Create a new customer by going to Accounts Receivable > Customers. Click the Customers button.
Add a new customer and set the Address book type to Person.
On this screen, click Setup > Advanced contact info.
Select the Contact information tab. Click CTRL+N to add a new record and enter in the contact details. Be sure that you enter the email address in the Communication field and check the Communicator sign-in address field.
Now go to the General tab and voila! you can see the presence icon for the contact. If you click the icon, the Communicator options menu appears.

You can see where this functionality could really be a time-saver for certain roles in your organization. For example, if the person responsible for expense reports could IM employees right from in AX when they are reviewing an expense report and have a question.

If you want to do some integration in your forms with Communicator, check out this interesting blog post that shows you how to send an IM from within AX through code: http://gregondax.wordpress.com/.

T-3 Days

dsiebold — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:46:00 GMT

The Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference is only three days away. Hope to see you there!

New Code Sample for AX 2009

dsiebold — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:52:48 GMT

'Tis the season for gift giving. And what better gift than sample code.

For you AX 2009 techies, we have a new code sample called the Facility Management sample application. Like the Fleet Management sample app, this code is designed to show you the basics of application development in AX with a functioning yet simple application module. This application lets users enter and track facility management requests.

We hope you find both code samples helpful. It'll be hard to top this next year.

The Help Guy – Who Knew?!

dsiebold — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:50:00 GMT

Not me! Within our very own company we have someone that blogs regularly about help files and formats. If you write or integrate content with Dynamics AX help, this could be a handy resource.

You can find his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thehelpguy/. In particular, the Help Guy's latest post about the current state of the various Microsoft help systems and formats is very interesting: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thehelpguy/archive/2010/10/26/help-state-of-the-union-october-2010.aspx.

Top 10 Reasons to Attend the AX Tech Conference

dsiebold — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:15:07 GMT

Here are my top 10 reasons to attend the Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference.

Rub elbows with AX industry luminaries. Or at least bump in to a PM or SDET from the product team. In this conference, the break-out sessions are all highly technical and presented by the developers, testers, PMs and writers that worked on the features. So your chances are good that you'll run into someone that has actually worked on the product. Bring your list of questions or your feedback.
Stay ahead of the curve. This is an opportunity to take a forward-looking view and see what features are coming in the new version. You'll get a glimpse of the new features in AX and understand what they mean for you.
Get your burning questions answered. Whether your company is already working with the new version of AX through TAP or your company is just considering the move to AX, this is the place to get your technical questions answered.
Network with your peers. This is without a doubt the best opportunity for AX geeks to get to meet other AX geeks. No other conference brings together as many Dynamics techies as this one, so this is a great opportunity to find out what other companies are doing and how they are solving technical problems, uh, I mean challenges. Be sure to bring a stack of business cards.
Cool Swag. They're still working out the details, but in usual MS fashion, each attendee will get an assortment of cool goodies. Your co-workers will be envious.
Free software. Every attendee gets a pre-release version of AX to take back with them.
Hands-on experience. Sure, you can hear all about the next AX in the sessions, presentations, and round tables. But you can also actually log some computer time and work with the product in the labs. The labs are all staffed so you can ask questions while you're taking a test drive.
Learn about the new features for developers and admins. Through deep-dive technical sessions, you'll learn about the new features specifically for developers and administrators. Not only will you learn the nitty gritty details, but you'll also learn about why features were implemented and the strategy behind them.
Understand the new product features for business users. This is a technical conference, but it's also an opportunity to learn about the product changes for business users. This is news you can use if you're developing business solutions, customizing modules or working with customers on implementations.
Visit the company store. As if basking in the glow of the Microsoft campus wasn't incentive enough, you also get the chance to visit the company store. And this means two things: more Microsoft branded doo-dads than you can shake a stick at and discounted software. Nuff said.

Process Manufacturing and AX 2009 - New Book

dsiebold — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:26:00 GMT

For those of you on the business side of Dynamics AX, there's a new book out called Managing Process Manufacturing using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. Written by Scott Hamilton, this book explains the functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 that supports process distribution and manufacturing including scenarios involving discrete manufacturing.

In the author's words, "The targeted reader includes those individuals implementing or considering Dynamics AX as their ERP system, as well as those providing consulting assistance. The book content (400 pages) provides a complete walk through of functionality related to operations and supply chain management in process industries, and includes 70+ case studies."

I'm not a process manufacturing geek, so I can't really comment on its usefulness, but the book has received some good feedback from luminaries in the ERP space.

Default Location when Saving Attachments in Outlook 2010

dsiebold — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:43:00 GMT

If you're an Outlook 2010 user, you've probably noticed that when you save an attachment, it brings up some default file location. Then you have to click through to navigate to the folder where you like to save your files. This was really getting me down and I figured it was one of those small issues that had a solution, so today I finally decided to investigate.

What I found is this KB article entitled How to change the folder where e-mail messages and attachments are saved in Outlook 2003 and in Outlook 2007. The article explains how to add a registry entry so that when you save an attachment, the Save Attachment dialog opens to the default location that you specify. In spite of the title, the process does work with Outlook 2010.

This tip could save you a few seconds each time you save an attachment. I feel my productivity soaring already.

Generate a Report of Reports

dsiebold — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:09:00 GMT

If you have ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I sure wish I had a list of all the reports in my AX installation," then your wait is over.

Now you can use this handy report to generate a list all of the reports in your AX 2009 installation. After you import the XPO, you'll see a project called BookOfReportsV1. Within this project there's a report called BookOfReports and an output menu item called BookOfReports.

To run the report, just right-click on the report and select Open.

Many thanks to Jose Lorenzo at Microsoft for providing this code.

Use X++ to Loop through the AOT

dsiebold — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:42:00 GMT

Recently, I had a need to loop through the Forms node in the AOT and find any form that had a particular property value. I've seen a lot of examples that show you how to locate nodes in the AOT by name, but not by a property value. So I thought I would share the code that I wrote for the task.

For a little background, when you press F1 on a form in AX, it brings up a help topic for that form. Each form is hooked up to help via the HTMLHelpTopic property (and the HTMLHelpFile property if you want to get precise). To find this property you need to open the form in the AOT and then navigate to the Design node.

Here's the code that loops through the forms.

static void FindFormInAOT(Args _args)

{

#AOT

Treenode formNode;

Treenode form;

Form actualForm;

str HTMLHelpProperty;

str formName;

int i;

int nodeCount;

;

formNode = treenode::findNode(#FormsPath);

// Count of all the forms.

nodeCount = formNode.AOTchildNodeCount();

form = formNode.AOTfirstChild();

for (i=1; i<=nodeCount; ++i)

{

formName = form.AOTgetProperty("Name");

actualForm = formNode.AOTfindChild(formName);

// Get the HTMLHelpTopic property.

HTMLHelpProperty = actualForm.design(0).hTMLHelpTopic();

if (strScan(HTMLHelpProperty, "386c78e8-16c3-404f-aad2-d50248c26905", 1, strLen(HTMLHelpProperty))>1)

{

info("Form name is: " + formName);

break;

}

form = form.AOTnextSibling();

}

If successful, the code displays and Infolog window with the matching form name.