lab manual

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Improve Productivity

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 - Improve Productivity

Table of Contents

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 - Improve Productivity .............................................................. 1

Exercise 1 Charlie ........................................................................................................................................................... 2

Exercise 2 Inga ............................................................................................................................................................. 15


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Objectives After completing this lab, you will be better understand how Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 will help:

Improve Productivity

Scenario

The objective of this overview is to give customers and partners a preview of new features and functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX® 2009.

Estimated Time to Complete This Lab

90 Minutes

Computers used in this Lab AX-W8R2-01

The password for the Administrator account on all computers in this lab is: pass@word1


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Exercise 1 Charlie

Scenario In a fast-paced world, people need software that helps them do their jobs more effectively and with minimal training. To increase productivity and foster more confident decision making, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009’s role-tailored design gives employees access to critical business data.

Using the company demonstration data of Contoso, a global electronics manufacturer and retailer that manufactures and sells televisions and home theater systems, you’ll walk through the Role Center and business intelligence capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. We’ll take a look at Charlie, the CEO, who is a typical business executive implementing strategies to help grow the business. And we’ll also look at Inga, who is a typical day-to-day user.

Tasks Detailed Steps

Complete the following tasks on:

AX-W8R2-01

1. Setup

Note: During this lab you’ll be asked to change roles so that you can look at different examples of Role Centers and how different users can interact with the application.

The password for all users is pass@word1.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 used integrated windows authentication to log on so users don’t have to remember a specific password to the business application once they are logged onto the network. Once the Administrator of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 has provided access users will be able to log on.

For this trial experience, and to help you log on to the network and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 as different users, we have provided a Remote Desktop Connection that you will find on the Desktop.

a. To change users, double click the RDP Full Desktop icon found on the desktop.

b. Click Use another account to log on as the suggested user with a password of pass@word1.


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c. Once you are past the log on, double click the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 icon provided on the desktop.

d. Or, on the Quick Launch bar at the bottom of your screen, click the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 icon.

Either of these links you will start Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. When you log on as the Administrator you will see the Role Center.

2. Get to know the RoleTailored user interface

For this lab we’ll log on as Charlie. You’ll be accessing a remote desktop client. If Charlie didn’t come up, remember to select Use another account and enter Charlie’s credentials and password.

You’re now in Charlie’s Role Center. It may take several minutes for his role center to fully load.

Someone in Charlie’s role in the past may not have used a business application because such applications have traditionally been too complex and difficult to use. Instead, Charlie would rely on the accounting team for information. Now, he has direct access to the information that is important for monitoring the business.

Specifically, the Role Centers in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is tailored for Charlie, making it possible for him to see the key business indicators that he is interested in.

a. What you’ll see on Charlie’s Role Center are:

Key Performance Indicators (Financial, Customer and Production KPIs)


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coming from the business analytics data or Cube.

Rich information coming from additional analysis done on that cube data through Microsoft Excel Web Analytics, Analysis Reports created by the Charlie or other people.

Access to charting information (Cash Inflow vs. Cash Outflow) presented from the business application.

Additional links to reports (My Reports and My Links) Charlie can run if he wished.

Now let’s take a look how to use some of these and how Charlie can change the information that he sees.

We see three Role Center parts consisting of Financial KPIs, Customer KPIs, and Production KPIs. Charlie has the ability to change these by adding additional KPIs or managing existing KPIs. Let’s change an existing KPI.

b. Click Manage KPIs under Financial KPIs.

You can see Charlie’s total revenue.

By clicking the Manage KPIs link, Charlie can add, edit and remove existing KPIs. Since KPIs enable visibility across the whole organization, this is an important feature for growing complex entities.

c. Click the Edit KPI or Pencil icon.


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Charlie can change how he looks at his total revenue by changing the dimension.

d. Select the Display split by: check box.

e. On the Dimensions menu, click Department.

f. In the Business Overview – Edit KPI dialog box, click OK.

g. In the Business Overview – Manage KPI dialog box, click OK.

A plus sign appears and Charlie can now break down the total revenue by department as well as see their impact on the organization—and do so in a way that makes sense for his needs.

h. Click the Plus symbol.

Additional information is presented in the shape of an Excel spreadsheet through Excel Web Analytics. We can see this because the Role Center is actually a Microsoft SharePoint page delivered through the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 client.

3. Navigating in the Role Center

In fact, Charlie can, if he wishes, dive deep into the information he has available. An easy-to-use Navigation Pane opens up different functionality, like the General Ledger.

a. Click General Ledger.

But Charlie, being a fairly typical CEO, probably doesn’t get down into the functional side of the business application.

b. In the Navigation Pane, click the double arrows.


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c. Click the Back button to navigate back to the Role Center.

4. Introducing the Enterprise Portal

Charlie’s Role Center is more likely to be what he views day to day. Because this is a SharePoint page, Charlie can view his day-to-day information through a Web browser. Let’s open Internet Explorer to see how Charlie can view information on the go.

a. On the Quick Launch bar, click the Internet Explorer icon.

As you can see, the same Role Center information that was displayed through Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is displayed through the Web browser, or Enterprise Portal.

Take note of the functionality provided for users who need it.

5. Data Analysis in the Role Center

a. Click the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 icon.

There are numerous reports that can be accessed through both the Enterprise Portal and the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 client. We’re going to look at one through the client to see how easy it is to view information through Excel.

b. In the Analysis Report box, select the report called Project Expense Analysis –FY11.


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c. In the Open Document dialog box, click OK.

When Excel opens, you’ll notice some data listed and then a chart appear. This is an expense report presented in Microsoft Excel 2010 and prepared by someone else in the organization.

d. To leave Excel, click Close.

Additional analysis could be provided to Charlie, through his Role Center by using Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

e. Scroll down to the bottom of the Role Center until you see a box called Product Sales.

f. At the bottom of the chart, locate and click the OLAP tab.

This is a simple look at the organization’s product mix presenting the information in data bars like you would find in Excel. Charlie can access this view to get a quick look at sales across the years on the different product lines.

6. Presenting information in Microsoft Excel 2010

a. Click Open in Excel.


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b. In the Open Document dialog box, click Edit.

c. Click OK. It will take a moment for the data to load.

The chart here presents the same OLAP data that was presented in the Role Center. However, Charlie may want to do further analysis.

d. Click the OLAP tab.

e. Click anywhere on the OLAP chart.

We see the measures and dimensions from the cube that created this pivot table. Charlie can now look at the different data dimensions, regional sales, for example.

f. Click on the number presented in the sheet to see the PivotTable Field List, scroll down to locate and click Customers.Country region dimension.

g. Click the Plus button.


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h. Drag Customers Country region to the Row Labels PivotTable box.

Charlie can now see that additional information. Again, because this is Excel 2010, he will now see that new information in the chart.

i. Click the Chart tab.

If he wanted to do analysis on that chart directly, he can. For example, he can see the Speakers and Television categories are showing higher sales and he wants a more specific analysis. He can easily select the categories and display them.

j. Click the Item groups - Items menu.

k. Click (Select All).

l. Click both instances of Speakers.

m. Click both instances of Television.


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n. Click OK.

7. Presenting information in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Charlie may need to present this information to the board of directors or at a management meeting, and he can easily do this as well. Using PowerPoint 2010, he can bring the Excel chart into his presentation.

a. From the Quick Launch bar, click the PowerPoint icon.

b. Click the File tab.

c. Click New.

d. Click Sample Templates.

e. Click the Pitchbook template. This is Charlie’s sales template.

f. Click Create.

g. Click Slide 4.

This is a presentation that Charlie has been preparing for the Contoso Board of Directors.


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What he can do, using the Screenshot feature in PowerPoint, is bring in the Excel chart that shows the high sales for Speakers and Television into his presentation.

h. Click the Insert tab.

i. Click the Screenshot button.

j. The first screen shot is the one we want. Click Microsoft Excel – Sales by Product Group.

Using the features in PowerPoint, Charlie can crop the chart and insert it into his presentation.

k. Click the Crop button.

l. Using the Crop sliders, move them until you have just the image of the chart.

m. Click the Crop button again.

n. Though not necessary for this lab, if you wish you can use the resizing sliders to make the cropped image fit over the old pie chart.


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Charlie is now done with his presentation and wants to keep a copy of it.

o. Click the File tab.

p. Click Save & Send.

q. Click Save to SharePoint.

r. With the default Analysis Report highlighted, click the Save As button.

s. In the Save As dialog box, change the File Name to Product Sales Presentation.

t. Click Save.

u. If the Confirm Save As warning box appears, Click Yes to replace the existing presentation.

v. Click Save again.

8. Sharing Information Charlie has saved his presentation to the Enterprise Portal SharePoint library. He has named the presentation, saved it, and he can now go back to his Role Center to easily access his presentation. Using PowerPoint, he can also send it to one of his colleagues.

a. From the Quick Launch bar, click the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 icon.


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b. Click the Refresh icon.

At the Role Center, Charlie now sees his updated presentation in the Analysis Reports box.

c. Click the new presentation.

d. In the Open Document dialog box, click Edit.

e. Click OK.

Charlie wants his financial controller, Sara, to see the presentation. He can do this through PowerPoint.

f. Click the File tab.

g. Click Save & Send.

h. With Send Using E-mail highlighted, click Send as Attachment. This will bring up Microsoft Outlook 2010.

i. In the To: field, enter Sara.

j. Click Check Names.

k. In the body of the mail, enter any comments: Updated presentation.

l. Click Send.

In a very short time, we’ve seen how someone like Charlie can get access to


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summarized business data from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, provided through the Role Centers and by the underlying business intelligence capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. A CEO, like Charlie, with a few clicks, can easily see data, create further analysis, and get that information out to different people in the organization. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is also powered by Microsoft SharePoint, which is utilized in the Role Centers to share document information like Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

Now that you’re done with Part 1 of this lab, either close down the applications or explore further. You don’t need to save anything. When you’re done, simply log off.


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Exercise 2 Inga

Scenario In Exercise 1: Charlie, we took a look at how the Role Center is tailored to a fairly typical high-level user, like an executive. But users that most benefit from the productivity enhancements in the application are those who live in the application day to day. Take Inga, for example, the purchasing manager. Inga is a business person who must deal with managing the status of the orders moving through the system, and with reporting and analyzing that status information. Inga’s Role Center is an example of one of the 30 plus Role Centers that are shipped out of the box. These Role Centers provide insight into the status of the purchasing process.


Complete the following task on:

AX-W8R2-01

1. The day-to-day Role Center

a. Log on as CONTOSO\INGA with a password of pass@word1 for the following actions. For more information on how to log on, refer to the top of this document.

b. In the Quick Launch bar, click the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 icon. It may take several minutes for the role center to fully load.

This is an example of a Role Center tailored to Inga’s unique role. In her Role Center are different visual indicators for quick and easy reference. Along the top are two Cues boxes, which represent a status or KPI of a particular transactional document through the system. Someone like Inga can have as many different cues, or visual indicators, as she needs; and she can modify the display of her cues and add more as she wishes.

c. In the top left Cue, click the arrow icon.

d. Click the arrow again to close the menu. This was just to show you where Inga would go to add visual indicators.

Inga can also see Chart information (to the left beneath the first Cues box), or Work


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list information (to the right). The unified work list provides a consolidation of alerts, workflow events, and activities from different places in the application. It also makes it possible for a user like Inga to better manage items involved in her day to day tasks.

2. Review purchase order information

If she subscribes to an alert when purchase orders are created, she can respond and have a look at those purchase orders.

a. Right click on the top alert.

b. Click Go to Purchase orders.

This allows Inga to drill down and see information in the purchase order.

This purchase order doesn’t have line information at this stage, but Inga could come back to this order later when there is more information available.

c. Click the back arrow icon to navigate back to the Role Center.

She can choose to subscribe to different events like data being changed or created in the system. Other tasks, like approving a purchase requisition, can be routed to Inga for her approval.

3. Day-to-day navigation

Cues play an important role in Inga’s day-to-day tasks by providing access to business data. For example, looking at the Cue for Delayed Purchase orders we can see that


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Inga can see more information with a click.

a. Click Delayed Purchases.

This gives her an easy look at each item, its status, and whether she needs to take further action. She can see what inventory is on hand and what needs follow up.

From this page, Inga can also easily move around Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 using some of navigation features. There is a Navigation Pane that she can open to go to the specific modules for which she has security access. Or, she can use the Back and Forward buttons like a Web browser, as well as the document history to navigate to areas where she has been.

Inga can also use the Address Bar, just like in a Web browser, to navigate to different


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companies or legal entities within the organization.

She can navigate to different modules like Accounts Payable, based on her security clearance.

b. And she can navigate to a specific list page. Let’s go to Purchase Orders.

c. In the Address bar, on the CEU menu, click Accounts Payable.

d. In the Address bar, on the Accounts Payable menu, click Purchase Orders.

From here, Inga can use the search and filtering capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. Let’s say Inga wants to see all of the purchase orders from a specific vendor—Earth Televisions, for example. She’s going to search by vendor name, but she could

search on from a range of vendor fields.


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e. Type Earth into the search field.

f. If Vendor Name is not showing as the search parameter, click Vendor Name in the menu.

g. Click the Green arrow.

From here, Inga can see a list of Earth Televisions orders, select an order, and see the relevant details.

h. In the Purchase Order column, click 000441.

At the bottom of the screen are details such as Item name, Quantity, Unit Price and so on.

Having looked at Earth Televisions, Inga can easily remove the filter and look at other vendors.

i. Click the Remove Filter/Sort button.

4. Presenting information in Microsoft Excel 2010

Someone like Inga may want to do simple status-type reporting. She can do that from any list that she finds in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. At the top of the Purchase Orders list page is the Action Pane. This is similar to the Ribbons that you find in Microsoft Office 2010 programs. These are the functions that available to her while she is looking at a list of documents. Different tabs in the Action Pane are oriented relevant to a specific process. Let’s go to the General tab.

a. Click the General tab.

If Inga wants to report on the information she has, she can export her data to Microsoft Excel 2010.

b. Click Export to Excel.

Once she is in Excel, Inga can use all of its capabilities to create, for example, a pivot table.

c. Click the Insert tab.


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d. As the default, all of the data should be highlighted. If it isn’t, make sure it is. Click the arrow at the top left of the data.

e. Click the PivotTable button.

f. In the Create PivotTable dialog box, click OK.

g. To the right, in the PivotTable Field List drag and drop Status to the Row Labels box and Purchase Order to the Values box.

Inga can now see a simple listing of the status of her purchase orders. She can select this information, and then present this information better for her use or for presentation for others.

h. Using your cursor, highlight the information between Rows 4 and 7, and Columns A and B.

i. Click the Insert tab.

j. From the Pie menu, click 3-D Pie.


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k. In the PivotChart Tools area, on the Design tab, click the down arrow.

l. Click any of the Chart Styles you see.

Using the capabilities in Excel, Inga can be more productive by getting data out of the system and making sense of it. She can also use more advanced analytics techniques.

5. Advanced data mining using Microsoft Excel 2010

Using the Data tab in Excel, Inga can access data from other sources, for example, Analysis Services. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 provides a range of default cubes that streamline the work of mining data for information. Let’s say she wants to help accounting get some sense of which vendor invoices need to be paid. Inga could look at the Accounts Payable Cube and put that data in a spreadsheet for analysis.

a. In Excel, click the File tab.

b. Click New.

c. Double click Blank Workbook.


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d. Click the Data tab.

e. From the From Other Sources menu, click From Analysis Services.

f. In the Data Connection Wizard dialog box, in the Server name: field, type AX-W8R2-01.

g. Click Next.

This brings up a list of cubes that Inga can use to further mine her data. Let’s continue to get information for accounting.


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h. Click Accounts Payable Cube.

i. Click Next.

j. Click Finish.

k. Click Yes.

l. Click OK.

Taking data from the Account Payable Cube, Inga put that data in a spreadsheet so she can look at outstanding amounts by different dimensions.

m. In the PivotTable Field List, click Master Outstanding Amount.

We can also look at the data by Company accounts, and use the filter to see all of the companies in question.

n. In the PivotTable Field List, drag and drop Company accounts to the Report Filter area.

o. New data will appear to the left in Column A. Click the All menu.

p. Click the Plus sign next to All in the menu.

q. Click Cancel.

We can also look by Vendor Group and time.


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r. In the PivotTable Field List, drag and drop Vendor Group – Vendors to the Row Labels area.

s. In the PivotTable Field List, drag and drop Time.Years Quarters Months Weeks… to the Column Labels area.

Even further presentation and analysis can be done by using the data filtering capabilities in Excel 2010. Let’s say we only want to see our outstanding amounts to various vendors in 2010.

t. On the right hand side of excel, under Pivot Table Field List, select the down arrow next to Master Outstanding Amount –Customers in the Values box. Select Value Field settings. On the Show Values As tab, select Running Total In from the drop down box. Select Vendor Group under Base field: and click OK.

u. In Column B, under Calendar 2009, click the first cell that says: -83681.47.

v. Click the Home tab.

w. Using your cursor, highlight the data in Column B.

x. From the Conditional Formatting menu, click Data Bars, then click the first Gradient Fill option.


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This information can also be presented as we did earlier in a pie chart.

y. Using your cursor, highlight the data in Column B.

z. Click the Insert tab.

aa. From the Pie menu, click 3-D Pie.

bb. In the PivotChart Tools area, on the Design tab, click the down arrow.

cc. Click the Chart Styles, Style 42.

dd. In the pie chart that appears, click the Time.Years Quarters Months Weeks Days menu.

ee. Click (Select All).

ff. Click Calendar 2009.

gg. Click OK.

Inga can share this information using Excel 2010 or save it SharePoint 2010 as we did with Charlie earlier.


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This has been a quick overview of how someone like Inga can be alerted, find and respond to events in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, and draw down and react to those events. Then, exporting data and using some of the simple analytics capabilities in the application, she can drill down and find more information so that she can respond to and manage her daily tasks.

Overall, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 provides a role-tailored interface that lets users access the data they need to make decisions to manage and grow their business.

Now that you’re done with this part of the lab, either close down the applications or explore further. You don’t need to save anything. When you’re done, simply log off by clicking the Start button

lab manual

Documents

minutes axw8r2

business application

links charlie

charlies role center

productivity exercise

microsoft excel web

charlie didnt

business analytics data