Update Troubleshooting Project Hour Journal won't get created automatically while submitting Timesheet in Dynamics AX 2012 CU3

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Update - Thanks heaps to Andre and Sandeep for their responses which confirms my investigation.

I posted this issue in Dynamics forums and got this reply..

Within the build you mention, indeed the hour journal is not used for posting the hours. You can manually or automatically post the timesheets. No hour journals are created then. The timesheet is your "hour journal".

One disadvantage without the hour journal is that there is no possibility to change the ledger date and eventually correct the cost or sales amount in advance.

I believe posting without the hour journal is the way to go, but it should be possible to make adjustments before it gets posted.

You can read the complete post out here..
 https://community.dynamics.com/ax/f/33/p/109594/218725.aspx#218725

Below Sandeep's comments:

In AX 2012 feature pack, when timesheets are approved, they appear in the Unposted timesheets where one can see the distribution of sub ledger. When you post the Unposted timesheet, system registers the project hour transaction but does not create a separate hour journal anymore.

In AX 2012 feature pack, hour journals are no more created.

1. Timesheets sit in the Unposted timesheets form
2. One can view ledger distributions prior to posting it.
3. When posted, system creates the project hour transactions, but does not create any separate hour journals.

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Dear Friends,

Hope you are doing good.

This post is going to be more of an issue which one of my client is facing while creating Project Hours Journal (automatically) via timesheet submission. They are on Dynamics AX 2012 (CU3 Build) - 6.0.1108.670

In Project Management and Accounting Parameters > TimeSheet parameters are set as shown below:

Now, when we submit a timesheet through Home > TimeSheets > All timesheets > Create a new timesheet, we are able to create a new timesheet line and then submit the timesheet. This is done through AX Thick Client.

The batch gets invoked, Initially the timesheet is "In Review" status and then it gets progressed to "Approved" status.

At this stage, we were expecting an hour journal to be automatically created based on the above parameter setting, but we are not able to see the Hour Journal under Projects >  Journals > Hour Journal form.

Then, we go to Unposted Timesheets under Home > TimeSheets to post the timesheet. The timesheet gets posted, but again no transaction is shown under Hour Journal, although we can see the posted transactions under Project > Manage > Posted transactions

Doing some googling around, I came across this article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh271583.aspx

·         Approve – Approve the timesheet. Depending on your version of the product, one of the following things happens:

o    Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012: If this is the last step in the timesheet workflow, an hour journal is automatically created for the timesheet. If you have not configured Microsoft Dynamics AX to post timesheets automatically after they have been approved, you can a view and post the hour journals in the Hour journal form in the Microsoft Dynamics AX client.

o    Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Feature Pack or Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2: If this is the last step in the timesheet workflow, a subledger journal is automatically created for the timesheet. If you have not configured Microsoft Dynamics AX to post timesheets automatically after they have been approved, you can a view timesheets that have not been posted yet on the Unposted timesheets list page in the Microsoft Dynamics AX client.

I read the above paragraph several times and what I found interesting is that in  Dynamics Ax 2012 standard version (without any hotfixes), once the approval is completed, you can view and post the hour journals in the Hour Journal form, Whereas with the later releases of AX 2012 feature pack (CU2, CU3 etc) it creates a subledger journal and one needs to post the Journal through Unposted timesheets screen and not through hour journal. 

Can anyone please confirm if this is case? 

I did some digging around the Timesheet related classes in AOT, but I can see only a linkage in the TimeSheetPost class which is invoked when the Unposted Timesheet form is invoked other than that during the timesheet creation process, there is no calls to create a Hour Journal automatically, Maybe I'm wrong? 

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

Microsoft Dynamics LifeCycle Services - A cloud based framework for AX!

Dear Friends,

Microsoft has released bunch of new cloud-based services which allows customers and their partners  to manage Microsoft Dynamics AX projects from pre-sales to implementation and operations. Based on the phase of your project and the industry vertical, the site provides checklists and tools that you can use to help you manage the project. It also provides a dashboard so that you have a single place to get up-to-date project information. 

You can login using your Partnersource/Customersource credentials over here lcs.dynamics.com

There's a new blog on LCS and below extract taken from here http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lcs/archive/2013/06/28/microsoft-dynamics-lifecycle-services-released.aspx

Overview of what’s available in LCS V1:

COLLABORATION WORKSPACE	· Customer-managed collaboration workspace · Cloud-based, secure environment · Project management using SureStep or other methodologies · Project-specific dashboard · Tools & data that connect multiple lifecycle phases to enable better decision making by key stakeholders
Business process modeler	· Aligns industry processes (APQC) with process maps for Microsoft Dynamics AX. · Create cross-functional flowcharts based on rich metadata. · Map processes & perform fit-gap analysis. · Integration between BPM & RapidStart. · Quickly generate documents and flowcharts using the updated TaskRecorder (KB#2863182).
CODE & UPGRADE ANALYSIS	· Leverages a cloud-based rule engine to analyze code and identify potential best practice, performance and upgradeability issues. · Generates actionable reports in Excel & HTML that can be imported into MorphX IDE as actionable to-do’s for developers.
License sizing estimator	· Estimate how many licenses you need (CAL) · Model the effect of custom roles on license needs. · Get automatic CAL-level estimates
USAGE PROFILER	· Model user & batch loads. · See graphic representation of load volumes. · Identify a starting point for infrastructure sizing.
Issue search	· Search a repository of reported, in-progress & fixed issues. · Identify specific code objects & lines of code affected by hotfixes. · Get notifications for issue status changes, and new fixes for AX functional areas.
DIAGNOSTICS	· Automate & monitor health checks for AX ecosystem. · Collect data from AX environments. · Evaluate data against pre-defined rules · Generate reports to provide actionable corrective actions

Additional References/Links to videos and more content available here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsa/archive/2013/07/01/microsoft-dynamics-lifecycle-services-resources.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsa/archive/2013/07/01/microsoft-dynamics-lifecycle-services-resources.aspx

To conclude, It's all happening for Dynamics AX and Microsoft is taking the right direction to put it's flagship ERP product into the cloud.

Troubleshooting Error Access denied to method TRANSFER of class LedgerPostingGeneralJournalController

Dear Friends,

Hope you are doing well.

I encountered this issue while troubleshooting a security role, Like users belonging to a custom role were not able to post the invoice journal.

Error:

Access denied to method TRANSFER of class LedgerPostingGeneralJournalController

Solution:

1. Go to the specific role and Click on "Override Permissions" as shown below

2. Click on Add Server methods

3. Filter the LedgerPostingGeneralJournalController/transfer method and add it to the list of permissions

Book Review - Dynamics AX Performance Optimization Guide

Dear Friends,

This post has been due from my end for a while now. First of all, I would like to thank Martin Zhen and Daniel Liao for shipping me the hard copy of the book from China.

Introduction of the Authors:

Martin Zhen started as a Dynamics AX developer in 2004. His focus has primarily been on performance, working on architecting, developing, and tuning Dynamics AX applications.

 

Daniel Liao has been working with AX since 2004.  Currently, he is managing an offshore development team in China that specialize in providing a complete set of offshoring services around the Microsoft Dynamics AX and .Net development services.

"Dynamics AX Perfomance Optimization Guide" - This book lives upto it's name and I would recommend it as an excellent resource and a handy guide to troubleshoot performance related issues to Dynamics AX and SQL. This book is targeted towards the technical audience.

Alongwith Dynamics AX, this book covers advanced troubleshooting tips with SQL Server which many of us might have not known before.

This book spans approx. 200 pages and it's divided into 8 chapters:

1. Understanding Dynamics AX - covering Dynamics AX Architecture, Sessions, Concurrency Control

2. Monitoring Hardware, Database and Dynamics AX - Touches on the key areas like Hardware Monitoring, Database Monitoring, Database I/O, Monitoring Dynamics AX

3. Setup and Configuration - This chapter extensively covers from a SQL Server perspective like Recovery models, Files and File Groups, SQL Server configuration, Database options

4. Common Dynamics AX performance problem - Disk I/O Bottlenecks, Memory Bottlenecks, Extensive Logging, Deadlocking

5. Optimizing Dynamics AX SQL Statement - Index Hints, Trace flags, Best Development Practices, Buffer and Caching mechanisms are covered in this chapter

6. SQL Server Performance and Compilation Optimizations for Dynamics AX - Resource Management, Auditing and Compliance, Performance Monitoring , Query Optimizations and Hardware Optimizations

7. Database Maintenance - Managing Indexes and Locking

8. Infrastructure and Hyper - V virtualization - Hardware Sizing, Sizing guidelines for Dynamics AX 2012 and 2009, Dynamics AX Server Virtualization benefits, Hyper-V best practices

As you might have already seen by now, this book covers extensively SQL Troubleshooting which i think is very critical to understand while dealing with performance issues. I think every technical person developing in Dynamics AX should have a good understanding of SQL Server from an administrative point of view and this book exactly does that. Whether you are a newbie in AX Development or an experienced developer, there's a lot to learn from this book.

I really appreciate Martin and Daniel for the effort they have put behind this book and I would recommend every technical person to grab a copy of the book if they could. Good job guys!

If you like to order a copy of this book, kindly go to this link http://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Performance-Optimization-Guide-Microsoft/product-reviews/1481100750

Resuming after a break....

Dear Friends,

Trust you are doing well! Guess you missed me :)

I was away on holidays for a while now and since last 2 weeks I was not doing well.

I'm back now and will be soon coming up with new posts, there's a lot to be covered, so keep looking out.

Thanks for stopping by and all your support and encouragement.

Happy Dax'ing :)