Dynamics AX 2009

According to Microsoft, Convergence attendees will get a sneak peek into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (codenamed AX 5.0), scheduled for release no later than 2009.


If not mistaken, everyone of AX people are eagerly want to see this new version of product. The user interfaces (UI) have changed a lot; they called it as “M3” features. It consists of menu bar, navigation pane and content pane. To me, all this newly designed DAX 2009 UI has improved in both user friendliness and flexibilities. The interface diced into more clearer and straightforward instead of putting all the itemized into a subfolder. From the previous version 4.0 some people complaint about the messy dices, at this time improved become a tidier layout. Microsoft is really putting a lot of effort to tailored user experiences.


Besides the interface changes, Finance and distribution are also have a lots of enhancement. The finance has enhanced into a more comprehensive way, it would added selling points to this product as well. In additional, there is one new module “Expense Management” installed in DAX 2009. I believe that most of the HR will be excited to implement this new module, it is simple and lots of the reimbursement rules and policy can be comply into the system as well as credit card import and export features. Thereafter, we will get suffered due to the strict rules and claims policies.


By the way, check out the new forthcoming book on Dynamics AX 2009 at Amazon. Well, just keep on exploring at DAX 2009 before it is going to release.

Dynamics AX user friendly features

When we are doing any system demo, most of the time we will demonstrate an overview of functionality to any prospects in order to give them an impress and get familiar with our system.
Dynamics AX 4.0 provides a user friendly features that works like and familiar to Microsoft Office System such as Outlook, Excel and so on. That’s why most of the people will find this system ease to use and less learning curves to pick up the functionality.

The below information depicts those powerful features in Dynamics AX:

1
My Favorites:
Drag and drop the frequently used form or reports to easy access.
2
Navigation Pane:
It has same look and feel as other Microsoft Office System such as Outlook
3
Copy + Paste:
It can be copy and paste to Microsoft Excel, Word format
4
Filter:
There are three types of filter record methods:
1. Advanced Filter/Sort
2. Filter By Selection
3. Filter By Grid

The format is slightly similar to Microsoft Excel, just key in the keyword that you like to filter in any filter column.

When you click on the icon, a drop down searching criteria will be displayed as above. Then you may apply the criteria for filtering record purpose.



5
Alerts:
This provides users to stay informed on business condition; the alarm clock will be display at status bar.
6
Document Handling:
Allow users to attach note, image, file into any forms. For example, you may attach a map to a specific customer record to better keep track of customer information.
7
Global Search
Use this feature to search for information across the system.
8
Help File
Build in help file to assist users access the system.

With Dynamics Ax 4.0 user friendly features it will dramatically brings the positive impact on demonstrating system to any prospects.

AOS fails to start for Dynamics Ax 4.0 intallation

I have encountered an error from AOS service last few days as reintall the Dynamics Ax 4.0, the error message as below:

Could not start the Dynamics Server$01-Company1 service on Local Computer.
Error 100: Cannot create another system semaphore.

i intalled at the below environment:
• Windows XP Professional (SP2+)
• SQL Server 2005

At the meantime, i got some enquiries for expertise and tried my best to troubleshoot this error. Finally, i fixed it successfully. During the time of fixing this thing, i have got one solution from Microsoft website was telling me "Please try again later" for this "semaphore error".

What does it means for this "Please try again later"? There is no specific guideline on how to fix the error. It is very funny and inevitable guideline would turn a green line to solve the problem.

From my troubleshooting and research; this "semaphore error" is a general error indicating that the AOS cannot connect to the database for some reason. The following rules must be followed:

1. Check your database connectivity
2. Ensure the user has appropriate permissions to access the database files when running
the AOS service (normally NetworkService).This means that the following roles
should be assigned to the specific database
• db_ddladmin
• db_datareader
• and db_datawriter.
3. Ensure the user has enough rights to access the file server/folder

After you have setting up the permissions , now you may follow suggestion from Microsoft "Please try again later".