AX7 on Oracle VirtualBox

I have started my advetures with AX7 today on my local machine.

To make things working you need:

1. Set Virtualization on your CPU enabled
2. Application where you can run VHD images. I have choosen VirtualBox from Oracle
3. AX7 VHD Image
4. Account on Office365

At first, check your settings in bios. Make you Virtualization Enabled. For me it is Intel Virtualization Technology.

Now following steps. Create virtual machine by pressing New.


Name it. In this case it is ax7.

 As much RAM as you can add is nice to have.

Select your VHD image.

 

Press Start button to run virtual machine. It will take some time to initiate windows. 

After some time you should see standard login prompt. Type password: pass@word1

Run As Administrator Provisioning tool, type your Office 365 account and press Submit.
After some time you will be granted to administrator.

Open IE. You will find this address. Open it. Login with your Office 365 credentials.




Once you have issues with login with your Office365 account try below trick:

1. Start Visual Studio as Administrator
2. Find in AOT CustTable Form for example
3. Right click on it and Add to new project. 
4. In your project right click on CustTable form and Set as startup object
5. Go to Debug  and press Start without debugging

Upload blob data in AX. BinData class.

I would like to present you very user full class which is avaiable in 4, 2009 and 2012 versions of AX.

Everytime you have to work with blob type data in just few lines you can load and save fille in AX in container type field. Works on client and server side.

Below you can see example of how to load file to container and back, form container to file:

    BinData             binary;
    FilePath            filePath;
    FileIoPermission    perm;
    container           con;
    ;

    filePath = @"c:\temp\from.jpg";
    binary = new BinData();
    perm = new FileIoPermission(filePath, 'rw');
    perm.assert();
    binary.loadFile(filePath);
    con = binary.getData();
      
    binary.setData(con);
    binary.saveFile(@"c:\temp\to.jpg");

Please check MSDN to see more sources where from you can read and save data to.

Document Data Sources and integration with Excel

On below video you can watch how to create document data sources service. Document data sources are used to integrate AX Queries with Excel. Excel must have installed PowerPivot plugin . Data from Document Services are only read-only. This integration can be used to create small, simple Bi system in your company.


You can also connect Document Services with Visual Studio. Just add service reference with correct address.
You can see example, written in C#.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using ODATA_Test.MAN_CustomersNS;
using System.Net;

namespace ODATA_Test
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var uri = new Uri("http://192.168.20.6:8104/DynamicsAx/Services/ODataQueryService" );
            ODataQueryService service = new ODataQueryService(uri);
            service.Credentials = new NetworkCredential { UserName = "***", Password = "***" , Domain = "***" };

            var query = from c in service.MAN_Customers
                        select c;

            foreach (MAN_Customers item in query)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(item.CustTable_AccountNum + " "   + item.DirPartyTable_Name);
            }

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

How to start workflow in AX2012

If you would like to start workflow in your AX2012 instance do following steps:

1. Create tree batch groups.

Remeber to add proper AOS servers on Batch Servers tab.






















Please, check as well if you have configured user for workflow in Workflow execution account. As you can see I have the same acccount as Business Connector. This is Ok for DEV/TEST enviroments. On LIVE I reccoment to have separate account for workflows.

2. Run Wizard. You can find it at System administration\Setup\Workflow\Workflow infrastructure configuration. Press Next and in every page select created previously batch group. Setup time periods in which you would like to have Workflow working.

3. You should see new workflow batch jobs. If yes, then all goes OK.

Workflow will not work if CIL won't be fully compiled without any errors.

Hi, I'm Michal

I would like to share my daily findings in Dynamics AX development and configuration and related topics connected with programming.

If you would like to tell me something, please wirte email mandruchow@gmail.com or write a comment.

Many thanks!