A tremendous step forward for material planning in Dynamics AX 2012: we can now firm a planned Purchase order to a Purchase Agreement. The system does it in silence in the background (we would prefer some kind of confirmation message) and it works for all commitment types: product quantity, product amount, category amount and amount only. The interesting thing is that you cannot detach the agreement from the PO line when Master Planning created the link. What is missing is a warning when we are going above an enforced maximum of the Agreement or when we release below the minimum or above the maximum dollar amount. These restrictions only work when I manually link a Purchase order to an Agreement. With Dynamics Ax 2009 and earlier versions we often customized the Purchase Blanket order to behave more like a contract by adding start and end dates and the possibility to firm a planned order to a purchase contract.
To Increase had this enhancement also, the blanket Purchase order showed in the bottom of the Planned Order details screen which we thought was a nice detail. What we still need in 2012 is change control on the Purchase Agreement and the already mentioned warning messages when firming a planned order. But our customers are very content to have the Purchase Agreement now as standard functionality!