[Announcement] Tech Talks for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Sustainability in business

Sustainability is not a new topic, but for a lot of companies this has been overlooked or not prioritized in previous years. With all the impact from climate change in recent years however, it is coming more and more into focus, with shareholders demanding to see companies making tangible progress on reducing their overall impact on the environment through reduction of their carbon emissions, better management of their water consumption and generated waste.

Regulation from the government, like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) coming into effect in Europe, and SEC issuing a similar proposal in the US, is only going to increase the pressure on companies to get their Environmental, Social and corporate Governance (ESG) reporting in order.

With Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, and Microsoft Sustainability Manager (MSM) in particular, Microsoft has been leading the charge to help companies embrace their ESG journey and enable them to reduce the entry barriers and costs associated with this monumental shift in how they conduct their business sustainably.

Microsoft Sustainability Manager has now been generally available for 1 year, with a vibrant partner community quickly upskilling their staff on selling and supporting MSM, we still get feedback from both partners and customers, that they need more learning material to become available on sustainability in general and Microsoft's vision and approach to it with MSM in particular.

Let's talk Sustainability

That's why we have recently launched a new type of content on Microsoft Learn, called Let's talk Sustainability, where people from the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Product Group share their knowledge on the product, answer common questions and have a dialog around how to approach some of the more complex parts of collecting and preparing your data for regulatory reporting.

We're starting off with 3 videos, covering the basics of:

• configuring ESG goals for your company,
• getting your carbon-related activity data into MSM, as well as 
• setting up models and profiles for how to calculate the resulting carbon emissions from all those activities.

You can find these and any new tech talks that have been added since the writing of this post through the following link: 

Let's Talk Sustainability: Tech Talks | Microsoft Learn

What's next?

Are there any specific topics about Sustainability, Emissions Impact Dashboard, Microsoft Sustainability Manager, Microsoft Sustainability APIs, project ESG Lake, or anything else, that you would like to learn more about? 

Let us know by leaving a comment below!

Thanks

[Announcement] Warehouse App task validation framework (RSAT for WMA) now available on Tier 2 environments

Refresher

In a recent post, I talked about testing, using the ATL framework to write easy-to-read test automation. 

This is a developer activity recommended for ISVs and partners, to ensure their customizations against regressions. 

At a customer site, if a developer team is unavailable, or for testing E2E scenarios in the system, Microsoft recommends using the RSAT tool. You can see a quick summary of those recommendations in the below picture:

Test classification pyramid

RSAT is well suited for recording and replaying tests that use the web client of Dynamics 365 SCM.

As such, it was not providing much support when it came to validating scenarios, that required the use of the Warehouse management mobile app.

To fill that gap we had shipped the RSAT for WMA a while back, officially called "Warehouse App Task Validation Framework". If you are not familiar with its capabilities and use cases, please watch the corresponding Tech Talk to familiarize yourselves.

Problem statement

This framework with the initial release was only supporting Tier 1 environments (like, DevBoxes). 

This was not ideal, as many customers wanted to run their RSAT validation on Sandbox ("perform") environments to replicate real production performance and behavior more closely. 

Also, with more and more customers being moved to Self-Service environments, they lose easy access to free Tier 1 environments.

Announcement

Starting with Dynamics 365 SCM version 10.0.19 the Warehouse App Task Validator is now supported on Tier 2 environments! 

Configuration

All you need to do to start capturing of the warehouse mobile device operations as part of RSAT is to enable this under Warehouse management parameters, as shown below:

Enable RSAT support for WMA on Tier 2 environments

You can now navigate to the Warehouse app task validation page (under Warehouse management \ Periodic Tasks) and start creating validation scripts.

Word of caution

As stated in the help text for the configuration flag, do NOT enable this on a PROD environment, as it carries a significant overhead for each operation. 

Request for ideas

The current user experience with RSAT for WMA is OK, but not great. A lot of people are timid when presented with the large XMLs.

If you have ideas on how to improve the user experience in RSAT for WMA, let us know!

[Ann] Warehouse management app for Dynamics 365 SCM is in Public Preview

The day has come when we are ready for Public preview of the reworked Warehouse management app. 

Summary

The Warehouse Management app is a complete remake, using the “frontline worker” visual style, as seen in Production floor execution and HoloLens Guide. The new design concepts are based on extensive usability studies including a broad worker population. The solution is designed to help workers be more efficient, productive, and better able to complete work accurately.

The new solution provides the following benefits and capabilities:

• Faster task execution
• “Spinner” for fast quantity input
• Buttons easy to hit with gloves
• Clear text on dirty screens
• Buttons in best corner for user’s grip
• Easier ramp-up of temp workers
• Title and illustration per step
• Full-screen photo to verify product
• Solves top user pain points
• Menu hard to use
• Gray text hard to read
• Hard to learn what step means
• Settings sync’ed from FnO
• Instruction per task step, company can edit
• Great foundation for next steps
• Meets WCAG 2.1 accessibility with focus on situational disabilities
• Scales text to 400%
• Scales buttons to 200%
• Scaling to fit any device type
• Based on resulting sizes of elements
• Swaps parts
• Changes layout sequence

Demo

You can watch a quick overview of the new app in below video recording (by Markus Fogelberg, our PM):

Or go in for a more in-depth look at some of the scalability / user configuration features available in the new app (also recorded and voiced over by Markus):

Documentation

Available on Microsoft Docs

Feedback

There's still work to be done to iron out the kinks here and there, but we are proud of what we've been able to build here, and would love to hear your feedback on it, so please don't be shy :)

The best way to reach us for this is through Yammer - if you are not familiar or do not know how to connect, reach out to me in the comments or through other community sites, and I'll set you up!

[Announcement] New version of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations - Warehousing released

Our Warehouse Mobile App has been updated to version 1.6.0.0.

Please find below the high-level list of changes coming with the new release:

·        Multiple connection settings now possible

·        Work list filter now disappears when scrolling down

·        Work list filters can now be sorted ascending or descending by clicking on the arrow

·        Now possible to dismiss errors

·        Added log out button to the action menu

·        Multiple bug fixes 

The biggest change that comes with this release is the ability to setup multiple connection settings, which allows to later easily switching between, say, UAT and PROD environments. Great time saver!

If you do not have auto-updates enabled, please go ahead and update manually

If you experience issues with the update, please let us know!

Thanks

Announcement: MDCC is looking for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations engineers

I'm really happy to share that we've updated the description of open positions (Example: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/616931/Software-Engineer) to really reflect the focus of the team here in Lyngby, Denmark.

And we couldn't be more serious about finding the right talent to help us build an even better product within Supply Chain Management on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations platform.

So, regardless of your level of experience (in the positive direction), if you love AX and want to make it better, if you are passionate about business problems, warehousing, manufacturing or sales, and if you are great at and enjoy solving complex technical challenges, apply today for one of the open positions we have!

Announcement: Plan of record design for InventDim extensibility

As you all hopefully know by now, we are on a journey towards overlayering-free solutions.
One big roadblock on this path was the Inventory dimension concept we have in AX, or, more specifically, providing a way for partners to add new inventory dimensions that would not require overlayering.

Michael has documented the current design we have in mind in a blog post you can read below:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mfp/2017/08/10/extensible-inventory-dimensions/

Let me know if you have any questions!

Announcement: Extensibility documentation is now available

With the next release of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Enterprise edition we plan to soft seal the Application Suite model.
For anyone not yet familiar with this agenda, please read through the previous announcement

The partner channel need to be educated for them to successfully migrate their development to using extensions instead of overlayering.

In order to help with that we have created a dedicated section on Extensibility in our documentation, which has a number of details about our plans, the process of migrating to extensions, as well as specific How to articles around platform capabilities, as well as specific application frameworks and how to extend them (coming soon...)

Home page for Extensibility documentation

If you cannot find a particular topic, let us know, either directly on the docs page, or here through comments to this post.

Hope this helps!

Thanks

Announcement: Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Now generally available

Including Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations formerly known as Microsoft Dynamics AX aka Axapta

The Fall release is here, meaning all sorts of goodies both in platform and application are now available for you to try out (You can actually do it for free for a week before you make a decision to buy).

You can read the announcement by our CVP on the Microsoft Community blog

To learn more about Dynamics 365 visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/home

To learn about all the new or changed features, both in platform and application, visit our wiki page:
https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/whats-new-or-changed-in-dynamics-ax-7/


Let me know what you think of it!

Announcement: Dynamics 365 general availability is just around the corner

On Wednesday, July 6 we announced Microsoft Dynamics 365, the next generation of intelligent business applications in the cloud.

Now it is time for the Dynamics 365 public launch event.

Join online on Tuesday, October 11 at 11:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7) and be among the first to see our next generation of business applications—helping your organization to grow, adapt, and evolve.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/dynamics-365-first-look

We hope you love it as much as we do!

Announcement: We are hiring!

We are hiring Microsoft Dynamics AX software engineers @ Microsoft Lyngby in Denmark (Supply Chain Management Center of Excellence).

Microsoft Lyngby

Want to work for one of the largest software companies in the world?

We have a number of positions open for the Dynamics AX team, ranging from senior positions for people with multiple years of industry experience to those just beginning the software development journey.

Find the 4 open positions below - you can apply directly from the page there.

• AgileSoftware Development Engineer
• SoftwareDevelopment Engineer
• SeniorSoftware Development Engineer
• AgileSenior Software Development  Engineer

Let me know if you have any questions through the comments below

Thank you, and hope to see you joining our team in Denmark soon.

Announcement: Links to Technical Conference session recordings available on Learning Portal

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts (http://kashperuk.blogspot.dk/2016/02/announcement-technical-conference-2016.html), I presented a number of things at the recent Tech Conference around the new version of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

If you are interested in learning about AX "7" and have missed the Tech Conf, you can watch recordings and view session content online now.


All of the recordings from Tech Conf 2016 are available on Learning Portal


More specifically, if you are interested in one of the sessions I advertised earlier, here are direct links:
(Copy/pasting my original session descriptions below)

• An instructor led lab on building workspaces, a new concept in the latest version of Dynamics AX. This comes in two parts, 1 hour long each, and as a result you will have built a fully functional workspace with Tiles, Lists and Charts.
• Part 1, Step-by-Step guide
• Part 1, PowerPoint Slides
• Part 1, AX project contents, Baseline (missing from Learning Portal)
• Part 2, Step-by-Step guide
• Part 2, PowerPoint Slides
• Part 2, AX project contents, After Lab 1 
• Part 2, AX project contents, After Lab 2
• An instructor led lab on integrating with the OData endpoint exposed by Dynamics AX with the help of the Data Entities. This is the future of many integration scenarios for AX, so don't miss your chance to learn how it's done.
• Step-by-Step guide
• AX project contents and VS projects for integration to OData endpoint (archived)
• A breakout session talking about a highly discussed topic of what kind of skillset is required for AX developers with the move to the latest AX version. 
• Session Video recording
• PowerPoint Slides
• A breakout session talking about Warehouse management functionality in AX, more specifically, installing, configuring and using the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal with the cloud release of Dynamics AX.
• Session Video recording
• PowerPoint Slides

Good content in all of these and detailed descriptions throughout, so take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks!

Announcement: Instructor-led course: Advanced Deployment of WMS in Retail and Wholesale Warehouses with AX 2012 R3

Hey guys

It's kind of late notice, but still wanted to send this out in case you can make it.

There's a 3 day course next week (May 2 -  4) taking place in Lyngby, Denmark, led by Steve Mulaik, which will cover the WHS implementation topics targeting Retail and Wholesale industries.

To register for the course follow the link below:
https://mbspartner.microsoft.com/AX/WorkshopOffers/2

Here's a summary of the content:

The Advanced Deployment of Warehouse Management (WMS) in Retail is a 3-day instructor-led course to help address the unique needs of customers and partners deploying the Warehouse Management module within retail warehouses. The student will gain exposure to what makes retail warehouses different and how should the new Warehouse Management System (WMS) released in AX 2012 R3 be configured to meet many of these needs as well as what customizations customers or partners may want to provide to enhance the base offering even further. The course will focus on the needs of both ecommerce and brick & mortar retailers by using a case study built around a fictitious multi-channel retailer. The materials covered will include:

• Inbound requirements & setup
• eCommerce outbound requirements & setup
• Internal warehouse operations
• Brick & Mortar outbound requirements & setup

While not focusing on scenarios for distributors and wholesalers, the focus on retail scenarios in this course allows partners operating in the distribution sector to understand what the product can do for these industries because there is noticeable overlap in requirements. The scenarios covered will not include any integration to Production, however. 

Worth noting is that there will be a repeat of this course in June (June 6 - 8) in Gurgaon, India

Announcement: Microosft Dynamics Salary Survey 2016

As you saw from my last post, Tech Conference is happening next week.
That is a great opportunity to mingle with other partners and developers, potentially finding that ideal place of work you have always dreamed of.

In that context, consider participating in the Microsoft Dynamics salary survey carried out each year by Nigel Frank.
I always enjoy reading through and comparing all the numbers and just the general stats are pretty fun.

Here's a more detailed description of the survey from the organizer. Note some nice Microsoft branded prizes for 3 random participants. It's free to participate, and the chance to win is pretty good, considering the number of Dynamics specialists out there. Go for it!

Take the Survey Now

Find out How Your Salary Compares to Others in Microsoft Dynamics Roles. Take Microsoft Dynamics Salary Survey 2016

Take part in Nigel Frank’s industry acclaimed annual Microsoft Dynamics Salary Survey in its 7th edition and find out how your remuneration compares to others in similar roles. You will automatically be entered into a prize draw to win a  Microsoft Surface Pro 4, Xbox One or Microsoft Band 2.

Once the Salary Survey report has been compiled, you'll be one of the first to receive it via email. The results of the survey give an unparalleled insight into global salary trends for Dynamics professionals. It will allow you to benchmark your team’s, company’s and your own salary against your peers.

Follow this link to take the survey
http://goo.gl/Hfsw6N

Thanks

Announcement: Technical Conference 2016 - See you there

Hi all

I am flying out to attend Technical Conference 2016 tomorrow morning. The conference is held in Seattle this year, and if you have not yet signed up, well, it's probably already too late :)
I hear there are at least 1300 participants coming this year, and we have a wide variety of sessions planned.
If you want to stop by and say hi, I'll be presenting a few things this year, and you can find the schedule online:

• An instructor led lab on building workspaces, a new concept in the latest version of Dynamics AX. This comes in two parts, 1 hour long each, and as a result you will have built a fully functional workspace with Tiles, Lists and Charts.
• An instructor led lab on integrating with the OData endpoint exposed by Dynamics AX with the help of the Data Entities. This is the future of many integration scenarios for AX, so don't miss your chance to learn how it's done.
• A breakout session talking about a highly discussed topic of what kind of skillset is required for AX developers with the move to the latest AX version. 
• A breakout session talking about Warehouse management functionality in AX, more specifically, installing, configuring and using the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal with the cloud release of Dynamics AX.
• A round table discussion on inbound and outbound ASN. We'd like to collect your feedback on the ASN solution in the release as of right now, and understand the use cases / tools you rely on for using ASN in your current implementations

See you all there!

Announcement: Warehouse management system implementation guide for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 is now available for download

If you have been following my latest posts on the new Warehouse management module in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, and are curious to find out more, you should check out the new implementation guide that has been released today.

You can download it through the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43660

If you have any feedback on the guide itself, or on the information missing from it, feel free to reach out through comments to this post, and I will convey the message appropriately.

Enjoy the read!

Help content for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is now available on TechNet

As you might have heard, AX 2012 has RTM'ed recently.
Now, the question you might ask is - OK, I have read the What's new in AX 2012, but that's not enough. The changes are too vast and I need more detailed information about them.

Well, worry no more :)

The information about AX 2012 is now available on TechNet, with a lot of new content still being added each day. And, finally, it's actually interesting to read. We now have various graphs, diagrams and tables that should help you understand each feature area a bit better.

Hint: The description of the functional modules of the application is under section 5. Use Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Enjoy!

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Technical Library
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg852966.aspx