Setting Up A Dynamics AX Retail Store With POS
Setting Up A Dynamics AX Retail Store With POS
Setting Up A Dynamics AX Retail Store With POS
PREFACE
WHAT YOU NEED FOR THIS BLUEPRINT All the examples shown in this blueprint were done with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 virtual machine image that was downloaded from the Microsoft CustomerSource or PartnerSource site. If you don't have your own installation of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, you can also use the images found on the Microsoft Learning Download Center. The following list of software from the virtual image was leveraged within this blueprint: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (both R1 and R2) Even though all the preceding software was used during the development and testing of the recipes in this book, they may also work on earlier versions of the software with minor tweaks and adjustments, and should also work on later versions without any changes. ERRATA Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our booksmaybe a mistake in the text or the codewe would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by emailing murray@murrayfife.me. PIRACY Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy. Please contact us at murray@murrayfife.me with a link to the suspected pirated material. We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content. QUESTIONS You can contact us at murray@murrayfife.me if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.
Introduction
Dynamics AX 2012 now has a retail module that includes store management, and also the ability to set up Retail Point of Sales (POS) terminals to take orders, manage store inventory and also track customers. It may seem a little bit daunting to set up, but its really not that hard. In this blueprint we will go through all of the steps that are required for you to set up your first retail store and then configure the POS register so that you can take orders through the touch screens. The following topics that are included in this blueprint: Set Retail Store Number Sequence To Manual Create A Store Warehouse Create a Retail Store Adding Store to a Retail Channel Configuring Workers for Retail Creating Retail Position Assigning Workers to a Retail Position Creating New Retail Product Hierarchies Creating Retail Product Assortments Processing Assortments Creating POS Terminals Create a POS Database Setup POS Database Profile Adding POS Database to Distribution Locations Adding POS to the Distribution List Running Initial Data Distribution Creating A POS Shortcut Logging Into Your POS Terminal Assigning Shortcut Keys to POS Buttons
To do this, open up the Retail Shared Parameters menu from the Parameters folder of the Setup group on the Retail area page.
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Right-mouse click on the Number sequence code field for the Store number to open up the context menu, and select the View Details option to access the number sequence details.
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When the number sequence definition is displayed, click on the Edit button in the Maintain group of the Number Sequence ribbon bar to enter into edit mode.
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In the General group, click on the Manual check box to enable manual numbering. Then click close to save the number sequence.
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Now repeat the process for the Register number. Right-mouse click on the Number sequence code field for the Register number to open up the context menu, and select the View Details option to access the number sequence details.
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When the number sequence definition is displayed, click on the Edit button in the Maintain group of the Number Sequence ribbon bar to enter into edit mode.
In the General group, click on the Manual check box to enable manual numbering. Then click close to save the number sequence.
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To do this, open up the Warehouses menu item from the Inventory breakdown folder of the Setup group on the Inventory and warehouse management area page.
From the Warehouses form, click on the New button to create a new Warehouse record.
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Give your Warehouse a code and a name. In this example, to make things easier to link up, I have used the city name as the Warehouse code. Then assign the warehouse to a Site, and if you are using Quarantine and Transit warehouses then register those against the new warehouse as well.
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In the Master Planning section, check the Refilling check box, and select a Main Warehouse. This will designate the warehouse that is going to be used to supply your store for planning purposes.
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In the Location names group, configure your location types and numbering sequences. For my warehouse I am going to create Aisles and Racks for the store. I dont think we need much more that that for our example.
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Now we need to create the Inventory Locations. We could copy these from an existing warehouse, but since we dont have any currently configured, we will use the Location Wizard that you will be able to access from the Functions menu to help us built the locations.
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When the Location Wizard form shows up, just click Next through the Welcome screen.
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Check all of the option boxed for the Location Types and then click Next.
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Select the number of Special Aisles that you want in your Store Warehouse. In this example, we just want 1.
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Now select the number of Inbound Docks for the Store. We will just have 1 for ours. Then click Next.
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Now select the number of Outbound Docks for the Store. We will just have 1 for ours. Then click Next.
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Now select the configuration of your Aisles and Racks for the Picking Locations. This form will change based on your Warehouse location configuration. For this example. We will just create one Aisle with 5 Racks for the inventory. Then click Next.
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If you want you can specify the physical dimensions for the picking locations racks, and also the default picking locations. After doing that click Next to continue on.
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Now select the configuration of your Aisles and Racks for the Bulk Locations. This form will change based on your Warehouse location configuration. For this example. We will just create one Aisle with 5 Racks for the inventory. Then click Next.
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If you want you can specify the physical dimensions for the bulk locations racks, and also the default picking locations. After doing that click Next to continue on.
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Now that the locations for your Store Warehouse have been created, you can configure your Warehouse management group with the default locations.
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Finally, we will just need to go to the Retail group on the Warehouse record and check the Store checkbox to mark the warehouse as a Store Warehouse.
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To access the Store details, open up the Retail stores menu item from the Retail channels folder of the Common group on the Retail Area page.
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To create a new Store click on the Retail Store button in the New group of the Store ribbon bar.
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This will create a new blank Store record for you. If you are not already in edit mode, click on the Edit button in the Maintain group of the Setup ribbon bar group.
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Give your new Store a Name, and Store Number. For our examples, we will continue to use the same naming convention that we used for the Warehouse and use the city name for the store name and code to make it easier to locate. Also, we can link the Store record to the stores Warehouse.
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In the POS register section, pick a default Screen layout ID, Functionality profile, and also Offline profile. Later on we will show how you can create your own screen layouts and profiles, but for now we will use the standard layouts delivered with the system.
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Now we will associate the Store record with a Customer and Employee address book. The Employee address book is the most important of the two, because it will allow you to link the Employees that can use the POS system to the store. Since this is a new Store we will create a new address book for the store. Right click on either of the address book fields, and select the View details option to open up the Address Book maintenance forms.
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To create a new Address Book, click on the New button on the Address book maintenance form.
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Then create a new address book record. Keeping with out naming conventions were using, we will give the Address Book record the same name as the Store. After you have done this, close down the form and return to the Store record.
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Now you can associate the Store record with an address book for the customers, and also the employees.
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In the Statement/Closing section of the Store definition, you may want to associate rounding and difference parameters that are allowed by the store.
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In the Miscellaneous section of the store definition, you may also want to turn off the Hide training mode option. This will only show up on the POS register, which we will set up later.
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In the Financial dimensions section we can set the default dimensions for the store.
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The final step in the process is to set up all of the payment methods, shift definitions, cash declarations tec. For the store. Rather than do this by hand, you can save time by clicking on the Copy all menu button from the Copy Group of the Setup ribbon bar.
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This will allow you to select another Store record to copy all of the miscellaneous settings from. After you have done that you can click on the Close button to save the Store definition.
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To access the Organizational Hierarchy details, open up the Organizational hierarchies menu item from the Organization folder of the Setup group on the Organization administration Area page.
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From the Organization hierarchies form you will be able o see the retail hierarchies that are defined. For each of these we will probably want to add our new Store. To do this, select the hierarchy that you want to maintain, and click on the View button in the menu bar.
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This will open up a hierarchical view explorer. To edit the hierarchy click on the Edit button from the Maintain group of the View hierarchy ribbon bar.
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If you don not currently have your Business Unit in the hierarchy then you can right-click on the parent node and select the Business Unit option from the Insert menu item.
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This will allow you to browse through the un0used business units and add them to the hierarchy.
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To add your new Store to the Retail hierarchy, right mouse click on the Business Unit that you want to add it to and select the Retail channel option from the Insert menu group.
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From here you will be able to see all of the Stores that are not currently in your hierarchy including your new store, and you can select it and click OK to add it.
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Now you will be able to browse through the hierarchy and see your Store.
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To activate the hierarchy, select the Publish and close menu button from the Maintain group on the Maintain hierarchy ribbon bar, specify an activation date for the hierarchy, and then click Publish. Repeat this process for any other Retail Hierarchies that you may have within your system.
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To access the Worker details, open up the Workers menu item from the Workers folder of the Common group on the Human resources Area page.
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From the worker list, find the one that you want to assign to your store address book, and click the Edit button from the Maintain group of the Worker ribbon bar.
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This will open up the Worker maintenance form. In the Other information group of the Worker summary section, select the Address book field, and from the multiselection box, select the Address Books that you want to add the worker to. The worker may belong to multiple address books, but in order to use the POS systems in the Store make sure that on of them is the stores address book.
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While we are in the Worker record, we might as well configure some of the other default retail options for them. To do this click on the Retail group on the left hand side of the Employee record.
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If you want the user to have their own screen layout or default retail employment type, then you can set that up here. You can also assign the user their own POS password for authentication.
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Just to check that the user is correctly configured, select the Stores link at the bottom of the Retail options to open up the list of valid Stores for the user. You should see your new store that you assigned to them in the list. Once you have done that, your employee record is configured.
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To access the Position details, open up the Positions menu item from the Positions folder of the Common group on the Human resources Area page.
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Find an existing Position record to use as a template for our new Position, and click the Copy position button from the New group on the Position ribbon bar group.
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Select the number of positions that you want to create and then click the Copy button. In this case we just want one more Store Manager position.
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Now the system should have created a new empty Position record for you to use.
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Workers are assigned Positions through the Works maintenance form. To access the Worker details, open up the Workers menu item from the Workers folder of the Common group on the Human resources Area page.
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Select the Worker record that you want to assign your Retail Position to.
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From the Position Assignment group on the Worker ribbon bar, select the Add Assignment button.
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When the Create a position assignment dialog shows up you can select any of the open positions and assign it to your user. In this example we will make the user a Store Manager.
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To finish the assignment of the Position just click on the Create position assignment button.
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To check that the user has been assigned to your Retail Position, go to the Retail ribbon bar and click on the POS permissions button within the Set up group.
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You should see the POS position details. This is also where you can override the default privileges associated with the position on a worker by worker basis.
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To start creating your Retail product hierarchy, open up the Retail product hierarchy menu item from the Catalog hierarchies folder of the Setup group on the Retail Area page.
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This will open up the Retail product hierarchy view. To add a new section to the hierarchy, click on the Edit category hierarchy button in the menu bar.
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This will open up the hierarchy editor. If you are not currently in edit mode, click on the Edit button in the Maintain group of the Category hierarchy ribbon bar.
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Once in edit mode, you will be able to create new structures within the hierarchy. To create a new base category, select the ALL node in the hierarchy tree and click on the New category node button in the New group of the Category hierarchy menu bar.
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When the new node is created, you can assign the category node a Name, Description, Friendly Name, and Keywords.
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You can continue this process and create as many different nodes in your hierarchy as you like, and also create as many levels as you like. Once you have finished, just click on the Close button to return to the main Retail Product Hierarchies form.
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Now you need to assign products to your hierarchy. To do this, select the node that you want to add the products to, and open up the Products section of the record. To add a single product, click the Add button.
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This will open up a list of all the Products that you have configured in your system. Select the product that you want to add and click the Select button.
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Repeat the process to add as many other products as you like to the category node, and then click the OK button to update the products.
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If the products were not initially set up and configured as Retail Products, then Dynamics AX may ask you if you want to update the products with retail configurations.
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If you click Yes then it will ask you what information you want to update on the Released Products record.
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In this case we will allow for negative inventory and also zero prices although you may not want to do this in a real system.
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After clicking Update the system will add your products to your hierarchy node. Repeat for all of your other products and then click the Close button on the form to finish the process.
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To create a new Assortment, use the Assortments menu item from the Common group of the Retail Area page.
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This will open up the Assortments maintenance form. To create a new Assortment, click on the Assortment button in the New group of the Assortments ribbon bar.
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If you are not already in edit mode, then click on the Edit button in the Maintain group of the Assortments ribbon bar. Then give your new assortment record an Assortment ID, and Name. Then we want to assign our Assortment to one or more Retail Channels. To do that, click on the Add line button in the Retail channels section of the record.
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This will open up the Retail Organization Hierarchy browser. You can select stores individually and add them to the Assortment by selecting them and clicking on the Add >> button, or you can assign stores to the Assortment by selecting their Business Unit.
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In this example we will save time, and just assign this assortment to all of the Stores that are in our parent Business Unit. This way, as we add more stores, then we can simply add them to the Business Unit, and then they will automatically be assigned to the Assortment.
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Now we need to assign products to our assortment. We do this much the same way that we did with the Retail Channels by select the Add line button in the Products section of the record.
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This will open up the Retail Product Category browser. We can add any node that we like and add it to the assortment.
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Once all of the products and stores have been associated with our Assortment, click on the Close button to save and publish your Assortment.
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If you want to double check your setup, click on the View assortment products button from the Inquiries group of the Assortments ribbon bar.
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This will show you all of the products that are part of the Assortment. In the Fact Boxes you should also see that the products are associated with a Retail Channel and also a Product Assortment. If you dont see anything here, then you have probably forgotten to set an Effective Date on the Assortment.
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PROCESSING ASSORTMENTS
After creating or updating Assortments there is one final administrative step that you need to perform, and that is to process them. This will use the Assortment configurations that you have created to explode them out to the Store records for your POS Registers to use. This quick example shows you how to perform this step.
Processing Assortments
To perform the assortment processing step, click on the Process assortments menu item in the Periodic group of the Retail area page.
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Processing Assortments
When the update dialog pops up, click on the OK button to start the process.
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Processing Assortments
When this has finished, you will see all of the products that have been deployed out to the stores, with the item counts for the assortments.
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To create a new register, click on the POS registers menu item in the POS/Profiles group in the Setup section of the Retail Area page.
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This will open up a list of all the POS Registers that you have defined in your system. To create a new register, click on the Register button in the New group of the Register ribbon bar.
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This will open up a record for your new Register. If you are not currently in edit mode, then click on the Edit button in the Maintain group of the Register ribbon bar.
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Give your new register a Register Number, Name, and also a Reference, which will be your store. Just as with the Store and Warehouse, we are making things easier to track in these examples by using the city name as the main reference for the Register. Other fields that you may want to configure include the Hardware and Visual Profiles for the Register.
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If you want to have a custom screen layout for the register, and override the one that is defined at the Store level, then in the Display section of the record, you can assign a specific one in the Screen layout ID field.
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Tip: If you already have some registers configured, then you can copy their configurations through the Copy all function in the Copy group of the Registers menu bar. After you have finished, you can click the Close button to save your register configuration.
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To access the Retail Database Utility, look in the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 program folder for the Retail Database Utility folder.
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In the dialog box that pops up, change all of the Store and Register references to point to the ones that you want to create the database for.
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Before running the update, click on the Test connection button to make sure that you are able to communicate with the database.
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To create the Store database, just click the Continue button. If everything worked as it should then you should be done.
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If you open up SQL Management Studio, you will see your new database that the utility created for you.
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Along with all of the staging tables for the store. Unfortunately though they are all empty, because there are a few more steps required to synchronize the data down to the store.
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To create a new Database profile click on the Database Profiles menu item in the Retail scheduler/Channel Integration group of the Setup section of the Retail Area page.
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Each store database needs to be registered here with a profile. You can create a new record by clicking on the New button on the menu bar, although if you already have Store Database Profiles defined, then its easier just to create a profile from the existing ones by clicking on the Copy menu item.
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When you select the copy option, you just need to give your database profile a name and click the OK button.
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Then change your Database name to match the new database that you have configured.
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To check that the connection is correctly configured, click on Test connection menu item. If everything is connected correctly then the test will succeed.
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To edit the Distribution Locations for the Stores, click on the Distribution locations menu item in the Retail scheduler folder within the Setup group within the Retail area.
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Your Store Location should already be in the system it is created as you create your Store. It will just be missing the Database profile and Channel Schema.
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In the Profile name field, add the database that you registered for the store.
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You should also have a value configured for the Retail channel schema that you can select and use.
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Before continuing on, select the Test connection option from the Functions menu item to make sure that everything is configured correctly.
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If you have everything in place, then you should get a successful message.
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Finally you need to update Sync Service configuration. To do this select the Send configuration option from the Functions menu item.
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If all of your synchronization services are working correctly you should get a successful message notice and you are done.
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To add a Store Distribution Location to the default Distribution List, click on the Distribution location list menu item in the Retail scheduler folder within the Setup group within the Retail area.
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Select the Default include list record and you will be able to see all of the Store Distribution Locations that will have their data synchronized.
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To add your new Store Distribution Location to the list, click on the Add button in the distribution Locations section and select your Store Distribution Location that you created. Then click close to save your changes.
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To access the Data Distribution jobs, click on the Distribution schedule menu item in the Data distribution folder within the Periodic group within the Retail area.
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Here you will see a list of scheduled jobs that are used to distribute the data to the POS databases. Select the first job A-100 and then click on the Run Directly menu button.
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When the confirmation box shows up, select Yes to run the process.
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After you have finished the Status Message should show that the job completed successfully. Now repeat this process for all the A jobs, and also the incremental N jobs as well, ignoring the Online Channel ones though.
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Now if you look at your database in SQL Server Management Studio, you should see that your Store Database is populated.
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When you are at the Operator ID screen within POS, type in the Worker ID for any of the users that have been registered against the Store through the Worker Address Book that has been assigned to the Store.
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The password that you use to log into the POS Register is the password that you have defined in the Retail section of the Worker profile.
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This will ask you to either Open up a new shift, or return to an existing shift. Click on Open a new shift.
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Now you are up and running with your new Retail POS system.
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SUMMARY
The retail module is pretty darn cool, and being able to configure and deploy a Point Of Sales system that is completely integrated with your base system, without having to purchase any more software is a great benefit. You could easily deploy registers out to PCs and tablets without much additional work. There is still a lot more that you can do though that we did not touch on yet within this blueprint. After you have mastered the basics that we introduced here you may want to try: Creating custom layouts for different screen form factors Change the background image for the POS welcome screens Create variations of the POS for different users Setting up a store has never been so easy.
I created the Kindle Edition of this blueprint to provide an easier way for you all to reference all of the examples that are here , and also to make the images easier to view. As a bonus. I have included some extra content in the Kindle edition that you cannot get through the blog post or the presentation. Creating A POS Shortcut Assigning Shortcut Keys to POS Buttons AMAZON: BLOG:
http://extendingdynamicsax.com/2013/12/08/setting-up-a-retail-store-withpos/
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Sometimes the image quality has not been the best because SlideShare compresses the images when they are uploaded, and also it moving from slide to slide can sometimes be a little slow, and with the larger slide decks this can be frustrating especially if you are looking for some particular content. Here are some additional locations that you can find the blueprint contents: ON AMAZON We have created reference Blueprints that are available on Amazon that combine all of the information in the SlideShare post into an easy to reference and lightweight format. These should be better references when working through some of the more intricate or lengthy posts, and also should give you better access to the content and code snippets. These take a little bit of time to develop and publish, but I should be creating these as part of the documentation process, but they give me the ability to update them continually, and also add additional notes and sections that you will be able to access automatically through the Kindle publishing process, so not all of the blueprints are available in this format, but were working on it. View the Blueprint on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Murray-Fife/e/B00G9CNJPQ THROUGH BLOGS Also we have posted a most of the individual posts on the Extending Dynamics AX blog. If you are looking for a quick link to grab a code snippet from, or to reference a particular process, then you can find them here: http://www.extendingdynamicsax.com
Also, there are a lot of smaller posts that we make showing tips that you might find useful. For those we have created another blog called Dynamics AX Tip Of The Day. As you may have probably guessed there should be a new post every work day. You can find this blog here: http://www.dynamicsaxtipoftheday.com ON FACEBOOK If you want an easy way to track the posts on all of the channels that I am using, then make sure you follow the Facebook page that we have created: http://www.facebook.com/extendingdynamicsax
Murray Fife
Microsoft MVP, Dynamics AX
Murray Fife is a aMicrosoft Dynamics AX MVP, a Presenter, an Author, and Solution Architect at I.B.I.S. Inc with over 18 years of experience in the software industry.
Like most people he has paid my dues as a developer, as an implementation consultant, and a trainer. Ihehas a hard to find blend of technical and interpersonal skills and spend his days working with companies solving their problems with the Microsoft suite of products, specializing in the Dynamics AX solutions.
Unable to completely kick the habit of being a developer, countless prototypes have started their life on his desktop, only to be turned into standard products and offerings. The projects that are too visionary (a.k.a. too out there) usually live on through my personal blog sites waiting for others discover them. EMAIL: PHONE: TWITTER: LINKEDIN: BLOG: murray@murrayfife.me +1 (770) 324-3862 @murrayfife http://www.linkedin.com/in/murrayfife http://www.extendingdynamicsax.com http://www.dynamicsaxtipoftheday.com http://www.atinkerersnotebook.com http://slideshare.net/murrayfife/presentations
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