I had this blog for a long time when I worked at a different role in Microsoft. For the last 4 years I’ve been working in a solution architecture team at Microsoft working with customers reviewing implementation projects on Dynamics AX. A few months back I decided it was time to create a new blog  Organicax.com

Main reason was a technical one to move to something gave me some more options for making the blog look a little more presentable as well I wanted to change tact and use the blog to share concepts, features, implementation issues/solutions that I’d come across through implementations, in the spirit of sharing with the Dynamics community.

So this is the last post to this blog, you can find me now over here Organicax.com

Cheers

Lachlan

If you get this message make sure you have Adobe reader installed.  Click the Edit\Preferences.

When the Preferences are displayed click General and down the bottom of the page you will have a button to select the default PDF Handler. Click this button and you will be prompted a couple of times to accept the change.

Once you do this close any browser windows and open again you should be able to view previews in InformationSource.

If you still can’t then you might want to review the help Adobe provide for making sure your browser can use PDF documents.

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/display-pdf-browser-acrobat-xi.html

Cheers

Lachlan

Update. December 5th 2013. The login framework for InformationSource had been updated so you no longer need to do this work around.

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I’ve had a few emails on this topics from Microsoft folks who have upgraded to Windows 8.1 with IE11 and haven’t been able to log into https://informationsource.dynamics.com so here a few note on setting the compatibility setting in IE11.

Symptom. If you go to InformationSource and you can’t click the login link

Then follow these steps. Click on the on the settings icon in IE11.

Then click on the Compatibility View settings.

Enter the URL for InformationSource in the “Add this website:” field. Then click the Add button.

You will notice that this will be added to the list of “Websites you’ve added to Compatibility view” as just Dynamics.com. Click Close.

Close the browser and go back to https://informationsource.dynamics.com and you will be able to click the links to login either via LiveID or Microsoft Corporate login.

Cheers

Lachlan

We live and work in a complex world. Complexity comes from the growth of societies and the systems we have put in place to manage and be able have common ways of communicating. In business it's about the numbers. Stock markets, in theory, are driven by the ability to invest and get a return from the money in the form of dividends or capital growth. The assumption is that you aren't going to get either if the business isn't performing well.

Again in theory people are making a value judgment of the future potential return. How should they make those decisions? Well they should look at the financial viability of the company. How do you do this ? You should look at their financial statements and other reported company information.

Most average investors don't analyze the reports, it's more driven by other news about the company but that is a completely different topic on consumer behavior so I won’t go down that path.

Financial statements are what the bank is going to ask for or private equity investors are going to ask for when trying to raise capital outside the stock markets. I can hear you say great and? Well working with a lot of ERP projects sometimes we forget about the basics of what it is we are doing.

ERP software is a tool for the business used for the people in the organization. The tool is supposed to help the organization collect and analyze financial and operational data. Then use that data for reporting to internal and external consumers. The external consumers would be shareholders, investors and regulators. The internal consumers are the managers.

The internal consumers will use the data to track their progress to tactical and strategic policy. The external consumers will look at the data and see if they are making the right investments decisions. The external consumers will look at the strategy and use the numbers to give them an indicator to see if the company is heading in the right direction which protects their investment of future returns potential.

Now I can hear folks saying ok your explanation includes only concepts of public and private commercial companies. What about public sector, not for profit, charities or community organizations. Well the same basics apply there as well. They just have different strategies. They need to manage the resources they have to execute on their mission. They still have people that want to see how they are performing. In the case of public sector organization it's you and me because we pay taxes and want to see those taxes spent wisely. In the case of not for profits, the people committing money to the charity want to see it's being use for good.

Ok so I've set the scene, we have a tool ERP and we have an expected outcome. How do we connect the dots. What are the basic concepts and how does this really connect with trying to implement and ERP application? Well that is what I thought I'd try to do in a series of posts, I don't know how many, so we'll just make a start.

So back to basics the financial statements:

Revenues and Expenses

Income Statement (Profit and Loss)

The income statement is a statement of the summary of revenues and expenses for a specific period. Total the revenues for the period, if they are more than the expense then we have net income (net profit). If we didn't do so well in managing or organization then total revenue would be less than expense and we'd have a net loss.

So the income statement is going to tell us in that period if we are making money. Now that period could be a month, or quarter or year which are the typical buckets organizations manage by. If we made a loss in a month is that a concern? No maybe it's seasonal business so there maybe always a pattern of losses in the low months and then profits in the high months. But if you look across the year the plan would be that we end in a profit.

Statement of Activities (Excess or Deficit)

In a public sector organization we are not so worries about making money but how we are spending it. Conceptually the same as an Income Statement in a commercial organization we want to see how much money we have coming in verses going out. The money we have is typically managed in Funds. The fund represents were the money came from or how it is ring fenced in the budgeting cycle for spending. So typically we don't talk about profit we talk about excess. If we didn't manage the money well enough then we have a deficit.

An example Income statement. In this example it's for the period end October 31st but also includes a comparison to year to date (YTD).

Assets and Liabilities

Balance Sheet

To be in business we are leveraging the tools we have to help us make money. These tools are assets. It could be a building we own, it could be a machine we have. It could be the money we have in the bank. It could be patents we have developed and own. What we need to do is measure how well we are using these assets and the assets wear out over time. When we started out business we might not have had money to get the machine we needed. So we took out a loan. Or we have products that we have purchased so that we can on sell but we still owe the supplier the supplier for the goods.

So the Balance Sheet is going to be our tool here to help us understand the picture of assets and liabilities.

Statement of Financial Position

In a public sector organization they have the same need. They have roads they need to maintain. They have water or electrical infrastructure. They have planes or equipment to distribute food aid in remote parts of the world. These are assets and like a commercial business they may seek loans or have been granted credit from suppliers. Typically it is called a Statement of financial position.

Similar to the income statement the balance sheet when produced is for a specific period. An example here across a two page listing:

Remembering the accounting equation

From the balance sheet you can see the accounting equation in action:

Assets = Liabilities + Owners Equity.

From the statement above then this company has $161,935,288 in assets. $11,905,494 in liabilities and $150,029,794 in equity.

Where does the data come from

The accounting data is generated by events. Someone in the organization purchase materials. Someone combines materials together to make a finished product. A sale is made to a customer. Product is shipped to a customer. There are multiple people in the organization that need to be able to input and register data so we can collect this for accounting purposes and eventually reporting.

For example let's look at the modules in Dynamics AX 2012 compared to the Income Statement.

• Sales we might generate and manage in the Sales and Marketing, Retail or Project Accounting modules.
• Manufacturing Expense are going to be incurred in managing production in the Production Control module.
• Selling and Advertising Expenses could come from our sales people registering travel expenses in the Travel and Expense Module.
• Personnel Expenses could be generated from the Payroll module.
• Depreciation Expense would be generated by managing our depreciation books in the Fixed Assets module

If we look at the Balance Sheet:

• Bank accounts will be managed in the Cash and Bank Management module.
• Accounts receivable will be managed in the Account Receivable module after recording sales in the Sales and Marketing or Retail modules.
• Physical Inventory would be managed in the Inventory and warehouse management and Product Information management modules.
• Fixed assets both intangible and tangible assets would be managed in the Fixed Assets module.

Bringing it all together

So how does this all come together that we can report our organizational data. Well that comes together in the General Ledger as documents are posted from the other modules they end up in the General Ledger and that is what we report on. The example reports were exported from Management Reporter 2012 for Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

Multi-Dimensions

These samples reports give one picture for an organization and typically the company would report a summary version for external consumption. But for internal usage they might want to slice the income statement or balance but internal structures based on how they are organized.

For example you have a multi-national company with operations in Canada, USA, Mexico, UK, France, Germany. Now the CEO might appoint managers to help him run the company and execute on strategy so he appoints a manager for North America (Canada, USA, Mexico) and Europe (UK, France, Germany). Now the CEO wants the whole company to be profitable but he also wants to be able to see the profitability by region North America and Europe because he wants to track the progress of each manager.

Take a different example as an extension of the above. What if there was an additional set of managers that were responsible for product lines. A product line might expand across regions because they sell the product in North America and Europe.

This leads to a number of dimensions that we need to be able to track the financial data to be able to report out:

• Legal Entities
  • To be doing business in a country I would have some form of organization registered. This legal entity is registered based on the local company law and is regulated and taxed in that country.
• Regions.
  • In this example we have an organizational concepts for how we internally manage the company.
• Departments
  • We want to be able to separate expenses incurred but the different departments so we can put in place cost control policies.
• Product Line
  • Another example of an organizational structure. In our example Income Statement above we have sales in October of $7,678,600. How much of this is Item X vs. Item Y sales.

Basic Measurements

There are other basic measurements concepts that we need to organize to report consistently:

• Calendars
  • Remember we said the reports were for a stated period in time. This needs to be controlled by a calendar that we can defined are reporting period buckets.
• Currency
  • The example reports above are in US dollars. If the organization did operate in Europe then they would likely be making sales in Pounds in the UK and Euro for the other countries.

Back to Basics

So this post is getting long so I'm going to break here and in the next post we'll talk about the concept of recording a transaction to post to the ledger and then in sub-sequent posts over lay some the other concept on top and see how we configure these in Dynamics AX 2012

Cheers

Lachlan

(Original post at https://blogs.msdn.com/lcash)

In the last post I said I would talk about actors in an ERP project. Running a project like this you also have to be effective at managing people and bringing in the skills at the right phase of the project. The art of this is to understand what skills you will likely need and stay one step ahead of the project to make sure the resources are ready when you need them.

Something else you need to consider is do you have skills in-house or do you need to bring in an organization to help you. Unless you are building your own in-house application most ERP projects are going to have some mix of external consultant support. What you need to do is decide what this skills mix looks like. What you can't do is outsource goals and project control.

The skills mix is going to vary through the phases of the project:

• Analysis, Design, Development, Deployment, Operation.

You might be lucky to have people with a range of depth and breadth skills that you can rely on throughout the course of the project. Generally you will likely have a small core team that will stay consistent and then you will bring in skills as you need them through the phases.

I'm going to lists these roles independent of where the resource is employed. If you look at the Dynamics Sure Step methodology most of these roles are define in the context of consulting roles or customer roles. What I see in the market is Hybrid mixes.

• Executive Sponsor
• Project Board member
• Project Manager
• Business Process Analyst
• Business Process Reference Owner
• Business Process SME
• IT Director
• Infrastructure Support
• Database Administrator
• Functional Consultant
• Technical Consultant
• Development Lead
• Developer
• Build and Release Manager
• Functional Solution Architect
• Technical Solution Architect
• Test Manager
• Data Migration Lead
• Change Board Member
• Support Engineer
• Engagement Manager

Now each project doesn't mean you will have all these people but the combination of skills needs to be in the people that you have available to the project and we'll explore the different tasks in the coming posts.

Cheers

Lachlan

(Original post at https://blogs.msdn.com/lcash)

As part of my job I work with customers and help them with their ERP project implementations around Dynamics AX. An ERP project is a complex project. You have so many different dynamics (excuse the pun) that you need to manage. Business needs, regulations, training and understanding software, resource management, corporate politics, and probably the biggest being communication and change management.

Some of the projects I enjoy working on happen to be the biggest and most complex and if the project is run right can actually be a fairly peaceful and enjoyable experience. I'm not saying trouble free, all projects have un-expected issues. But with the right planning and management the troubles will be small detours as opposed to road blocks.

I thought I would start to share my thoughts and observations on running and ERP projects in a series of blogs posts. Now I'm not saying that I'm going to write out a manual but provide some insight if you are looking to embark on an ERP implementation project.

First and foremost an ERP system is a system that collects operational data in the course of executing business processes, data collected is used for decisions support. There would be no need to implement an ERP system if people didn't need the data, it's a tool and you have to keep that in mind.

People implement ERP applications. The effective relationship between management, system consumers, project team, external software consultants, external business consultants and software vendor is what makes a project successful.

The Need

If you are going to implement a new ERP system then someone has made a decision to do that. It might be one person, the CEO, CIO, CFO. Sometimes these are some of the best projects as you have exec involvement form the beginning. Usually the exec doesn't decide on their own, there would have been an initial instigator maybe from operations, maybe from finance, maybe from sales. Someone would have been fed up enough with dealing with inadequate data that hindered their role that they raised the need and probably got support from other department leads.

This is an important success factor "Why are we implementing a new system?". It's important to keep clear goals. If the decision to push a system through comes via someone thinking it's a good career move just to change systems, usually the project doesn't go well. There needs to be clear and agreed motives for improvement that the whole organization supports. Without that you shouldn't embark on an ERP project.

Projects that don't go well come from organizational conflict before the decisions is made. For example operations needing new systems but finance is happy with their systems so don't want to change, or vice versa. If the groups don't agree from the beginning then the implementation team is not going to get the right level of support.

Let's start from the beginning and I'll break these down in latter posts.

Requirements Gathering Before Sourcing Software

You need to be clear on what you want. Often the timeline determines if you rush this step or skip it all together but in my opinion you need to be very clear on what it is you really want to do before any thought of software selection. This is consumer behavior mixed with organization behavior.

Think about yourself buying at that new tablet computer. You might spend a while thinking you need one because you commute to work a long distance. You spend some time and understand their features and realize additional tasks you could do with it. Once you understand what you will do with the device you starting comparing options based on what your needs are. On the other hand you might just say I saw Steffan with a new TabletXY I'm going to get one of those. Once you get it you realize that it doesn't have a good book library and that was what you really needed.

Organization behavior follows the same pattern but you just need to involve a lot more people to understand needs. When it's yourself you can make a decision quickly. In an organization that is too bureaucratic this could be a hindrance to making a fast decision.

The point being, don't go looking at software until you are sure of what you need and that you can manage the organization efficiently to understand the needs. Now I've certainly seen examples where the impulse decision was made to buy a software package before any requirements gathering was really done. But this only works if there is a really strong and cohesive management team with very strong IT development and support skills in-house.

Additionally by gathering initial requirements before any software evaluation will put you in a better place to plan the implementation project, define scope, timelines, resourcing etc. During this phase you should also do an assessment of your organizational capabilities. Some things you might want to ask:

• How fast do we make decisions as an organization.
• How well do we deal with organization conflicts.
• How well do we deal with cross-organization decisions making.
• Do we have the project management skills in-house.
• Do we have development resources in-house.
• Will the systems stay on premise, or will you engage a hosting company to handle the infrastructure.
• Do we have enough business capacity from functional domain experts from finance, operations, sales etc. can they be dedicated to the project for an effective amount of time.
• Do we have change management skills in-house.
• Who manages our existing systems? Will they help move to a new system, usually not without a cost.
• Is their management or board level support for the project.
• Are their trading partners (suppliers/vendors) going to be affected by a new system.
• Is there an appropriate business cycle/timeframe that will cause the least disruption.
• Is there organization change coming. Mergers/Acquisitions, new product lines, geographic expansion.
• Do we need to downsize operations, do we need to upsize.
• Do we need to move resources because of changing business environment.
• Will the decision to move to a new system cause people to leave the organization. Is there a need and a plan to keep that knowledge.

Now a word of caution. Don't spend too long on this. I've seen projects that had a real need for a new system but they spent so long detailing requirements, the organization collapsed under the weight of legacy systems the company was merged/acquired or management changed and the project was stopped. It's a balance which you need to work out for your circumstances.

Software Selection

So you have a basic need and you have some knowledge of what that system should do. They next step is to find the right tool. Now this could be a book in itself of process or large system selection and I'm sure there are good books out there. For the purposes of what I set out to do here I just wanted to touch on a few points.

When you talked to the software provider understand if they are selling the software directly (they developed the software) or are they are a services/distribution company for the software. They key here is you are going to have to A. buy software from someone. B. Lear and Implement the software. C. Support the software.

So while features and functionality are important, equally important is the organization supporting the software. Their software might be the best in the world but if you can't get someone to come and help you implement it's not going to be helpful. Vice versa if the software doesn't have all the features you need but the software provider is willing to work with you then you can overcome these.

The point being, the two go hand in hand. You need to know where the balance is in the software you have selected and if you can structure your implementation team to overcome which ever imbalance you perceive for your organization. Some things to consider :

• Will we resource the project internally, if so how can we get training on the software.
• Can the software be customized and does it have development tools.
• Do we have development resources internally, can they get training.
• Who will manage the infrastructure, do we have to manage it or will the software provider.
• If there are features we want improved will we take them on with our development resources.
• If there are features we want, will be software vendor add them for us.
• How long do you think your project will run, how long will the software provider support a specific version. Is that longer then you think it will take to implement and roll-out
• If the software provider is selling direct do they have implementation resources. Do they have a support desk.
• If the software provider is selling in-direct do they have support/implementation resources, are they supported by the software vendor. Can you get direct support from the software vendor.
• Will we staff the project internally but augment the staff with external independent consultants. If we do this can we get review services from the software provider.

Decision Made

You made a decision on software now what? Now you have to build the project plan and start to look at resourcing. In the next blog I'll start there by describing the different actors and project phases.

Cheers

Lachlan

(Original blog https://blogs.msdn.com/lcash)

I managed to get a new Microsoft Surface on the weekend and it’s an amazing little piece of kit. I like that it still has all the regular capabilities of Windows as you’d expect but with a reimagined UI. I especially like that you can still have account switching. This is great that then the family can share the machine and they are not messing up my stuff and for the kids I can just put on the apps that I want them to have under their profile.

I do a lot of typing so I like the feel of the Type Cover and have a few plane trips coming up so I’m looking forward to have that on the plane. Which leads me to another great thing I had music that I’d ripped from my CD’s over the years in WMV so I didn’t want to take any sort of conversion to MP3 or other formats so this all comes together. I have a Zune HD which is a great little device and at home Media Center runs our living room TV and XBOX in the games room so for me the Surface really complete the my at home and mobile experience. Oh and I do have a Windows phone so yes my music I can use on this but because I normally fly with my Zune mostly my music I listen on the Zune. The Surface I picked up has 64gb which is plenty. So I noticed after setting up a few profiles for different family members and a work account I’m left with about ~45Gb. But I like that the Surface has a microSDXC card which is great as we have Nook tablets which also has microSD cards so movies I had on cards which I can also use in the Surface. My movies I had as MP4 so that works fine across the devices as they live on a Windows Home Server and so can access them from the XBOX and the Media Center. I did upgrade are home computer with Windows 8 on the weekend and got the Free download for the Media Center you can get it here till Jan 31, 2013. https://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/feature-packs

One thing I’ve seen on report on the Surface is that it’s only Wi-Fi I don’t think this is too much of a limitation because with the Windows Phone you can do internet sharing so can connect the table to the phone for data when not near Wi-Fi. So when I travel I think this will come in handy.

I do like that it has Office 2013 preview especially OneNote. I use OneNote every minute of the day and because I have a few different computers my OneNotes are synced on SkyDrive so for me opening up OneNote one Surface a few minutes out of the box and having all my work notes there was awesome experience. I also like that there is a Remote Desktop app in Windows 8 and for Windows 8 RT so that is going to come in handy for work use as well. I haven’t tested the external screen yet at the HD cables had all sold out when I purchased my Surface so I’ll pick up when of those when I can. Also the Lync and Skype apps are there so they seem to work well. I haven’t tested with a headset plugged into the USB port on the Surface so I’ll give that a go in the next couple of days.

Anyway this isn’t really anything Dynamics related which is usually what I blog about but this was the first time I was excited about getting a new computer for a very, very long time. And it gave me an excuse to test out Windows Live Write on Windows 8 so now I no excuse to get back to blogging.

Cheers

Lachlan

Sometimes you put your head down and work, work, work and don't look up to see where you are heading. I just looked up and saw that's in been almost 2 years since I've written a blog post. I must say it's been quite an amazing couple of years working with customers on Dynamics AX 2012 projects. I've run into many partners and customers saying the blog was helpful and I should start up again, so better late than never.

I used to write a lot about the VMs but I moved off that project when I changed roles just before the first Dynamics AX Technical Conference in 2011. I still use the VMs that the team produce so I can still write topics on that and might do form time to time. I have some thoughts about what to write on but I thought I'd give it a try and put the question out there to see what people might want to hear about. Considering this blog is about Dynamics AX that is the scope at least.

Cheers

Lachlan

(Original blog https://blogs.msdn.com/lcash)

I had a few questions about the links for the new demo VMs on Customersource.

Refresh 4

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/documentation/setupguides/MSDYAX2009_DemoToolkit_Refresh4

Refresh 3.5

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/documentation/setupguides/MSDYAX2009_DemoToolkit_Refresh3_5

Refresh 3

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/documentation/setupguides/MSDYAX2009_DemoToolKit_Refresh3 

Cheers

Lachlan

(Original blog https://blogs.msdn.com/lcash)

I had a question about saving documents to SharePoint on the demo VM. If you get an error and trying to save like an Excel spreadsheet or Word document to a document library something to the effect

“This file cannot be saved to this location because there is no connection to the server. Check your network connection and try again. “

To get around this you can stop the sens service. See this note I posted a while back on the early VMs. It is still valid for Office 2010.

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/lcash/archive/2009/04/10/using-excel-services-on-ax-srv-01.aspx 

Cheers

Lachlan

(Original post at https://blogs.msdn.com/lcash)