Solutions Monkey

Microsoft BI Authentication and Identity Delegation

Meyyappan M — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:21:00 GMT

Microsoft BI Authentication and Identity Delegation Whitepaper by Kay Unkroth http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn186184.aspx

Time Zones in Tabular Model

Meyyappan M — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 01:28:13 GMT

If you are building a tabular model for global audience in multiple time zones and your data involves time information, then this post may provide some approaches on dealing with different time zones.

The AS Engine has a simple type system which does not support datetime with time zones. So it is up to the modeler to do the necessary time zone reconciliation.

For example, let us say you have one call center in the east coast ( utc-5) and another one in west coast ( utc-8) and you use PowerPivot/Power View based global BI solution to do call volume analysis. The data is pulled from both places and aggregated at an hourly basis and the datetime is stored in UTC.

The Data Analyst could be in any place and when they are doing call volume analysis and they are interested in looking at the call volume in the local time zone.

Let us start with a simple table which has the location, the start and end times in UTC and the number of calls in PowerPivot

If the user tries to visualize this info in Power View, they will get

Since the date is in UTC format, it will display the UTC time which is not meaningful to the user in Seattle. It will make sense to see
the data in PST.

The modeler anticipating the potential usage in different time zones, could add calculated columns for each time zone that would be used with
a very simple formula

Now using the calculated column, the end user could easily visualize the data in the timezone that he/she is interested in

Of course, if you have multiple tables, it’s better to create a separate Date table and have the timezone conversion done at one place and rest of the tables reference this Date table.

Calling for Power View users in Northwest

Meyyappan M — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:01:51 GMT

I am looking to connect with Power View Users in North West region to arrange for a day in the life of Power View usage session. Let me know if you use Power View for your business and located in Seattle / Portland/ Vancouver region.

PASS summit - 2012

Meyyappan M — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 23:38:00 GMT

I will be at Professional Association for SQL Server summit - 2012 Nov 6-9 at the Reporting & Data Visualization sessions in Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle. Looking forward to meet the SQL BI enthusiasts and hear about Power view.

moving on...

Meyyappan M — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:48:51 GMT

Just a short one to say goodbye and thank you.

Today is my last day at MBS/Dynamics and starting next week I will be with SQL BI team. Thanks for the opportunity entrusted upon me over 7 ½ years that shaped who I am today and broadened my horizon. I enjoyed every bit of it to the fullest and you all played a huge part of it, so thank you.

Best Wishes and Cheers

Mey

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Enterprise Portal Development Cookbook

Meyyappan M — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:29:51 GMT

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Enterprise Portal Development Cookbook is now published thank to Anees. You can find it here: Enterprise
Portal Development Cookbook.

Enterprise Portal in AX 2012 now supports the Safari browser

Meyyappan M — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:48:05 GMT

Enterprise Portal in AX 2012 now supports the Safari browser

Summary
• We have just released a hotfix that adds support for the Safari browser (version 5.1.2 on both Windows and Mac) for Enterprise Portal in AX 2012.
• This will further expand the audience of Enterprise Portal and AX 2012 .
• This support is mainly for end-users i.e. end-users should be able to perform tasks in Enterprise Portal successfully.
• Although system administrator and developers tasks should work too we are not officially supporting these.
• You can download the hotfix from PartnerSource here: https://mbs2.microsoft.com/Knowledgebase/KBDisplay.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2686124.

A big thanks to everyone involved in this cross-group, cross-team effort: Dave Parslow, Kaiyu Wu, Johan Broberg, Song Gao, Imran Laljivirani, Jun Xie, Revathi Muthiah, Susan Coble, Nikolay Muzykin, Amy Zhao, Tracy Xing, Erick Li, Fischer Chen, Feng Liang, Matthew Halliday, Satya Teki and many others.

Async call to display method from the EP via a web service for delay loading

Meyyappan M — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:39:28 GMT

Dave Parslow from the EP dev team came out with this sample to demonstrates how to do a call to display method from the EP via a web service and have the result show up in the UI such as the grid async.

Sample xpo is attached with this blog post.

SampleService.asmx

This is a pretty generic pattern of taking an array of id keys and return an array of key/value pairs.Calls a find method to get a record and then calls the display method on that record. You could use the sample code provided and inherit from AsyncDisplayMethodService or build your own class based on the sample.

public class
SampleService : AsyncDisplayMethodService

{

public SampleService()

{

this.TableName = "Sample";

this.FindStaticMethodName = "find";

}

[WebMethod]

public IDValuePair[] GetTotal(string[] expenseNumbers) {

return this.CallDisplayMethod(expenseNumbers, "total");

}

[WebMethod]

public IDValuePair[] GetLineTotal(string[] expenseNumbers)

{

return this.CallDisplayMethod(expenseNumbers, "lineTotal");

}

EPAsyncDisplayMethod.ascx.cs:

This is the code that you would include in your code behind. It registers the base javascript include.Then registers the initialization code that would be specific to you.

var lineTotalAsync = new AsyncDisplayMethod();

// Just an ID for debugging.

lineTotalAsync.ID = 'lineTotalAsync';

// This would be the asmx for your web service

lineTotalAsync.WebService = 'SampleService.asmx';

lineTotalAsync.WebServiceOperation = 'GetLineTotal';

// IDSelector is a jQuery selector to find the ID to send to the web service

// You can go to jquery.com to learn more about jQuery selectors.

//GetBoundFieldCellSelector gets the basic jQuery selector to find an AxBoundField value

// If you do not have ID as a visible field on the grid,

// then you can create a template field with the ID value in a input type='hidden' field and

// then you put a jQuery selector for that field as the IDSelector instead of calling GetBoundFieldCellSelector.

lineTotalAsync.IDSelector =lineTotalAsync.GetBoundFieldCellSelector('LineNumber');

// lineTotalAsync is name of my display method that just returns an empty string as a placeholder

lineTotalAsync.ValueSelector = lineTotalAsync.GetBoundFieldCellSelector('lineTotalAsync**') + ' > span';

// The default is cache the results of the display method in the browser, however if your value of the display method can change then

// there is a method of invalidating the cache using CacheInvalidateSelector. In this example, the PriceUnit and QtyOrdered input fields can change the line total so

// Here we have the jQuery selector to use when those fields change that we invalidate the cache.

lineTotalAsync.CacheInvalidateSelector= lineTotalAsync.GetBoundFieldCellSelector('PriceUnit') + '> .AxInputField'

+ ', ' + lineTotalAsync.GetBoundFieldCellSelector('QtyOrdered') + '> .AxInputField';

lineTotalAsync.Initialize();

SampleDisplayMethod.ascx:

<%-- These are the placeholder methods that return an empty
string that will be replaced with the real values async --%>

<dynamics:AxBoundField DataField="lineTotalAsync**" DataSet="SampleDataSet" DataSetView="Sample">

</dynamics:AxBoundField>

<dynamics:AxBoundField DataField="totalAsync**" DataSet="SampleDataSet" DataSetView="Sample">

</dynamics:AxBoundField>

Sample table:

This the display method that will be called via JavaScript (lineTotalAsync and totalAsync).

This also has a display method that just acts as a placeholder for the real display method (lineTotalAsync and totalAsync).

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Enterprise Portal Performance Tips

Meyyappan M — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:13:00 GMT

Role Centers

Cues - Make sure the Queries used by Cues has indexes on the fields used in the ranges.
Cues- Do not have more than 6 cues in one role center page
Reports/Charts - Do not have more than 2 reports or charts in a role center page
UnifiedWorklist – Make sure old records in EventInBox , WorkflowWorkItemTable, smmActivities are periodically archived and removed from the production database.

List Page

You can control the page size of all list pages installation wide from System Administration > Setup >Enterprise Portal > Enterprise Portal Parameters > General > Number of rows to display in list pages. After making a change, make sure the cache is cleared in Enterprise Portal for this setting to take effect.
Do not display more than 20 records in one page in a list page.
Use Display Methods in grid with caution. They are evaluated for every row and are generally time consuming. If you need to display calculated values, then have them displayed in a fact box or in a preview pane, so that it gets calculated only for the selected row and not for all rows returned by the query. Also enable caching on Display Methods.
For the queries used in factboxes/related information make sure they have appropriate indexes
In Factboxes are using expensive quries, delay load it. ( either load asynchronously or make it as a dialog which the user can invoke through action pane when needed)
Do not have more than 8 columns in the grid.
For the factbox/preview pane , do not have more than 5 rows per page in case of grid
For the secondary list pages , make sure appropriate index is there for the fields used in the ranges and sort orders
For polymorphic tables, make sure adhoc mode is set. ( set OnlyFetchActive to yes in Dataset Datasources)
Avoid changing any properties that trigger data binding in the prerender event of the GridView. Instead, do that in the page prerender

Lookups

Lookups can be marked as Client-side lookup. The data for the first page of the lookup will be fetched when the page is initially rendered. When the user clicks the lookup button, the lookup will be displayed immediately on the client side without going back to the server.
If the lookup is generally small (less than 50 items), marking it as a client-side lookup is recommended. For that, set the LookupStyle to Preload.If the lookup values do not change (for example currency, state, country, and so on), then set the LookupCacheScope to Global or DataBindingContainer. For example

private void AttachLookupsToBoundFields()

{

foreach (DataControlField dcf in this.Group_Transaction.DataControlFieldCollection)

{

AxBoundField boundField = dcf as AxBoundField;

if (boundField != null)

{

switch (boundField.DataField)

{

case "ExchangeCode":

boundField.LookupStyle = LookupStyle.PreLoad;

boundField.LookupCacheScope = CacheScope.Global;

break;

case "PayMethod":

boundField.Lookup += new EventHandler<AxLookupEventArgs>(PayMethod_Lookup);

boundField.LookupStyle = LookupStyle.PreLoad;

boundField.LookupCacheScope = CacheScope.DataBindingContainer; // since CostType is not changing on this page, we can cache it for the form

break;

}

Detail Pages

Cache the values in local variables for multiple code paths are calling, for example getting the current row.
Set the AutoSearch and AutoQuery properties on the Data set data sources if the query is modified through code or through ranges added before the values are used. This will be beneficial mainly for create and edit scenarios where the query is always modified or the result set is not needed (in the case of create).
Write managed code wherever possible for better performance and to avoid going back and forth from managed code to X++ through proxies.
Use GetFieldValue instead of GetField to get the field values in managed code. GetField is on the AxaptaRecord, which is a wrapper around the X++ instance of the record. GetFieldValue is on the DataSetViewRow, which internally looks at the dbCache hooked to the X++ record. Use GetFieldValue whenever you can because then your code will benefit from the perf improvement.
For polymorphic tables, make sure adhoc mode is set. ( set OnlyFetchActive to yes in Dataset Datasources)
Avoid changing any properties that trigger data binding in the prerender event of the GridView. Instead, do that in the page prerender
If you are using AppFabric for storing Server State, then you can also use AppFabric to store any other custom cache that you need for your customizations.

For example

// Check the state cache

IAxStateCache stateCache = AxStateCacheFactory.CreateStateCache(this.Page.Session);

if (stateCache != null)

{

object cachedState = stateCache.LoadState(this.GetExpenseTransToolbarMenuCacheKey());

if (cachedState != null)

{

// Got it from the cache - deserialize it

this.expenseTransToolbarMenu = WebMenuItemMetadataHierarchicalContainer.Deserialize((byte[])cachedState);

}

else

{

// Not found in the cache - create it

this.expenseTransToolbarMenu = this.GetExpenseTransToolbarMenu();

// Save it in the cache

stateCache.SaveState(this.GetExpenseTransToolbarMenuCacheKey(), this.expenseTransToolbarMenu.Serialize());

}

Minimize the page size as much as possible. For complex forms, separate header and detail pages and display only the section that’s needed. Use Expense Report page as an example.

Configuration

Use AppFabric for NLB topology or enable machine affinity.

<Microsoft.Dynamics>

</ Microsoft.Dynamics>

Set the MaxSessions in web.config to the maximum concurrent users that you expect for your scenario (taking available memory into account).

<Microsoft.Dynamics>

</Microsoft.Dynamics>

Disabling Tracing and Debugging
4. Configure IIS compression
5. After IISReset or app pool recycling, invoke the EPWarmpup page to cache the metadata http://<server>/sites/dynamicsax/_layouts/ep/EPWarmUp.aspx

UX Patterns

Follow the UX guidelines provided in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg853304.aspx

AXUG Summit 2011

Meyyappan M — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:07:43 GMT

AXUG Summit 2011 event is being held in Las Vegas (Caesars Palace) from Nov 8- 11^th, 2011

http://www.dynamiccommunities.com/Summit2011/AXUG/descriptions.html

From the Services, Enterprise portal and Business Process / Workflow team , we will be participating in the below sessions and looking forward to meet and hear directly from customers and present AX 2012 .

Session #	EP01
Title	Best Practices for Setting Up the Enterprise Portal (EP)
Date/Venue	Wednesday, 11/09/2011 10:00AM-11:00AM, Room Octavius 23
Description	In this presentation session, learn how best to set up Enterprise Portal from both a technical and functional perspective. Learn the steps to follow, the software licenses needed, and the potholes to look out for when setting up EP. Enterprise Portal SIG members are encouraged to attend this session.
Track(s)	Potpourri
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Workshop
Ability Level	Intermediate
Learning Objectives	In this session, you will learn recognized best practices for setting up the Enterprise Portal in Dynamics AX.

Session #	INT01
Title	Understanding AIF: Unlocking One of the Keys to AX
Date/Venue	Wednesday, 11/09/2011 11:30AM-12:30PM, Room Octavius 22
Description	In this presentation session, learn more about the Application Integration Framework (AIF) and how it can be used as a tool to build integrations with Dynamics AX. Dive into the structure and framework of AIF as you learn the techniques and approaches for when AIF is the right integration tool.
Track(s)	Integration
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Workshop
Ability Level	Intermediate

Session #	AX2012-11
Title	User Interface Microsoft Conduit Roundtable
Date/Venue	Wednesday, 11/09/2011 2:30PM- 3:30PM, Room Octavius 9
Description	Everyone has their own take on what makes a software product more usable, so these roundtable discussions on usability are always spirited! Join the discussion to share your own opinions, and to learn how others are making the most effective use of Dynamics AX. We’ll also share some of our learning from usability studies and how we’ve incorporated that into the AX2012 design.
Track(s)	AX2012
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Roundtable
Ability Level	ALL

Session #	AX2012-10
Title	Dynamics AX 2012 User Interface
Date/Venue	Thursday, 11/10/2011 1:30PM- 2:30PM, Room Umbria
Description	The Dynamics AX 2012 user interface builds on the patterns started in the AX 2009 release. The UI is designed to be more discoverable for new users and just as productive for experienced users. Come and take a look at what the AX 2012 UI is better for your users, and learn tips and tricks to maximize their productivity. We’ll also take a look at the new UX guidelines so you can follow the same patterns when doing your own development work.
Track(s)	AX2012
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Workshop
Ability Level	ALL

Session #	CON02
Title	Microsoft Conduit - Employee Self Service (ESS)
Date/Venue	Thursday, 11/10/2011 3:00PM- 4:00PM, Room Octavius 9
Description	Come share your employee self service wish list with Microsoft in this AXUG Microsoft Conduit session! Microsoft product and development staff will be on hand to hear what you would like to see in the area of employee self service with Dynamics AX. Also, Microsoft would like to hear about features that could be enhanced in the existing Dynamics AX product, and hear about new ideas for future functionality in this area.
Track(s)	Potpourri
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Conduit
Ability Level	ALL

Session #	POT16
Title	Understanding and Using Role Centers with Dynamics AX
Date/Venue	Friday, 11/11/2011 8:00AM- 9:00AM, Room Octavius 23
Description	Many companies are not fully utilizing the role center functionality Dynamics AX provides. In this presentation, learn how best to set up, configure, and utlizie role centers to allow your users and your company to achieve greater effiencies in your operations.
Track(s)	Potpourri
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Workshop
Ability Level	ALL

Session #	TEC07
Title	SharePoint Set Up and Install
Date/Venue	Friday, 11/11/2011 11:00AM-12:00PM, Room Octavius 19
Description	In this How2 session, be prepared to learn the steps required to get SharePoint set up and configured to work with Dynamics AX. At the end of this session you will have a checklist of items to follow for installing SharePoint into your Dynamics AX environment.
Track(s)	IT
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	How2
Learning Objectives	In this session, you will learn recognized best practices for setting up SharePoint.

Session #	AX2012-8
Title	Services with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
Date/Venue	Friday, 11/11/2011 1:30PM- 2:30PM, Room Octavius 18
Description	Enabling the use of Services in Microsoft Dynamics AX2012 can be a powerful tool in the design and architecture and foundation for any integration between AX and the outside world. In this session learn more about the enabling of services, including: - Out-of-the-box Services in AX 2012 - AIF Services / Custom Services - OData Feeds, and it's uses (Excel / PowerPivot) - Consuming from outside world (C# / LOB Example) - Consuming Services within AX (On-Premise / In the Cloud) - Warning of the .Net BC not being recommended anymore
Track(s)	AX2012
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	Workshop
Ability Level	Expert

Session #	TEC06
Title	Integration with AX and SharePoint
Date/Venue	Friday, 11/11/2011 1:30PM- 2:30PM, Room Octavius 19
Description	In this How 2 session, learn the steps required to get SharePoint and Dynamics AX configured to work in your environment. Come prepared to take good notes, as the steps/checklist required for this integration will be reviewed.
Track(s)	IT
Duration	60 Minutes
Format	How2

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 EP - Admin Enhancements

Meyyappan M — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:40:07 GMT

Cut costs

Deployment and User management of large Web sites can be taunting tasks for Administrators. The topology could be complex and knowing and installing the pre-requisites can be time consuming and tedious jobs. Having a pleasant setup and deployment experience is critical for the successful adoption of the product and EP team has invested heavily in this space to make the deployment experience better.

• Simplified Install: With a quick and simple installation and configuration process, Enterprise Portal provides a flexible deployment experience. EP can be installed with all other required components needed for development scenario by a single setup option. The pre-requisites are detected exhaustively by a separate utility which could be run ahead of deployment to verify the readiness of the machines or during the setup. You also now have the option to change the EP site url during setup.

• Maintenance: Once EP is setup, subsequent changes could be easily deployed by a command line utility. In AX 2012 the command line utility could be executed from a remote machine or admin could use the AX Client (Administration) from a remote machine. They no longer need to locally install AX Client on the Web server and run the update only by logging in locally to the Web server. They can now do it from their desktop and pass the server name as a parameter. This simplifies the management of multiple machines from a single place. Also the command line utility provides various options to granularly deploy any EP related AOT node to any EP site or bulk update all Web sites with all changes.

• Authentication: Managing large number of external users like customers and partners in Active Directory for them to access EP has been administrative hassle in the previous versions of EP. In this release, EP supports pluggable authentication by leveraging claims-based authentication of SharePoint. Customers now have a choice to use standard windows authentication methods, or database of user names and passwords outside of AX or connecting directly to external organizations identify management system through federation.

• One Click deploy: One click deploy option is enabled on AOT projects node, Web content node and on List Page menu item node for easy deployment to Enterprise portal web server from AOT in AX Client.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 EP Developer Enhancements

Meyyappan M — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:12:02 GMT

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012: Rapidly respond to business needs

To gain a competitive edge, business processes need to respond rapidly to changing market conditions by improving operational efficiencies. They should be a strategic tool for handling change and not be a hurdle to be overcome. Enterprise Portal (EP) provides full flexibility with a first class development tool like ASP.net/Visual Studio while simplifying the complexity of Web development from application developers and provides a simple metadata based modelling approach to build their user interface.

• Write Once/ Write Less for List Pages: Customers and partners want to share their development effort as much as possible between Client and EP, so that their work of enabling the application capability in both becomes simpler, easier to maintain, and ensures consistency. We took your feedback and implemented a model-driven, list-page approach that provides a holistic experience to the developers and end users. This is accomplished by basing the entire List Page on the Services infrastructure and reusing the metadata fully from the Application Object Tree (AOT). Developers define the user interface components in AOT one time and write the user interface application logic in a display agnostic way. Both Microsoft Dynamic AX 2012 Client & EP renders the list page using this common metadata and business logic, and reduces the development time and cost. This feature is only available for List Pages in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. The Task pages in EP are still being built in Visual Studio using C#.

• MorphX EP enhancements: The Microsoft Dynamics AX cross-reference system allows you to see the relationships between objects. You can see which other objects use the current object and also which other objects the current object uses. This is a great tool for rapidly responding to changing business needs. As you make changes to one particular object, you can easily find out the other impacted objects and fix them in one go. In the previous version, EP artifacts in AOT were not covered by the cross-reference system. In this release, we bridged this gap and seamlessly integrated the Web controls developed in Visual Studio and the Web pages developed in SharePoint in their respective nodes with the cross-reference system, so making changes in EP is simpler for developers. Also, the code difference tool works with the EP artifacts in AOT.

• Visual Studio EP enhancements: The visual studio development experience for EP, Reports, and managed code development are integrated now with one set of tools to ensure consistency and familiarity. The Application Explorer in Visual Studio provides an easy way to pull content from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to Visual Studio. The projects are now saved in AOT, so that the changes are instantly reflected in AOT and EP without the needing the user to manually add it to AOT or deploy to EP during development. Consuming X++ classes in C# are made simpler through the Proxy development project in Visual studio. Proxies could be easily shared between different projects and deployed seamlessly together without any conflict.

• Development Environment: Multiple developers can use one shared Web server for development. The templates are deployed in a place where any user who has access to that machine can use it. In the previous version, manual steps were required to enable multi-user development scenario in single box. Developers can now use Windows 7 client 64 bit to develop EP. They no longer need to install a server operating system on their development box.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 EP user interface enhancements

Meyyappan M — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:49:00 GMT

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 EP: More Power to the People

We heard from customers and partners that to get a good return on investment, the user interface is a key component. Enterprise Portal (EP) needed to score high on both look-and-feel and usability in this release. To meet and exceed customer and partner expectations, the user interface has gone through a major revision in this release. We built our user experience on the already familiar Office and Windows platforms. User interaction was made intuitive and consistent across the product, information and actions are easily discoverable, and tasks are completed in fewer steps, leading to a reduction in time spent on tasks.

The key capabilities of EP user interface

Action Pane: Built along the lines of SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007 successful and well-adopted ribbon interface, EP has Actions Panes in this release. The toolbars in the list and task pages have been replaced by the Action Pane. The commands are organized into a set of tabs along with relevant icons for visual cue. The tabs on the action pane display the commands that are most relevant for each of the task areas. This improves the discoverability of actions and simplifies accessing and acting on the application features.

Model dialogs: In the previous versions of Enterprise Portal, viewing, editing and creating items in a list page forced the user to navigate to the task page away from the list page. By navigating away, all the user interactions previously completed on the list page—such as filtering, sorting, page navigation, etc.—are all lost when the user navigates back to the list page after completing the task. Since the navigation reloads and refreshes the list page, the user had to start all over again to regain their previous settings. In Microsoft Dynamics AX6 all the task pages are opened as Model dialog boxes on top of the list page instead of navigating away, so the context is preserved. The task page is highlighted on top of the list and when the task page modal dialog is closed, it puts the highlight back on to the list page preserving the setting along with the refreshed data. This makes finding, viewing, creating and modifying data much simpler and consistent across the product. Built on SharePoint 2010 dialog platform, all this is done through meta data setting by developers without the need to write any code.

Fact Box: In Microsoft Dynamics AX6, all list pages have Fact Boxes and a Preview Pane to provide more information from related objects in context for the selected object. This gives users an overview of a given object, enableing them to initiate more actions in context and thereby reduce the need to open additional windows or navigate to other places in the navigation layer. Fact boxes can also act as preview panes at the bottom of the list page. This allows more information to display about the selected object itself in a list page and overcomes the space limitations of the number of columns displayed in the list.

FastTab : Collapsible and expandable FastTabs replace traditional tabs on task pages in EP. Key fields can be promoted on a summary line that display even when the tab is collapsed. The traditional tabs can display information from one tab only at a time. But with FastTabs and its auto summary fields, users can get full view of the selected object and all its important data in one shot without the need to navigate between different tabs.

Filters: Enterprise Portal now has a Quick Filter in all the list pages to allow the user to find data quickly. Developers can enable most common filtering fields readily available as Facet Filter at the top of the list page to increase their discoverability. Power users can build complex filtering conditions using the Advanced Filter control which allows multiple filter conditions.

Search: In Microsoft Dynamics AX6, EP makes search seamless by integrating with SharePoint Search through Business Connectivity Services (BCS). Microsoft Dynamics AX queries, Microsoft Dynamics AX Navigation metadata, and document attachments are published as BCS entities through Microsoft Dynamics AX Setup and end users can search for business data, metadata and attachments. For example, a user could search for customers, a link to the report, and any attached documents.

Navigation: In Microsoft Dynamics AX6, the quick launch displays items in a hierarchical view instead of a flat list as in prior versions. This way, related navigational elements are grouped together and are displayed in a familiar Outlook-type navigation control. The information architecture has been revisited in this release with consistent navigation taxonomy. This will help the end users quickly locate and navigate to the correct places to do their tasks.

Actions: Actions on the list page are more discoverable through the Action Pane. Also they can be exposed as hyperlinks on the list columns and as actions in a Fact Box. List Page also supports taking action on multiple items for bulk changes.

New Controls: In Microsoft Dynamics AX6, we also added a number of new controls for displaying complex data in a usable way such as Account control for financial dimensions, Hierarchical grid view for resource scheduling, and Reference field for displaying composite keys.

Export to Excel: Users can seamlessly export any list into Excel through a command in Action Pane. This brings the power of Excel to the fingertips of EP users for analyzing and comprehending large amounts of data from a list page. With the Microsoft Dynamics AX Office Add-in, data could be refreshed at a later time directly from Excel to get the latest information.

LookUps: For quick data entry, lookups with a fewer number of rows (under 50 rows for example) could be made to render in-client instead of on the server. This reduces the wait time for the lookup to load tremendously improving the user experience and reducing the time it takes to enter data.

With these changes, users are now able to get and control more information in less time than ever before. Next time we’ll look at how Enterprise Portal rapidly responds to business needs.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Virtual Launch Event

Meyyappan M — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:52:00 GMT

Registration is now open for the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 virtual launch event. Tune in on Thursday, September 8th at 9:00am PST

For a quick intro the features in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, check out other videos on the Microsoft Dynamics ERP Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/MicrosoftDynamicsERP

Enterprise Portal video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td2ROxxXzcE

Sharing Business Information the Easy Way: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Enterprise Portal

Too often, organizations make business data and business applications available only to back-office workers. By limiting access in this way, they miss out on the benefits of providing everyone in the company with real-time information and the ability to make informed decisions quickly enough to keep up with the competitive, ever-changing business world.

On the face of it, sharing business information should be straightforward, but in reality, there are some challenges, including business applications that were not designed with sharing in mind and a variety of user interfaces to choose from. Enterprise Portal in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 addresses these challenges by providing a web-based interface to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and prebuilt support for a number of common business processes.
In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, we’ve made some major improvements to Enterprise Portal to:
• Make it easier for people to complete tasks in fewer steps and in less time.
• Help businesses respond quickly to changing needs and opportunities.
• Lower the costs associated with installing and maintaining web applications and portal sites.

Easy to Use

We heard from customers and partners that the user interface has a strong influence on the adoption and, therefore, on the long-term return-on-investment (ROI) of an ERP solution. In this release, the Enterprise Portal user interface has gone through a major revision, making it much easier for business users to navigate. We modeled the user experience on the familiar Microsoft Office and Windows interfaces, so the user experience should be more intuitive and consistent across all the Microsoft products that people use every day. In addition, we reduced the number of steps required to complete common tasks and made information and actions more easily discoverable, which should reduce the time people spend completing routine tasks.

Flexible and Extensible

Our customers also tell us that they need to constantly update business processes in response to changing market conditions or to improve operational efficiencies. The latest release of Enterprise Portal supports this need for agility by simplifying the development cycle and providing a set of first-class development tools.

Most notably, we’ve adopted a model that lets you share code between Microsoft Dynamics AX and the web-based portal environment for list pages. This approach can significantly reduce the development effort required to implement customizations in the parallel environments, while also ensuring easier maintenance and consistency across the two platforms.

In addition, we’ve upgraded the development tools for the Enterprise Portal in both MorphX and Microsoft Visual Studio so that developers can work in X++, Microsoft ASP.NET, or any other .NET language. We’ve also made it possible for multiple developers to work on the same code on the same server, so that teams can build applications more quickly

Simple to Install and Maintain

Deploying and maintaining applications on a large website can be a daunting task for the administrator. The Enterprise Portal team has invested heavily, building several utilities that simplify the installation and configuration process, as well as the day-to-day maintenance of your portal site.

During install, we’ve included a utility that developers can run before deployment or during setup to verify the readiness of the machines and detect prerequisites, eliminating many of the time-consuming, tedious tasks associated with implementing Enterprise Portal, especially across complex topologies.

After you set up Enterprise Portal, you can easily deploy subsequent changes by using a command-line utility that you can execute from a remote machine. This simplifies the management of multiple servers from a single place. The command-line utility also provides options to granularly deploy updates to a single Enterprise Portal site or to bulk update all websites with all changes.

Changes to the security model in Microsoft Dynamics AX also make it easier to manage large numbers of external users. In this release, we’ve added support for claims-based authentication so that customers can choose among standard Windows authentication methods, a separate database of user names and passwords, or connecting to an external identity management system, such as a Windows Live ID.

EP team has reached ZBB for AX 2012.

Meyyappan M — Sun, 22 May 2011 16:17:00 GMT

HUGE THANKS to the entire team!!!. EP team has reached ZBB for AX 2012.Great to see the product that we worked on for 3 years has come out beautifully and achieved this milestone on time which takes us close to the final step for RC.

We already have two customers live and this itself is a testament to the great set of features that we built in this release. Thanks to the performance, UX , Pro and MSIT teams for the great partnership in making this happen.

MS Expense 2.0	MS E&D Xbox

EP in-a-slide

Convergence 2011 - Atlanta

Meyyappan M — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:00:41 GMT

Come and learn about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Enterprise portal @ Convergence Atlanta.

CSAX23-R1 Simplifying Access to Information with Portals in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Track: Microsoft Dynamics AX

Speaker(s): Anees Ansari

Room: B405

Audience: IT Professional, Technical Decision Maker

Monday, April 11

17:00-18:00

CSAX23-R2 Simplifying Access to Information with Portals in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Track:

Speaker(s): Anees Ansari

Room: B311

Audience: IT Professional, Technical Decision Maker

Wednesday, April 13

13:30-14:30

Session Details

Skill Level: 300 - Experienced

Product: Microsoft Dynamics AX

Refreshing one user control webpart from another user control webpart through code.

Meyyappan M — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:24:14 GMT

Enterprise portal supports connecting webparts and passing context between them. In some cases, you may want to refresh the consumer webpart from the provider webpart even if the context is not changing.

For example

1) UserControl1 is a grid of header rows (ex. Rental header) and serves as provider. Besides the grid, there is an action button on the user control.
2) UserControl2 is a grid of line rows (ex. Rental lines) and is the consumer

In User control 1 when the action button is clicked, you are calling X++ method which inserts record in the rental lines table through business logic and you want to refresh the UserControl2 , even though the context has not changed.

In this case , in the button click event you can fire the currentcontextchanged by yourself, so that the consumer webpart will reload itself.

Microsoft.Dynamics.Framework.Portal.UI.IAxContext contextInterface = Microsoft.Dynamics.Framework.Portal.UI.AxContextHelper.FindIAxContext(this);

contextInterface.FireCurrentContextChanged();

For this to work make sure

(1) UserControl1 atleast has one AXDataSourceControl with the Role set to Provider Consumer or Provider

(2) WebPart1’s (hosting UserControl1 ) Role is set to Provider in SharePoint Web Part Page

(3) WebPart2’s 9 hosting UserControl2) Role is set to Consumer in SharePoint Web Part Page

(4) WebPart1 and WebPart2 are connected in SharePoint Web Part Page to pass the AXContextList

Code compare utility in MorphX on EP User controls

Meyyappan M — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:05:00 GMT

To enable the code compare utility in MorphX on EP user controls , edit the CodeIsSource method of SysTreeNode class in AOT and add UtilElmentType:WebControl and UtilElementType::WebSourceFile to the switch statement that returns true. After making the change, you shoudl be able to do code compare on user control markup and code behind files.

static boolean codeIsSource(UtilElementType _utilElementType)
{
boolean ret;

    switch (_utilElementType)
    {
        case UtilElementType::WebPageDef :
        case UtilElementType::WebStaticFile :
        case UtilElementType::WebControl:
        case UtilElementType::WebSourceFile:
            ret = true;
    }

return ret;
}

Enterprise Portal advanced training – suggestions welcome!

Meyyappan M — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 02:21:09 GMT

Are you coming for the Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/solutions/archive/2010/08/11/announcing-the-microsoft-dynamics-ax-technical-conference-2011.aspx

If you are looking for advanced technical training in EP (level 300-400) focusing on web framework internals, debugging , tracing, perf tuning etc We are planning to organize a one day EP training event post the technical conference(prabaly on 21^st or 22^nd). The date and avenue is being finalized for this day long EP training. For those of you who won’t be able to extend your stay, we will also have some of it covered during the EP sessions in the conference.

Respond to this postwith the topics of interest related to Enterprise Portal. We will use this as the input to design the training event and the conference sessions.

Migrating X++ web forms to AX 2009 EP asp.net framework

Meyyappan M — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:12:00 GMT

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 EP introduced the asp.net web framework. In the prior versions, the web user interface logic was defined entirely in X++. Asp.net framework has lots of great benefits , the big ones being AJAX capabilities, rich out of the box controls and the power of .net and asp.net for customization, extensibility, performance and reliability.

Here are the topic related to migrating existing X++ web forms to asp.net EP user controls.

1. Use the SysEPWebFormConverter to move the Web form datasources to the dataset and the user control. For simple cases, it should automate everything.

2. Refer to the migrating code pattern document and move the code as needed to the dataset X++ methods or to C# in user control as suggested by this document

3. Refer to the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 EP dev cook book for general development tips-n-tricks

Debugging X++ code on EP pages (AX 2009)

Meyyappan M — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:47:41 GMT

As per Flemming Gregersen's request posting this info

Here is the article to on How to: Debug X++ Code on EP Pages

Make sure you login to the machine in console mode. Also if UAC is enabled, you have to run AX Client with admin privileges (right click and ‘Run as Administrator’) to get the debugger to work. Also note that KB2251040 is required only for WCF debugging, KB962952 is required for EP debugging.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Foundation compatibility mode support with Dynamics AX 2009 Service Pack 1 Enterprise Portal

Meyyappan M — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:59:03 GMT

Dynamics AX Sustained Engineering Team announced the compatibility of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Dynamics AX 2009 Service Pack 1 Enterprise Portal. For more details refer to http://blogs.technet.com/b/dynamicsaxse/archive/2010/08/12/new-compatibility-testing-result-august-2010.aspx

Thanks a lot team for validating and releasing the hotfix to support SharePoint 2010 in compatibility mode. While this compatibility mode support paves the way for organizations to start using SharePoint 2010 for their AX 2009 deployments, AX ‘6’ will leverage the new capabilities of SharePoint 2010.

Announcing the Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference 2011

Meyyappan M — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:39:08 GMT

The launch of the next release of Microsoft Dynamics AX will be next year. We will be the hosting the Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference 2011 in January to give partners and customers an early look at the product.

This will be an important event for architects, consultant developers and IT infrastructure consultants to get deep technical information on the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics AX. You can find out more information here
http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/DynamicsAXtechnicalconference2011

Using EP as a subsite to your existing company intranet portal

Meyyappan M — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:30:37 GMT

If you already have a SharePoint based intranet portal for your company , you may want to create the Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise portal as a sub site to this intranet portal to provide a seamless integrated experience to the users. For EP sub site creation to work, you need to check and make sure the below two are set correctly.

1. The application pool of the IIS Web site running the intranet portal need to use the BC proxy account as the identity

2. In Sub site creation, select the Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal Site template and custom tab and also select “Use same permission as the parent site” option for User permissions. ( The SharePoint permission is only the front end gate keeper and actual data visibility and access permission is controlled inside Microsoft Dynamics AX.)

Convergence 2010

Meyyappan M — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 04:51:00 GMT

I’m attending Microsoft® Convergence® 2010 Atlanta, April 24-27. We have two concurrent sessions and one interactive discussion of Enterprise Portal. This is a great opportunity for networking and learning. So come, join us and get the latest and greatest information and insights about Enterprise Portal.

CSAX23

Enterprise Portal for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Concurrent Session

Mey Meenakshisundaram

Attend this deep-dive session on the Enterprise Portal for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. See how to build and customize Enterprise Portal pages and understand how to develop user controls with Visual Studio and ASP.NET to develop portal functionality for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

B212

Monday, April 26

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

CSAXR23

Enterprise Portal for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (Repeat)

Concurrent Session

Mey Meenakshisundaram

B406

Tuesday, April 27

1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

IDAX26

Best Practices: Setting Up the Enterprise Portal in Microsoft Dynamics AX

Interactive Discussion

Grant Wilson, Larry Reski, Mey Meenakshisundaram

Join this session as we listen, learn, and share experiences centered around setting up Enterprise Portal from both a technical and functional perspective. We'll take a deeper inside look into the deployment of Enterprise Portal, along with a review of various components that it deploys and configures. Together, we'll discuss how to troubleshoot common setup issues. *Hosted by the Microsoft Dynamics AX User Group*

B202

Tuesday, April 27

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM