Form patterns report

Form pattern report can give you a lot of useful informations about how forms in Dynamics 365.

Create report from Visual Studio menu. It will iterate through all forms in AOT.

It will create CSV file type report. You can open it in Excel.

Let's describe columns:

Model - Model name where form belongs
Form - Form name
Style - Form style. You can find more here
Pattern - Top level pattern applied to that form
Controls - Indication how big form is
Covered controls - Number of covered controls by non custom pattern
Percent covered controls - Percent of covered controls by non custom pattern
Pattern Version - Pattern version
Unspecified count - Indicate how many controls doesn't have pattern applied
Custom count - How many controls do not fit to existing pattern

Based with this report you can track progress of work with your forms.

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

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.