Archive for February, 2015

Erp? What’s it all about – ask Synergy Software Systems. Dubai

February 18th, 2015

Although the term mrp was coined by Joe Orlicky back in the 1940s and ERP came along in the late 80s there are still many organizations that don’t truly understand the value of ERP.

While streamlining and automating your financial processes is a huge benefit, that is only one piece to a much larger puzzle.

Successful ERP solutions enable businesses to capture, manage and translate data into business insight from a wide range of activities.

An erp system is not just a typewriter- it makes the right data available in the right context for informed contextual decision making at all levels of the operation.

Both for key business tactical operational decisions, the Sales and Operation plan, the budgets, forecasts and strategies, the short and the long term, erp is the glue that aligns your business processes, plans delegates work, monitors and reports and notifies progress and helps to evaluate changes, threats and opportunities and to manage constraints and priorities

Erp can help create new levels of efficiency and reduce manual tasks through streamlining, and directed process automation, a and exception reporting and dashboards.. It can reduce errors with profiles, policies and templates, and provide more control with workflow processes, and analysis tools.

ERP provides a platform to re-engineer your business processes to fit with best practices, and adapt to changing technology and market demands and opportunities. Understand your real across and how you make profits-which customers and products. What if different scenarios.

Ultimately, ERP is a platform on which to design a better business. Organizations who don’t share this vision for ERP will struggle to reach a solid ROI.

ERP used to be reserved for large organizations, who could afford to take on such an expensive transformation. However, thanks to advances both in technology and infrastructure, and changes in licensing modules, and the emergence of cloud technology ERP solutions are accessible and affordable to businesses of any size through the cloud.

Organizations no longer have to invest half their earnings into hardware and IT staff, and can get up and running much quicker than ever before.

Be open to change

ERP is not about fitting your existing practices to a technology system. While that may apply in some aspects, the goal is really to improve your processes with a system that can enhance their accuracy, automate them, and integrate with your partners and suppliers.

While a budget usually can put a cap on ERP projects, don’t settle for less than what’s possible. There are many ways to utilize ERP when you understand what others have done and what is possible. Don’t buy a Ferrari and drive it in first gear and skimp on servicing and driver training. Don’t spend money on endless reports and customisations to suit every employee’s whim. Be prepared withy our report design, business processes and data – use self elearning resources, get involved early so you can do your own testing, and use consultants for where they can most add value without wasting their time.

Key factors

An ERP implementation can literally transform your business, but also carries a certain level of risk. Projects can fail to reach positive ROI if the following factors aren’t met:
◾Support from senior management
◾Planning: time, roles, scope, budget and process analysis
◾Consultation and support, both functional and technical
◾Go-live process: phased vs. big bang
◾Training, available resources, and user willingness to adopt. ◾Test! Test every aspect of the system with each of your users as much as possible before going live.

Find out why every Synergy project goes live on time to budget- in 23+ years no Synergy project has ever failed to go live and none has ever needed reimplementation.

Ask our customers. Find out why we were awarded highest customer satisfaction by Microsoft.

Dynamics Ax 2012 R3 HR and Payroll for the GCC from Synergy Software Systems, Dubai

February 18th, 2015

Before Dynamics Ax 2012 R3, the HR modules were seldom implemented. A customer needed to buy HR user licenses, HR modules 2 and 3, Questionnaire Module, ESS licenses, EP development tools, Employee records, Employee ESS licenses etc. So Synergy was one of the few practises with any experience of implementing Ax HR at versions: 3,4 and 2009 – even then there was no suitable Ax Payroll for the GCC, so external applications were needed and the HR module also needed localization e.g. to support PRO activities.

With the changes in Ax 2012 licensing the HR module is now available to all.
– It has also been integrated into Production and Projects ) schedule by employee calendar and skill), and Budgets (approval hierarchy, manpower planning)
and
– It has been strengthened with: Case Management, new workflow engine, Role based portal, Time and Expense management etc.

Summary of Features
Workers (Employees and Contractors)
•Workers, which includes, employees and contractors, are shared across the enterprise. ◦Basic worker information and worker competencies are shared across companies.
◦Employment, absences, compensation and payroll data are specific to a company.

•The primary relationship between a worker and the company is defined through employment. Employment history is retained for each worker.
•Injuries and illnesses can be tracked for workers with ability to print OSHA preparation reports.
•Past absences can be recorded for a worker, and future absences can be requested for a worker, which can be approved or rejected.
•Drug and medical tests can be recorded.
•Education, skills, certificates, courses, and work experiences can be recorded.
•Skill-mapping profiles can be set up and used to find workers with a set of skills.
•Loaned equipment can be tracked.
•Transitions for workers changing positions is recorded. In addition, personnel actions can be used for workers as they are hired, transferred/promoted, and terminated, with an option of workflow approvals.

Organization Setup
•Departments, Teams, Jobs, and Positions are shared throughout the enterprise eliminating duplicate data entry. ◦Departments are operating units that represent categories or functional areas of an organization.
◦Jobs are a collection of tasks and responsibilities.
◦Positions are a specific instance of a job that can be occupied by employees and assigned to organizational units. Positions can be assigned to departments.

•Workers are organized based on their positions within departments and jobs.
•Positions and organization structures (hierarchical, matrix, and team-based) are retained over time to get an accurate picture of historical, current and future changes.
•Personnel actions can be used to track new positions and modifications to positions with an option of workflow approvals, and also an option to track budget/cost information.
•The human resource manager role center provides KPI and key decision making information, as well as alerts, links, common tasks, and reports, which makes it a good starting point for the HR Manager.
•HR and Payroll cubes are available in CU7 for more adhoc reporting.

Recruitment
•Recruitment projects can be created for new and open positions and can be posted to the Enterprise portal.
•Applicants can submit applications for a recruitment project.
•Applicants can be shared across the enterprise.
•The recruiter can correspond with applicants by using templates and bookmarks and sending e-mails using Microsoft Office Outlook.
•Competencies, tests and qualifications for applicants can be recorded. The competencies for the applicant can then be compared with what is recorded on the job to determine the best candidate.
•The staffing manager role center provides KPI and key decision making information, as well as alerts, links, common tasks, and reports, which makes it a good starting point for the recruiter.

Compensation
•Fixed and variable compensation plans can be created, which includes grade, band and step compensation structures.
•Compensation structures can be mass adjusted.
•Eligibility rules can be defined, and process event streams can be created and executed.
•Pay for performance based on employee and organizational performance goals can be enabled.

Benefits
•Current and future benefits can be set up for workers. Benefits are defined by benefit types, plans and options.
•Benefit eligibility rules can be defined.
•Workers can be enrolled in benefits for which they meet the eligibility requirement, this can be done individually or through mass assignment.

Performance
•Goals can be set up for workers, and the progress for the goals can be tracked as part of a development plan.
•Discussions can be scheduled for workers to propose goals and review goals.
•Performance plan can be defined and employee ratings tracked against each plan.

Course Management
•Courses can be set up with logistical information, and can include sessions and agendas.
•Workers can sign up to take courses.
•Attendee signup lists, waiting lists, and withdrawals are available.
•The training and development manager role center provides KPI and key decision making information as well as alerts, links, common tasks, and reports, which makes it a good starting point for the Training manager.

Self Service
•Users with employee and manager self-service capabilities are empowered to maintain and view competencies and personal information.
•Users can apply for jobs, register for courses, maintain performance goals, complete questionnaires, enter and approve absences, and enter and approve expenses.

Questionnaire
• A Questionnaire is a set of questions that is used to collect information into a database for a variety of purposes. Questionnaire includes the following tasks: ◦Designing questionnaires, which involves setting up prerequisites, answers, questions and a questionnaire
◦Distributing questionnaires to respondents
◦Completing questionnaires
◦Viewing and evaluating results from completed questionnaires

• Within Human Resources, questionnaires can be used to survey employees, to evaluate employee job performance, test course participants at the end of a course. The module provides a workflow and notifications and statistical reporting


Synergy Software Systems has implemented Payroll and T@A system for many years for very large regional organisations. Now that the Ax HR offering is compelling and available in the core AOS server license we have applied that experience to localise the HR module.

We include many extra fields, extra validations, workflows and reports to streamline HR operations. Our configurable, Ax Payroll module caters for all GCC countries. Of course there is also integration with EP Self Service, and detailed financial accruals, and WPS file generation. The icing on the top includes Power BI analysis.

Synergy Software Systems at the MEA Partner Council February 2015

February 15th, 2015

Microsoft Middle East and Africa Partner Council meeting at Redmond.
Brief summary: The future is all about the Cloud, and Mobility, and Predictive Analytics, and cross platform applications, 24 x 7.

Spot our Executive Director, Jennifer Vaz representing – (hint: she is tall enough to stand at the back).

And here’s a closer look…

A rose alongside the two thorns: Tamer Elhamy, Regional Channel Sales Manager, Microsoft Gulf, and Abdul Salam Knio , Managing Partner, Information & Com Technology (ICT), Qatar.

Microsoft and Wix

February 15th, 2015

Over 57 million people worldwide choose Wix to create stunning web sites.

1. Choose a website template
2. Customize it the way you want
3. Publish online instantly

Wix.com offers a comprehensive web creation solution, including hundreds of designer-made templates, an intuitive drag-and-drop website editor, the ability to integrate business management applications through the Wix App Market, mobile and e-commerce capabilities, and much more.

Microsoft and Wix have partnered to bring simple website development to Office 365.
Customers will be able to select Wix as a web-hosting provider – or just use Wix to build a website to be hosted with Microsoft.

Wix fills a web development void that was created when Microsoft shut down the Public Website feature of SharePoint in December 2014. Microsoft didn’t feel the service got enough use to warrant continued investment and support. It seems there is enough demand, that Microsoft then felt it necessary to partner with a third-party to provide that service for Office 365 customers.

The Wix App Market contains a diverse array of elements to add to your website. There are apps for comments, events calendar, testimonials, social networks, live chat, maps, and more. You can however build a website for free,. Much of what Wix has to offer is ‘freemium’ – most of the tools in the Wix App Market offer both a free and a premium version. You can use the tool for free. Accessing the full power and features of the tool to make a website a business rather than just a slick looking page on the web will likely cost a few dollars and probably still require some outside help or self tuition to get these configured and functioning properly. Things like: setting up SSL encryption or building a functioning shopping cart generally take more than just a drag-and-drop.

Subscribers still using Microsoft to host a domain will be able to connect the domain to a new site built on Wix.

Why Dynamics Ax 2012 R3 for HR ? Ask Synergy Software Systems, Dubai

February 14th, 2015

Why not? It now comes as part of your Ax server license – and as well as all the features in the HR module you also get:
– record all dependents and their document details for PRO related activities – avoid fines
– Case management e.g. for injury, incidents, new starters etc.
– Document attachment- passport scans, application letters, expense receipts etc.
– Ax workflow engine, approvals, for promotions, pay rise, overtime, department transfers etc.
– Alerts – expiring documents, overdue appraisals, etc.
– Questionnaire module: -appraisals, employee feedback, panel interviews etc.
– Travel and Expense Portal pre and post approval- against your defined policies
– Employee Portal self service
– HR role based Portals
– Power BI analysis of HR data
– Manpower Budgeting
– Graphical organisation charts
– CRM to record meetings, notes etc. with e.g. government agencies, H@S inspectors, or potential vendors of HR services e.g. recruitment, training.
– Projects module e.g. for a change management project, or for HR activities to support a takeover, or for a new factory – includes collaboration portal for working across departments and companies and external parties
– Deep integration with MS office – e.g. for mail merge letters to all employees, or to create contract direct from Ax HR
– Employee skills and calendars in HR module are used by Ax to schedule appropriately qualified, available resources to projects across companies.

Synergy Software Systems also offers a comprehensive GCC Payroll module, with additional localisation enhancements for the AX HR module. Complete with WPS file output, multiple financial accruals, EP integration to process leave and absence and employee requests e.g. for bank letters, or for self service access to own payslips.

Watch this video to see how Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft’s most powerful enterprise resource planning solution, clearly displays position information in easy-to-understand graphical hierarchies. See how AX employee records hold detailed information relevant to individuals; including employee loaned items from fixed assets, skills and competencies relevant to an organisation and position assignment details in either a summary view or a more detailed historical video of information.

UK Passport Advice- for Dubai residents

February 12th, 2015

This recent advice form the British Embassy but many of the points are good advice for all.

British Embassy Abu Dhabi Tel: 02 610 1100: Dubai Tel: 04 309 4444consular.uae@fco.gov.uk

Your passport is an important document. Look after it!
Some tips from us to you:
1. Check the validity – you need at least 6 months to travel to some countries (see travel advice).
2. Carry a photo copy when you travel and keep a copy at home
3. Take a picture of your passport on your phone
4. Don’t book any holidays or travel before checking your passports validity
5. Keep your passport safe at all times
6. Carry alternative identification when you’re not travelling
7. Check you have enough spare pages for stamps and visas to travel

With the holiday season approaching, the British Embassies in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are urging British nationals resident in the UAE to keep their passports safe and check their validity before organising travel.

Apply for your replacement passport in good time. It will take at least six weeks from the time the passport office receives your documents to it being delivered back to you. Remember to check children’s passports too as they are only issued for five years.

If you are expecting a new baby make sure you leave plenty of time to apply for a passport. It takes at least 8 weeks to obtain the First Time Applicant (FTA) full validity passport. Make sure you have all the correct documents to submit well in advance.

Applying for a new passport is simple: apply, pay and track the application’s progress online. Supporting documentation will still need to be sent to the passport office in Liverpool for applications from the UAE. To apply online go to https://www.gov.uk/overseas-passports. For further enquiries contact Passport Advice Line on +44 300 222 0000 or email: overseasNewportCCC@hmpo.gsi.gov.uk.

If you are renewing your passport whilst in the UK you will need to book an appointment at the UK Passport office and obtain the form from your local post office.

Emergency Travel Document
You can apply for an emergency travel document (ETD) at the British Embassies if you’re a British national outside the UK and your passport has been lost, stolen, damaged or has expired.

 You should first try to renew or replace your passport if it has expired or is damaged.
 Only apply for an ETD if you need to travel before you can get a replacement.
 An ETD allows you to travel to your destination via a maximum of 5 countries.
 It doesn’t guarantee entry to every country and you may also need a visa (see travel advice).

If your passport has been lost or stolen and you need an ETD it may take several days to obtain the necessary documentation (e.g. a police report). You should note:
 It costs £95.
 It will ONLY allow you to travel out of the UAE. You CANNOT return to the UAE on an ETD.
 The ETD will only be valid for the journey that you specified when you applied and for a specific period of time. This will be shown on the document.
 Your existing British passport and your UAE residency visa will be cancelled in most cases.

To obtain an ETD, you need to make an appointment at one of the Embassies, and bring with you:
 a completed emergency travel document application form
 a recent photograph of yourself
 proof of your travel plans – e.g. booking confirmations (or detailed written travel plans if you can’t book ahead)
 a police report if your passport has been stolen
 Money: you can pay £95 by credit card or the equivalent fee in UAE Dirhams,

Gov.uk Website
The UK’s worldwide pages and consular information can be found on Gov.uk Click Here for more useful information about the UAE.

Power BI

February 11th, 2015

Power BI, it is a cloud-based business analytics service for non-technical business users. With just a browser or a Power BI mobile app, you can keep a pulse on your business via live operational dashboards or explore business data through interactive visual reports.

Recent new Power BI capabilities, including dashboards, new visualizations, support for popular software-as-a-service applications, a native iPad app and live “hybrid” connectivity to on-premises SQL Server Analysis Services tabular models.

Dynamics CRM Online connector. This new connector relies on the CRM Online OData feed to present new dashboard views with improved data refresh rates. The framework is still limited to standard entities and fields, so its utility in more sophisticated CRM solutions will be limited as-is.

Expect to see more pre-built SaaS connectors (with more to come, including one for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing), an iPad interface, and improved connectivity to on-premise data sources. There is a new Power BI Designer to allow business analysts to model and visualize data, then publish the results to for use by others. (free USA trials for now)

Microsoft also released a preview of Power BI for iPad. They will also introduce iPhone, Android and Windows universal apps

The technology, including tools like Power Query, Power View, and Power Pivot, has been compelling for a while. Easier access, more and better interfaces, improved collaboration, and simpler integration points will ease the path toward a tool and platform like Power BI.

Dynamics Technical Conference 2015 – AX

February 11th, 2015

Microsoft Dynamics AX updates covered Microsoft’s guidance on what it will take to upgrade and stressed the importance of AX 2012 R3 CU8 to prepare for AX ‘7’. to AX 7. There is going to be tooling provided, but it appears that the best path will be to get upgraded to AX 2012 R3 CU8 or higher first.

Microsoft shared several looks at early builds of AX ‘7’

The Cloud is the Future is the repeating message. The cloud is a three-prong cluster consisting of Azure, Office 365, and Microsoft Dynamics. Collaboration will be much easier with new social media changes; for example, CRM will seamlessly link to Lync, OneNote, and Yammer.
Several good reasons to move to Azure – lifecycle services, disaster recovery, excellent use of proof of concept. A stunning statistic is that more than 80% of Fortune 500 companies are using Azure, and the customer base is increasing weekly

They discussed the different hardware available for Azure environments:
A series, which is “not really a factor anymore”,
D series, which uses SSD’s and has faster CPUs, and prices from USD$236-$980/mo,
G Series, which can go as high as 32 cores and 448 RAM, for a range of USD$454-6532, which would be good for production environments.

Your options for deploying in Windows Azure are Lifecycle Services, manual setup, and build your own.

You can customize with Hybrid Networks. A gotcha is that when you specify the accounts, they do not validate these at the time – a bad account means you will get a failure further down the road. Finally, they addressed performance issues, and optimizations that you can do.

“Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform” and they have opened 19 Azure datacenter regions.

A very impressive demo showed a web store, and how it can use machine learning to increase sales and increase customer satisfaction.

The new dashboard was a hit.

The entertaining and informed Peter Villadsen gave examples of “how to leverage .NET from within the Microsoft Dynamics AX development space.”

He discussed:
– the common language runtime (CLR),
– calls to .NET using reflection,
– managed controls to achieve a richer user interface experience,
– the business connector (note that in AX6 (AX 2012) it was completely rewritten, and now has a user interface. )

He explained the benefits of offering business logic. with the basic business connector:
1) The BC should be used only for cases where business logic must be implemented in C#
2) Consider using services instead for all non-business logic related scenarios. T

He discussed using services and use the Tower of Hanoi puzzle and showed how to solve it in X++ and P-Code, demonstrating the differences in performance.

As a finale, he attached the Spark Core (a USD$19 Wi-Fi enabled chip) to a phone to measure the temperature and report it in AX.

Microsoft Dynamics AX development tools on Visual Studio 2013 include changes in the Visual Studio environment, Microsoft only tested their VS changes with R3, not with R2. There was definitely the implication throughout the conference that if you are on R2 or RTM you are going to need to upgrade to R3 CU8.

No new training is required – the “Microsoft Dynamics AX development experience does not change after you upgrade.” The tools require Visual Studio Professional 2013, or a better version, such as Ultimate.

Side-by-side installations of the 2010 development tools and 2013 are not supported.

Microsoft will end mainstream support for Visual Studio 2010 on July 15th, 2015.”

Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2003/R2 on July 14, 2015

Ax license deployments grew 30% last year.

Dynamics Ax Retail 2012 R3- mpos – mobile POS – a game changer -ask Synergy Software Systems, Dubai

February 5th, 2015

Why deploying the Dynamics AX mPOS solution will allow retailers to really “change the game” when it comes to in-store systems.

1. Engaging with your customers form the minute they arrive
“Traditional” retail. You walk in a store, perhaps you are greeted with a very general “can I help you” greeting ….but the sales associate often has no idea who you are or why are there. If you do engage, then often you find that the Sales Associate is trying to sell you things you don’t want and politely ask to be left alone (e.g. when it becomes apparent that the Associate has no idea of your actual tastes or preferences). Many retailers don’t even greeti ou at the door. You roam the shop and mayb e fill your basket and your first interaction with a store employee is until you reach the checkout counter to pay for your purchases.

A retailer, needs to engage the customer, keep them interested and keep them buying. If you never make contact with the customer until they are checking out, it’s pretty much impossible to capture their interest at the checkout counter. In most cases, your customer is already tired and ready to leave, they aren’t interested in your help or sales suggestions . The customer may have even been standing in a long line and just wants to pay and go. The checkout time at the traditional cash wrap is one of the worst times to have a first identification/interaction with your customer.

Often the customer isn’t ever identified at the store. When they are identified, it typically is not until they provide their loyalty card or other identification. Again, this is way too late in the process for your Sales Associate to finally know the customer and interact at the checkout counter.

This is where mPOS can be a game changer. Deploy the mPOS on mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones, to empower your Sales Associates with the data they need to engage with the customer. Use the mPOS to look up the customer data by scanning the customer’s card, or searching for the customer at the time they greet them at the door or on the sales floor.

Extend the mPOS to use RFID tags in loyalty cards to identify customers and bring up their data in the mPOS. Unless this is a brand new customer, Provide your Sales Associates with a wealth of useful information at their fingertips to help direct the customer to the products that make the most sense.

Show information about the customer such: as their recent purchases (not just from your store, but from any of your sales channels), wish list items (from your ecommerce site or mobile application), and even data like their loyalty points balance (“did you know you have enough points to get $10 off your purchase today?”) are all things that can engage the customer. This Sales Associate actually knows who you are! and is helping you to get a better shopping experience. A fashion retailer, incorporating data on this screen like the customer’s size or color preferences, or even information about their family members and birth dates can all help your Sales Associate to increase basket size (“I noticed your husband’s birthday is in 2 weeks – can I show you some ties that we have on sale?”).

2. Help your Sales Associates to be as smart as your Customers

One of the things we often hear is that the customer knows more about the products than the Sales Associates do in the store. Customers have so much information at their fingertips that often-times the Sales Associate can’t really impress the customer with information that they don’t already know. By the time the customer arrives in your store, they have probably already researched online and may even continue the research process in-store with their smartphones. Sales Associates typically don’t have the same access to the content, or if they do it requires them to leave the customer’s side to go to a fixed computer or perhaps use their personal smartphones to try to keep up with the customer’s knowledge.

This brings me to the second reason as to why using the Dynamics AX mPOS is empowering for your Sales Associates…product data!!!! The mPOS allows users to “shop” not only your in-store inventory, but inventory sold in other locations or channels if desired. The rich content user-interface design allows both the Sales Associate and the customer (while standing next to the associate or by taking hold of the mobile device themselves) to see pictures of products, read marketing copy, review item attributes such as size and color options, or even review more detailed information such as care instructions or item dimensions or weight. Any of the AX product attributes can be extended to display on this product details screen.


Now your Sales Associate not only has the product information they need in a handy mobile device, but they can also lure the customer away from their own smartphone screens and share the mPOS screens with the customer. Now your Sales Associate is back “in charge” and can get engaged with the customer while providing the information the customer needs.

A really neat feature added to the mPOS allows a side by side comparison of multiple products. If your customer is undecided, presenting them with this view may just be what they need to help drive them to a final decision.

3. Mobility, Mobility, Mobility
The mPOS user interface is that it can be deployed on tablets or smartphones.So get your Sales Associates out on the floor and engaged armed with the information they need to work with the customers on the sales floor. In addition to making available all of this customer and product data, the mPOS is a full POS solution – so the associate cancomplete the sale and collect payment in the middle of the sales floor.

New retail server architecture concepts even allow you to take the store anywhere. Deploy mPOS can on a tablet or smartphone and leave the confines of your brick and mortar store while connecting to a retail server hosted at a data center or in the cloud. This makes things like an in-mallls pop up, or a parking lot tent sale or taking your store to a trade show or other event really very easy – without a lot of complex hardware/technology logistics. Added offline support is also available for many devices in those situations where your network connectivity to the retail server may be severed or spotty.

Many hardware options allow the mPOS to be used as a mobile device, but it can also be docked and used as a traditional POS device at the cash wrap counter .

4. Never lose the sale!

Dynamics AX mPOS is powered by the Dynamics AX ERP application, and AX can manage all of your channel inventory, this allows the Sales Associate to view inventory availability in other stores across the chain, or even in other channels (like DC inventory, etc…), there is really no reason to ever lose a sale due to out of stocks. The Sales Associate has the ability to find the inventory elsewhere, and can easily transition into setting up a sales transaction that will allow the customer to have the item shipped to them, or allow them to pick the item up in another location.

Dynamics AX provides the central hub for all sales transactions. A transaction can start in one channel and be completed in another without any complex integrations. Shopping for an item and hearing the Sales Associate say they don’t have any in stock and they don’t know when more will arrive…. means that many retailers do not have the ability to drill into their supply chain or their other inventory sources to “save the sale”. The functionality provided in the Dynamics AX mPOS makes this possible.

5. Multi-Functional Devices
mPOS also provide functionality for inventory management tasks and overall store management tasks.

With the proper security, this same application that is used for sales can also receive inventory or perform a stock count. A suite of reports is easily be accessed from the device to provide in-store management with store sales activity data and individual sales associate performance in real-time, at any point in the day.

Features like clock in and out and safe and bank drop capabilities also allow for additional in-store functionality to be performed from the mPOS.

The mPOS is extensible as well, toadd-in links to other systems or programs to make the mPOS your main “hub” for all in-store applications.

Unlike other mobile POS solutions that can only scan items and accept payment, and are not extensible for the retailer, the Dynamics AX mPOS can perform many additional functions.

Cumulative Update 7 (CU7) for Prophix 11 SP3 is now available

February 1st, 2015

Cumulative Update 7 (CU7) for Prophix 11 SP3 is now available.
If you intend to use Microsoft SQL Server 2014 with Prophix 11 SP3, then you must install this cumulative update
Versions prior to CU7 should not be used with Microsoft SQL Server 2014.

One useful small UI change is the option to hide the ribbon to see more of the screen

In Template Studio:
• The content of the formula bar can now be copied to the clipboard, and the content of the clipboard can be pasted to the formula bar.
• Various improvements have been made to the color indicators that show which cells are actively referenced in the formula that the user is editing.
• When exporting a template to Excel, the names for worksheet tabs can no longer contain special characters. Template Studio now automatically removes these characters in order to prevent errors from occurring.
• When a template is run, and it only contains a single page dimension, a new option automatically hides the page dimension selection area.