Book Review - Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

Dear Friends,

Greetings!

Thanks to Packt team once again for sending me a copy of this wonderful book to review.

This is one of the best book which I have reviewed and written by one of the best in the game - Murray Fife

Introduction of the Author (from the book)

Murray Fife is a Microsoft Dynamics AX MVP, a presenter, and an author with over 18 years 
of experience in the software industry.

Like most people he has paid his dues as a developer, as an implementation consultant, 
and a trainer. He has a hard-to-find blend of technical and interpersonal skills and spends 
his days working with companies solving their problems with the Microsoft suite of products, 
specializing in Dynamics AX solutions

I'm sure most of us would have come across Murray's blog (www.atinkerersnotebook.com) or  SlideShare account (www.slideshare.net/murrayfife). I would recommend you to go through his presentations and blog, it's really helpful. 

Who this Book is for

This book is really a great resource and handy for AX developers/consultants who would like to take that extra advantage of integrating and extending Dynamics AX into their existing Microsoft stack of Sharepoint and SSRS/SSAS (Reporting and BI) tools. Likewise, if you have a Sharepoint or Reporting Team working with Dynamics AX team, they can as well leverage some of the knowledge from this book.

What to expect from this book

This book is filled with practical and do-it-yourself examples which one can leverage in their enterprise straightaway and get productive.

Some Highlights of the book:

* Extending with Sharepoint - Create document Libaries in sharepoint, Link the document library directly to AX Records

* A whole chapter is dedicated to Power View Reporting and integrating Power View Reports into Dynamics Ax forms and Role Centers - very cool

* More Reports, Dashboards, Scorecard, Charts etc

* Leveraging Unified communication via Lync 2010

* Organizing Workflows

* Reporting using Office Tools via Dynamics Add-In

* Create Help

* Use Infopath forms to consume Dynamics AX WebServices


Please refer the chapters of book over here http://www.packtpub.com/extending-microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-cookbook/book?utm_source=networking.com&utm_medium=book&utm_campaign=book_networking


Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed going through this book and I would give it a full 5/5 rating. I recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested to utilize Dynamics AX and the surrounding Microsoft technologies to it's fullest. Once again kudos to Murray Fife for taking time and writing such a useful book.

Tom Moles - How to attract the best talent in a skills short market (Dynamics AX)

Dear Friends,

Here is a well written article by Tom Moles (from TalentWeb) on how to attract the best talent and how to retain them in a short skilled market. This article is written keeping in mind the Dynamics AX market and a good read both for employers and candidates.

Please read the entire article over here http://talentweb.com.au/index.php/news-blog/61-how-to-attract-the-best-talent-in-a-skills-short-market

BlogPost# 500 - Integrating Dynamics AX 2012 with Sharepoint 2010 Workflow (Nintex) List using REST Services - Part 1

Good day Friends!

This got to be my 500th blogpost and I'm excited ! :). Started blogging since Oct 4, 2007 and it's been a good learning experience over these 6 years! Thanks for your support which encourages me to continue blogging!

I had been super busy this last month with a Go Live Project and also have done some exciting work over the past few months with Sharepoint and Dynamics AX 2012 Integration.

I have build this windows service which polls every 10 mins a Sharepoint Nintex workflow based list and retrieves necessary information from a Sharepoint List using Sharepoint 2010 REST Services to create and post a Vendor Invoice Journal in Dynamics AX 2012.

I will try and cover this in couple of posts with code snippets as and when I go.

So, the process is:

a. Windows Service polling every 10 mins
b. Retrieve information from a Sharepoint based workflow
c. Create Vendor Invoice Journals in AX
d. Post Journals in AX
e. Updates the AX Journal Id, Status and other relevant information back into Sharepoint

Tools/Technologies used in this project:

a. Dynamics AX 2012
b. Visual Studio 2010 Windows Service Project (VB.Net)
c. Sharepoint Server 2010
d. Sharepoint 2010 REST Services

So, let's jumpstart. this code snippet below does the job of retrieving information from a Sharepoint based List, it looks for an item in the list which has status of "In Progress" and picks it up.



Let me explain how the code works:

1. Function GetSPListVendorInvoiceInfo is a VB.Net function (this is part of my Windows Service Project) and it looks into a sharepoint list and retrieves the individual item for e.g. Below is a sample of how my Sharepoint list looks like.

2. Next step, I grab the URI of my custom Sharepoint List via the REST webservice * by calling GetSPWorkflowUri()
<!--Sharepoint Workflow URI This is DEV URI Need to change for PROD Sharepoint URI--> <add key="WfUri" value="http://servername:portnumber/workflows-staging/_vti_bin/listdata.svc" />

*Note - I will cover the Sharepoint 2010 based REST Services for List items in a separate post.

3.  refitem = dc.WFLodgeClaim.

Expand("Reg").

Expand("Bu0").

Expand("Country1").

Where(Function(i) i.Status = "In Progress").FirstOrDefault()

Then, I use the above LINQ call to query the list filtering out only the items which has a status of "In Progress"

Please watch out for this space as there is more to come.....