D365 Commerce making changes to Adyen payment and service connector considerations

 Hello all, 

I wanted to make a quick note about changing Adyen account and payment connector settings within Dynamics 365 Commerce. From time to time, you'll need to make changes to account or payment connector settings in Dynamics 365 Commerce as a result of an upgrade.

The way that things work, you can make these changes but you need to make sure you invoice all orders and capture payments (so the system shows no outstanding funds due), and then change the settings. 

By failing to do that, you'll run into an incongruence of payment settings between the previous authorizations with the old configs vs the new configs using the old authorizations. 

This will obviosuly be a very big trick when you look into online ecomm orders coming in bound, orders in multiple statuses, etc. You almost need a hard stop on new orders being authorized for payments, or temporary change the process to collect payments up front, which is usually not possible. 

So looking at this dilemma, it might seem unrealistic to making any config changes to the Adyen Dynamics 365 Commerce settings. But what if you have to and can't stop the flow of orders?

For one potential solution, you could create a tool that can be used to update the current open authorizations after the config change is made. This will allow you to make the change in PROD and then create new auths as needed. For open authorizations after that change is made, apply your tool to update those open records to accommodate the new configs. 

If you wait and those open auths expire, sometimes as early as 7 days, you'll have to recapture the payment either manually or via a reauth if you have card on file.

So the lesson here is to get ahead of correcting the open auths if you can't put a hard stop to your order/payment flow. 

Hopefully this post will help proactive dialog for those who encounter this uncommon, hopefully rare scenario. 

Dynamics 365 and you for 2017: Helpful hints, insights, and resources

Dynamics ERP friends,

Microsoft is on the move quickly with their ERP systems. Time is changing and so is the Dynamics world. Here are just a few things I want to note for this year. This is my informal, full of information/opinions/suggestions/humor note for 2017. 

Big Milestone

First and foremost, I greatly appreciate everyone who reads my blog even in passing. Its a fun and creative outlet for me to grow and the fact it helps people helps motivate me to keep it going.

I recently hit 1 million page views on my blog. Yay! [smiley face with party hat]. No clue what I'll hit next year but I'm excited to find out.

New Roadmap Portal

For roadmaps in the past, there would be an image that Microsoft would often show at keynotes at Convergence which would get passed around and reposted. It was a static image with Microsoft working being a veil of mystery.

While the above still exists, there is now an interactive roadmap that shows more than just concepts; it provides deep insights into the entire Dynamics 365 suite. https://roadmap.dynamics.com/ You'll want to bookmark this site and keep up to date on what all is going on.

It breaks down 'What's New', 'In Development', and 'Previously Released' features for all of the Dynamics 365 products and modules within those products. Keep in mind there are two editions now: Dynamics 365 Enterprise (D365 for Sales, D365 for Customer Service, D365 for Field Service, D365 for Project Service Automation, D365 for Operations) and Dynamics 365 for Business (Dynamics 365 for Financials [SMB]). The Enterprise/Business is just a way to bundle the products between Enterprise level solutions and solutions for the SMB market.

Searching for things via search engines

Culturally, we have adopted 'Google' for searching much like asking for a 'Kleenex' for a tissue or a 'Coke' for a soda. 'Did you Google it' is significantly more common that 'Did you Bing it?'. I use 'Bing' in my demos and people snicker with the fan boy jokes flying. For better or worse, that's just how it is.   

Rumor has it, you will find more data on Dynamics 365 using Bing vs other search engines due to how Microsoft optimized the search engine and metadata or something. I don't know the details but its what I've heard from multiple people in different departments at Microsoft. My experience over the past 6 months verifies these claims. Maybe I do a side by side analysis post later this year??

Product education resources

While we're on the topic of search results, MSDN and TechNet were great resources for the Dynamics AX products. Give https://ax.help.dynamics.com/ a look. It is where all the newest information is going to be found and maintained. LCS is also a great spot to research potential issues without opening a ticket while also providing valuable tools for the lifecycle of your implementation.

One interesting note is its 'ax.help...' but AX is not the branding anymore, even though it does still cover AX products. I'm ok with that since my alias is DAX Dude and a number of companies have AX embedded in the name. I refuse to become D3FO Dude (pronounced as 'Dee-foh Dude'?). I'm officially DAX Dude, who works on D3FO.

Mobility and resource development

Mobility will be so important going forward. We are already seeing the beginning pushings for it in the Dynamics space. Cloud/browser based ERPs add significantly more value with mobile applications to supplement functionality. 

I'd recommend getting up to speed on how/why companies will use mobility and what technologies to start growing resources for. You can buy great resources for a premium, but if your company wants homegrown experts, the one thing you can't buy is time. Invest in your employees. Give them the resources to grow with the technology and innovate. Its one of the things I really love about the company I work for. Its not cheap but its worth it. Blue Horseshoe is hiring top talent btw ;-) Inquire within. 

Product Specific naming

Make a resolution to only refer to the products by the full name ('Dynamics 365 for Operations' or some abbreviation like 'Operations', 'D3FO', 'D3 for Ops', 'Ops 1611 (the version)', etc. Just saying Dynamics 365 will not fly. I talked to a sales person last year who really want to talk to me about a great ISV add-in for 'my Dynamics solution'. The conversation was literally: "Great! Which products is it for?" "Y'know, Dynamics... the Microsoft product?" [Looks at me all sketched out] "I'm good thanks! I'll check it out online" [Grabbed branded pen, product flyer, and walked away].

Also, the product should not be called AX 7 or AX when referring to the new version. This is the same transition as from Axapta to Dynamics AX. Now its Dynamics 365 for Operations. All the cool kids are calling it by the new name. You don't want to be the dude who says Axapta 2012 do you? Coincidentally, that's the same guy who orders the gluten-free wine or a gin and root beer with a celery stick at the bar... Don't those sound yummy? Don't be that guy :-)

Thanks everyone and have a wonderful start to 2017!!!

Look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones!

AX 2012 R3 Retail Error when running a retail distribution job: 'Failed to create a session; confirm that the user has the proper privileges to log on to Microsoft Dynamics'

[Going through old notes in my retail folder and posting here]

I was attempting to run a Retail Data Distribution job in AX 2012 R3 to a POS and got the below error. It was 'Failed to create a session; confirm that the user has the proper privileges to log on to Microsoft Dynamics'. I recently ran the generate classes and create staging tables functions so there was new code in place. 

I did a little debugging as the error was not retail specific and it was odd it was being thrown where it was. Sure enough, the CIL wasn't recognizing my current user which is why it wasn't working... Obviously this isn't a bug but rather something within AX. Come to find out, I had previously built the classes and staging tables for the jobs in the USR layer, deleted them, then rebuilt them in the proper layer/model. That threw some issues into the system.

A compile, usage data clear allowed me to get the new error in Figure 3. Obviously that told me to do a full CIL build. I did that, problem solved!

 Figure 1 - The error in question

 Figure 2 - Line 51 is where the error was being thrown.

Figure 3 - The actual error in question. Its actually quite helpful!

Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Retail Error when running Distribution schedule job: 'Class RetailCDXChannelSpecificData_AX63 does not exist

Are you getting an error when attempting to run an AX 2012 R3 Retail data distribution scheduler job (Figure 1)? Is it 'Class RetailCDXChannelSpecificData_AX63 does not exist'? Does it look like the one in Figure 2 below? Do you like things actually working correctly? Hey, friend! If your answer was Yes to the questions above, I might be able to hook you up.

To fix the issue, navigate to the Retail Channel Schema (hint: its on the Scheduler job setup in the field 'Retail Channel Schema'. You can right click on this field for the job in question and go straight to the record and form to generate those magic classes the error has told you all about.

NOTE: This process will generate code in AX AOT so you'll want to be in the correct layer/model for this process

When you click 'Generate classes' (Figure 3), you'll be prompted to what it will do (Figure 4) so make sure you are in the right layer and it will generate the classes you need as you'll see in the AOT (Figure 5).

You will need to do the Incremental CIL build after this or you may get weird issues, but I always do a full as I still don't trust the incrementals from earlier experiences.

Figure 1 - Running the Data Distribution Scheduler job manually

Figure 2 - A delightful little nugget of goodness raining on your parade

Figure 3 - The 'Generate classes' button in the Retail Channel Schema form

Figure 4 - The confirmation for generating the scheduler job classes

Figure 5 - The classes generated in the AOT

Figure 6 - Go grab a beer and celebrate. Or get back to work...

New DAX Dude Dynamics AX Windows Store App now available!

I was tinkering around with mobile apps and tools available and created a DAX Dude Dynamics AX mobile app. Pretty sweet and pretty easy to do! Just tried to keep it simple and use various aspects of social media and consumable content.

You should check it out and leave me some stars. It is what it is. Nothing too crazy or dynamic but is my app so I'm proud of it.
http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-tt/app/dax-dude-dynamics-ax/b86258e4-d782-412f-8dae-abe8f90dcbaa 

It is also available in the Windows Phone store. For those that don't know, there are currently two stores you need to submit your apps to: Windows App Store and Windows Phone Store. I submitted to both.

It's in C#/XAML and used Windows App Studio as a spring board. Check out Windows App Studio: http://appstudio.windows.com/en-us

Would like to finally publish one in javascript/HTML5. They are currently just taking up space on my D: Drive. Maybe when I can get my head above water from other hobbies.

As some information, Windows App Studio and Project Siena are two ways to quickly build windows apps but there are many differences. No one has compared the two and I'm not really interested in spending the time to compare the two quantifiably but each have their pros and cons for different applications. The biggest thing is that WAS is C# based and Siena is Javascript. That will be the guiding decision maker for a lot of people I think. Both allow you to get the project files to take your apps to the next level so thats not a factor.

On a non-AX related side note:
I got a Grestch 12-string acoustic guitar over the holidays so I'm feeling awfully creative these days. That is a great thing as it pushes me to do new thing in other aspects of my life like creating apps and stuff. Behind that and finally getting back on the slopes snowboarding 9 weeks after snapping my arm, I have more energy. Life is good! Be good to others and pay it forward!