Explanation of Intellimorph (not MorphX!)

AX has functionality in it which allows end users, not developers, to customize their user experience. It is called Intellimorph. This is not to be confused with MorphX which is AX's IDE and fully contained within the AX 2009 application (in AX 2012, Visual Studio 2012 can be leveraged also). I hear it often where people call this feature MorphX and it creates a whole bunch of confusion when they reference it assertively for various points. An example of this is when they say 'You can do that through MorphX development, right?' when they really mean 'Our people can do that through Intellimorph, right?'.

AX's Intellimorph functionality will allow you to customize what fields the user can see and in what location/order. It is incredibly versatile for allowing multiple users to each see different views without needing to bring in a developer. Technically, it stores the changes to the form in the system's Usage data for the user so all changes are user to user. Usage data is stored as a container. Since the forms displays are unique to a given user, this is good for satisfying requirements for form changes are not universal and the security requirements for field access exist.

As seen in Figure 1 below, by right-clicking on a field or column (in AX, rows are data and columns are fields), there is the option to select 'Hide'. This feature will essentially hide the field from the user. Not shown in this blog (sorry) is the option right below this 'Hide' option called 'Show' where the fields hidden by the user can be revealed.

A given user can store multiple different views of a form (via the 'Save' button in Figure 2) and the template layout can be recalled at any given time for use later (via the 'Load' button in Figure 2). At any time, the current layout can be cleared and reverted back to the target form without any Intellimorph modifications by clicking the 'Reset' button in Figure 2. These features are all user to user. They do not apply cross-user.

Since these modifications are unique to the current user, it may be desired to apply the tireless blood, sweat, and tears that went into a custom template from someone else to another user's form. The target user can then use the 'Retrieve from user' button in Figure 2 to select from a list of users that have other templates for the current form (Figure 5). Of the list of these users, when one is selected (from Figure 5), it will show the user what templates that user has created (Figure 6). When a template is selected, it will be immediately applied to the user. The user can then save the template for use later.

Through usage data, a user will automatically be brought into the view of the last template that was used. This means that if a user selects someone else's template, it will be there's until they change it or the usage data for the user is erased.

Unfortunately, there is no way to mass deploy a template to users or groups of users.

If you need to make a change to an existing template of yours, you will need to remember the exact name of the template and it can be updated. To do this automatically would be another modification.

This is a good alternative to some other things that people come up with during the design phase. This is even something overlooked by developers because Intellimorph is not in the same thought vein as the 'modification' mindset. I know this for a fact as I am functional/technical and used to be solely technical.

Hope this helps.

Figure 1 – Right click on the form

Figure 2 - User Setup View

Figure 3 – The screen that appears from clicking the 'Save' option from Figure 2 for entering the name for a user template

Figure 4 – The screen that appears from clicking the 'Load' button from Figure 2 for applying a previously saved form

Figure 5 – The names of the AX users that have templates that you can browse

Figure 6 – The templates saved by the user from the previous figure for the current form



Error in Management Reporter: "The request for data from Microsoft Dynamics AX failed. Provider query name: LedgerMRBalanceRequestQueryBuilder"

Issue:
When generating a YTD Balance sheet in Management Reporter (MR) for AX 2012, we were seeing an error being thrown and the report did not run.

The error: “The request for data from Microsoft Dynamics AX failed. Provider query name: LedgerMRBalanceRequestQueryBuilder.”

We checked the appropriate permissions to all folders that MR must access but we were still getting the issue.

The error was isolated to that one specific report as we could run other reports without issue.
Cause:
The report had a significant amount of data in it and it was causing the query to fail.

Workaround:
Breaking down the report into smaller sections allow the users to run the report without hitting this issue.

Resolution:
This was an MS product issue.  Thankfully, the helpful staff in Fargo was able to resolve it and push out the resolution out in the new AX2012 MR provider Service pack.  Download it from customersource/partnersource to resolve this issue.  The name of the update is
'Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Provider for Service Pack 2'
Name of the file you will be downloading: AX2012Provider.zip

Hope this helps!!

Run static method through X++ code

The following is code that will allow you to run a static method using two strings and a container. You need to assert and revert permissions around doing this but it allows you to dynamically run a static method without knowing what the method is.  This is good for frameworks.

• _className     = the string name of the AX AOT Class name.
• _methodName = the string name of the method from the AX AOT Class above.
• _params           = the container which has the variables, [parameter 1, parameter 2, etc]. 

// Start DAX code
// From parameters:
ClassName _className
MethodName _methodName
Container _params;
// From method variables
Container               result;
DictClass               dictClass;
;

// This code will run the static method
executePermission = new ExecutePermission();
executePermission.assert();

dictClass = new DictClass(className2Id(_className));
result = dictClass.callStatic(_methodName, _params);

CodeAccessPermission::revertAssert();
// End DAX code

This code is dynamic and powerful.  Enjoy!

How to get to AOT in AX 2012 (Application object tree)

I was asked this question by someone who was a 3 year seasoned application AX person recently. This person knew enough AX development to be dangerous but was not a developer.  He never claimed to know dev but in talking with him, he knew his stuff.  Which brings me to the question that was asked, "How do you get to the AOT in AX 2012?  It doesn't look like you can anymore".  

I was kind of confused at how the person did not know the answer but then, after talking a bit, realized they would only access the AOT through the AX toolbar. I actually met 2 other people who I know did the same thing.  In AX 2012, the IDE is actually a whole seperate workspace in contrast to previous versions of AX which were all tiled together.  With this new configuration, that button is gone (or moved. I don't know. I never use it...).

Getting to the AOT is as easy as hitting Ctrl+D as long as your user rights permit it.  I could put up screenshots and get into the details but I think everyone who is involved in AX knows that the easiest way is the best way. Just hit Ctrl+D when you are in your AX instance and, BLAMMO!, a new instance/workspace of AX with the AOT will appear to you like a magic genie in a bottle. 

Easier and faster than ordering room service...  Enjoy!

AX 2012 WCF Error: 'The specified client configuration does not contain valid WCF settings'

I hit the following error while working in AX 2012: 'The specified client configuration does not contain valid WCF settings' (Figure 1 below).  This seemed to happen all over the place when specfic actions were done. Didn't care or have enough time to pin point what.  The actions were pretty varied and seemed almost random.  Try running the On Hand Inventory report...

This error was only encountered in AX 2012.  It is because of an issue with a new feature in the AX configuration file that needs to be fixed through the configuration utility.  Do the following to fix the issue:

1. Open the .axc where this issue was being seen in the Microsoft Dynamics AX Configuration Utility.
2. Click on the 'Connection' tab
3. Click on the 'Refresh' button and wait for the proces to complete.
4. Click on the 'Configure Services' button'
5. You will now see the info message in Figure 2. Click 'Ok'
6. You will now see the info message in Figure 3. Click 'Yes'
7. You will now see the info message in Figure 4. Wait for the process to finish.
8. You will now see the info message in Figure 5. Click 'Ok'
9. A new window for Microsoft Service Configuration Editor will appear (Figure 6 below).  You can close this screen.
10. Save this configuration
11. Open the config file and verify there is an XML section of the file (Figure 7 below).
12. Replace the config file in all the user's desktop with the new one.

Figure 1 - The error at hand...

Figure 2 - Clicking 'Configure Services' will give this information. Click 'Ok'

Figure 3 - Clicking 'Ok' in Figure 2 gives this message. Click 'Yes'

Figure 4 - Clicking 'Yes' in Figure 3 will show this process window.  Wait for it to finish

Figure 5 - Once Figure 4's process is complete, this information is presented. Click 'Ok'

Figure 6 - This pops up at the end of the process.  Just close out of it.

Figure 7 - This is what opening the new .axc file looks like after running that process.

AX 2012 for Retail POS development

As I stated in one of my previous posts, the AX for Retail solution is highly customizable. There is not a lot out there on the web about it but there should be. While I am not so much of a technical person anymore (just by title...), I will still do a bunch of mods in this solution to make sure I know my stuff.

A functional consultant that knows the technical aspects of things is an extremely valuable resource and I can assure you that I will stay current with tech to keep that badge.

I'll post some stuff on here as I do it to keep people informed of my adventures.

Here is one great blog post about retail POS development that I've found helpful.  I hope you will, too.  I hope to come out with one that is equally as helpful that people will come to as well...

http://blog.rahulsharma.in/2011/09/dynamics-ax-for-retail-pos-development.html

AX 2012 for Retail history summary and how it got to where it is today

Microsoft had two primary Point of Sale (POS) solutions in their Dynamics software stack: Retail Management System (RMS) and POS 2009.  These solutions were great for cash and carry retail operations that had a few locations and could handle a fair amount of volume without a problem.  They handled all of their backoffice functionality in smaller accounting solutions like Quickbooks and PeachTree to name a few. 

For larger companies, Microsoft's Dynamics AX (Axapta) solution was the obvious choice for their backoffice applications as these smaller accounting solutions were not capabale of sustaining their operations. The issue with these POS products and larger corporations is that they were developed for smaller operations out of the box (OOTB).  The major selling point of large scale ERP's are their abilites to centralize managment of all operations into a single location.  These products had to be adapted for larger companies via third party integrations like ToIncrease's Retail Chain Management (RCM) or Blue Horseshoe's Retail Operations Bridge (ROB) interfaces (for example) in order to integrate RMS to the AX system.
There were two issues with this solution: 1) Not a OOTB integration with a lot of effort in upgrading  and 2) RMS was not a flexible application to allow major customizations like AX was able to.

As many in the AX industry know, AX is VERY customizable.  With this customization power comes great customization responsibility.  As an observation, the larger a corporation was, the more unique requirements their business contained.  This created an obvious limitation of using these solutions as they were not very customizable.  To note, they did not need to be and they did their job extremely well.

In order to bridge these two gaps, Microsoft purchased LS Retail POS and ToIncrease's RCM in order to develope their own, highly integrated, highly customizable POS end-to-end solution for their larger clients.  From this came AX 2009 for Retail.  This was a great product and everyone instantly saw that every implementation had customizations.  I have yet to hear of a single solution that was 100% OOTB.  This was by design as one size does not fit all.

Microsoft will soon release in the third quarter of 2012 (tentative), the AX 2012 for Retail feature pack.  This is currently in the TAP process at the moment.

This is obviously just a high level history of how AX for Retail came to be.  I left some stuff out and may have been too broad in some areas so please comment below if you can help add to this.  I'm always interested to learn the background of stuff...