Administrating Microsoft Dynamics AX

System Administration

·        Manages entire instance of AX

Common

Users – Must be Domain user to manage Users

Register users from Active Directory into Userinfo table

If user is disabled in AD they can’t get into Dynamics AX

You can disable a user in Dynamics by editing their profile and check off Enabled. They can still be active in AD.

Can register AD Groups – Must do manually instead of using Wizard. Any members of the Group are automatically added into AX as a result of belonging to the Group. Assign Roles to the Group and all users within will have that permission.

User Id cannot be more than 8 characters – User Id field is an AX field. If the id is more than 8 characters and first 8 characters match another name it will append numbers to the end of the name to ensure it is unique.  

Security Automation: Can Create Rules in AX to assign Roles to Users based on specific criteria that you select.

Options

Click on Options on Main Menu to view your own profile details, personalization of the screen view, notifications. General User options. Can Edit other users if you have Admin level.

Start Company Account Field  Contoso but this will change when we go to Production. Would never use DAT refers to Demo Data.

Can set User unique Time Zone based on their location.

Document Handling allows you to attach a document to records in AX. Supports only Excel integration with local client, set to Client Excel. Do not want to open Excel on the Server as it will bog down the server. Remote Desktop v6.1 or higher, must have AX integration Tool installed on your local machine.

SQL – Tracing will record all Select statements, Long queries, Warnings and Deadlocks. Use only when trouble-shooting a user issue.

Deadlocks – Don’t use, will not help find deadlocks.

Usage Data – Will show all details of personalization, Click on General Rest and all personalization’s will be removed and views will be set back to Default.

Can setup Microsoft Outlook to integrate with CRM module.

Online Users

Active User shows real active users, other jobs associated with the same user are supportive sessions. Session can be called Worker.

A Deadlock will have a status of Blocking – Can high-light user and click End Session but it will not end until the process is complete. Would need to use SQL statements to end the block and use Stored Procedures. This would require a DBA to complete this step. Someone may call and advise that job is taking too long to run and it usually runs in 30 seconds but is running for 20 min.

User may run End Task, and start another task which will causes a second block. End Users should always call if a job takes too long.

If doing Maintenance, you can select Reject New clients and users will be connected to other AOS service. Users can log out but not be able to log in again.

Axadmin should not be used to do Administration management, it is intended for installation and patch updates, system configuration.

We should be using our own AD account to administrate the Application.

User must be a member of an Active AD Account and AX_Users.

Database Log

Any change to database can be recorded. Don’t go crazy with this tool as it can severely affect performance of the dbase. This is essentially an Audit log of every user’s activities. Try to avoid using Transactional tables, you only want to view Static tables.

CLEAN UP LOGS – Setup a cleanup job that will purge some of the log files that will be generated as a result of turning on Audit, or SQL Trace etc……

Ctrl-G allows you to filter some of the windows.

System Parameters is a Global parameter setting.

Batch Groups – Setup a Batch Group Daily, Weekly, Monthly and assign jobs to the group. Can have more than one Batch server.

  

Periodic - Batch Processing

Batch Groups run same types of jobs via a schedule

Batch processing classes – multiple tasks per job

Client actions are always single-threaded

Can have dependencies so one job runs as a result of completion of prior job

Do not use Alerts with Ended enabled, just use Error or completed.

Runs in specific AOS server

Be careful of heavy system load jobs (MRP) should run at night. Is a collection of tasks – can use multiple threads per server. The server will allocate whatever the job will ask for. Use a performance monitor on the AOS server to indicate performance required along with time to run. This will help to schedule and balance jobs accordingly.

Document all the jobs that are scheduled

Users can run Interactive jobs but would require specific permissions to run in Batch.  Sys-admin is required to schedule Batch jobs.

Reports can run Interactive or Batch – No hard rule as to why a Batch job would run on one AOS server over another. Timing.

Can have as many Groups as you want

Alert job will run as a job in a Batch Group and will run periodically

Need a job to periodically check email queue for Alert notifications – AX configuration piece

Email processing and Alerts need to be setup to be alerted and emailed for AX processes. Both run as Batch processes and scheduled by Sys Admin. Can only send alerts to a specific user, no Groups but can use a dummy account which is actually a Distribution list.

Email Broadcast – Setup an email template and send the message broadcast. Not usually used to notify users. Outlook would be better to notify users. Setup-Email Templates. Can send a pre-defined message to Online Users.

AX can run a consistency check to check referential integrity in the event of a system crash

 System

Client support Options – not needed

System service accounts – not needed (Dan sets up)

Server Configuration – Identifies your Batch Servers available (Dan sets up) threads = maximum number of jobs running at any one time. If you exceed threads all jobs will fill fight for processing power. Do not change Performance Optimization parameters.

Cluster Configuration – Dan sets up (Manual Load balance do not let it auto setup)

Email Parameters – Setup Mail server

Modify Data Types – Do not Touch (Global Changes at all table levels where that data type is found)

Modify Invalid Conditions – Usually used after a migration from previous versions, could be some invalid conditions. Not used often.

Data setup in R3 Sandbox compare to Contoso setup by Microsoft.

WorkFlow – Will be built by Functional Team

Database

Database Log Setup – Alex will provide a list of tables we need to configure in here. Need logging/audit on the tables. Use the Wizard to setup. Recommended.

Tables can be referred by Physical Name or Label – Label is an alias for the table (friendly name). Labels are used to satisfy multiple languages.

Can select specific Table fields to audit – New Transaction (Select), Update, Delete and Rename

When choosing one field to audit you can only select update since Delete would affect the entire record. Stored in logging table in SQL. In the Database Logs table on the Main Page.

If you delete a record you can select re-insert on the Database Log table to put the record back if needed. Be careful if too much time has passed otherwise referential integrity could be compromised with changes made after the delete.

Concurrency Mode – Do not change from Optimistic enabled per table

Licensing Configuration – Do not touch unless working with functional Team

License Information – Identifies Licensed Modules and Feature Sets

If the configuration Key is disabled all associated tables and fields are deleted.

BI

Report Server

Need to define all AOS Servers in order to run reports each AOS

Checklists

Performs updates as per different system options

Enterprise Portal

Cannot update a website, you must drop and delete and register a new one.

Search

Global Search – Alex has a document on how to setup this search feature. Synchronize with the Sharepoint Services.

Can setup database logging for system Administration changes

To port all System Administration changes to another environment

Example: AX2012R3-CFG and AX2012R3_model could be saved and restored to another environment.

On any form in AX you can press Ctrl-P to build a report on the fly