Problem:

Many companies hesitate to upgrade versions due to the given common worries:

• Upgrade will stop the production for a few days or a week
• Upgrading will need extra time, money and effort.
• My version of NAV is so old that it cannot be upgraded.
• Any NAV Developer can handle upgrades

Actually, upgrading is the best investments in your company. When you upgrade, you can take advantage of new function, platform and features. It will help your business a lot and improve your company’s performance.

Why use Jean Martin Upgrade for NAV?

This end-to-end Jean Martin Upgrade for NAV service delivers value to Microsoft Dynamics Partners:

• FREE NAV Upgrade Assessment*:Get a free professional upgrade analysis.
• Partner Sales & Marketing Upgrade Tools*:Receive free access to sales & marketing toolkits.
• Self-Service Upgrade*:Access self-service transformation tools to help decrease the upgrade investment for your customers.
• Guaranteed a Cost-Efficient Upgrade Path
• Test Data Migration
• Live Data Migration:Gain expert support for your live upgrade/data migration.
• Upgrade Subscription: Provide your customers with stability and peace of mind with fixed price upgrades, minimal solution downtime, and regular product.

How You Benefit By Choosing Jean Martin

Jean Martin’s Microsoft Dynamics NAV Upgrade Service Process

For more information on how Jean Martin can improve your organization’s Microsoft Dynamics NAV version upgrade experience, contact us today.

By Jean Martin

You can export many thousand lines to Excel from MR reports. In this way we do not hit the design limitation in Dynamics 365 for Operation when we export 2000 lines.

For illustrational purposes, the default report Ledger transaction list will be used.

The report is generated for period 12, base year 2014.

It is generated at Financial, Account and Transaction detail level.

Once generated, click Export:

The export to Excel will start.

Once completed, you will see a dialogue box at the bottom of the screen in IE:

Here Open is chosen:

There are three sheets, one for each detail level.

You can generate the report to a single worksheet, by using this setting:

Result:

The below shown is the end of a report generated with the same parameters:

The limit for exporting lines to Excel is based on Excel limits.

author: Anne Schwarz-Nielsen

This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (fe2b8c34-c21c-42bc-a1e6-822d1a48010a – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

Top equipment-driven rental trend: The industrial revolution 4.0 is shifting the balance from in-store to online selling for both retail and commercial businesses. If you’re focused on equipment-driven rental and services, there are several strong reasons why you should be tailoring the online model to work for your business. Along with increasing rental revenues, you can expand customer reach, uncover new opportunities, and fit organically into the digital marketplace that’s becoming the first and only shopping place for millions of consumers and businesses.

The shift to online is already well-established for car rental companies—a prime example is one of our customers Europcar, which uses a global cloud platform and localized web pages for car rental transactions. All data is exchanged with the company’s back-end ERP system. In other online models, rental car companies exchange online presence via interfaces with third parties—for example, travel and lodging websites. As companies get bolder, we’re seeing diverse businesses utilize online platforms—simple web shops—where customers can place rental orders for equipment, tools, parts, vehicles, and services.

What’s essential to online rental success is that your web presence be simple and easy to understand and use. At the same time, it needs to provide real-time information for pricing, availability, contract or order requirements, and the like. Your site should also include multiple payment methods and accessibility via mobile apps. And just as important, customers should be able to manage their rental transactions, communications, invoicing, and updates via browser or mobile device. Apart from pickup or delivery, actual maintenance or drop-off, there should be minimal to no need for manual process or human interaction. Even customer service can be managed through online chat, email, or FAQ.

It goes almost without saying that you will need a sturdy IT platform and equipment rental software that can accommodate online presence. The easier the online experience, the more complex things are “under the hood”—financials, customer records, scheduling, transport, contracts and service all need to emerge as an effortless part of the experience. Thanks to innovation and integration, that’s possible. Mobile platforms connect with all aspects of ERP and equipment rental management if you find the right solutions. If you’re willing to make a moderate investment, the benefits can be significant:

• You’ll attract customers from the start—by treating equipment rental as an online commodity, much like retail, you’re moving into the mindset of today’s customer. They want the speed and ease that comes with an online, mobile shopping experience.
• Working with mobile and cloud-based platforms gives you the ability to manage business remotely on the back end—just like your customers, you can handle rentals end-to-end from any location, using any device.
• Online is a huge market that equipment rental can tap into for both growing customer base and increasing exposure. In particular, if you combine your own web presence with third-party website collaborations, the sky’s pretty much the limit for expanding your reach.
• Leveraging analytics for online customer trends lets you target new demographics, audiences, and territories. Marketing and simply getting your name out can have all the precision of expensive strategic campaigns at a fraction of the cost.

Online shopping is one of the heartbeats for the Industrial Revolution 4.0—there’s no reason why you can’t look at equipment rental as a selling commodity and put out your shopping basket. We invite you to learn more about how HiGH Software and DynaRent are helping equipment-driven companies take on new trends across multiple industries.

The continuing growth of Regal Cinemas theater network caused Regal to transition away from their existing purchasing system and implement MIcrosoft Dynamics AX for Financials. At that time, the company acknowledged that their homegrown EDI solution wouldn't be able to scale with them and that they needed a comprehensive EDI solution that worked well with their Dynamics AX implementation.  By having the right technology in place, Regal Cinemas could ensure customers get their complete movie experience, seamlessly.

Budget cuts and financial scrutiny have forced public sector organisations to look for new ways to streamline their spending and, as with any other business, local authorities must become more customer-centric if they want to succeed in today’s interconnected environment.

Chris Hemming, Head of Public Sector Recruitment at Cognitive Group, explores how improving operational management through the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics can help achieve both of these objectives.

Why does the Public Sector need CRM solutions?

Traditionally, government bodies such as local authorities have had a rather disjointed approach to operations, with customer facing services such as council tax, student loans and benefits, housed on different platforms. Firstly, not only is the council paying for each system separately, but the customer is having to visit multiple platforms to access their information, leading to (generally) an unhappy user experience. And, as local authorities are constantly facing threat from opposition, finding ways to improve constituent satisfaction is only going to benefit them.

CRM systems are already present in the public sector, but we are mainly seeing data management features being used. An effective CRM system can help align the needs of the council and the public, by creating one system that manages all contact for every service on offer.

One of the key benefits of having a single view of the customer is that all information (e.g. tax/housing data) will be captured in one place. This accessibility will lead to greater insight and understanding, which can be used to communicate more effectively with constituents and also allow for services to be tailored to meet specific needs.

Lagan to Microsoft Dynamics

Lagan was the original supplier of CRM systems to focus on the public sector and although they were at the forefront back in 2009, there have been major developments and innovations in the technology that have surpassed what Lagan has to offer.

Microsoft Dynamics on the other hand is constantly innovating; the Dynamics 365 platform for example, integrates both CRM and ERP systems through the use of a common data model, helping local authorities to manage all aspect of their operations – from financials and HR to marketing and consumer insights.

Additionally, the Cloud aspect of Azure offers much needed security for the sector, and as Dynamics is just an extension of the Office 365 suite, users will appreciate the familiarity of the interface. Microsoft is also currently offering free license fees for office users, adding a further incentive for Lagan users to migrate over.

How will Microsoft Dynamics will benefit the sector?

Thoughts from a Public Sector Industry Lead for a Tier 1 Consultancy…

The introduction of Dynamics 365 sees the CRM solution as we know it, being re-branded to Dynamics 365 for Customer Service.  The Dynamics for Customer Service functionality has reached an all-time high, supporting Public Sector strategies for digital channel shift, improving customer insight, enhancing the customer experience and a maintaining up to date information.

Customer service solution

Dynamics 365 Operations provides the transactional capability required to manage Council Tax, Housing Benefits, Finance, Procurement, HR and other transaction based services, all of which can be fully integrated with the Dynamics 365 for Customer Service solution.

Included within the Dynamics 365 product set is the Portal solution, offering an online self-serve facility for customers to serve themselves at a time to suit them. The portal is fully integrated with Dynamics 365 Customer Service, enabling customers to access key data such as Council Tax balance, Benefits payments, Waste Collection information and much more.  It also provides the ability for customers to raise service requests and check their eligibility for council services.

Mobile solution

The Mobile Solution within Dynamics 365 provides the capability for mobile working.  Council workers can access and edit customer records and create cases even when they are out of the office.  This enables the most up to date information and activity to reach the field workers without the need to return to the office resulting in an increased amount of time spend delivering services.

It is clear to see that through the use of Dynamics 365, local authorities now have the ability to reduce their IT landscape, manage and maintain one core data set and hold a 360 degree view of their customers.  This results in an improved customer experience, improved service standards, reduced IT costs, reduced operational costs and improved user experience.

So, if you would like some ideas on how to build your programme team in 2017, or to hear about our current job opportunities, get in touch today.

info@cognitive-group.com

+44 (0) 203 587 7772

Upload your CV

View live roles

Cognitive Group are specialists in Microsoft Dynamics recruitment with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics AX jobs, Microsoft Dynamics CRM jobs and Microsoft Dynamics 365 jobs

The post Is the Public Sector “Lagan” behind? appeared first on .

Push paper out: the benefits of expense reporting automation

Going “paperless” is most often associated with going “green.” While this may be part of your company’s environmental drive, paperless processing, especially in expense reporting, also provides countless benefits that all contribute to a healthier bottom line.

A 2015 travel and expense management report by a leading research group has highlighted this need as they show that most companies spend less than $100,000 on travel operations, with a close 25% spending between $100,000 to $500,000 annually. This said, efficiently and thoroughly managing expense reporting processes by going paperless can greatly lessen processing costs and fraud while increasing your overall profit.

Benefits of Going Paperless

Let’s take a closer look at the many ways you can increase your profits by investing in an expense reporting software like Gorilla Expense:

• Cost savings. The most obvious benefit of going paperless to your bottom line is the cost savings. An automated method greatly minimizes spending on paper, printer maintenance, storage, paper disposal, and the extended times of filing and photocopying paper-based documents. Of course the biggest cost savings comes from reducing time spent by your employees and accounting team reconciling paper expense reports.
• Improved policy compliance. Expense reporting non-compliance can add up and cost big. Not following policies and regulations directly affects the bottom line, especially when times are tough.
• Improved expense management efficiency. Efficiency is one of the cornerstones of a profitable business. Your employees prefer to work on activities that generate income for the company rather than pushing paper receipts and expense forms.
• Greatly reduced errors. Errors and delays can add up quickly and affect your profit. Even simple errors on a corporate credit card statement can cost the company thousands. By automating these processes, you can ensure accuracy and reduce costly mistakes.
• Capturing fraud. By going paperless, you have better control and monitoring while helping you easily identify issues much earlier on compared to paper-based and manual processes.
• Slicing and dicing of data. Automated expense reporting processes allows you to easily store, organize, and retrieve data for later review. This allows companies to better understand their spend and work on better deals with vendors or alter their T&E policies to gain a better control.

By investing in paperless expense reporting solutions such as those provided by Gorilla Expense, you gain multiple benefits that not only help ease up the workload of your employees, but also help improve the company’s bottom line.

Gorilla Expense offer an innovate spend management solution for companies of all sizes. The three main components of this solution are T&E Expense Reporting, Timesheets, and P-card Reconciliation for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. While the solution is typically deployed as SaaS, Gorilla Expense also supports On-Premise deployments.If you would like to see a live demo or have any questions, please contact us at sales@gorillaexpense.com.

About Gorilla Expense

Gorilla Expense is a leading global provider of T&E Expense Management Software for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. Our Expense Reporting, Mobile Apps, Integration Services & Analytics solutions give customers the edge they need to compete in the global marketplace. With our powerful solution, we are constantly proving that – Expense management doesn’t have to be so difficult! Learn more at www.gorillaexpense.com

The post How a Paperless Expense Reporting Process Benefits Your Bottom Line appeared first on goERPcloud.

Dynamics AX For Retail Enterprise POS (EPOS) has functionality to email receipts but the implementation of the feature has a few tradeoffs:

• Email does not get sent immediately at the conclusion of the transaction.  Instead, the process goes like this:  1) a transaction is uploaded to HQ (via P-job); 2) it gets calculated on a statement; 3) it then gets posted via statement posting; 4) finally, the Send Email Receipts batch process runs and sends the email.  Statement posting is usually done nightly, so this means emails usually won’t get sent out until the next day.  While a simple customization will make Send Email Receipts send email for unposted transactions, there is still a lag until the P-job uploads the transactions.  Randy Higgins has a good blog post on how this process works.
• Generation of the receipt is done via an SSRS report.  This adds quite a bit of overhead to the process.
• Receipts are sent via a PDF attachment instead of the body of the email.
• Changing the look and feel of the receipt means customizing an SSRS report instead of using the receipt designer.  This means that the emailed receipts will look very different than the printed receipt.

These limitations are largely overcome in the Modern Point of Sale (MPOS) for AX 2012 R3 and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations:

• Email is sent via SMTP immediately at the conclusion of the transaction.  This is done with a Realtime Service call to Headquarters.
• The receipt is sent in the body of the email message.
• Generation of the email receipt is done by the MPOS application.  This is done by using the same layout as the printed receipt.

Randy’s follow-up blog post for MPOS goes through the details of how this process works.

Ideas for Improvement

Because upgrading to MPOS is not an option for some customers, I looked into some options for improving email receipts in EPOS.  Here are a few ideas I came up with:

• Change the Send Email Receipts batch process to forego SSRS and generate a message body (HTML or simple text) and send directly.  This would get past the SSRS performance issue and PDF attachment, but would be a lot of X++ development and would still not necessarily match the printed receipt.  It would also not get past the lag of needing to upload the the transactions via the P-job first.
• Have EPOS generate and send an email directly via SMTP without calling Realtime Service.  This would eliminate the Realtime Service call at the end of each transaction, but it would also mean managing SMTP communication directly from each EPOS instance.  This would also mean database changes (EPOS would have to have information about its SMTP server) and making sure that SMTP communication from dozens or hundreds of different IP addresses is healthy.  I like having AX manage the SMTP traffic and besides, EPOS can call a Realtime Service call just as easily as MPOS can.
• Mirror the MPOS functionality as much as possible as an EPOS customization.  I settled on this one so as to not introduce a third way of emailing receipts:  there is still just the “MPOS way” and the “EPOS way.”

Customization Approach

There are really only a few things that the customization has to do:

• Generate the email body of the receipt
• Determine the email address to send it to
• Call the same Realtime Service method that MPOS does to send the message

Realtime Service call from PostEndTransaction Trigger

As a refresher, I talk about customizing Realtime Service (previously Transaction Service) in this blog post.  In this case, the X++ work is already done for us since we’ll be using the same method that MPOS calls:  SendEmail.  A good place to add this call is in the PostEndTransaction trigger (in the TransactionTriggers project).

The RetailTransactionService::SendEmail X++ method takes the following parameters:

• SysEmailId emailId:  This is the email template as defined in Organization Administration > Setup > E-mail Templates.  MPOS hard-codes this to “EmailRecpt” so we’ll do the same.
• CustLanguageId languageId:  This is the language of the EPOS client.  We have this available in the System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.Name variable.
• Email email:  The recipient’s email address.  EPOS already has logic to ask the user to confirm an email address when needed.  This gets stored to the RECEIPTEMAIL column of the RETAILTRANSACTIONTABLE and is used by the Send Email Receipts batch job.  We can use the same value in our trigger:  retailTransaction.ReceiptEmailAddress
• str serializedMappings:  This is a series of key/value pairs for substitution in your email template.  For instance, if you have a %customername% in the body of your email template, you would send in the pair “key: customername, value:Contoso Entertainment” as part of this XML.  As noted in Randy’s blog post, MPOS only sends one key/value pair:  %message%.  This means that we will send the entire receipt as this one key/value:  “key: message, value: a big string for the entire receipt”.
• str xmlData:  Not used.
• boolean isTraceable:  Hard-coded to false.
• boolean isWithRetries:  Hard-coded to true.

Note that I pulled this from MPOS code in the SDK:  Retail SDK CU9\Commerce Run-time\Workflow\Orders\GetReceiptRequestHandler.cs (the parameters are in a different order).

In our EPOS code, our Realtime Service call looks like this:

Getting the Receipt Text for the Email Body

The text of a printed receipt is generated in the Printing service.  We could repeat that logic in our PostEndTransaction trigger but that seems like an unnecessary task when the work has already been done for us.

Keep in mind that receipt printing is pretty simple:  using a form layout as defined in the Receipt Format Designer, data from the Retail Transaction object is converted to a simple string of formatted text.  This is then sent as-is (with some simple formatting) to the printer.  For our customization, we will intercept that string and save it to a PartnerData variable on the transaction (see this blog post for information about PartnerData).  This value will then persist to our trigger and we can use it as the body of the email.

This can be done with a small customization to the PrintFormTransaction() method in Services\Printing\PrintingActions.cs:

Pulling it Together:

The text that comes back from GetTransformedTransaction has some special formatting characters which need to be cleaned up.  This can be done in the trigger (more code taken from the MPOS SDK):

Note that this is essentially the same code from MPOS (GetReceiptRequestHandler.cs).

Also, even though we are only sending in a single key/value pair, to make it consistent with MPOS, it still needs to be sent in as a serialized collection.  I’ve added a helper class and a couple helper methods for this usage:

Finally there is some simple logic of whether to send the message and some basic error handling:

Wrap-up

If things work correctly, you can test it with a customer that has an email address associated.  EPOS will prompt the user to confirm or change the recipient’s address:

And if you are using smtp4dev for your testing, you’ll see the message come across:

You’ll find the the full source code for this customization attached below and it can be used as-is.  I’ve included the baseline R3 CU12 versions of the files from the SDK which can be used for code diffs.

There are a few areas that you might want to improve upon:

• The receipt email depends on a Realtime Service call.  If this call fails the user will get a message but there is no retry logic in place (which is is the same limitation as MPOS).  You may want to add some error handling or a mechanism to track failed messages.  Also, if Realtime Service connection is lost, it may add processing time to the transactions before a timeout occurs.
• For retry logic, you could look into adding a button on the Show Journal page to re-send the email message.  Alternatively, it might be useful to have the ability to send an email directly from AX.
• By default, EPOS will only prompt to send messages for named customers that have an email address associated with their account.  You may want to add UI and logic to prompt for an email receipt for one-off customers as well.
• If you look closely at the email body above you’ll notice that the horizontal spacing is not implemented correctly.  I noticed this as I was writing up this post and it is also an issue in MPOS.  Keep an eye out for an update to this article when I find a solution for that problem.

Code Sample

Join HiGH Software to explore software that helps companies handle constant pressure to have full insight around revenue and cost streams for equipment-driven rental and services projects.

If you’re like most companies, you’re dealing with multiple dependencies and tight margins. You also need to manage risk. Your ability to plan, execute, and proactively handle issues demands precise forecasting, registration, monitoring, and reporting at granular and KPI levels.

Software tailored to equipment-driven rental and services is important to these challenges. You want top-notch capabilities and top-notch integration with your business system. Our perspective is that you also want employees to use this software like it’s an extension of their own intelligence and talent.

Image 1: DynaRent for dynamics 365 Operations Workspace

Our webinar will demonstrate how DynaRent in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations gives employees graphical, flexible tools that transform the stress of costs and revenue analysis into real-time problem solving that takes all rental project variables into account.

We’ll discuss and showcase how DynaRent gives employees many intuitive ways to register details for cost and revenue, continuously monitor margins, forecast and plan resource and equipment allocation—and catch issues before they derail projects.

Image 2: DynaRent Power BI ***-pit

DynaRent works hand-in-glove with Dynamics 365 for Operations so that your front-office and back-office always have the same information, and can work with graphical, role-tailored dashboards, drilldowns, templates, and workflow. They can quickly tap into any data view to evaluate strengths and weaknesses that impact costs and revenues. Ad-hoc reporting tools deliver instant insight from initial transaction creation through final invoicing.
We look forward to your participation, and we’ll make sure there’s ample time for discussion and questions.

Mark your calendar and register today. We encourage you also to forward this invitation to colleagues you think we be interested in our webinar.

Dynamics 365 for Operations deploys custom web services in two ways: as SOAP-based services and JSON-based services. AX developers are often familiar with SOAP services (which were used in AX 2012), but JSON-based ones are new to them.

One particular challenge is passing arguments to a service. Let’s say we have an Add operation, which can sum two numbers.

publicint Add(int a,int b){return a + b;}

To call the service, we have to provide values for both arguments, a and b. Because the expected format is JSON (Java Script Object Notation), we have to provide a JSON string describing an object with two properties (a and b) and their values. This is it:

{ a:2, b:5}

Note that names of the properties are important – they must match parameter names in the X++ method.

Because building JSON strings by yourself can be cumbersome (especially with more complex parameters), a better approach is working with objects and leaving conversion to JSON to a serializer.

For example, you can build a simple class,

publicclass AddContract{publicint a {get;set;}publicint b {get;set;}}

create an instance with required values and call JsonConvert (from Newtonsoft.Json) to convert it to string:

AddContract contract =new AddContract { a =2, b =5};string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(contract)

If you need AddContract class just at this single place, maybe it’s not worth creating it at all. We can use an anonymous object instead and it will still work the same.

var contract =new{ a =2, b =5};// Anonymous objectstring json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(contract)

When we have the JSON string, we have to send it to the service. The implementation below assumes that you use AuthenticationUtility from the sample solution from Microsoft.

// Prepare HTTP client, including authentication
HttpClient client =new HttpClient();
client.BaseAddress=new Uri(ClientConfiguration.Default.UriString);
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add(OAuthHelper.OAuthHeader, OAuthHelper.GetAuthenticationHeader()); // Define parametersvar contract =new{ a =2, b =5}; // Create a request
HttpRequestMessage request =new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Post,"api/services/MyServiceGroup/MyService/Add");
request.Content=new StringContent(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(contract),
                                    Encoding.UTF8,"application/json"); // Run the servicevar result = client.SendAsync(request).Result; // Display result to consoleif(result.IsSuccessStatusCode){
    Console.WriteLine(result.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result);}else{
    Console.WriteLine(result.StatusCode);}

If you’re using WebRequest instead of HttpClient (as in Microsoft sample code), you can use add parameters to the request in this way:

var contract =new{ a =2, b =5};string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(contract); Byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json); 
request.ContentLength= byteArray.Length;
request.ContentType="application/json"; using(Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream()){
    dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);}

It’s clearly nothing difficult, just make sure that your properties in JSON exactly match parameter names. For example, if parameters of my Add operation were prefixed with underscore (as usual in X++), the JSON string would have to be { _a: 2, _b: 5 }.

We are happy to announce that we have now moved to a continuous update cycle for the Dynamics cloud platform. We will be sharing the monthly updates with you through these blogs so check back to learn about the latest updates!

This month, there are some exciting updates being delivered:

• Updates - Moving to a monthly cadence and providing a simpler update process to help keep new and existing systems up to date.
• Embedded Power BI reports - Licensed for all users plus there is additional functionality available with Power BI Pro licenses as well.
• Build and ship workspaces with embedded Power BI reports to provide interactive and visually engaging experiences for users
• Mobility – Updated the framework to support building unique online and offline experiences that now also support iOS and Android devices.
• Visual scheduling – updated Gantt chart integration, new visual icons, localized formats, updated user efficiencies, and improved resource management features
• Feedback – Continue to provide your input to help us improve Dynamics 365 for Operations

Monthly updates

As you are aware, the cloud platform is locked as of update 3. Locking the platform enables rich customizations that use extensions while allowing you to make updates without costly code upgrades. Starting with update 4, the cloud platform will release monthly updates so that new and existing environments can stay up-to-date with the latest innovations with a click of a button.

To install the latest monthly platform updates on an existing environment, on http://lcs.dynamics.com go to the shared asset library and select the Software deployable package tab. You will see the platform update 4 package ready to deploy, as shown below. This package can be imported to the project’s asset library and then can be applied to a specific environment through the update flows. For more details, see the upgrade wiki.

For new environments, the topology will include update 4.

Because the platform models can’t be overlayered in Dynamics 365 for Operations version 1611, the Platform X++ Updates tile is no longer required because all the updates are binary from this release forward. For customers who are on versions prior to Dynamics 365 for Operations version 1611, you will continue to see the Platform X++ Updates tile for any customizations to the platform models.

Binary updates are cumulative, so we recommended that you always apply the latest update. You can find more details in the LCS blog.

Here's an overview of some of the other features in Dynamics 365 for Operations platform update 4.

Embedded Power BI reports licensed for all users

With Power BI Embedded, all users will be able to access rich graphical views of analytical data bundled with Dynamics 365 for Operations applications. No additional licenses will be required to access these reports, which are embedded in the Dynamics 365 for Operations application.

The existing tile pinning experience provided through PowerBI.com service integration will continue to be supported. A Pro license must be obtained separately to access some PowerBI.com functionality outside of this embedded experience.

Build and ship workspaces with embedded Power BI reports

Now you can embed full-page, Power BI-driven interactive reports in workspaces. By using rich infographics and visuals supported by Power BI (including the large number of controls provided by third parties), workspaces can provide a highly-visual yet interactive experience for the user.

If you’re a power user or business analyst, you can tweak ready-made reports or create new ones using Power BI tools. As a developer, you can use the reports developed by your users and create rich navigation experiences within the product as workspaces. If you’re in the partner and ISV community, you can now build rich workspaces with Power BI experiences and ship these workspaces as part of your solution.

If you are an ISV or a systems integrator, you can package Power BI-enabled workspaces (including navigational experiences) as part of a Lifecycle Services (LCS) solution. Your customers get the same experience without requiring a PowerBI.com subscription - it just works with Dynamics 365 for Operations.

For more details on these and other Power BI features, see the BI blog.

Mobility

We have made major strides on the mobile framework for Dynamics 365 for Operations that enables our partners to build workspaces that are unique and fully-functional mobile experiences. These new capabilities make it easier for users to interact with Dynamics 365 for Operations, both online and offline. The mobile framework now supports iOS and Android devices. You can find more details in the upcoming mobility blog.

Visual scheduling

We have made updates to visual scheduling in this release:

You can now explicitly order activities in the Gantt chart. You can set the order of activities in the Gantt chart and move tasks within the same project.

Visual icons are available for tasks, such as warning or errors.

Date and time formats are now localized.

You can drag-and-drop multiple selected tasks.

A resource capacity bar clearly flags time intervals where there is overbooking.

Feedback

We always value your feedback. As part of this update, we periodically prompt you to rate your recommendation of the product. We encourage you to provide this feedback to help us continually improve your experience, including providing details on what areas we can improve.

Looking forward to seeing you next month to learn about the latest platform updates!

AOT - Application Object Tree

AOT Structure in AX

The AOT in AX

The Data Dictionary in AX

Security of the AOT

Navigating to Windows > New Development Workspace will open the AOT

If you use or are considering Microsoft Dynamics ERP or CRM, you’re likely aware that Dynamics Lifecycle Services can sharply reduce implementation and software application management time and costs. If you’re looking for ISV solutions to use with Microsoft Dynamics for equipment-driven rental, leasing, and services, we encourage to see how HiGH Software has put an expert spin on DLS.

Let’s look briefly at how our DynaRent solutions suite can be configured and managed like a custom industry solution, using standard software and methodologies. The top 3 benefits we can offer come from working with customers to create industry-specific templates that can be used by partners or even directly by customers.

First let’s quickly summarize what we’ve added to Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services when it comes to our DynaRent solutions suite. DLS cuts time and effort for deployment, maintenance, and upgrades for Microsoft Dynamics applications. When it comes to DynaRent, HiGH Software has enhanced DLS with templates and tools that let you configure up to 70% of industry- and business-specific needs for your solution prior to implementation. You can also use configurable processes and task guides across your full solutions lifecycle.

Image 1: DynaRent Solution Suite Lifecycle Services

Top Benefit #1: Before you start your implementation of DynaRent, you can take advantage of business processes and task guides for training purposes, so that partners and IT staff understand all the possibilities for using DynaRent within Microsoft Dynamics. From big-picture insight to granular task recordings, you can sharply reduce error risks, fine-tune DynaRent in Dynamics for your needs, and keep everyone on the same page with a standard approach.

 
Image 2: Tree structure of more than 500 DynaRent Solution Suite Business Processes

Top Benefit #2: At any time during your implementation, partners or customer IT/consulting staff can configure industry-specific business processes within DynaRent that map to the blue you have for your business processes within your organization. DynaRent utilizes lifecycle services so that you can translate best practices within your organization directly into your ISV software. Companies that work with equipment rental, leasing, and services will appreciate the combination of a standard approach that can adapt to your specific challenges. Your software truly will fit the way you work, and be ready for you to take on new business trends or growth strategies.

Image 3: DynaRent Task Guide Experience

Top Benefit #3: After implementation, you’ll have a wealth of industry- and business-specific task recordings and guides that end users and new employees can utilize for training and learning. End-users can turn on recordings or consult task guides during any process, and get step-by-step demos and instructions that ensure they perform tasks without errors. It’s a far more precise approach than generic Help offers, and helps reduce need and frequency for expensive trainings.

Image 4: Value of Lifecycle Services for Key Personas

There are many benefits to explore with the DynaRent approach to Dynamics Lifecycle Services, and we’ll write more soon about the benefits DLS offers with regard to software updates and modifications. Right now, we encourage you to explore more about task guides and specifically how they work in DynaRent for Microsoft Dynamics.  You can also watch our Task Guide Exeperience Product video that gives you a good uderstanding about the DynaRent Task Guide Eperience.