Equipment asset management—specifically, maintenance—is quite literally what gives your company a lifecycle to profit from. And maintenance is complex. To start, consider the many types of equipment a single company might own, rent to others, or perhaps provide service for as a third party. Different types of equipment, different usage scenarios, and different customer needs lead to a wide range of maintenance requirements.

In turn, different types of maintenance, from periodic maintenance to corrective maintenance, carries its own set of demands. Just at a high level, you need to consider categories that range from obligatory yearly inspection, maintenance based on usage, pre- and post-delivery inspection, emergency repairs, routine but regular performance checks, etc. A single equipment type might involve multiple maintenance scenarios within a lifecycle, so you’re dealing with a dense matrix of needs. A few equipment asset management examples:

• For equipment that will require spare parts replacement, you need accurate records and forecasting to determine what spare parts are needed, what resources are required to replace them, and timing for both. You’ll also need to coordinate availability to ensure that parts are available before a job starts—and that they’re delivered to or picked up by your resources.
• If you work with complex equipment, it’s more than likely that you’ll need to be ready to verify that service engineers meet certification requirements. Such requirements can vary depending on region, equipment use scenario, and maintenance type. You need integrated equipment, customer, and resource records with agile search and flexible planning tools.
• Costs and invoicing for equipment maintenance are often not straightforward, especially for corrective maintenance on rentals. A customer might be responsible for a malfunction—in that case, you’d want the ability to bill the customer in part or full for maintenance. That involves smart analytics about equipment history and trends, configurable contracts, and strong links to ERP accounting.
• If you’re planning and executing maintenance for equipment that’s still under warranty, you need to know what specific procedures must be followed to comply with warranty conditions. Again, you’ll want fully integrated records that cover all angles for equipment, resources, customers, maintenance types--flexible but bulletproof against errors!

What’s the key to coordinating a diverse range of equipment maintenance needs?

 

A service management solution that combines industry-specific functionality with full ERP and CRM integration. Innovative equipment asset management depends on your equipment maintenance strength and flexibility. In today’s market, you need automation and complete insight to realize profitable equipment lifecycles.

If you’re interested in talking about your company’s specific needs for equipment rental and services, HiGH Software would welcome the opportunity to talk with you. Contact us at info@highsoftware.com or visit www.highsoftware.com.

We all must use LCS when working with Dynamics 365 these days, sometimes it feels good and sometimes it is frustrating.

The next real live image of LCS shows how I feel about the experience.

We are speeding up but at the same time we have to wait. 

The pitfalls one might encounter are the following:

• Deploying an environment from scratch is easy.  Just follow the steps, but still one has to be careful. Make sure to select the correct supported version. As you can see in below picture don’t trust the default values
  
• LCS updates only once a day – in the evening at 22hrs
  You can still push an update, which will be explained in a following blog post.
• Service requests must be planned a couple of hours beforehand, even when this request is not related to a production environment (eg.  a restored database between environments).
  Also, please Microsoft tell me why you are you asking at each ticket what my current build environment is, when I log my tickets in LCS? And why do I have to confirm that in an e-mail as well? Is LCS just a registration tool that pushes my service request in your e-mail box?
• Beware of updating the wrong environment
  Once one selects the environment (red block below), the screen refreshes and the scrollbar shifts. Once the full details link is pressed again, one could mistakenly select a different environment by mistake. So, in case one just keeps pressing buttons, be aware that this might lead to updating a different environment than the one intended.
  
• Deploying packages can result in environments running out of disk space.
  Solution:
  The deployment does not clean up the created backup folders. One has to do this manually.  I always cleanup the folder  J:\DeployablePackages on all machines.
• You have installed a (MS KB) X++ code fix on your build machine. You start building a new release and your just installed X++ code fix is disappeared. MS BUILD prepares a backup of the entire packages local directory. This backup is restored after BUILD completion. But this Backup was outdated because your X++ fixes are not in it.
  Solution:
  Remove all content of map I:\DynamicsBackup\Packages.  In case you don’t do it, the MS BUILD process will simply remove all those x++ fixes by restoring this map back on the  J:\AosService\PackagesLocalDirectory. By removing the content of I:\DynamicsBackup\Packages. A fresh copy is created and restored back after MS BUILD has finished.
• You have made changes to Retail, MS BUILD works fine, but it still does not work.
  Solution:
  You still must deploy the package on your build machine or local VM. It is not don automatically by MS BUILD.
• To speed up building the asset library:
  Download the required x++ fixes and binaries from LCS from an Azure windows environment. Once this is done, one can see that the uploading is much faster than downloading it to a local pc and then adding it to the asset library.
• Security
  o Don’t forget to set the property on the downloaded content, otherwise it will not work at all!

The post Dynamics 365 LCS tricks – A day in the life of LCS appeared first on Kaya Consulting.

Ready, set, move: A controlled, predictable, and productive cloud transformation

You’ve decided the cloud is for you. There are many reasons to like the cloud. Virtually limitless computing resources are available, and they can scale to meet your needs with minimal notice. All you pay for is what you actually use, not what you might one day use. But, how do you start your cloud transformation journey? That requires a solid roadmap.

Take stock of opportunities for improvement

To start with, don’t even think about the cloud. Take a look at the processes and systems that might be powered by cloud technology. Would you want to transfer them as they are, or is there an opportunity to make processes run smoother? If you were to deploy, for instance, your current finance or manufacturing systems in the cloud, would you like them to run as they do today, or would it make sense to simplify them or maybe standardize business roles more?

You should not delay the cloud project until everything is perfect. But it’s important to know what you would like to change and improve in the cloud. If you allow any current process inefficiencies to linger, you may not get to realize the full benefits of the cloud. In the cloud you might also find more current versions of your older systems, or industry software that closely matches your operational needs. In any case, your list of desirable improvements should become part of your cloud success strategy together with any other goals for moving to the cloud.

Find a best-fit vendor

Have you already identified a cloud service provider that is a good fit for your business? In addition to the large brands known around the globe, there are smaller companies that may offer industry expertise or specialized analytics tools that can be valuable. Talk to vendors’ references, if you can. If, for example, you’re interested in connecting devices or products to the internet of things (IoT) and processing IoT data in the cloud, your vendor should have IoT experience and solutions to offer.

Qualified vendors should hit all the marks for their ability to assist your long-term cloud planning, multi-level security and data protection in the cloud, and expertise in working with such newer cloud technologies as containerization. Of course, they also need to offer reasonable contract terms that leave you in control.

Perform a pilot project

Whichever vendor you choose, they can help you run a pilot project, moving a specific, not business-critical workload to the cloud and assessing the outcome. Assuming that turns out to your satisfaction, we recommend you consider a hybrid cloud environment, where some workloads and applications move to the cloud and others remain on-premise. For many companies, the hybrid cloud delivers the best results. Your vendor should have the expertise to assist you in creating an effective hybrid architecture.

Transition one workload at a time

Finally, it’s usually preferable to manage a cloud transformation step by step, not all at once. You move one workload at a time and resolve any issues before you carry on with another. Some of the best business software available for the cloud is modular, so you can easily move such task areas as sales, manufacturing, logistics, or finance. In Microsoft Dynamics 365, which runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud, you get that flexible modularity for some of the most powerful business management software available today. Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a large portfolio of what used to be known as ERP and CRM capabilities, eliminating the needless distinction between the two.

To learn more about moving to the cloud with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and how Columbus can help you make your cloud transformation seamless, low-risk, and productive, download our eBook "Start Your Cloud Journey with Columbus and Dynamics 365" or contact us at 888.209.3342.

The biggest advantage of Microsoft Dynamics AX is the capability of the application to handle multi-threaded complex processes. Microsoft has categorized Microsoft Dynamics AX as a premium product in ERP which will be the best fit for Enterprises.

Why choose AX?

Microsoft Dynamics AX can be configured efficiently to read any sensors, actuators of any machinery to receive data through direct feed and processed for different throughput.

Various AX Customization

Business Travel Workflow

Objective - the organization will have onboard resources and/or contracted resources moving in and out of locations as per business requirement. Microsoft Dynamics AX manages every stage within this process to handle through an automated approach.

1. A traveler to raise their travel needs, get a pass, through an approval queue.
2. Approval queue has cost approval limits, which flows through an approval matrix based on hierarchy defined.
3. Pass the approved travel application to “External travel desk”.
4. Collect the travel details from “External travel desk” based on “Travel Application ID” and update the internal AX application.
5. End to End interconnection of “Procure to Pay” cycle.
6. Intimate traveler on their complete itinerary through AX.

Outcome

The business travel workflow life cycle may look very simple in terms of above expression. But here, the challenge was to connect with different itinerary processing application with “External travel desk” in and out, back to Microsoft Dynamics AX.

1. AX got tuned with the application of “External travel desk” through an automated process.
2. All approved travel request along with Request ID was saved in a secured public folder with encryption.
3. Encrypted data is fetched by the “External travel desk” application and decrypted information to process the request.
4. Completed itinerary will be saved within “External travel desk” application in XML format in a secured public folder with encryption.
5. The data encrypted data will be collected by AX where the information will be decrypted and separated.
6. Finance related information will be separated from travel itinerary, where the cost details will be posted to ledger while the travel details will be intimated to a traveler.

A small schematic technical diagram is given for reference purpose.

Jean Martin Customization Service for Dynamics AX

Jean Martin offers implementation and customization services across all the Microsoft Dynamics AX. Our expertise spans across various functional areas, which include Financial, Trade & Logistics, Production, Project, CRM and HR Management, and various industries, which include Energy & Utility, Healthcare, Banking, Brokerage, Insurance, etc. Our professional team provides industry-focused and cutting-edge solutions.

For more information on Dynamics NAV 2017 and how it can improve your organization’s operations, contact us today.

By Jean Martin

This article will explore data warehouses (DWs) when associated with cloud- and on-premise data sources.

Have you watched Buzzfeed’s Tasty food videos? The videos typically begin with a default still of the finished meal, then give the viewers a step-by-step tutorial of the ingredients and measurements that go into the recipe. In comparison, a data warehouse (DW), a platform where all of your important data sits, can be seen as the final dish and the ingredients can be interpreted as the different data sources that make up the recipe, in this case, the analysis. Just as ingredients come from different locations, data sources come from different places.

Cloud – Organizations are moving to the cloud. As mentioned in previous articles, the cloud is continuously evolving and its usage is rising. On-premise users do not have to worry because, as cloud BI tools continue to get smarter, it is likely that hybrid models will appear in the marketplace. A data warehouse (DW) is able to consolidate all your data sources no matter where they are located in the cloud, web, or on-premises.

Data Warehouse – Informatica defines a DW as a “technology that aggregates structured data from one or more sources so that it can be compared and analyzed for greater business intelligence (BI).” Consolidating for organizations with several entities has never been easier as it is stored in one location. It is organized with business user accessibility at the center of design, and the information housed within DWs can be used for periodical reporting, planning, forecasting, and modeling, as well as in dashboards or graphical scorecards where trends and trajectories of organizational data can be analyzed visually.

Data sources – A data source can be a database, a spreadsheet, a dataset, or even hard-coded data within- or outside your organization. DWs bring multiple data sources together and house a wide array of data types, whether your data is on-premise or cloud-based, and improve budgets, data visualizations, and financial reporting capabilities. The DW is a singular database for aggregation of your separate data sources, clarifying and enriching your analyses.

You know you need a DW if you begin to feel like you’re wasting time due to manual documentation, in addition to analyzing and managing data with a program like Microsoft Excel, DWs can help eliminate errors, tedious manual documentation as well as wasted time and money. This will truly help your organization be on the right track this year and guide the decisions for where to begin. You can find more information about DWs in this article about preparing for your first DW implementation.

To learn more about DW for Hybrid Cloud Data Management, click here.

LCS is your friend in Dynamics 365 as long it is up-to-date. And I have seen it is not always the case. So I will share some tricks to force it.

There are some things you should know LCS is only updating 1 time a day and that is 10 o clock in the evening.  But when you look in LCS you see it is not updated for a couple of days. So what’s next?

The issue is that the VM want to send to match data to LCS, and on the end, it is not sending anything at all (at least that is my opinion).

Solution

So, the trick is to reduce the amount of send data.  I reduce this data by cleaning up recursive the windows event log.  You must start PowerShell on the VM in administrator mode and execute the next statement.

After cleaning it up, you can start the LCS update task manually by running the windows scheduled task.

Does it always work, now I still have an issue, and it is logged at MS, after this one on the windows event log, it is also game over

The post Dynamics 365 LCS tricks – force LCS to update appeared first on Kaya Consulting.

Switching to Electronic Payments Can Make a Positive Impact On Your Bottom Line

Innovations in payment technology have given AP departments more ways to save than you might think.  ePayments allows your company to find more cost-effective ways to run your business, including reducing hard costs for payments and helping you find better pricing with your vendors. Read this week’s blog from ACOM Solutions to learn more about the benefits of payment automation.

About ACOM Solutions

For 34 years and over 4,000 clients globally, ACOM connects people, processes and information with solutions that automate their entire invoice-to-payment cycles, from document capture and workflow processing, through vendor/supplier payments. acom.com

The post How Electronic Payments Can Improve Your Bottom Line appeared first on goERPcloud.

One can follow the instructions from https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/copy-an-ax-database-from-azure-sql-database-to-sql-server/
But what is happening at the low level, it is not an ordinary backup restore operation as we have been used to see in older Dynamics AX environments.
For more information, one should read the next link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-copy. It is good to note that the backup type is now a BACPAC file. One of the additional steps that Microsoft executes is disabling all the users except for the admin user. After the restore all user will not be able to login. I have created the SQL instruction below to enable all the required users with admin rights.

Trouble shooting

Login on SQL:

I always login on the BI server because Sql Studio is installed on that server. The connection to the database is also a little different. See the screen dump below.  One has to add ‘. database.windows.net’ at the end of the SQL server name. The SQL server name and login user are shown in LCS

So login this way.

Data access Errors

The post Dynamics 365 LCS tricks – restoring database appeared first on Kaya Consulting.

Three ways to get corrections for Generel Electronic Reporting

ger-and-kb

I have seen a lot off issue after applying new software or after restoring a database the retail database is not update anymore.

To solve these issue I suggest you follow these steps, to get it all working. I always start looking if the connection string to the retail database is correct. Unfortunately, MS has hided this field on update 3.

Extend the Form

But we can make this field visible again easily by extending the next form

On this extension we set the property visible true on control ConnectionStingGroup

The form on your VM is located her: https://usnconeboxax1aos.cloud.onebox.dynamics.com/?cmp=DAT&mi=RetailCDXDataStore

Now we are able to see the connection string, document this string for all your environment.

When the connecting string is correct, remove all download sessions and batches that are related to retail database synchronization.

Finally do a full sync on the retail database (job 9999)

Did you know?

On the AOS machine a lot of addition event logging is available on retail:

In case the events stay empty: trust you communicating to a different retail DB. In case you see errors, investigate them.

Database plumbing

In case you have a database restore, work always this way. Rename you axdb to axdb_old, restore your new database in axdb and finally update the data with the content from axdb_old

The post Dynamics 365 LCS tricks – Fix your Retail Database appeared first on Kaya Consulting.