Supply Chain Management in Dynamics AX

Product Number and Item Number in Dynamics AX 2012

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:14:00 GMT

What is the purpose of the product number?

This is a common question since the product number is a new concept in Dynamics AX 2012. The main purpose is to have a single, unified identification of a product throughout the entire organization.

In addition to the product number you have a legal entity-specific item number. The item number supports the need to be able to identify products based on numbers that make sense to users within a legal entity.

In this post we will describe the purpose and the use of product numbers and item numbers.

Product number

The new Product information management module in Dynamics AX 2012 allows users to create and manage shared product definition data in a centralized and consistent way. For companies that run a business across multiple legal entities, the concept of shared products can be a help to manage product master data and establish company-wide data governance processes.

For example, consider a company that wants to ensure that the same product data is consistent across different manufacturing plants or retail stores.

The product number is the main product identification (ID) in the system. It helps users to identify or to search for the same product instance across the entire organizational structure. The product number serves as a common reference for company-wide operational and reporting purposes.

In Dynamics AX 2012, a product has to be released to a legal entity before it can be included on a transaction, line or before orders can be created against the product. The release process allows users to control which products become released products in which legal entities.

Item Number

The item number (or item ID) is the legal entity-specific identification of the released product. When a product is released to a legal entity, the item number is aligned with the product number, unless a number sequence exists for the item number in the legal entity.

The system does not validate whether the values are identical or not. So in cases where a specific item number is required in order to identify products within an organization, the item number can be renamed.

For example, some manufacturing companies include the unit of measure in the legal entity-specific item number. In cases where items are consolidated between a legal entity and an acquired organization, it would also be necessary to rename the item number in the legal entity.

Intercompany supply chains and consolidated reporting

For intercompany chains and for consolidated reporting purposes the system always uses a product reference. The system does not take any dependency on the legal entity-specific item numbers. Instead, a shared product reference is used to map intercompany demand and supply during master scheduling or to establish the relationship between the intercompany sales and purchase orders.

Please note that in previous versions of Dynamics AX, the system uses the concept of a company item to allow for intercompany trade between two parties. All items in one company have to be mapped manually to every item in the other company before the intercompany order can be created. With Dynamics AX 2012 there is no longer a need for manual mapping. As long as a product is released to both companies, all intercompany chains can operate smoothly.

Recommendation regarding intercompany trade

As a general guideline, we recommend that you avoid using the item number for any purposes that are related to intercompany trade. Instead, aim to use the product number for any data consolidation across multiple legal entities.

Please note that in previous versions of Dynamics AX, the system uses the item number as the main reference for entry of orders such as sales orders and production orders. The system also uses the item number to identify inventory transactions. This is unchanged in Dynamics AX 2012.

Ievgenii Korovin and Dynamics AX SCM Team

Dynamics AX 2009 Cost Accounting White papers

Ievgenii Korovin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:09:00 GMT

If you are looking for information about inventory close and reconciliation, please check out Tracy Taylor’s post on the AX Support blog.

Enjoy!

Use of One Pallet for Shipping and for Receipt

Ievgenii Korovin — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:19:00 GMT

By using the Item arrival journal in the Inventory and warehouse management module in AX2012 you can ship and receive a transfer order using the same pallet.

In addition to the normal criteria that are used to validate pallet moves, the use of one pallet requires that the pallet is empty. If the pallet is used for receipt, it is automatically moved to the receipt location when the journal is posted.

The validation of the pallet move is implemented in the class WMSPalletMoveValidator.

By Lennart Conrad, Per Lykke Lynnerup and Bibi Christensen

Visualizing Security in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Ievgenii Korovin — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:43:00 GMT

Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 introduces role-based security, which makes security easier to manage. Relations between security roles, duties and privileges are complex. However, you can apply a tool to represent these relations in a grid.

This document describes another way to represent security objects and the relations between these objects.

DGML is an XML based file format for directed graphs. For example, this is the graph:

…and this is the DGML file behind it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<DirectedGraph GraphDirection="LeftToRight" Layout="Sugiyama" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/vs/2009/dgml">

<Nodes>

    <Node Id="Duty D" Area="X" Type="SecDuty" />

    <Node Id="Duty E" Area="Y" Type="SecDuty" />

    <Node Id="Privilege F" Area="X" Type="SecPrivilege" />

    <Node Id="Privilege G" Area="Y" Type="SecPrivilege" />

    <Node Id="Privilege H" Area="Z" Type="SecPrivilege" />

    <Node Id="Role A" Area="X" Type="SecRole" />

    <Node Id="Role B" Area="X" Type="SecRole" />

    <Node Id="Role C" Area="Y" Type="SecRole" />

</Nodes>

<Links>

    <Link Source="Duty D" Target="Privilege F" />

    <Link Source="Duty D" Target="Privilege G" />

    <Link Source="Duty D" Target="Privilege H" />

    <Link Source="Duty E" Target="Privilege F" />

    <Link Source="Duty E" Target="Privilege G" />

    <Link Source="Role A" Target="Role B" />

    <Link Source="Role B" Target="Duty D" />

    <Link Source="Role B" Target="Duty E" />

    <Link Source="Role C" Target="Duty D" />

    <Link Source="Role C" Target="Duty E" />

</Links>

<Properties>

    <Property Id="Area" DataType="System.String" />

    <Property Id="GraphDirection" DataType="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Progression.Layout.GraphDirection" />

    <Property Id="Layout" DataType="System.String" />

    <Property Id="Type" DataType="System.String" />

</Properties>

<Styles>

    <Style TargetType="Node" GroupLabel="Type" ValueLabel="SecPrivilege">

        <Condition Expression="Type = 'SecPrivilege'" />

        <Setter Property="Icon" Value="pack://application:,,,/Microsoft.VisualStudio.Progression.GraphControl;component/Icons/Key.png" />

    </Style>

    <Style TargetType="Node" GroupLabel="Type" ValueLabel="SecRole">

        <Condition Expression="Type = 'SecRole'" />

        <Setter Property="Icon" Value="pack://application:,,,/Microsoft.VisualStudio.Progression.GraphControl;component/Icons/Users.png" />

    </Style>

    <Style TargetType="Node" GroupLabel="Type" ValueLabel="SecDuty">

        <Condition Expression="Type = 'SecDuty'" />

        <Setter Property="Icon" Value="pack://application:,,,/Microsoft.VisualStudio.Progression.GraphControl;component/Icons/kpi_green_sym2_large.png" />

    </Style>

    <Style TargetType="Node" GroupLabel="Type" ValueLabel="SecProcessCycle">

        <Condition Expression="Type = 'SecProcessCycle'" />

        <Setter Property="Icon" Value="pack://application:,,,/Microsoft.VisualStudio.Progression.GraphControl;component/Icons/Gears.png" />

    </Style>

</Styles>

</DirectedGraph>

The DGML format is supported in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Premium and in some other third party tools as well. In this document, Visual Studio is used:

In Visual Studio 2010, there is Directed Graph toolbar and a Legend window that allow you to change the appearance of the graph. For example, this is one graph, rendered in different ways:

There is a context menu, which provides even more options, such as Advanced selection. For example, you can also:

select all nodes with a specific property value
group nodes
hide the nodes in order to simplify the graph
select all incoming and/or outgoing connections for the currently selected nodes

Before reading any further, we recommend that you watch this 10 minute video for a brief introduction. We also recommend this video which is dedicated to large graphs.

Generating graphs

First of all, import the attached XPO file to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

There are 4 classes in the SecurityToDGML private project. SysDgmlFromSecurity is the main class, which should be run in order to generate the DGML file. The SysDgmlGraph, SysDgmlNode and SysDgmlLink classes encapsulate graph construction logic.

Note: Eventually, you may want to customize the solution by adding more attributes to the nodes and links. For example, objects with a particular prefix may require an additional attribute to make it easier to select them when manipulating the graph.

When you have imported the XPO to AX, run the SysDgmlFromSecurity class. In the dialog, verify the output file name, and then click OK. After several minutes, the file is generated and it opens in Visual Studio (or in the tool that you have assigned to open DGML-files).

Important: The graph is comprehensive so every little change, such as adding a property to the Legend or switching the rendering mode from Left to right to Quick clusters, will take 10 to 20 seconds or more to complete. So avoid any unnecessary clicks on the workspace. The idea is to hide as many nodes as possible and still be able to explore the nodes and relations that you want to focus on. The fewer nodes on the visible graph, the faster it is rendered.

Working with graphs

Scenario 1: Find out what external* roles have access to duties and privileges in your area (in this example, Inventory)

*External roles: In this example, roles from areas other than Inventory, such as Manufacturing. There is some logic in the SysDgmlGraph class that tries to determine the owner team of the object and add an Area attribute to the corresponding graph node. The owner team is determined based on a prefix and/or a suffix of the object name. This is where you may need customization. You can find a sample Excel sheet attached to the this post.

1. Open the DGML-file.

At first, the graph looks like a vertical stripe in the middle of the workspace:

This is because there are too many nodes (while this is being written, about 6000 nodes and 10000 relations).

2. Right-click to select a little area on the stripe.

When you release the button, this part of the graph is zoomed in.

3. Repeat zooming until you see something like the following:

You can see 3 columns of nodes, left to right: roles, duties, and then privileges. There are too many visible relations, so some have to be hidden.

4. Right-click anywhere on the workspace and select Show Advanced Selection in the menu.

A new window will appear on the right side of the workspace:

Area, Type and AOT name are properties of the nodes.

5. Select the nodes that belong to Inventory.

You will notice that some relations and nodes are selected now:

6. Click the I button three times to select incoming connections.
With three clicks you can select a chain of Inventory privileges: For example, a non-Inventory role can have a non-Inventory sub-role which can have a non-Inventory duty which can provide access to the Inventory privileges. By clicking once on the I button you select the duty, with two clicks you also select the sub-role, and with three clicks the whole chain is selected.

At this point, you see all Inventory nodes and all the external nodes that relate to these nodes.

7. Right-click on any of the selected nodes, and click Selection > Hide unselected in order to hide nodes.

The graph becomes much smaller and all remaining nodes remain selected:

8. Click anywhere on the workspace to clear the selection of the nodes. The Selection window looks as follows:

Note the 600 nodes compared to the 6000 nodes on the original graph.

9. Select all areas in the Selection window except for Inventory to view only the Inventory nodes that are used by external roles and duties.

10. Click the O button three times like you did with the I button in order to select all outgoing connections for the selected (=non-Inventory) nodes.

11. Right-click any of the selected nodes and select Selection > Hide unselected.

12. Click anywhere in the workspace to clear the selection of the nodes. This way you reduce the number of nodes in the graph to about 300.

13. Select Zoom to fit in the toolbar to see the following:

The final graph is not very large. The only thing missing is the set of highlighted external duties and roles.

14. In the Legend window, click the Add button and then select Node Property > Area.

15. Click on the new Area stripe and then select Background.

16. In the Color Set Picker window, click the button at the top and then select one of the predefined color sets.

17. Change the color for Inventory to White to leave only nodes from other areas highlighted.

18. Click OK.
This is the final graph:

19. Select one of the external nodes, such as Maintain BOM master, in order to zoom in and check the external nodes for eligibility to use Inventory privileges.

20. Turn on the Butterfly mode.

The graph now looks as follows:

The product designer has access to 4 Inventory privileges. If something is wrong here, we have an issue.

21. Turn off the Butterfly mode and proceed to the next non-Inventory node. Repeat until you are finished.

Scenario 2: Do the opposite of the first scenario to figure out what external privileges and duties are used by roles in your area

This scenario is similar to the first scenario except for the fact that you should use the I and the O buttons in the reverse order.

Note: If objects are marked with wrong areas, you must update the prefixes in the ownership Excel sheet and generate the DGML file again.

Further information about Security can be found on MSDN

By Sasha Nazarov, SCM, Microsoft Dynamics AX

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012: Where is the Shop floor control module?

Ievgenii Korovin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:36:00 GMT

Introduction

Those of you who know the Shop floor control module in Dynamics AX 2009 will notice that it is not a separate module in Dynamics AX 2012. This post gives you a quick overview of how to access the Shop floor control functionality in Dynamics AX 2012.

Time attendance and Manufacturing execution

The Shop floor control module has been divided into two feature sets:

Time and attendance contains functionality to register work time and attendance such as clock-in and clock-out, indirect activities, absences, breaks, overtime, and flextime. It also includes features to generate payroll information that can be used in a payroll system.
Manufacturing execution allows you to register time and item consumption for a specific production job or project, provide job feedback, do job scheduling and prioritization, etc.

The division of the time and attendance and the job registration functionality provides more flexibility. The licenses for the two feature areas are separate and more users and more industries can now benefit from the functionality that is relevant for their work areas.

The Time and attendance features are moved to the Human resources module and the features can be accessed through the Human resources area page. The related menu items are located in Time and attendance groups under Common, Reports, Inquiries, Periodic and Setup. There is also a Time registration workers list page menu item under the Workers group in the Common area.

The features to clock-in and clock-out and to register time with an electronic timecard are available on the Home area page in the Time and attendance group under Common. These tasks can be performed by any employee and this is the reason why the features are not located in the Human resources or Production control areas.

The menu items for Manufacturing execution are located on the Production control area page in the Manufacturing execution groups under Common, Periodic and Setup and in the Registration group under Inquiries

We hope this short post was useful for you. Further information about Manufacturing execution can be found on MSDN

By Slava Chernenko, SCM, Microsoft Dynamics AX

Disclaimer

All the information about AX 2012 posted here is a pre-release. Any feature is a subject to be changed before the release without notice.
This disclaimer is applicable to all posts about AX 2012 in this blog.

Product-item data management services

Ievgenii Korovin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 09:05:00 GMT

Introduction

In this blog entry we will provide guidelines for the use of new and modified product-item data management services.

Product-item data management services

The following services have been created or modified in order to enable manipulation of product-item data. These services are AIF document services so they follow all the conventions applicable to the AIF document services:

Service	Purpose
EcoResProductService	Create products (all three types). The service can also be used to retrieve data that has already been created.
EcoResProductMasterDimValueService	Specify values of product dimensions for a product master. These values become available for the creation of product variants. The service can also be used to retrieve data that has already been created.
ItemService	Release distinct products and product masters. The service can also be used to retrieve data that has already been created.
InventDimCombinationService	Release product variants. The service can also be used to retrieve data that has already been created.

Setup of product services

Product-item services must be enabled on an AIF inbound port before they can be used. All services can be enabled on one port or several ports can be used.

An inbound port can be created in the Inbound ports form (System administration > Setup > Services and Application Integration Framework > Inbound ports). This article illustrates the creation of two ports:

A port that uses a NetTcp adapter
A port that uses a File system adapter.

A port that uses a NetTcp adapter can be used to access services programmatically; for example, from a C# application. A port that uses a File system adapter can be used when input data is in the format of an XML document. The following guidelines are based on the use of a default configuration of ports. Advanced configuration of ports is beyond the scope of this article.

Create a port that uses a NetTcp adapter

1. For a new port, specify name and adapter:

2. Click the Service operations button to specify the service operations that are going to be available on the port:

3. In the Select service operations form, select all the product-item service operations:

4. Click the Activate button in the action pane strip to activate the port.

When the port has been activated, a control appears which displays the URI of a WSDL document for the service. This value can then be used for adding a service reference in Visual Studio.

Create a port that uses File system adapter

1. Specify a port name, and from the list of adapters, select File system adapter:

2. In the URI field, specify a path to a folder for incoming XML documents that are to be picked up by the service:

3. Follow the guidelines in the previous procedure to specify the service operations that are going to be available on the port.

4. Click the Activate button in the action pane strip to activate the port.

Now you have two ports with product-item service operations available. Use the following guidelines to create and retrieve data.

Set up Visual Studio

In this article a C# console application project in Visual Studio is used. The only thing that is required here is to create a project and add a service reference for the services:

Create products

All types of products are created by using the EcoResProductService service. However, the methods to create a distinct product, a product master, and a product variant are different so each method is described separately.

Create a distinct product

To create a distinct product, use the EcoResProductService.create operation. First, create a product using C# code, and then create an XML document with data to create a product.

The following code creates a distinct product in Dynamics AX:

static void createDistinctProduct()
{
    AxdEntity_Product_EcoResDistinctProduct distinctProduct = new AxdEntity_Product_EcoResDistinctProduct()
    {
        DisplayProductNumber = "Bulb60W",
        ProductType = AxdEnum_EcoResProductType.Item,
        SearchName = "Bulb60W"
    };
    distinctProduct.Translation = new AxdEntity_Translation[1];
    distinctProduct.Translation[0] = new AxdEntity_Translation()
    {
        LanguageId = "en-us", Name = "Transparent Bulb 60W"
    };
    distinctProduct.Identifier = new AxdEntity_Identifier[1];
    distinctProduct.Identifier[0] = new AxdEntity_Identifier()
    {
        ProductNumber = "Bulb60W"
    };
    distinctProduct.StorageDimGroup = new AxdEntity_StorageDimGroup[1];
    distinctProduct.StorageDimGroup[0] = new AxdEntity_StorageDimGroup()
    {
        Product = "Bulb60W", StorageDimensionGroup = "Std-Dim"
    };
    distinctProduct.TrackingDimGroup = new AxdEntity_TrackingDimGroup[1];
    distinctProduct.TrackingDimGroup[0] = new AxdEntity_TrackingDimGroup()
    {
        Product = "Bulb60W", TrackingDimensionGroup = "Std-Dim"
    };

    AxdEcoResProduct axdProduct = new AxdEcoResProduct()
    {
        Product = new AxdEntity_Product_EcoResProduct[1] { distinctProduct }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext();
    EcoResProductServiceClient service = new EcoResProductServiceClient();
    try
    {
        service.create(ctx, axdProduct);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

As it appears, the create operation accepts an array of products so it is possible to create multiple products in one call to the service.

The following XML code creates a distinct product. Note that storage and tracking dimension groups are specified. The storage and tracking dimension groups are not mandatory information to create a product so the C# code for the creation of a distinct product does not create these groups.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <Company>DMO</Company>
    <Action>http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/services/EcoResProductService/create</Action>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <MessageParts xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
      <EcoResProduct xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/EcoResProduct">
        <Product xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="entity" xsi:type="AxdEntity_Product_EcoResDistinctProduct">
          <DisplayProductNumber>Bulb40W</DisplayProductNumber>
          <SearchName>Bulb40W</SearchName>
          <ProductType>Item</ProductType>
          <Translation class="entity">
            <LanguageId>en-us</LanguageId>
            <Name>Transparent Bulb 40W</Name>
          </Translation>
          <StorageDimGroup class="entity">
            <Product>Bulb40W</Product>
            <StorageDimensionGroup>Std-Dim</StorageDimensionGroup>
          </StorageDimGroup>
          <TrackingDimGroup class="entity">
            <Product>Bulb40W</Product>
            <TrackingDimensionGroup>Std-Dim</TrackingDimensionGroup>
          </TrackingDimGroup>
          <Identifier class="entity">
            <ProductNumber>Bulb40W</ProductNumber>
          </Identifier>
        </Product>
      </EcoResProduct>
    </MessageParts>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

The EcoResProduct element can contain multiple Product elements in order to create multiple products in one service call.

Create a product master and a related product variant

To create a product master, use the EcoResProductService.create operation. Then use the EcoResProductMasterDimValue.create operation to associate product dimension values with the product master. Finally, use the EcoResProductService.create operation again, this time to create a product variant.

The code to create a product master is basically similar to the code that creates a distinct product. One difference is the code that associates the product master with a product dimension group (in the following example: Size-Dim):

static void createMaster()
{
    //master definition
    AxdEntity_Product_EcoResProductMaster productMaster = new AxdEntity_Product_EcoResProductMaster()
    {
        DisplayProductNumber = "RunningShoe",
        ProductType = AxdEnum_EcoResProductType.Item,
        SearchName = "RunningShoe",
    };
    productMaster.Translation = new AxdEntity_Translation[1];
    productMaster.Translation[0] = new AxdEntity_Translation()
    {
        LanguageId = "en-us", Name = "Comfortable running shoe"
    };
    productMaster.Identifier = new AxdEntity_Identifier[1];
    productMaster.Identifier[0] = new AxdEntity_Identifier()
    {
        ProductNumber = "RunningShoe"
    };

    productMaster.ProductDimGroup = new AxdEntity_ProductDimGroup[1];
    productMaster.ProductDimGroup[0] = new AxdEntity_ProductDimGroup()
    {
        Product = "RunningShoe", ProductDimensionGroup = "Size-Dim"
    };
    productMaster.VariantConfigurationTechnology = AxdEnum_EcoResVariantConfigurationTechnologyType.PredefinedVariants;

    AxdEcoResProduct axdProduct = new AxdEcoResProduct()
    {
        Product = new AxdEntity_Product_EcoResProduct[1] { productMaster }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext();
    EcoResProductServiceClient productService = new EcoResProductServiceClient();
    try
    {
        productService.create(ctx, axdProduct);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

When the product master is created, associate two size dimension values with the product master (size L and M):

static void createMasterDimensions()
{
    //master dimensions definition (two sizes, L and M)
    AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterSize sizeDimensionL = new AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterSize()
    {
        SizeProductMaster = "RunningShoe",
        Size = "L",
        EcoResSize = new AxdEntity_EcoResSize[1] 
        { 
            new AxdEntity_EcoResSize() { Name = "L" }
        }
    };
    AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterSize sizeDimensionM = new AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterSize()
    {
        SizeProductMaster = "RunningShoe",
        Size = "M",
        EcoResSize = new AxdEntity_EcoResSize[1] 
        { 
            new AxdEntity_EcoResSize() { Name = "M" }
        }
    };

    AxdEcoResProductMasterDimValue axdDimValue = new AxdEcoResProductMasterDimValue()
    {
        MasterDim = new AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterDimensionValue[2] { sizeDimensionL, sizeDimensionM }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext();
    EcoResProductMasterDimValueServiceClient masterDimensionService = new EcoResProductMasterDimValueServiceClient();
    try
    {
        masterDimensionService.create(ctx, axdDimValue);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

Create a product variant with the size L for the product master. One thing that may not be obvious is the value required for the ProductDimensionAttribute field of the AxdEntity_VariantDimValue_EcoResProductVariantConfiguration, the AxdEntity_VariantDimValue_EcoResProductVariantSize, and the AxdEntity_VariantDimValue_EcoResProductVariant entities. The value must correspond to the IDs of the EcoResConfiguration, the EcoResSize, and the EcoResColor tables, respectively.

static void createVariant()
{
    //product variant definition
    AxdEntity_Product_EcoResDistinctProductVariant productVariant = new AxdEntity_Product_EcoResDistinctProductVariant()
    {
        DisplayProductNumber = "RunningShoeL",
        ProductType = AxdEnum_EcoResProductType.Item,
        SearchName = "RunningShoeL",
        ProductMaster = "RunningShoe"
    };
    productVariant.Translation = new AxdEntity_Translation[1];
    productVariant.Translation[0] = new AxdEntity_Translation()
    {    
        LanguageId = "en-us", Name = "Comfortable running shoe L size"
    };
    productVariant.VariantDimValue = new AxdEntity_VariantDimValue_EcoResProductVariantDimensionValue[1];
    productVariant.VariantDimValue[0] = new AxdEntity_VariantDimValue_EcoResProductVariantSize()
    {
        DistinctProductVariant = "RunningShoeL",
        ProductDimensionAttribute = 3173,//The ID of the EcoResSize table
        Size = "L",
        EcoResSize = new AxdEntity_EcoResSize1[1]
        {
            new AxdEntity_EcoResSize1() { Name = "L" }
        }
    };

    AxdEcoResProduct axdProduct = new AxdEcoResProduct()
    {
        Product = new AxdEntity_Product_EcoResProduct[1] { productVariant }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext();
    EcoResProductServiceClient productService = new EcoResProductServiceClient();
    try
    {
        productService.create(ctx, axdProduct);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

The following XML code does almost the same thing. The only difference is that it creates a product master that is associated with a product dimension group where the Color dimension is active. At first, create a product master:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <Action>http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/services/EcoResProductService/create</Action>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <MessageParts xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
      <EcoResProduct xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/EcoResProduct">
        <Product xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="entity" xsi:type="AxdEntity_Product_EcoResProductMaster">
          <DisplayProductNumber>BoardMarker</DisplayProductNumber>
          <SearchName>BoardMarker</SearchName>
          <ProductType>Item</ProductType>
          <Translation class="entity">
            <LanguageId>en-us</LanguageId>
            <Name>Whiteboard marker</Name>
          </Translation>
          <ProductDimGroup class="entity">
            <Product>BoardMarker</Product>
            <ProductDimensionGroup>Col-Dim</ProductDimensionGroup>
          </ProductDimGroup>
          <Identifier class="entity">
            <ProductNumber>BoardMarker</ProductNumber>
          </Identifier>
          <VariantConfigurationTechnology>PredefinedVariants</VariantConfigurationTechnology>
        </Product>        
      </EcoResProduct>
    </MessageParts>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

Associate values of the Color dimension with the product master:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <Action>http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/services/EcoResProductMasterDimValueService/create</Action>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <MessageParts xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
      <EcoResProductMasterDimValue xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/EcoResProductMasterDimValue">
        <MasterDim class="entity" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterColor">
          <ColorProductMaster>BoardMarker</ColorProductMaster>
          <Color>Red</Color>
          <EcoResColor class="entity">
            <Name>Red</Name>
          </EcoResColor>
        </MasterDim>
        <MasterDim class="entity" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="AxdEntity_MasterDim_EcoResProductMasterColor">
          <ColorProductMaster>BoardMarker</ColorProductMaster>
          <Color>Blue</Color>
          <EcoResColor class="entity">
            <Name>Blue</Name>
          </EcoResColor>
        </MasterDim>
      </EcoResProductMasterDimValue>
    </MessageParts>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

Create a product variant:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <Action>http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/services/EcoResProductService/create</Action>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <MessageParts xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
      <EcoResProduct xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/EcoResProduct">
        <Product xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="entity" xsi:type="AxdEntity_Product_EcoResDistinctProductVariant">
          <DisplayProductNumber>BoardMarkerRed</DisplayProductNumber>
          <SearchName>BoardMarkerRed</SearchName>
          <ProductType>Item</ProductType>
          <Translation class="entity">
            <LanguageId>en-us</LanguageId>
            <Name>Whiteboard marker red</Name>
          </Translation>
          <Identifier class="entity">
            <ProductNumber>BoardMarkerRed</ProductNumber>
          </Identifier>
          <ProductMaster>BoardMarker</ProductMaster>
          <VariantDimValue class="entity" xsi:type="AxdEntity_VariantDimValue_EcoResProductVariantColor">
            <DistinctProductVariant>BoardMarkerRed</DistinctProductVariant>
            <ProductDimensionAttribute>3169</ProductDimensionAttribute>
            <Color>Red</Color>
            <EcoResColor class="entity">
              <Name>Red</Name>
            </EcoResColor>
          </VariantDimValue>
        </Product>        
      </EcoResProduct>
    </MessageParts>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

Release products

A product must be released to a company before it can be used in that company. The ItemService and InventDimCombinationService serve this purpose. The former can be used to release distinct products and product masters. The latter can be used to release product variants. A product master must be released before any of its product variants can be released.

Release a distinct product or a product master

The only information required to release a product to a company is the ID of the product and the ID by which it will be represented in the company (ItemId). It is possible to add information to the ItemService service. In the following example, information about units used for storage, purchasing, and selling is provided:

private static void releaseProduct()
{
    AxdEntity_InventTable inventTable = new AxdEntity_InventTable()
    {
        ItemId = "Bulb60W",
        Product = "Bulb60W",
        Invent = new AxdEntity_Invent[1]
        {
            new AxdEntity_Invent()
            {
                ItemId = "Bulb60W", UnitId = "Box"
            }
        },
        Purch = new AxdEntity_Purch[1]
        {
            new AxdEntity_Purch()
            {
                ItemId = "Bulb60W", UnitId = "Box"
            }
        },
        Sales = new AxdEntity_Sales[1]
        {
            new AxdEntity_Sales()
            {
                ItemId = "Bulb60W", UnitId = "Pcs"
            }
        }
    };

    AxdItem item = new AxdItem()
    {
        InventTable = new AxdEntity_InventTable[1] { inventTable }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext() { Company = "DMO" };
    ItemServiceClient itemService = new ItemServiceClient();
    try
    {
        itemService.create(ctx, item);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

The following XML code releases a product master with the minimum amount of information required:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <Company>DMO</Company>
    <Action>http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/services/ItemService/create</Action>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <MessageParts xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
      <Item xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/Item">
        <InventTable class="entity">
          <ItemId>BoardMarker</ItemId>
          <Product>BoardMarker</Product>
        </InventTable>
      </Item>
    </MessageParts>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

Release a product variant

A product variant can be released once a related product master has been released. When you release a product variant to a company, the product variant can be identified in two different ways.

Use the product number of the product variant.
Use the ID of the associated product master in the company (ItemId) and the InventDim structure with the relevant fields set to the dimension values for the variant (the ItemId/InventDim approach).

For details, see the following examples.

Use the product number of the product variant (DistinctProductVariant):

private static void releaseProductVariants()
{
    AxdEntity_InventDimCombination releasedVariant = new AxdEntity_InventDimCombination()
    {
        DistinctProductVariant = "RunningShoeL",
        ItemId = ""
    };

    AxdInventDimCombination inventDimCombination = new AxdInventDimCombination()
    {
        InventDimCombination = new AxdEntity_InventDimCombination[1] { releasedVariantL }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext() { Company = "DMO" };
    InventDimCombinationServiceClient inventDimCombinationService = new InventDimCombinationServiceClient();
    try
    {
        inventDimCombinationService.create(ctx, inventDimCombination);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

Use the ItemId/InventDim approach:

private static void releaseProductVariants()
{
    AxdEntity_InventDimCombination releasedVariant = new AxdEntity_InventDimCombination()
    {
        DistinctProductVariant = "",
        ItemId = "RunningShoe",
        InventDim = new AxdEntity_InventDim[1] 
        {
            new AxdEntity_InventDim()
            {
                InventSizeId = "M"
            }
        }
    };

    AxdInventDimCombination inventDimCombination = new AxdInventDimCombination()
    {
        InventDimCombination = new AxdEntity_InventDimCombination[2] { releasedVariantM }
    };

    CallContext ctx = new CallContext() { Company = "DMO" };
    InventDimCombinationServiceClient inventDimCombinationService = new InventDimCombinationServiceClient();
    try
    {
        inventDimCombinationService.create(ctx, inventDimCombination);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
        System.Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

The following XML code releases two variants in one call and uses both approaches to identify a product variant:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
  <Header>
    <Company>DMO</Company>
    <Action>http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/services/InventDimCombinationService/create</Action>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    <MessageParts xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2011/01/documents/Message">
      <InventDimCombination xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dynamics/2008/01/documents/InventDimCombination">
        <InventDimCombination class="entity">
          <DistinctProductVariant>BoardMarkerRed</DistinctProductVariant>
          <ItemId></ItemId>
        </InventDimCombination>
        <InventDimCombination class="entity">
          <DistinctProductVariant></DistinctProductVariant>
          <ItemId>BoardMarker</ItemId>
          <InventDim class="entity">
            <InventColorId>Blue</InventColorId>
          </InventDim>
        </InventDimCombination>      
      </InventDimCombination>
    </MessageParts>
  </Body>
</Envelope>

Summary

We hope that this blog post will help developers to better understand and use the services for the new product-item data model.

More detailed information regarding the creation and release of products can be found in the Application user Help in the “Product information management” section.

Further developer information about AIF and services can be found on MSDN.

By Wojciech Bardzinski

Disclaimer

All the information about AX 2012 posted here is a pre-release. Any feature is a subject to be changed before the release without notice.
This disclaimer is applicable to all posts about AX 2012 in this blog.

Back ported features from Dynamics AX 2012 to Dynamics AX 2009 (Close non-financial transfers, Inventory Reconciliation and Reporting)

Ievgenii Korovin — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:19:00 GMT

Some of the new functionality that is created in the Dynamics AX development cycle brings about so much feedback from customers and partners that we decide to back port the features to previous versions of Dynamics AX products. The back ported features become available as part of hot fixes or service packs to previous versions of Dynamics AX.

Today, we would like to bring your attention to the great SCM features that were developed as part of the Dynamics AX 2012 release cycle and which are already included in Dynamics AX 2009 Service Pack 1 (Hotfix rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Service Pack 1)

Close non-financial transfers

This feature significantly improves performance for the inventory closing and inventory recalculation processes. The essence of the feature is the fact that inventory transactions which represent the physical transfers are disregarded during cost calculation. For example, inventory transactions might indicate a physical item movement between different warehouses or warehouse locations. However, from a costing perspective, the movement does not contribute to the final item cost.

With the new approach, the cost calculation process becomes significantly faster and more accurate. Please refer to the following white paper to learn more about the feature. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 White Paper: Close Non-Financial Transfers

Inventory Reconciliation and Reporting

The Inventory value report framework allows you to report and reconcile Inventory and WIP values on one report. The new report framework replace six individual reports and manual adjustments, which were required in previous versions of Dynamcs AX to achieve the same result.

Also, the Potential conflicts report can be used to report transactions that violate rules as defined by parameter settings in various modules. This report significantly reduces the time spent on identifying the causes of discrepancies between Inventory and General ledger values. Please refer to the following white paper to learn more about the feature. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 White Paper: Inventory Reconciliation and Reporting

Disclaimer

Service products in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Ievgenii Korovin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:34:00 GMT

With Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 new capabilities of selling and procuring products, decoupled from inventory control, have been introduced. The purpose of this post is to describe the difference between stocked and non-stocked products of type service and to provide general recommendation about this subject.

Item definitions in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and earlier

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 offered the options to define different types of items. The table below illustrates these options:

Item type	Purpose	System behavior
Item	Represent finished items and raw materials.	- Inventory balances are stored, which means these items can be reserved and picked - Inventory on-hand overview exists - Can be defined as warehouse items - Production orders cannot be created - Planned purchase orders and transfer orders can be created when running master planning - Coverage plan settings can be defined as purchase - Inventory transactions are created for source documents, allowing the user to receive/issue inventory for service items
Service	Represent services like sub-contracting	- No inventory balances are stored, which means these items cannot be reserved nor picked - No inventory on-hand overview - Cannot be defined as warehouse items - Production order cannot be created - Master planning cannot produce or transfer service - Coverage plan settings can only be defined as purchase - Cannot configure items using the Product Configurator - Inventory transactions are created for source documents, allowing the user to receive/issue inventory for service items
BOM	Represents the bills of materials. BOMs can be semi-finished items or finished items	- Inventory balances are stored, which means these items can be reserved and picked - Inventory on-hand overview exists - Can be defined as warehouse items - Production order can be created - BOMs can be produced and transferred when running master planning - Coverage plan settings can be defined as purchase, transfer or production - Inventory transactions are created for source documents, allowing the user to receive/issue inventory for service items

Service items

Whereas the item types Item and BOM share to a very high degree the same characteristics, the item type service is different.

Services are by definition consumed at the moment they are produced and can therefore not be stocked nor “owned” unlike items.

An example of a service is

The Contoso Company (consumer) has a fleet of company cars. Once a year, the company car must undergo service inspection at a local car shop (producer). The employee will take the company car and “purchase” (consumes) the service at the car shop.

The example illustrates the normal practice for service items. A business has certain services (items of type service) in their inventory, which they would like to, in the above scenario, purchase. The financial value of the service would be posted directly to expense accounts rather than inventory accounts.

In order to support the scenario in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 the reference data for such a service item would have to be defined specially for these items.

In the inventory model group, negative physical and financial inventory must be allowed for service items. Furthermore, all ledger integration options, particularly the Post financial inventory must be left blank. This will ensure that, in the example of purchasing the car service, an expense account will be used for receipt transactions.

From an inventory costing perspective, the system does expect service item transactions to be adjusted. Therefore the service items transactions will be excluded during the inventory recalculation process. During the inventory closing run, the service items will be settled according to the special “service item settlement” principle, which will close service item transactions without making any adjustments, therefore will be no additional posting created.

If for some reason whatsoever a service item was to be promoted to become a standard item to be purchased, the system offered the option to change the item type from service to item. This change would have a series of ripple effects, since the core definition of what functions was allowed performed with the previous service item has been changed.

Order management and inventory control management

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 order management and inventory control management were tightly coupled. This resulted in alternate solutions when trying to decouple them.

In the case of procurement, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 introduced the purchase requisition function with its concept of non-catalog. The non-catalog concept required a dummy item of type service. This catalog item would be the only item that could be expensed directly without effecting inventory or cost accounting.

To be able to support non-stocked trade for the sales side, you would instead of defining dummy service items, use the free text invoice function next to the sales order function.

Product definitions in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 introduces the concept of shared products. Core product definitions containing key product attributes are defined and controlled without an organizational context. A new product process allows you to release the core product definitions to all or parts of an organization, and finalization of the product data setup is done at the individual organizational level.

The item type in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 has been promoted into the product type in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. With the new concept the core product types have been revised and so some extend altered. See the table below for reference.

Product type	Purpose	System behavior
Item	Represent finished items and raw materials.	The behavior is similar to Dynamics AX 2009 - Any item can be associated with a BOM, and thereby be produced or purchased
Service	Represent services	- Products of type service, should be associated with an item model group, where the policy not stocked is selected - No support for service BOMs - Coverage plan setting can only be purchase
BOM	DISCONTINUED	N/A

Service products

Defining products of type service in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is fairly simple. Apart from selecting the correct product type, one essential component to remember is to associate the released product in a legal entity with an item model group, where the policy Stocked product is left blank.

This policy is new, and it ensures that products of type service will be expensed and not stocked in inventory.

The following recommendations apply:

Standard service product

Service product as part of BOM

(subcontracting)

Stocked product = false

- Recommended – will ensure that product costs are expensed directly

- No inventory operations required

- Not recommended

Stocked product = true

- Not recommended

- Recommended – will ensure that product costs can be captured in a BOM structure

As the above matrix illustrates, if a product of type service is to be used both as a standard product offering and included in a BOM cost calculation (for a subcontracting scenario for example), it will require two unique product IDs.

From a master planning and subcontracting perspective, the below constraints dictate that non-stocked service products cannot participate in subcontracting scenarios:

· From Master planning perspective, the non-stocked service product cannot be part of a bill of material. Demand from a higher level bill of material item cannot create drive demand towards a non-stocked product

· From product costing perspective, the non-stocked service product cannot be part of a bill of material and cannot contribute to the direct cost of a finished goods

For a service item to support subcontracting and be included in master planning, the service item has to be setup as stocked.

Regardless of the policy setting in the associated item model group for a product of type service, the inventory storage dimension group will still have to be specified on the product setup. However, only storage dimension site is mandatory for a source document line for a non-stocked service.

Notice: during upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 or earlier to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, all items defined with item type = service, will be upgraded to products of product type = service. The associated item model group for the released product of type service will have its Stocked product value, by default, set to true.

Order management and inventory control management

Looking at the service item example from in the beginning of this document, the most noticeable change in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is the ability to decouple order management and inventory control management.

Although products of type service can either be not stocked or stocked (in subcontracting scenarios), the purchase requisition in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 no longer requires dummy service items to include in catalogs, because of the new stocked product policy.

The policy now supports to be able to both procure and sell all kinds of products in a consolidated manner, which means on a single order.

Please note that system supports the conversion between stocked and non-stocked services.

Summary

With Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 new capabilities of selling and procuring, decoupled from inventory control, have been introduced. This non-stocked trade is being supported by a new policy called stocked product on the item model group.

By applying the policy, products of type service can be expensed directly without any use of inventory control processes.

By Mai-Britt Winther and Ievgenii Korovin

Disclaimer

WMS enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Ievgenii Korovin — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:58:00 GMT

This posting describes some of the enhancements of the WMS functionality that were added in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Storing and updating the requested ship date on shipments

The WMSShipment table now stores the latest date where the shipment must be delivered in order to meet the requested ship date. This information is displayed in the Requested ship date (RequestedShipDate) field and the date corresponds to the earliest date that occurs on the lines of the shipment.

Based on this new field, batch processing of shipments can be set up with a level of detail that allows you to prioritize shipments that are soon to be shipped. The requested ship date is displayed in the Shipments form and records can be filter by this date.

Automatic activation of shipments

You can now activate shipments when you run shipment reservation in batch. Select the Activate shipments parameter in the Shipment reservation form in Inventory and warehouse management under Periodic > Shipments > Shipment reservation.

Automatically create shipments that are unique for customers or orders

With the Joint shipping parameter in the Shipment templates form you can now specify if a shipment should be split when output orders are added. With this parameter you do not need a separate template per customer to define what orders can be added to a shipment.

The enhanced shipment template can help improve the process to automatically assign orders to shipments. Orders are added according to the value of the Joint shipping field and shipments are automatically created for unique values.

Tracking load on WMS locations.

In earlier versions only the numbers of pallets were tracked on locations.

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, weight and volume of items and pallets are also tracked together with the pallet count. The load for a location can be seen in the Inventory locations (WMSLocation) form.

The tracking is based on records in a new table named WMSLocationLoad. Records are always created and they are never updated. This is to allow for better scaling. The load on a location can be determined from the sum of the records.

Transports now also store the total weight and the total volume of the transport. The values are stored in the TotalVolume and TotalWeight fields.

In order to reduce the number of records in the WMSLocationLoad table it is recommended to run the Summation of load adjustments job in Inventory and warehouse management under Periodic > Clean up on a regular basis.

By Bibi Christensen, Per Lykke Lynnerup and Lennart Conrad

Disclaimer

Operational Sites in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Ievgenii Korovin — Wed, 25 May 2011 09:11:00 GMT

Operational Sites in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

As companies grow and operations are distributed across multiple geographic locations, there is a growing desire for shared business processes alongside processes that are tailored to the needs of specific parts of the business.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 introduced multisite hierarchy and supporting features which enable customers to create multiple logistic entities, such as operational sites, associated with a single legal entity

The multisite functionality was added as optional functionality which could be used for customers that run Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 with the Logistics license key activated.

Operational sites can be defined as follows:

“The term site refers to a location at which a company has setup operations. As such, a site is a grouping of resources and warehouses that are operationally interrelated. A site may be spread across multiple physical addresses, e.g. in the same city, if the associated resources and warehouse are operationally closely connected, and if it is considered one physical location.”

From this perspective, an operational site can be considered the geographical location where items are stocked in warehouses associated with the site. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, the warehouse always associated to a particular site when the multisite functionality is enabled.

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, the calculation of cost for stocked items can be done separately per site, just as it can be done per warehouse, and most other inventory dimensions. The costing information (inventory value) is linked to the operational site implementation via the inventory transaction engines and the Inventory transactions records carry both physical and financial information.

In case the business has a requirement to calculate costs and run Inventory closing per different warehouses the recommendation is to assign different sites to each warehouse to complete a separate calculation of the inventory value for each warehouse.

In case business has a requirement to calculate cost based on all existing inventory transactions across all warehouses, the system can be set up with a single site. This site must contain all warehouses even if the warehouses reside at the different geographical locations from operational perspective.

The multisite activation feature was introduced in order to enable existing customers to gradually adopt the new multisite functionality and upgrade their existing transactional data one company at a time. Once the multisite functionality is activated, the new Inventory site dimension becomes active and mandatory and all inventory transactions are populated with an operational site value. The following document contains a detailed description of the multisite activation feature: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 White Paper: Multisite Activation

The “Multisite Active” parameter is part of the Inventory parameters in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and it is used to identify whether the multisite functionality has been activated within a given legal entity

Since the release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, Microsoft has encouraged customers to activate and use the advanced multisite functionality.

Operational Sites in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 it has been decided to enable the multisite functionality for all Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 users.

It was primarily to simplify the functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. The previous versions of Dynamics AX provide the customer an ability to store items in unknown (blank) warehouses. Going forward, we want our customers to be more explicit about the modeling of their sites and warehouses and be explicit about where they stock their items.

Numerous incentives have led to this strategic decision and we would like to bring some of them to your attention.

Lower TCO for partner and customer customization

Today, our partners and customers need to develop and test dual code paths for configurations with and without multisite activated as part of their vertical and horizontal solutions. This carries additional cost and risk – particularly since the Microsoft Dynamics AX application continues to grow in size and scope. Also, the variability of product configurations to be upgraded is limited.

Operational sites are integral parts of the Organizational Model

Operational sites are integral parts of the Organizational Model that is introduced in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and the Organizational Model features are most relevant if the multisite functionality is activated. With the continued uptake of the Organizational Model across the application, and the SCM features in particular, the concept of operational sites will be required. We might consider enabling more advanced scenarios where multiple legal entities can share the same operation site.

Summary

We are happy to offer more out-of-the-box functionality to our customers, while at the same time making a strategic investment in the foundation logic and functionality of our core application. The objective of this approach is to pave the way for strong and advanced functionality in the next versions of Microsoft Dynamics AX. This means that:

All new Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 users will automatically benefit from the multisite functionality!
Existing Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 customers must activate the multisite functionality before upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012. This is done with the Multisite Activation Wizard that shipped with Microsoft Dynamics 2009.
Customers upgrading from Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 will experience that the multisite functionality is activated during the upgrade.
Going forward, all customizations and partner solutions can safely take a dependency on site being enabled and active as the core inventory dimensions.
- The Multisite Active parameter is removed from the Inventory parameters.
- The inventory Site dimension is always active as part of the shared storage dimension group.
- The Logistics license key has been merged with the Trade license key, which is a part of the basic Microsoft Dynamics AX offering.

Ievgenii Korovin and Dynamics Ax SCM Team

Disclaimer

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 SCM White Papers: Code Upgrade (InventTrans refactoring, Item-Product Data Management, Operational Resource Model)

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:13:00 GMT

The Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 SCM code upgrade white papers have been available for download on MSDN. Enjoy!

Implementing InventTrans Refactoring - Discusses the refactoring of the InventTrans table and common design patterns. Also discusses how to implement these changes when developing new features or updating existing features.

Implementing the Item-Product Data Management Framework - Highlights the new patterns that are used to represent item-product master data. When detailing the new patterns, the document also describes the pattern that is being replaced and how developers should approach updating their code.

Implementing the Operations Resource Model - Describes new patterns that are used for representing resources, resource capabilities, and resource groups, and provides instruction for upgrading and implementing the new operations resource models.

WMS related Question and Answers on Dynamics AX

Ievgenii Korovin — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:09:00 GMT

A number of questions have been asked thought this blog about shipments and the shipment reservation logic. Some of the answers to these questions include information about aspects of these key system components that might be of general interest to our readers.

Shipment reservation for consolidated picking and activation essentials

Question #1 – Shipment activation

When a shipment is activated (Inventory management > Common forms > Shipments > Functions > Activate), the system will reserve the stock first, even though you do not have the “Reservation required” check box selected for the shipment. Is this design logic for consolidated picking shipments? And why is the logic designed in this way?

Answer #1

Activation of a shipment basically means that all picking routes and transports related to a shipment will be activated, and this status indicates that the state of all routes (picking and transports) allows operators to start working.

In order to utilize WMS for picking, picking routes are created based on picking areas and sorted based on, for example, the inventory locations sort codes. If the items were not reserved by the system before the shipment was activated, the picking location cannot be identified and the routes cannot be optimized.

So for activation, without reservation, the operator could end up being sent back and forth in the warehouse by the system and the items to be picked might not even be there.

The same goes for transports. If the items that are going to be transported were not reserved on the system, it would not be possible to identify where the transport should come from, which again would make it pretty hard to even create a transport.

The WMS shipment logic has not been designed for planning of shipments – this is actually more of a “grouping logic” for the warehouse picking operations.

Ordered reservation can be performed for the item picking location if this is defined in the shipment reservation combination.

Regarding the “Reservation required” option, please refer to question #2

Question #2 – “Reservation required”

Please explain why the shipping template which has to be used in conjunction with the consolidated picking method has the “Reservation required” check box if reservations are required whether or not it is selected.

Answer #2

First of all, the Shipment template is not required for a consolidated picking shipment. You can create a shipment manually. But it is really not the Shipment template that is the most interesting part here. This logic just copies the parameter settings to the shipment and controls if output orders should be assigned to shipments automatically. Please consider the following information on the ”Reservation required” logic:

- If activated, it will not be possible to reserve/activate the shipment and thereby create picking routes and output pallet transports unless all shipment lines can be reserved. The shipment status will remain ”Registered”.

- If not activated, it will be possible to reserve/activate the shipment and thereby create picking routes and output pallet transports for the shipment lines that can be reserved. The shipment status will remain ”Registered” (logically this is the lowest line state), if just one of the shipment lines cannot be reserved. This logic is typically used in x-docking scenarios. Instead of waiting to perform the picking operations for all the items that exist on-hand, the warehouse workers can go pick all inventory that is available on-hand. The inventory can be placed at the shipment staging area or loaded into a truck in a waiting position. As soon as the last item gets registered into inventory, the inventory is added to a picking route by the shipment reservation batch job.

The above logic is applicable only for consolidated picking shipments.

Question #3 – InfoLog when running the shipment reservation

Why is the InfoLog message an ‘information only – no action required’ when a shipment reservation is run with the “Reservation required” check box cleared and when the shipment is run with the “Reservation required” check box selected, the InfoLog message is a critical stop.

Answer #3

We hope the above answers this. If you do not have enough on-hand inventory for all shipment lines and the parameter is activated, the shipment cannot process further in this state. But if the parameter is not activated, the shipment lines that can be reserved will be added to picking routes and pallet transports. The lines that do not have on-hand inventory will remain ”Registered” and you will be informed by an InfoLog message about a stock shortage.

WMS refill logic of an item picking location

Question #4 – Group more pallets from bulk locations to refill an item picking location

In our case, we would like the replenishment team to be able to group pallet transports in order to move several pallets in one time for replenishment of a picking location. Let's illustrate this by an example:

The picking location for item A is set for a minimum of 500 and a maximum of 1000. We use pallets to identify carton boxes in the warehouse and a full pallet contains 100 item A (maximum pallet quantity). The current available quantity in the picking location is 600. If we pick 300 in the picking location, the available quantity becomes 200 below the minimum, and a pallet transport is generated to transport only one pallet of 100 from storage to the picking location. It is only when we complete the transport that a second pallet transport of 100 is generated again to reach the minimum. Moreover, as long as a pallet transport to the picking location exists (that is to say, generated but not yet completed), any further picking will not generate automatic replenishment via new pallet transports.

The behavior above does not fit original requirement, and we find it surprising that AX does not allow multiple pallet transports for replenishments. What are the incentives for such a restriction? Is there a specific setting somewhere to override this?

Original source of the question

Answer #4

Historically, the functionality of automatic refill leverages big parts of the functionality from the manual refilling of a picking location.

When warehouse workers (pickers) manually request a refill of a picking location, they have no way of knowing if a colleague has just recently ordered a refill, which hasn’t been completed yet. For that reason the system allows only one refill transport to be active at a time

At the same time you can, of course, have more than one registered refill transport (but not more than one active refill transport).

We find this scenario fairly unique. Typically a much higher quantity than you mention here is stored in the bulk areas and you can refill picking location with one transport in one go.

Creation of output orders for reserved physical quantity only

Question #5 – Release to pick for only reserved physical inventory

How can we release to pick multiple sales order lines and at the same time only release what is physically available on hand?

Answer #5

This can be done by utilizing the “Release sales order picking” form where you can use the query that is available on the form and add a range on the inventory transaction status issue field.

If you only want to release order lines which are reserved physically, you can use the option “All orders that have status reserved physical” before you release the orders for picking.

Sales orders can have lines that are partially reserved (with some stock remaining on back order). Rather than transferring the entire sales order quantity, you only want to create output orders for items that are reserved. In this case, you must activate the ”Deduct released for picking” parameter on the Release sales order picking form under Order parameters. This option allows a transfer of partially reserved quantities on the output order and it can be applied with the consolidated picking method.

Production input location

Question #6 – Location type Production input location

When is a location of the type Production input location used?

Answer #6:

The Production input location type is used in conjunction with production and internal consolidated picking shipments for raw components that are picked to the production area.

The Production input location must be assigned on a resource. When a BOM line item, then, requests a production operation utilizing consolidated picking, a shipment can automatically be created from the shipment template logic to request delivery of picked items. The destination location for the picked items is the input location at the production line. With this functionality the warehouse picking is guided to deliver the picked raw components that are going to be consumed by the production line at the production input locations.

Hope this helps,

Ievgenii Korovin and Dynamics Ax SCM Team

The InventTrans table. Explore various field usages.

Ievgenii Korovin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 22:09:00 GMT

Introduction

No doubt, the InventTrans table is one of the most important tables in the inventory engine within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. It stores inventory transactions, which include a lot of the business data that is crucial to the functionality like reservations, on-hand quantities, inventory value calculations, and so forth.

There are number of different fields in InventTrans that contain information about:

Original source documents like purchase order or sales order lines - their states, items, quantities, document numbers, and so forth.
Time and place differences when business events such as physical or financial update have occurred.
Reference data which is important to different modules like Fixed Assets, Project Accounting.
And much more …

Today we want to focus on group #3 and explore how the certain fields on InventTrans are used, and what are their primary purposes. Let’s take a look at:

Direction
ItemBOMId and ItemRouteId
AssetId and AssetBookId

The Direction field is used to group receipts and issues and it’s important to have this field set properly. Otherwise, consider using consistency checks to fix corrupted data.

The ItemBomId and ItemRouteId fields play a key role in integration with master planning to cover expected demand properly.

The AssetId and AssetBookId fields enable seamless integration with The Fixed Assets module and help to establish the link between General Ledger and Inventory modules.

Direction field

This field specifies whether the transaction line is an issue or receipt transaction.

Conceptually, it can always be derived from the transaction quantity, and is determined with the following logic:

You should not be able to find any transaction within your database where the Direction field is set to InventDirection::None. This would indicate that you have corrupted transactions, as the inventory engine classes which deal with the Invent Trans table make sure that no inventory transaction exists for order lines where the quantity is not set. As a simple example, if you create a sales order line with a quantity of zero, there will be no inventory transaction for this order line.

The InventTrans.Direction field is used in various places, for instance from Inventory Marking form to group issues and receipts. So it’s important to have this field set correctly, so that the system can report correct transaction quantities and the user can mark against correct lots.

Use the standard consistency checks to correct inventory transactions and the Direction field as well. The Direction field value will be set properly during the consistency check job. Navigate to Basic > Periodic > Consistency check. Select the Inventory management module, and then click the Item check box and the Inventory transactions check box. Then, execute the consistency check in fix error mode by selecting Fix error in the Check/Fix field to correct inventory transactions.

ItemBOMId and ItemRouteId fields

These fields carry order line BOM and Route information which will be used to produce the expected item on the transaction line. Imagine a scenario where the Product Builder feature is used by a sales agent while creating sales order lines for a configurable item. The product builder feature lets you define the product model based on the customer requirements, and creates a new BOM structure and route to produce the item.

After the item has been configured with Product Builder, the BomId and RouteId information will be copied to the sales order line. The operator can always modify and preview the sub-bom and sub-route value for the selected sales order line on the main Sales Order form. Select the Lines grid > Other tab > BOM\route field group.

From the sales order line, select Inventory > Transaction to preview inventory transactions for the sales order lines and verify that a Sub-BOM and Subroute has been applied for the inventory transaction as well.

The InventTrans.itemBOMId and itemRouteId fields are used by master planning to fulfill the expected demand for the current item BOM structure. This creates a plan to produce or purchase all the components required to create the ordered goods within the expected lead time. The following code logic initializes data needed for the master planning run based on the existing inventory transactions.

You can simulate and explore master planning from the sales order line by navigating to Inquiries -> Net requirements. Note, the BOM structure and correct route will be used for the master planning engine only if the coverage group has been set correctly in Master planning > Setup > Coverage > Coverage groups form.

Please ensure that the Use BOM version requirement and Use Route version requirement has been selected for master planning on the Coverage groups form. If these are not set, production orders and derived requirements will not use the sub BOM and route, but instead will use the active BOM and Route for the issue transaction.

The most important consideration about Sub BOM and Route is that the values are not a part of the on hand information.

So even if an item is produced using a specific BOM or Route, the on hand information will show that one piece of the item is on hand, not any information about the BOM or Route.

If the specific BOM or route needs to be tracked as on hand information, please use one of the item dimensions for that. The item configuration dimension is a good candidate for this purpose. The BOM and Route can be automatically selected based on any item dimension, and this is fully integrated in master planning throughout production transfer purchase and on hand information.

AssetID and AssetBookId fields

Assume a company purchases an item which must became a part of the company’s fixed assets. Set asset fields on the original source documents to inform the inventory engine that the product receipt should be converted to a fixed asset, rather than being tracked and stocked in the warehouse.

There are two common ways to move inventory items to the fixed assets module in Microsoft Dynamics AX. First, we can purchase the items and set fixed asset fields on the purchase order line. Or we can post the special inventory journal to “convert” available inventory to fixed assets. The journal is available from the General Ledger Area Page > Journals > Inventory to Fixed Assets.

Let’s walk through the purchase order line life cycle as a simplified example. Assume that you have a purchase order line like the one in the screen shot and you purchase a quantity of a product. You want these products to be posted as fixed assets when they arrive.

The asset fields can be set on the Fixed assets tab for the purchase order line grid. You select the Value model of MOULD and associate the Fixed Asset Number of Asset-0001. This will create the asset in the fixed asset list with the posting of the packing slip or invoice. If selected, enter the asset group for the new asset. Select the fixed asset transaction type to be used when the asset is posted.

When you press (Crtl+S) to save the purchase order line, the system:

Creates an instance of InventMov_Purch class. This is a child type of general InventMovement class which “wraps” original source document line (purchase order line) and will be processed further by inventory engines (InventUpdate classes) to generate expected receipt transactions.
Processes the movement using the InventUpdate_Estimated class and generates inventory transactions.
Sets the Fixed Asset field values on the purchase line and on the movement, so the “link” is established between inventory transactions and general ledger assets.

The AssetInventTrans table keeps these relationships. In our case, the link is stored between the specified purchase line asset (Module, Asset-0001) and the newly created inventory lot value (InventTransId=00255_059)

After the financial update of the purchase order (invoice posting) is executed, the purchased items won’t be accounted for physically in the on-hand inventory, as they are posted as a fixed asset for the company. The inventory levels remain as they were before the original purchase order was placed in the system. The system will generate a special “system” issue transaction (TransType = FixedAsset) to settle the overall order line quantity to zero.

The new virtual movement (InventMov_Virtuel) was created and processed during financial update for purchase order to populate issue transactions. The movement was initialized in the InventMov_Virtuel > newAutoLossAsset method like:

The transactions with the “Fixed Asset” type can’t be previewed from purchase order line, as they have their own inventory lots. They refer to virtual movements system perform to settle the original purchase order quantity and they have nothing to do with the purchase order line.

You can always preview those transactions from the General Ledger module, which keeps tracks of company’s fixed assets and any movements associated to them.

You can navigate to General Ledger Area page > Places > Fixed Assets list page. Select the any fixed asset record on the main grid, and then navigate to Value Models > Transactions > Inventory Transactions. From this overview, you can find the original purchase order receipt (Receipts = Purchased) and corresponding fixed asset “auto loss” product issue record (Issue = Sold).

By Ievgenii Korovin, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Personalization of Role Centers in Dynamics AX 2009

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:44:05 GMT

In this post, we will cover easy-to-do modifications that can be done to Role Center pages and do not require special development skills. The goal is to explain how to add a value to a Role Center page by changing to best suit your business needs.

There are a number of predefined Role Centers for different roles that are coming with Dynamics AX and all of them can be personalized to be more useful to you. We assume you already have Dynamics AX 2009 installed and Role Centers configured. For the example, we will use the default Role Center that is a home page for users that are not associated with a specific role. The default page looks like this:

As you can see, there is a lot of unused space on the default Role Center page. Let’s try to make this page more useful by modifying the Web Parts that are already present on the page and by adding some additional Web Parts.

We already have 3 Web Parts on the page:

· Cues

· Quick Links

· Work list.

However, by default only the Work list has some predefined data, the Cues and the Quick Links Web Parts are just empty containers that should be modified to be useful.

Adding a link to the Quick Links Web Part

First, let’s add some links to the Quick Links. All you need to do is to click on Add Links (pretty straightforward, isn’t?) and a dialog will pop up where you can chose which link you want to add. The dialog looks like this:

Here we have 3 options - we can add a link to:

- Any item from the main menu (Desktop link)

- Any Enterprise Portal page (Enterprise Portal link)

- Any hyperlink (URL)

We will add one of each type:

By default, the EP link is hidden in the desktop client, but shown on the Role Center page on the Enterprise Portal. Click Display Enterprise Portal links in the client to choose to have the EP link in both the desktop client and on the EP page. Desktop Links are shown only in the client and hidden in EP, while URL links are shown in both places.

Now we can see the following links in the Web Part in the client:

Let’s look how the Web Part looks on the EP page:

The Desktop Link in the example will lead to the Inventory Management/Items list page; the EP Link will open the Sales/Activities page.

We can manage all our links from both the EP and the client. Click Manage Links to open a dialog where we can change the order of the links, remove links or edit them:

We have changed the order or the links by putting the URL link on top and also changed the title of the EP link to make it clear that it points to the Sales Activities page:

It does not matter whether you do modifications on the EP page or in the client – the changes are reflected in both places, you just need to press F5 to refresh the page in the client if you have done modifications on the EP page and vice-versa.

In the top right corner of the Web Part, you can see the drop down menu that allows switching between Personal and Shared views of the links. This control is visible for Dynamics AX administrator users only; other users can only see the Personal view. By switching to the Shared view, an administrator user can add or manage links that are available by default to all users in the personal links view mode. Individual users (including administrators) might choose to delete the shared link from their Personal view, it will not affect other users. If an individual user modifies the shared link, then the modified version becomes a personal link for this user and the shared version is excluded from the user’s Personal view while other users are not affected by the changes. If the administrator user modifies the shared link using the Shared view, then the changes are reflected on the Personal views of all users.

We hope now you know how to personalize the Quick Links Web Part to best fit your needs.

Creating a new cue and adding it to the Cues Web Part

Let’s now see how we can add value to the Cues Web Part that is empty so far. The Cues Web part can show a pictorial representation of an important number for a business, for example, the number of open sales orders. There are a number of predefined Cues that you can easily add to the Web part on your page by clicking the small button on the right side of the Web part and selecting the Modify Shared Web Part menu item.

By doing this, you are entering edit mode for the role page. The Web Part property editor for the Cues Web part will appear in the left side of the page. There we can select Cue to modify (the Cues Web part can show up to 6 different Cues) and choose one of the existent Cues. We have chosen the Delayed Receipts Cue.

After choosing a Cue the default values for the Cue’s parameters will be copied from the Cue definition. For now, let’s just use the default values and press the OK button at the bottom to apply changes.

We have added several more predefined Cues:

Pretty cool and quite easy, isn’t?

Now let’s create our own new Cue, that could be more interesting. To do it, we need to open a form with the list of artifacts we want to present as a Cue and then press Ctrl-F3 to open the SysQuery form. We will use the Inventory On Hand List page.

Let’s say we would like to see in the Cue the number of items with 0 physical inventory quantities. To do it, we are adding a new range to the query with criteria 0 for the Physical inventory field of the On-hand inventory table.

Then, we press the Modify button at the top-right and select the Save as Cue… menu item. It opens the Save as Cue dialog where we can specify parameters for our newly created Cue.

The Save as Cue dialog is available only when the form has been added to the main navigation in Microsoft Dynamics AX. To do this, you must create a menu item for the form, and then add the menu item to a menu that can be accessed through the MainMenu form in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

We have set a Cue Id and caption values for our Cue; we also have changed the Count Max property to 20. The Count Min and Max properties define how the Cue is rendered, depending on the number of artifacts it represents. If the number of artifacts is less than the Count Min value the Cue is rendered as an empty stack of documents. If the number of artifacts is more than the Count Max value, the Cue is rendered as a maximum stack of document and does not grow anymore even if the number of artifacts grows. We have also set the Threshold expression and value so that if we have 5 or more artifacts in our Cue, a warning sign will be rendered over the Cue’s icon. We also marked the Cue to be available to everyone.

Now let’s go back to the Role Center page and see what we will get when we add our newly created Cue to the Cues Web part. To do this, we enter the page Edit Mode again, select Cue 6 to modify, to put our new Cue to the last position and then select Items with zero physical inventory from the View drop down, then click OK to apply the changes. Now we can see our new Cue:

When we created our Cue, the Total property was disabled. This is because we should have a field of type Amount or AmountMST to set an aggregate function for the Cue that displays the total. Let’s see how it works on the Delayed Receipts cue (there are fields of mentioned types on it). So, we enter the page edit mode again and select the Delayed Receipts cue (Cue 1 in the example). Now the Total property is enabled and we can set the aggregation function to be Sum(PurchLine:PurchPrice).

After applying the changes, we will see the total amount of the purchase price of all delayed receipts that are represented on the Cue:

Isn’t it an easy and powerful way to get a pictorial representation of important business numbers? We hope now you know how to personalize Cues Web parts to make them really useful.

Adding other Web Parts to the role page

We still have a lot of free space on our role page, so let’s add more Web parts. To do it, we click on Personalize this page at the top-right corner of the page and enter the page edit mode that we are familiar with.

To add a new Web part, we just click one of the Add Web Part links depending on where on the page we want to have additional Web Part. Let’s say we want to add the Dynamics Report Server Report Web part above the Work List Web part, so we click on the yellow bar with the Add Web Part link just above the Work List Web Part. Actually, any Web Part on the page can be easy dragged to another place.

After clicking on Add Web Part the following dialog appears with the list of different Web Part types that could be added to the page. There is a really wide spectrum of different Web Part types to choose from, so you have lots of options. We will use the Dynamics Report Server Report Web part in the example.

After adding the Dynamics Report Server Report Web Part to the page, we need to specify which report we want to host in this Web Part. We select the Modify My Web Part item from Edit menu in the top-right corner of the Web Part to open the Web Part properties dialog and select the desired report from the list of available reports in the Report name drop down menu. We select the Top delayed production orders report.

We also choose to not show the report parameters toolbar and then apply the changes:

We can change the report’s parameters by pressing the Get Parameters button in the Web Part properties dialog. We want to see only 4 orders in the report, so we uncheck the Default checkbox for Number of orders parameters and set the value for the parameter as 4.

Technorati Tags: Role Centers in Dynamics AX,Role Centers,Dynamics AX

Then we press the OK button to apply the changes. Now we only see the top 4 delayed production orders in the report.

In the same way, we added several more reports and the Announcements Web Part. Now the role center page looks like this:

We hope that now you can personalize your Role Center pages in the way that perfectly fits your business needs, allowing you to more efficiently do your everyday work and having all essential information on your Dynamics AX role home page.

Slava Chernenko, Inventory Management, SCM, Microsoft Dynamics AX

Sales and purchase prices in relation to the item price setup in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Ievgenii Korovin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:27:00 GMT

Costing versions and trade agreements

Assume that you want to define the costing versions per item for two sites with different sales and purchase prices. The first step is to create the planned costs for the sites and then you activate the costs. However, sales and purchase orders always pick up the price of the corresponding type that was most recently activated, regardless of the specified site.

If you are familiar with the details of the setup and know why the system responds in this way, you may not want to read the rest of this article. But if you want to know more about costing versions and trade agreements and learn more about how to create a price setup that supports the requirements of your environment, the contents of this article might be useful to you.

Costing versions and sales and purchase prices

Costing versions were introduced in AX 2009. The Item price form (InventItemPrice) is assumed to be the primary entry point to define the price and cost setup per standard and non-standard cost item. The item price and cost data are used within various cost accounting calculations such as inventory closing and BOM cost calculation. Click this link for more information about costing versions: Inventory Costing and Validation in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Course.

Sales and purchase prices of items are only applied in a few processes in Dynamics AX. The reason why this information is part of the item price setup is to conform to the general framework by providing a single point of entry for all price related setup. In future versions of Dynamics AX, more functionality can be associated with the sales and purchase price setup, but in AX 2009 and AX 2009 SP1 the main purpose of the sales and purchase price fields is to be able to update the default cost price of the item master when a costing version is activated. So this functionality helps to associate the new price and cost setup with the item price setup that was available in previous versions of Dynamics AX.

The item master does not include inventory dimensions such as storage and site and it does not include dates for when the prices are valid so this information is not part of an item master update.

Updates of prices are sequenced by the activations of the costing versions and prices are overwritten in the order that they were activated. The costing version that was activated most recently for an item is the costing version that is associated with the item master. Any dimensions or effective dates that apply to the item are disregarded.

Implementation of the sales and purchase price setup

The InventTableModule table entity covers the purchase and sales settings for item master information such as default under or over delivery rates and miscellaneous charges. For more information, see the Trade and Logistics II in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Course. The InventTableModule table also contains default cost, sales, and purchase price information per item.

The default sales and purchase settings can be modified manually on the Price/Discount tab in the Item details form under Inventory management > Common Forms. These settings appear on the illustration below. However, we recommend using costing versions for that purpose instead.

Common Forms" border=0 alt="Price/Discount tab in the Item details form under Inventory management > Common Forms" src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/clip_image004_thumb.jpg" width=444 height=323 mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/clip_image004_thumb.jpg">

The activation of costing versions is initiated through the InventPriceActivation* classes hierarchy and the Sales price and Purchase price types are activated through the InventPriceActivationModule class.

The InventPriceActivationModule.activate() method initializes and updates the corresponding InventTableModule buffer with the latest prices.

Purchase price setup example

Follow the steps below to see how the purchase price of a standard cost item is updated in a multisite environment.

1. Click Inventory management > Item details and select an item.

2. Click Price to open the Item price form and, on the Pending prices tab, create a price setup of the type Purchase price for site 1 with a purchase price of 10.00.

3. Click Activate to activate the price.

In the Item details form on the Price/Discount tab, verify that the default purchase price is now 10.00.

4. Click Inventory management > Item details and select an item.

5. Click Price to open the Item price form and, on the Pending prices tab, create a price setup of the type Purchase price for site 2 with a purchase price of 20.00.

6. Click Activate to activate the price.

In the Item details form on the Price/Discount tab, verify that the default purchase price is now 20.00.

Price calculations and trade agreements

When sales and purchase order lines are created, the correct prices are retrieved by the price calculation engine. The starting point of the price search is a search for a valid trade agreement for the item. The search observes the setup of the item’s dimension group. If a price is not found, the default price from the item master is applied. The following description provides an overview of the implementation of this functionality.

Implementation of the price calculation functionality

The search for correct sales and purchase prices based on existing trade agreements depends on the PriceDisc class hierarchy. If a trade agreement is not found, a fallback to the default purchase order setting is initiated by the PriceDisc.findItemPrice() method.

In this example, no purchase price has been specified in a trade agreement.

Verify the trade agreement setup for an item in the Price (purch.) form under Inventory management > Item details -> Trade argmt. > Purchase prices.

Item details -> Trade argmt. > Purchase prices." border=0 alt="Price (purch.) form under Inventory management > Item details -> Trade argmt. > Purchase prices." src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/clip_image016_thumb.jpg" width=404 height=146 mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/clip_image016_thumb.jpg">

As it appears from the following illustration, the order line price defaults to 20.00 for both site 1 and site 2 when new purchase order lines are created.

Purchase price setup example (continued)

To apply unique sales and purchase prices per site, you must create a trade agreement for each site where you specify inventory dimensions that correspond to the inventory dimensions that are enabled for price search on the inventory dimension group.

To create a trade agreement with a unique price for site 1, do the following.

1. Click Inventory management > Item details > Trade agrmt. > Purchase prices.

2. In the Site field, specify S1 and specify warehouse GW in the Warehouse field.

3. In the Price field, specify a price of 10.00.

Item details > Trade agrmt. > Purchase prices." border=0 alt="Inventory management > Item details > Trade agrmt. > Purchase prices." src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/clip_image020_thumb.jpg" width=410 height=62 mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/clip_image020_thumb.jpg">

In this example, the price search is enabled for the Site and Warehouse dimension fields on the item’s inventory dimension group, so these dimensions must be specified on the trade agreement to retrieve the correct price for the site.

View the inventory dimension setup under Inventory management -> Setup -> Dimensions -> Dimension groups.

4. Click Accounts payable > Purchase Order Details, and press Ctrl+N to create a new purchase order line for site 1 and warehouse GW.

As it appears from the following illustration, the correct price is automatically transferred to the order line from the associated trade agreement.

Purchase Order Details" border=0 alt="Accounts payable > Purchase Order Details" src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/image_thumb_2.png" width=419 height=210 mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/dynamicsaxscm/WindowsLiveWriter/Salesandpurchasepricesinrelationtotheite_148E9/image_thumb_2.png">

The trade agreement functionality and the price retrieval algorithm are fully described in Trade and Logistics II in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Course and in Development IV in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Course.

Prospects for integration between the sales and purchase order price calculation and the price system

To be considered for future versions of Dynamics AX:

Possibility to maintain default prices for sales and purchase orders as records on the trade agreement and support for more advanced criteria to identify the correct prices such as inventory dimensions, customer/vendor related attributes and validity date.

Meanwhile, please continue using the trade agreement features.

Ievgenii Korovin and Bibi Christensen, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

SCM related Question and Answers on Dynamics AX

Ievgenii Korovin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:34:00 GMT

The Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Newsgroups are excellent sources for technical and application related information about Dynamics AX.

We encourage you to use the newsgroups when looking for advice or answers for question on Dynamics AX.

During the last year, we received a number of question thought this blog, usually as follow-up questions to the information that we provided. The following Q&A list is an extract with answers to some SCM related questions that might be of general interest to our readers.

BOM setup

Question: I would like to know how we can set up a BOM that uses raw materials to produce end products.

Example:

Sunflower seeds (raw material) are crushed to produce sunflower oil (finished product) and cake (finished product)

The ratio for the finished product is 64% cake and 36% oil for every 50MT of seed.

Can we use the BOM Report as finished journal to process the end products? The crushing is done by a third party and only service fee is paid for the crushing.

Answer: Customers have used the Report as finished journal for disassembly in the past. Your scenario is not disassembly, but it does have multiple outputs.

BOM item = Cake (with a positive quantity)

BOM line = Seed (with a positive quantity)

BOM line = Oil (with a negative quantity)

However, we must inform you that this is very basic functionality and as such it has its limitations.

For example, you mention that crushing is done by a 3rd party. You will have to customize to, for example, check the stock of cake, seed and oil at the crusher's site and generate documents for invoicing/excise payments etc. while moving goods to and from warehouses.

The Report as finished journal is designed for companies with a limited need for production functionality and which, typically, do not buy the Production licenses.

If this scenario corresponds to your customer scenario, we recommend caution if you apply a setup as described above.

However, if you expect a large amount of these transactions, consider using the Process Industries functionality which is available through the PMF and PDS licenses on top of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

Click microsoft dynamics partnersource link to download the add-on features.

Possible use of pallet IDs

Question: We would like to implement pallet IDs in Dynamics AX 3, service pack 6. The reason why we want to use pallet IDs is that we want to represent a "box" in AX as a pallet. We would like to know the following:

1. All boxes are stored in a packaging warehouse. Do we need to create a transfer journal to move the pallet from the packaging warehouse to the receiving warehouse? The receiving warehouse is where the goods will be entered into a pallet.

Answer: No, a pallet movement can also be used for this purpose.

2. Can the pallet be initialized at receipt using the Registration form? Or must we create an arrival journal?

Answer: The Registration form, available from Accounts payable > Inventory > Registration, can be used. A new pallet can be created in the Pallet setup form.

3. Can items be transferred from one pallet to another pallet? That is, how do we handle the scenario where an item is registered for a sales order and a new pallet/box needs to be specified?

Answer: We assume that the scenario has to do with a picking task. Any pallet with an available on-hand quantity can be selected. If the scenario has to do with a packing/staging function of picked inventory being moved to another pallet/box, the AX 2009 version is required.

4. Will the pallet still be available in the system when the item is sold? Or does the pallet disappear from the system when the item is picked?

Answer: A pallet can be reused in Dynamics AX. It can be specified on the warehouse that an empty pallet should be moved to an empty pallet location when the last item is picked from the pallet.

5. Can we skip using picking routes?

Answer: Yes a picking registration can be used and so can the picking journal in Dynamics AX3.

Automatic picking location assignment for receiving goods in WMS

Question: Can you describe how, in AX 2009 WMS, to receive goods on pallets and have a picking location assigned automatically if a picking location does not exist for the item?

Answer: Thank you for the feature request. We are sorry to say that this is not possible.

Automatic change and assignment of picking locations is not possible in existing versions of Dynamics AX.

If you select the Check picking location check box on an Item arrival journal line and no picking location exists, you get a message upon validation about the lack of a picking location setup for the warehouse item.

Picking list sorting by location

Question: I have problems getting the pick list to sort by location. Please share some information on how to accomplish this task in Dynamics AX 2009.

Answer: The picking list lines (wmsOrderTrans) are sorted using this method call: WMSOrderTrans::queryAddSortDefault(qbdsWMSOrderTrans); in the init() method on the form data sources.

The method has the following sort order:

_qbS.orderMode(_orderMode);

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, RouteId));

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, IsReserved), SortOrder::Descending);//un-reserved should end up in the bottom

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, ItemSortCode));

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, SortCode));

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, ItemId));

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, ItemTagging));

_qbS.addSortField(fieldnum(WMSOrderTrans, CaseTagging));

The wmsOrderTrans.sortCode is set based on the sortcode on the wmsLocation.sortCode.

Hope this helps,

Dynamics Ax SCM Team

Setup for Processing Inbound Pallet Transports

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:57:00 GMT

Introduction

This post provides details on how to set up AX 2009 to enable inbound pallet transports. The description includes an overview of:

The inventory breakdown setup
The item setup for Warehouse management
Item receipts and processing of pallet transports using the Item arrival journal

Inventory Breakdown Setup

The inventory breakdown setup includes setup of a warehouse, a store area, store zone, aisles, and locations.

Follow the guidelines below to create this inventory breakdown structure:

Create a store area

Create a store area called Bulk-13 and associate it with a store zone called SZ-13.

1. Click Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Store areas, and create a new store area called Bulk-13.

2. Click Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Store zones, and create a new store zone called SZ-13.

3. On the Store areas tab, select Bulk-13 under Available and click <.

Create a warehouse

Create a warehouse called 13.

1. Click Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Warehouses.

2. Create a new warehouse called 13 and, in the Site field, select S1.

3. On the Location names tab, select the following check boxes:

Include aisle
Include rack (Format = "-##")

Create aisles

Create two aisles called 01 and Special. Aisle 01 is for the normal bulk and picking locations and Special is for the inbound and outbound locations.

1. In the Warehouses form, click Inquiries > Inventory aisles.

-or-

1. Click Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Inventory aisles.

2. Create the aisles 01 and Special.

Create locations

Create two types of locations for each of the aisles that you have created and associate the locations with the corresponding aisles.

1. In the Inventory aisle form, select aisle 01, and click Locations.

2. In the Locations form, create a location with the following setup:

a. Warehouse = 13

b. Location type = Picking location

c. Max pallets = 10

d. Aisle = 01

e. Rack = 1

f. Input area = Bulk-13

3. Create another location with the following setup:

a. Warehouse = 13

b. Location type = Bulk location

c. Max pallets = 10

d. Aisle = 01

e. Rack = 2

f. Input area = Bulk-13

4. Close the Locations form, and in the Inventory aisles form, select the aisle Special, and click Locations.

5. In the Locations form, create a location with the following setup:

a. Warehouse = 13

a. Location type = Inbound Dock

b. Max pallets = 10

c. Aisle = Special

d. Rack = 0

e. Set manual update = Yes, in order to set location identifier manually

f. Location = Inbound

6. Create another location with the following setup:

a. Warehouse = 13

b. Location type = Outbound dock

c. Max pallets = 10

d. Aisle = Special

e. Rack = 0

f. Set manual update = Yes, in order to set location identifier manually

g. Location = Outbound

Item Setup for Warehouse Management

Use the standard AX 2009 environment with the Contoso demo data and create a location and pallet controlled item.

Standard setup based on the Contoso demo data

Inventory model group = FIFO
Inventory dimension group = N-WLP (the dimensions Warehouse, Location, and Pallet ID are active)
Default Site = 1

Create an item

Create an item called _Pallet_Transport, and set up warehouse item details.

1. Click Inventory management > Item details and create a new item called _Pallet_Transport.

2. Click the Setup tab to apply the following Warehouse management settings:

Pallet type = 42"x42"
Pallet quantity = 10.00
Min. output pallet quantity = 10.00

3. Click Setup > Warehouse items, create a new record using the following values:

Warehouse = 13
Store zone = SZ-13
Default receipt location = Inbound
Default issue location = Outbound
Picking location = "01-01"

Item receipts and processing of pallet transports

The item receipts scenario described in the following includes the creation of a purchase order and the use of the Item arrival journal to register the item.

Create a purchase order

1. Click Accounts payable > Purchase Order Details to create a new purchase order for 10.00 of the item _Pallet_Transport.

2. Apply the following settings for the purchase order line.

Site = 1
Warehouse = 13
Location = Inbound ***

3. Click Inventory management > Periodic > Arrival overview and select the purchase order that you created.

4. Select the Select for arrival check box, and click Start arrival. Note the journal reference that is created.

5. Double-click the message in the Infolog dialog box, or click Inventory management > Journals > Item arrival > Item arrival and select the journal that was created.

6. Select the journal line, and click Functions > Pallet ID to assign a pallet to the item and post the item arrival journal.

Run a pallet transport and deliver goods to the picking location

1. Click Inventory management > Pallet transports, and select the pallet transport that was created for the item _Pallet_Transport.

2. Verify or change the value in the Destination location field, and click Start transport to start the transport.

3. Click Complete transport to finish the process, and receive the item in the destination location.

Review pallets on location, trace transactions etc.

You can now check the item transactions to verify that the items are in the desired location in warehouse 13.

1. Click Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Locations and filter by warehouse 13 using the advanced grid filter.

2. Click Inquires > On-hand to review goods available on this location. You may notice that the value in the Number of pallets field is now one.

3. Click Inquiries > Transaction > Inventory > Trace to get the overview of inventory transactions.

Hopefully, this post clarifies the setup and transactions required to complete a basic inbound pallet transport flow within AX 2009. You can manually move a pallet further down from the point described to another location or you can start a new pallet transport within the same site. However, you cannot delete the pallet from the location unless the pallet is empty or no open transactions exist.

Ievgenii Korovin and Bibi Christensen, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Arrival overview

Ievgenii Korovin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:24:00 GMT

Introduction

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, the Arrival overview form is introduced to improve the overview of items expected to arrive as incoming goods. The new feature provides an overview of all expected incoming items and arrivals can be initialized based on the overview. The focus of this blog post is the functionality of the Arrival overview form and the receiving process. For more detailed descriptions, please refer to the Trade and Logistics I in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and the online Help.

Business scenario

Consider the following scenario to learn how the feature can support the tasks of the inbound processes.

Assume that Sammy, a receiving clerk, wants to know what is expected to be received on the same day.

In the Arrival overview form, Sammy can get an overview of the current tasks and a rough estimate of quantities, volume, weight, different order types, and so on.

Subsequently, assume that a delivery arrives at one of the inbound docks and Sammy receives a list of the delivery.

In the Arrival overview form, Sammy can do the following:

Identify the matching receipt order and register the receipt as In progress. The lines required for a registration are generated automatically, and the receipt can be monitored even though the transactions have not yet been posted as Arrived.
Access the appropriate arrival journal reference, that is, the Item arrival journal or the Production input journal, and identify journals that are ready for a packing slip update.

Facts on the Arrival overview form

The Arrival overview form is located under Inventory management > Periodic > Arrival overview.

In the form you can view a list of expected orders to be received. The overview is divided into header and lines. The header information is grouped by the order type, expected receipt date, and delivery destination.

When a header line is selected for arrival, all the detail lines that are related to this specific receipt reference are selected for arrival in the line details part of the form. When all lines have been posted as item arrivals or are in a later state, this information is not displayed.

Arrival overview – Setup

The Arrival overview form provides an overview of items that are expected to arrive and the date they are expected to arrive. The settings in this form can be saved for individual users and for individual computers so that users can have their personal settings on computers in the inbound area. One user can maintain multiple sets of personal settings.

Setup scenario

Sammy wants to set up a new computer at a location which is going to be used to receive finished goods coming from production at Site “1” . On the Setup tab, Sammy selects the following settings:

Under Site, a site in the Restrict to site field to limit the view in the overview area.
In the Transaction types shown group, the Production orders check box.
In the Journal group, a receiving warehouse, a location, and a journal name (item arrival/production input).
In the Miscellaneous group, the Update on startup check box to have the view updated automatically on startup and the Update on range change check box to have the view updated automatically when changing range values.
In the overview area under Range, information about a day interval and the warehouses to include in the overview.

Sammy saves the setup under the name “Prod. Input” by clicking Modify > Save as on the Setup tab.

Prerequisites for arrival journals

On the Setup tab, specify the appropriate information under Journal:

A journal name must be specified to create a journal.
If Site, Warehouse, and Location are specified, these values are applied on the journal lines. If no values are entered here, the values from the dimension specified on the inventory transactions are used.

Arrival overview – Start arrival

Receive items from one or more expected receipt orders.

Items received from one expected receipt order

Sammy selects a line under Receipts and clicks Start arrival. All related lines within the specified range and with a quantity to register are automatically selected. An item arrival journal is generated with a match between the expected receipt order and the journal. All lines are created with an automatic initialization of quantity.

Items received from more than one expected receipt order

Sammy multi-selects lines under Receipts and clicks Start arrival. An item arrival journal is generated with a match between all the expected receipt orders and the journal. All lines are created on one item arrival journal header with an automatic initialization of quantity.

Arrival overview – View information

Get an overview of expected receipts within a date interval.

Sammy opens the Arrival overview form, enters the following information under Range, and clicks Update to update the view:

- Days back: (Blank)

- Days forward: 0

- Warehouses: GW, MW

- Show lines: All

Sammy can view the following information

All related receipt orders for an infinite number of days back from the system date including the system date (the InventTrans.StatusDate interval) and receipts to warehouses GW and MW regardless of status.
Detailed line information for more than one order. Sammy can multi-select header lines in the overview to view the corresponding line detail information for all selected header lines.
Information about a specific purchase order. Sammy can enter a reference Number in the Vendor reference field, to only display information related to the specific reference number in the overview.
An overview of the registration tasks that are due for all the order lines where an item arrival journal has been created but not yet posted. To view this information, Sammy can select In progress in the Show lines field.

Arrival overview – Update journals

To register one or more order lines due to be processed, Sammy can select the lines in the overview grid or in the line grid and click Journals -> Show arrivals from receipts. The item arrival headers that match the lines are shown.

To packing slip update registered items, Sammy can access the item arrival journal headers that are ready for update from Journals -> Packing slip ready journals. All the header lines that are ready for packing slip update within the specified Warehouse range (not day-interval related) are shown.

Start an arrival registration

By multi-selecting lines in the Arrival overview form Sammy can start an arrival of more than one receipt reference. When he selects a line from the receipts overview, the corresponding line details are selected. If a quantity for registration exists, the Start arrival button is available. Sammy can use two different methods to start the arrival registration:

1) Activate the Vendor reference field in the Arrival overview form and scan a reference number from a vendor such as a packing slip barcode. Then click Update to update the overview and the details part of the form to only show the corresponding search criteria records.

2) Manually select or deselect records for arrival registration in the overview or the details part of the Arrival overview form.

When Sammy clicks the Start arrival button, the selected records are automatically created in an item arrival journal, including line information with all possible unique field information assigned.

Update arrival information, and post a packing slip

When all goods have been registered, the warehouse manager or the purchasing manager can update the received items with a packing slip to add the physical cost. To update arrival information and post a packing slip, follow these steps:

1. Click Inventory management > Periodic > Arrival overview to open the Arrival overview form.

2. Click Journals > Packing slip ready journals to display a list of the journals that are ready for packing slip update.

3. Select the journals that must be updated, and then click Functions > Packing slip to open the Posting form.

4. Enter the packing slip number, if it is not already available on the journal, and then click OK to post the packing slip.

Summary

The Arrival overview form can help the warehouse manager and warehouse workers achieve an overview of expected work to be done as part of an inbound process. The form can also be used to start the item arrival process to make sure that items are tracked at the first entry into the warehouse.

By Ievgenii Korovin, Per Lykke Lynnerup & Bibi Christensen, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Refill of Picking Locations in Dynamics AX 2009

Ievgenii Korovin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:38:00 GMT

In AX 2009, the task of refilling picking locations was automated and improved. The main idea behind the new functionality is that, if required, processes that impact quantities at picking locations should activate a refill.

This blog post describes how to set up parameters for the new functionality and how to use it. It also includes references to the code where some of the main functionality is implemented.

Parameter Setup

To enable automatic creation and activation of refill transports, you need to set up the following parameters.

· Select Automatic activation for the picking store area in the Store area form under Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Store areas.

With the new check box for automatic activation the periodic Create refill batch job becomes obsolete.

· Enter a value for the warehouse item in the Required minimum field in the Warehouse items form under Inventory management > Item details > Setup > Warehouse items. You can also define a maximum quantity to control the quantity that can be transferred to the location.

Creation of Refill Transports

Once the required setup has been completed, refill transports are created when the following events occur:

· A pick reduces the quantity at a picking location to a quantity that is below the required minimum (WMSOrderTransType_OutputDontPostTransfer.activateRefill() is responsible).

· A picking route is activated or started (wmsPickingRoute.activateRefill() is responsible).

· A pallet transport is finished (wmsTransport.activateRefill() is responsible).

To determine whether a refill transport should be created, the following rules are applied:

1. If (physical inventory on the location >= Max. storage capacity) -> no refill is created.

2. If (physical inventory >= Required minimum) -> no refill is created.

3. For picking route activation and start, the quantity that is already on activated and started routes are taken into consideration and the formula is:

a. If (physical inventory – quantity on activated/started routes >= Required minimum) -> no refill is created.

These rules are implemented in the method WMSPickingLocationRefillCheck::checkAndRefill().

Note: Refill transports that are created manually ignore the maximum storage capacity that is specified in the Warehouse items form, so for manually created refill transports the maximum storage capacity can be exceeded.

If none of the above rules evaluate to true, an attempt is made to create a refill with a requested quantity equal to the maximum storage capacity minus the physical inventory on the location.

The refill transport functionality now supports partial deduction of items from a pallet so reservations on a pallet are made even if the requested quantity is smaller than the quantity of a full pallet.

If a partial pallet is moved using a refill transport, the check box To pallet required is selected:

If the item being transported uses serial numbers or similar dimensions, it is possible to change the dimensions on the transport lines and thereby change the reservation. For example, an operator can now move items reserved at the bottom of a pallet to the top of the pallet.

When the transport is started, you are asked to specify the pallet that the items are going to be moved to:

In this example, only part of what is on the pallet is going to be moved so you must specify a pallet or create a new pallet at the To location.

If a pallet has not been specified at the To location, you are asked to specify the pallet when the transport is finished.

Note: The To pallet dimension is automatically selected in the dialog box if:

- Only one pallet exists on the picking location.

- The Use empty pallet location setting on the warehouse item specifies that an empty pallet should not automatically be moved to the empty pallet location.

By Bibi Christensen, Per Lykke Lynnerup & Lennart Conrad, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics Ax.

Picking update via .Net Business Connector

Ievgenii Korovin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:27:00 GMT

We have received extensive feedback on previous blog postings about the outbound processes within Inventory management in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Many readers have requested information on how to interact with Microsoft Dynamics AX via .NET Business Connector to create picking operations.

With this technical posting we will try to demonstrate how easy it is to code a terminal solution in C# .NET and call simple picking update methods in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

The solution is coded by using Microsoft.Dynamics.BusinessConnectorNet;

You will need a reference in the project to run the example code.

HINT: Get more information about the .NET Business Connector at MSDN (Microsoft Dynamics AX Developer Center) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa659581.aspx

This small Microsoft Visual Studio project includes information about:

How to log on to an AX installation

// company name, language, object server, configuration            
// this uses Windows Authentication            
 ax.Logon(CompanyId, null, null, null);

How to read data from AX and insert the data in a grid on a Windows form

View picking routes in the upper pane and picking lines in the lower pane.

How to prepare data and call picking update functions from the .NET C# code

Picking in AX: In AX you can pick multiple lines by calling the WMSOrderTrans::finishPickingLinesMulti method. This method takes a packed AX Map where the key is the recId of the wmsOrdertrans to be picked and the value is an AX container with the OrderId and recVersion.

The example shows how to prepare the map and call the method to do the pick.

        
private AxaptaObject BuildAxaptaMapForWMSPickingLines()

{
//build a map of the following structure
//key is <c>WMSOrderTrans.recId</c> and whose value 
//is [WMSOrderTrans.OrderId,WMSOrderTrans.recVersion].
AxaptaObject axMap = ax.CreateAxaptaObject("Map", (int)Types.Int64,(int)Types.Container);

foreach (DataGridViewRow dgvRow in wmsOrderTransGrid.SelectedRows)
{
    AxaptaContainer axContainerWMSPair = ax.CreateAxaptaContainer();
    DataRow row = null;
    DataRowView drv = (DataRowView)dgvRow.DataBoundItem;
    row = drv.Row;

    axContainerWMSPair.Add(row.Field<string>(1)); //orderid
    axContainerWMSPair.Add(row.Field<Int32>(7)); //recversion 

    //add to axapta map
    axMap.Call("Insert", 
       row.Field<Int64>(6), axContainerWMSPair);
}
    return axMap;
}

        
private void PickSelectedLinesFromMap(AxaptaObject axaptaObjectMap)
{
    // call below takes a packed map whose key is 
    // <c>WMSOrderTrans.recId</c> and whose value is
    // <c>WMSOrderTrans.OrderId,WMSOrderTrans.recVersion</c>.

    ax.CallStaticClassMethod("WMSOrderTransType", 
        "finishPickingLinesMulti", 
        axaptaObjectMap.Call("pack"));
}

Apart from the method to multi-update picking lines the project also includes a method to pick-update multiple picking routes by calling WMSPickingRoute::finishMulti.

private void PickSelectedRoutesFromList(AxaptaObject axList)
{
    ax.CallStaticRecordMethod("WMSPickingRoute",
        "finishMulti",
        axList.Call("pack"));
}

Have fun trying this yourself!

Bibi Christensen, Alexander Malafeev, Per Lykke Lynnerup & Lennart Conrad

Changes in Sales and Transfer Order Picking from Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 to Dynamics AX 2009

Ievgenii Korovin — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Overview

The purpose of this post is to present the major changes and new functionality that was introduced for sales and transfer order picking in AX 2009.

The aim and the idea behind these changes is to move towards a single system for picking that can be shared in order to simplify and unify future extensions.

The post contains information about:

User Interface changes
Changes to tables and classes
Upgrade scripts
New functionality for order picking
New enhancements for advanced WMS outbound processes

Differences in terminology

Picking registration, as known in AX 4.0, is referred to as order picking. Picking with output orders and advanced WMS, as applied in AX 2009, is referred to as consolidated picking.

Differences from a UI perspective

The parameter Set inventory transactions to picked in AX 4.0 is now obsolete, and it has been replaced by the Picking route status parameter.

The following conversion rules apply:

Dynamics AX 4.0	Dynamics AX 2009
Set inventory transactions to picked = selected	Picking route status = Complete
Set inventory transactions to picked = not selected	Picking route status = Active

When you post a picking list, and the picking route status is Active, the reference for inventory transactions is set to Output order instead of Invent-picking list registration:

When you click Posting/Picking list registration from a sales order or a transfer order, a new registration form opens:

The Picking list registration form is used to register what was picked and it is quite similar to the picking registration form in AX 4.0. You can either update the entire picking route or update individual lines, and you can view and pick both consolidated lines and order picking lines in this form.

Additional functionality available from this form:

Barcode identification
Split of picking lines
Unpick of picking lines with the option to put items on another location
Cancellation of picking lines

A new inventory parameter, End output inventory order, is introduced:

The End output inventory order parameter controls whether or not the reference between an output order and inventory transactions is removed when you delete or decrease the quantity of a picking registration line.

If the End output inventory order parameter is selected, the behavior is similar to the behavior in AX 4.0, and that is to say that after posting, the inventory transactions do not reference an output order.

It the End output inventory order parameter is not selected, the reference between the output order and inventory transactions is not removed and a new picking route can be created from the Open output orders form.

When the picking list is posted, the status of the picking lines and the inventory transactions changes.

In AX 2009, there are no separate tables to store picking list journal and picking list registration data.

Differences from a code perspective

In AX 2009, picking is handled using the WMS module and several classes and tables prefixed with WMS are used. This means that several tables are controlled by the LogisticsAdvanced configuration key rather than by the WMSAdvanced configuration key as in AX 4.0.

The figure below shows how the tables in AX 4.0 map to the tables used in AX 2009:

Changes to classes

In AX 4.0, several classes were used when posting a picking list for transfer orders or sales orders. These classes are not directly replaced by new classes.

The picking route is updated by calling the updateRoute method on the WMSPickingRoute table.

The WMSOrderTransType class hierarchy is used for the actual pick of the line. A new class, WMSOrderTransType_Output_OrderPick, has been added, and this class is dedicated to order picking.

Upgrade scripts

The upgrade of the picking list data is handled by the createWMSPickingData script in the ReleaseUpdateDB41_Invent class.

Only active picking lists for registration that are not yet picked are updated into the new tables.

New functionality in the advanced WMS module in AX 2009

This post covers the changes to the order picking functionality.

However, several enhancements were made to the Advanced WMS functionality in AX 2009 enabling you to, for example:

Use shipment template priority for automatic addition of output orders
Add shipment lines in an active shipment process
Include service items and items without locations to a shipment
Partially activate a shipment picking process for inventory on hand
Rerun shipment reservation
Run shipment reservation and physical shipment updates in batch
Control shipment reservation rules
Use outbound rules to control the process
Use new picking forms to unpick operations
Cancel picking routes and individual lines
Use minimum quantity on bulk pallet before creating a pallet transport
Refill with less than a full pallet from bulk locations
Use new refill pallet triggers and automatically activate refill of pallet transports
Use a paper based picking list enhanced with barcode identification and sorting based on optimal route
Deliver picked items to staging/production
Pack items for loading and subsequently load items

Hopefully we would cover more on this exiting functionality in our next posts. Keep watching.

Per Lykke Lynnerup & Lennart Conrad, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics Ax.

WMS in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. Outbound Process Setup

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:23:00 GMT

Introduction

This article describes the setup process of the outbound flow for external shipment in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. The process itself has already been described here, so the focus of this article is the settings and adjustments that can be made to the system to enable a typical business scenario within world class warehouses.

With this setup the following can be accomplished:

1) Use of locations within warehouses.

2) Inventory items are set up to use warehouse management including the consolidated picking method.

3) Output orders are automatically added to a shipment that is not yet activated or a new shipment is automatically created.

4) The shipment reservation runs automatically when the delivery date is [Today – 1 day].

5) The reservation sequence use multiple warehouses within a site and both batch picking routes and output pallet transports are used.

6) After having been picked, items are delivered to the shipment staging area and the staging can be completed. A shipment cannot be sent until all the shipment lines have been loaded.

7) When the goods have been shipped, the physical update is automatically carried through based on the shipment lines.

Why should I continue reading this post?

From this post you can get a clear picture of the main steps that need to be accomplished to set up basic outbound flows in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

Set up warehouses

Start by creating a site [Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Sites].

In this example, two warehouses are created and associated with the site [Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Warehouses].

When using warehouse management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 you can set up the warehouse layout. In general, two main strategies can be applied for the warehouse layout.

- Picking locations below bulk locations on the same rack

- Picking locations and bulk locations on isolated racks

In Warehouse 22 in this example, the picking locations and the bulk locations are on the same rack and in Warehouse 23, the picking locations are in an isolated area.

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, a location can be specified by: Warehouse, Aisle, Rack, Shelf and Bin.

When using the Location wizard [Inventory management > Setup > Inventory breakdown > Warehouses > Functions -> Location Wizard], you must specify the format of the locations for the warehouse at the Location tab.

The Location and the Update store areas wizards make it possible to automatically create and update the warehouse layout. You can, however, also create and update the layout manually by using the entry forms in the Inventory breakdown folder.

In general, both inbound and outbound layout must be set up. The store zones make it possible to group store areas in order to, for example, ensure that items that need to be stored in a cooling area are guided to a cooling area location.

The area on top will be filled first when using random storage and directed put-away with an input pallet transport.

In this example, the bulk locations hold full pallets and both warehouses use random storage. The layout for Warehouse 23 is best suited for inventory that can be controlled with picking locations that have a smaller capacity than the bulk locations. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, the item picking location must be specified on the warehouse item.

Set up items for warehouse management

When using warehouse management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, items must be set up to enable the warehouse management processes.

Min. output pallet quantity

In this example, output pallet transport from bulk locations is used. To control when a pallet transport is created, the Min. output pallet quantity field on the Setup tab in the Item Details form is set to 24. This means that a pallet transport can be created as long as the pallet quantity is equal to or higher than 24.

Inventory model group

In this example, all items that hold inventory are associated with an inventory model group that uses the consolidated picking method.

Inventory dimension group

Items are set up with an inventory dimension group with active inventory dimensions for site, warehouse, location and pallet. Site is specified as a primary stocking location to ensure that the optimal warehouse within the site is reserved through the shipment reservation. Only items with the Location dimension selected can use an optimized picking route where an operator is guided between the different locations in the warehouse. When a shipment reservation is run, items that do not have the Location dimension selected are added to a new, not-optimized, picking route.

Warehouse item

The warehouse item specify different setting for an item related to a warehouse and you enter information about the item picking location and the store zones related to directed put-away in the Warehouse items form [Inventory management > Common Forms > Item Details > Setup > Warehouse items].

If you specify a value in the Required minimum field, a refill transport is generated from a bulk location based on the quantity in the Max. storage capacity field. Use the Automatic activation check box for individual picking areas to control if the refill transport should be activated automatically. The Mode of handling parameter can be used if both online terminal and paper picking is used within the same warehouse in different picking areas.

Shipment template (automatically add output orders)

A shipment template [Inventory management > Setup > Distribution > Shipment templates] can be created to automatically assign output orders to a shipment.

The shipment type in this example can only contain sales orders related to site 2 and only sales order lines that are going to be shipped with UPS can be part of this shipment.

The default shipping location is from Warehouse 22, but inventory from Warehouse 23 can also be used. For both warehouses a full picking logic is used with picking routes and output pallet transports including refill from bulk to picking locations.

Clear the Reservation required check box to allow activation of the shipment even though not all inventory is physically on-hand.

The priority indicates that based on this shipment template the program starts searching for matching output orders to be added automatically to a shipment.

Shipment reservation in batch

Set up running of shipment reservation in batch under [Inventory management > Periodic > Shipment update > Shipment reservation].

In this case the shipment reservation must be run when a shipment line is going to be delivered tomorrow. To add this query statement, use the LessThanDate(2) method which will return [< “Today+2 days”].

Shipment reservation sequence

The shipment reservation sequence defines how and where the shipment reservation process reserves. You set up shipment reservation processes under [Inventory management > Setup > Distribution > Shipment reservation sequence].

The shipment reservation process contains different layers: Reservation sequence -> Reservation combinations -> Reservation methods.

In this example, the reservation sequence at first tries to reserve inventory from Warehouse 23 and if this warehouse does not have enough physical inventory, Warehouse 22 is the next.

The reservation combination must be enabled for pallet transports and picking route logic.

Outbound rules

To control the process after picking, an outbound rule must be used and associated with the shipment. In this case, the picked inventory must be delivered to the shipment staging area and it must be loaded before the shipment can be sent.

Physical update of the shipment in batch

Set up running of shipment reservation in batch under [Inventory management > Periodic > Shipment update > Physical shipment update]. In this example, the related sales order inventory transactions will be deducted when the shipment is sent.

Per Lykke Lynnerup & Ievgenii Korovin, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics Ax.

WMS in Microsoft Dynamics® AX 2009. Shipping Process Overview

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:44:00 GMT

Introduction

The WMS (Warehouse Managements System) encompasses the core components within average Microsoft Dynamics AX installations that are implemented to manage and run world class warehouses.

The WMS functionality is enabled by the configuration keys LogisticsAdvanced, WMSBasic, and WMSAdvanced. Formal training is available with the courses “Trade and Logistics I in Microsoft Dynamics® AX 2009” and “Trade and Logistics II in Microsoft Dynamics® AX 2009”. The training material covers main flows and processes, but there is still plenty of room for discussions on this exiting subject.

Please welcome the first post of a WMS series on this blog.

Why should I continue reading this post?

This post describes core Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 outbound shipping process components, such as output order and shipment, and it provides an overview of the outbound process in general. We would definitely recommend that you continue reading this post to:

· Get a clear overview of outbound shipping processes with WMS in AX2009

· Learn more about new features in the shipping process, such as consolidated picking

Let’s get started.

Outbound process

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 outbound shipping via warehouse management is processesed through a shipment [Inventory management > Common Forms > Shipments].

A shipment is a collection of items that are packed in the same container for transport by, for example, ship, rail, truck, or plane. A shipment includes an entire order, a part of an order, or a consolidation of multiple orders.

Based on the contents of the shipment, one or more picking routes, one or more pallet transports, or both are created.

An output order is a request for a picking requirements and it forms the basis of a shipment. From the shipment you can activate a pallet transport, a picking route, or both. The shipment status is based on the lowest denominator of the shipment lines’ status.

When, for example, a sales order line is created in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 an inventory transaction is created with a negative quantity to control an expected issue of inventory. To control the process of issuing the physical inventory, an output order is used in the warehouse management area. The output order [Inventory management > Inquiries > Output orders] is created when the reference order is released (Posting of the picking list).

The output orders are associated with a shipment, and in that process Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 creates shipment lines. When shipment reservation is run, the program creates picking routes and/or output pallet transports based on predefined settings. The following activation of the picking process makes it possible to pick and deliver picked inventory to the shipment staging areas where the shipment is staged and loaded before it is sent.

As shown below, the outbound process can be set up to include only part of the existing stages.

Output orders

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, the warehouse management outbound processes use output orders [Inventory Management > Inquiries > Output orders].

The output order [Inventory management > Inquiries > Output orders] is created when the reference order is released (Posting of the picking list), or when a manual output is requested from the issue reference line.

The output order holds information about the status of the outbound process and it is linked to the detailed information of the issue reference line.

Relation to inventory transactions

When the output order is created, it takes “ownership” of corresponding issue inventory transactions. This relationship is maintained by two dedicated fields on the InventTrans table (TransChildType and TransChildTypeRef). All related inventory transactions are marked consistently against an output order. Consider the following code example of output order creation.

AOT/Classes/WMSOrderCreate/updateCreateWmsOrder()

…

inventTrans.TransChildType = InventTransChildType::WMSOrder;

inventTrans.TransChildRefId = wmsOrder.OrderId;

Shipment

A shipment consists of a shipment header and lines, and the information relates to output orders which, again, relate to the different reference order lines. Note, that when using advanced warehouse management in AX, a shipment can contain references to multiple issue orders, and these orders can even be of different order types.

The shipment status is based on the lowest denominator of the shipment lines’ status. A shipment can be in one of the following statuses:

Status	Description
Registered	The shipment has been created but not yet reserved or, if just one shipment line exists, without being part of a route.
Reserved	The shipment has been reserved and picking routes and/or pallet transports have been generated, but they have not yet been released for picking.
Activated	Both picking routes and pallet transports have been released, but not all of them have been completed. Note that picking can start even when all items for the shipment cannot be reserved.
Picked	At least one line of the shipment line is still at the picked stage.
Staged	At least one line of the shipment line is still at the staged stage.
Loaded	At least one line of the shipment line is still at the loaded stage.
Sent	The shipment has been sent and the shipment has been fully expedited.
Canceled	The shipment has been canceled.

Shipment template

A Shipment template available from Inventory management > Setup > Distribution > Shipment templates, is used as the basis of a shipment.

A shipment template is required only if features such as automatic shipment creation, automatic creation of output orders, or creation of shipments via a wizard are applied, otherwise a shipment can be created manually. When a shipment template is applied, output orders can automatically be assigned to a shipment – and then a shipment need not be created manually.

Picking

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 supports three outbound picking processes:

· Consolidated picking

· Order picking

· Inventory transaction picking (for example, Accounts receivable > Common Forms > Sales Order Details (Lines) > Inventory > Pick)

The order picking and consolidated picking processes use the same framework, called output orders, but the consolidated picking method has much more functionality and it requires a license to Advanced Warehouse Management.

If consolidated picking is not applied, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 automatically creates a shipment and a picking route when, for example, a picking list is posted from the Sales orders form.

We do not recommend using inventory transaction picking in combination with one of the other picking methods since inventory transaction picking does not update output order related information.

The following example illustrates the possibilities of controlling the outbound warehouse management processes utilizing output orders in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Consolidated picking implies that multiple orders can be combined into one picking list. The orders can potentially be of different types, for example sales orders or transfer orders.

Consolidated picking uses advanced shipment functionality such as reservation via shipment, activate picking, activate pallet transport, and guided picking routes.

For flexibility of use, the consolidated picking method can be set up in a hierarchy of levels:

- Inventory model group

- Warehouses

- Warehouse items

- Picking list posting

Unpick and cancelation of pick

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 inventory can be unpicked and returned to a different inventory dimension as, for example, a location and/or pallet. The inventory transactions are returned to the original status after an unpick operation has been performed. The reference to the output order still exists, and the picking line can be updated to Picked again right after unpicking. When a picking line is canceled, the output order reference is moved to the issue reference line and the output order, therefore, needs to be released again from the issue order. Alternatively, the reference line or the “deliver remainder” quantity on the issue reference line can be canceled.

The unpicking and cancelation methods can be found on the picking list registration [Inventory management > Periodic > Picking list registration], lines – Functions. All the picking lines can also be canceled in one operation via Functions on the picking route header.

Note that after the unpick action it is still possible to pick the same inventory again and again. Since the historical information is not stored in the system, the final inventory transactions are marked against the latest selected picking route, and the original reference using inventory transactions (TransChildType, TransChildTypeRef) is not valid anymore which means that these fields are empty on related inventory transactions. This aspect should be considered by every partner, who is planning to customize functionality in this area.

Data model

Please look at the following data model which represents the relationships between all entities in the scope of this blog post.

Per Lykke Lynnerup & Ievgenii Korovin, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Quality Management in Dynamics AX 2009 - Upgrade essentials

Ievgenii Korovin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:31:00 GMT

Quick abstract

As many of you may know, with the latest release of Dynamics Ax 2009, the new Quality Management System (QMS) module is available within the Inventory Management Area, formerly the Fullscope TQM (Total Quality Management) solution, which was acquired and evolves in the new module.

As some of you may know, the upgrade scripts from previous TQM solutions have been provided a couple of months after the official release. Considering the fact that the previous TQM solution was a part of the BUS layer, but not a SYS layer, the upgrade scripts weren’t included in the Dynamics Ax 2009 SP1 and they were only available as hot fix 955735 (since September 2008). You can request the hot fix from here

Why do I need to continue reading this post?

This post is about the TQM->QMS upgrade and there are at least three good reasons why we would recommend partners and Dynamics Ax professional to read it. The post will include information about:

· the upgrade strategy from the BUS to the SYS layer between versions

· pre-upgrade data requirements that any partner should be aware of in advance

· how to adjust an upgrade process with a minimum of effort to support existing customizations

Let’s get started.

Prepare your data before upgrade

TQM evolves in the QMS module and as a result of the transformation the data model has been adjusted to follow the latest Dynamics Ax data model and code best practices. For instance, the text fields to keep comments for particular orders have been converted to standard document handling functionality; a new transaction type (InventTransType::QualityOrder) to mark related transactions on InventTrans table has been introduced for quality orders; QMS inventory transactions are treated by the system in a consistent way (an example would be that now there is no need for special fields like QmmScrap on InventTrans to specify scrap).

The extended data type (EDT) size truncation issue affecting primary keys

The standard extended data types have been applied to the amount of fields and this transformation results in adjustment/truncation of some fields in the new tables. For instance, QmmTestGroup.QmmTestGroupCode EDT (string size 20) evolves in InventTestGroup.InventTestGroupId EDT(string size 10). It may result in an index duplication violation error during the upgrade process in case you have an existing number sequence which is not unique within a size of ten digits for the QmmTestGroup.QmmTestGroupCode field.

Possible workaround

Before you upgrade, we recommend that you change QmmTestGroup.QmmTestGroupCode values of more than 10 characters to a maximum length of 10. To do this:

1. Right-click the field “Test group”

2. Select Record info

3. Click the Rename button

4. Expand the field length to 10.

You can find the full list of truncated fields in the corresponding KB article for hot fix 955735.

Upgrade strategy

In releases prior to Dynamics Ax 2009 the TQM code base took place in the BUS layer, but in the latest release it was “moved” to the SYS layer. The main problem is that “old” TQM application objects are on the BUS layer, but the “new” QMS application objects are on the SYS layer. This situation is not typical for the product. Usually the upgrade scripts upgrade the previous SYS layer to the current SYS layer. However, this is not the case with the QMS upgrade.

The strategy for upgrading the Dynamics Ax 4.* BUS layer to the Dynamics Ax2009 SYS layer uses an “ID based mapping” approach, which allows to:

· Consume any “old” TQM application object (QMM* tables) in the database from the “new” Dynamics Ax2009 SYS layer.

· Associate “new“ application objects (so called DEL_ placeholder tables) with “old” qmm* tables which contain “old” data, that must be upgraded.

· Create the usual x++ upgrade scripts, which can be accessed from the Upgrade Cockpit (new upgrade jobs marked as “QMS”).

Let’s go thought each step of proposed upgrade process

· First of all, we need to remove the old axBUS.aod file from the AOS directory.

o At this point of time there is no access to “old” qmm* tables from the application, but data are still “physically” persistent in the database. Let’s consider table one of those TQM tables in the database – QmmMyTable, as the example.

· The second step is to import all application placeholder objects (one of them will be called DEL_ QmmMyTable) that have the same IDs as the previous qmm* tables (same table and field IDs).

o All placeholder application objects will be mapped by the system to the “old” database tables, so by using the DEL_ QmmMyTable table from the x++ code this object gets associated to the old QmmMyTable table. Now we can write the regular x++ upgrade scripts.

· The third step is to import x++ upgrade scripts (ReleaseUpdateDB41_QMS class) and recompile the ReleaseUpdate* classes hierarchy, so that the framework becomes aware of any new upgrade script classes.

· Finally we can follow the normal upgrade path by running the upgrade jobs from the Upgrade Cockpit!

What should I do if there are partner customizations in the TQM solution and if the ID values of the placeholder tables of the hotfix don’t match my implementation?

The answer is simple – make sure that the placeholder tables match your original qmm* tables. One way of doing this is to export the project, which contains all qmm* tables in the order of any new proposed placeholder tables (placeHolders.xpo) and use any applicable merge tool (WinDiff) to apply the correct table/field IDs for the placeholder tables. For example, in the original TQM solution the table ID value for QmmMyTable is equal to 100, but say, that in a partner customization, the value is changed to 101. The DEL_ QmmMyTable placeholder table will then have a table ID value that equals 100, and the partner has to change the placeholder table ID value prior to the upgrade in order to make the placeholder table map to the correct source table.

Conclusions

The TQM->QMS upgrade process is quite different from the usual upgrade process in Ax, but at the same time it is designed to require minimal customer interaction and enables transparent mechanisms to consider existing customization and to make the whole process as smooth as possible. We would love to hear about your experiences. Have a nice upgrade!

Ievgenii Korovin, Inventory Management, Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Supply Chain Management in Dynamics AX

Product Number and Item Number in Dynamics AX 2012

Product number

Item Number

Intercompany supply chains and consolidated reporting

Recommendation regarding intercompany trade

Dynamics AX 2009 Cost Accounting White papers

Use of One Pallet for Shipping and for Receipt

Visualizing Security in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Introduction

Generating graphs

Working with graphs

Scenario 1: Find out what external* roles have access to duties and privileges in your area (in this example, Inventory)

Scenario 2: Do the opposite of the first scenario to figure out what external privileges and duties are used by roles in your area

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012: Where is the Shop floor control module?

Introduction

Time attendance and Manufacturing execution

Disclaimer

All the information about AX 2012 posted here is a pre-release. Any feature is a subject to be changed before the release without notice. This disclaimer is applicable to all posts about AX 2012 in this blog.

Product-item data management services

Introduction

Product-item data management services

Setup of product services

Create a port that uses a NetTcp adapter

Create a port that uses File system adapter

Set up Visual Studio

Create products

Create a distinct product

Create a product master and a related product variant

Release products

Release a distinct product or a product master

Release a product variant

Summary

Disclaimer

Back ported features from Dynamics AX 2012 to Dynamics AX 2009 (Close non-financial transfers, Inventory Reconciliation and Reporting)

Close non-financial transfers

Inventory Reconciliation and Reporting

Disclaimer

Service products in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Item definitions in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and earlier

Service items

Order management and inventory control management

Product definitions in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Service products

Order management and inventory control management

Summary

Disclaimer

WMS enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Storing and updating the requested ship date on shipments

Automatic activation of shipments

Automatically create shipments that are unique for customers or orders

Tracking load on WMS locations.

Disclaimer

Operational Sites in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Operational Sites in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Operational Sites in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Lower TCO for partner and customer customization

Operational sites are integral parts of the Organizational Model

Summary

Disclaimer

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 SCM White Papers: Code Upgrade (InventTrans refactoring, Item-Product Data Management, Operational Resource Model)

WMS related Question and Answers on Dynamics AX

Shipment reservation for consolidated picking and activation essentials

WMS refill logic of an item picking location

Creation of output orders for reserved physical quantity only

Production input location

The InventTrans table. Explore various field usages.

Introduction

Direction field

ItemBOMId and ItemRouteId fields

AssetID and AssetBookId fields

Personalization of Role Centers in Dynamics AX 2009

Sales and purchase prices in relation to the item price setup in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Costing versions and trade agreements

Costing versions and sales and purchase prices

Implementation of the sales and purchase price setup

Purchase price setup example

Price calculations and trade agreements

Implementation of the price calculation functionality

Purchase price setup example (continued)

All the information about AX 2012 posted here is a pre-release. Any feature is a subject to be changed before the release without notice.
This disclaimer is applicable to all posts about AX 2012 in this blog.