Cumulative Update 13 for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 is available for Synergy Software Customers

October 17th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Compatibility:
Windows Server 2016 is supported with AX 2012 R3 CU 13.
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2017 is now supported with AX 2012 R3 CU 13.
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP 1 is supported with AX 2012 R3 CU 13.

Cortana intelligence services management – showcases Recommendations API integration in Dynamics AX 2012 R3.
Use this capability to create a machine learning model and train that model generate recommendations.
Use this as a reference implementation, and then connect more Cognitive Service APIs or to bring other Cortana intelligence based insights into your Dynamics AX solution.
For more detailed information, review the Cortana Intelligent Services management white paper – available from us on request.

There are a number of enhancements/hotfixes related to DIXF.
A new feature enables an alternate way to report a carry-forward budget. The feature maintains the carry-forward status on relieving documents that were based on an originating document carried
forward.
(If you change functionality mid-year, and not after year-end, then retroactively update the budget for any transactions for the current year.
This feature cannot be disabled after it’s enabled, because transactions which )would not be considered carry-forward might have occurred using the alternate configuration
)

Reprocessing of documents against Budget control. When issues are found, the budget manager can inquire into the documents that were found and reprocess these. After reprocessing, the data maintenance process
becomes a read-only record of the documents that were found, as well as showing the results of the reprocessing.
To update the Ledger takes a long time to run Advanced ledger allocation basis rules, as the TempDB fills up -this addresses that issue.

Many retail enhancements – here are a few:

In Retail the maximum number of fields you can add to a receipt footer is increased from 50 to 100.

Customer data privacy – extra fields in the Customer table indicate privacy choices, such as do not call,
email, text, and so on, for all interfaces in all channels

A Post-sync channel DB clean up will reduce data volume.

The X Report and Z Report (in POS and HQ)will no longer include the amounts from the sales quotations.

A feature is added to display/check loyalty card point balance on the Customer detail, Store operation and Loyalty payment page.

A performance issue arises on the Retail Sales form when there are a large number of SQL records in the AX database. KB 4024615 hotfix adds a Search button, and changes the process so that the query is run only when the button is clicked.

A new control allows users to sell (and return) items outside the store assortment.
A credit memo is created without reference at AX HQ if the credit memo is created during a time when the network at the store is down. KB 4021760 hotfix clears the credit memo that was created previously before creating a replacement.

These are some SCM enhancements that also impact performance:
‘Select packing slip’ takes a long time to process for an intercompany Sales Order when the sales policy is set to Unit price equal to cost price – whichis common practice.
KB 3212427 hotfix resolves the performance issue by optimizing data access and improving the performance of the business logic.

When you have a large number of bills of materials (BOMs), bill of materials lines, or BOM versions, you may experience that the performance of the BOM circularity check, that is optimized for high complexity, is not
acceptable. The hotfix he hotfix improve performance of the BOM circularity check, that is optimized for high complexity, in scenarios where you have a large number of bills of materials (BOMs), bill of materials lines, or BOM versions.

VAT in the U.A.E. – time to act.

October 16th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »


VAT, as a general consumption tax, will apply to the majority of transactions in goods and services. A limited number of reliefs may be granted.

As a result, the cost of living is likely to increase slightly, but this will vary depending on an individual’s lifestyle and spending behaviour. If an individual spends mainly on those things which are relieved from VAT, he is unlikely to see any significant increase.

The government will include rules that require businesses to be clear about how much VAT an individual is required to pay for each transaction. Based on this information, individuals can decide whether to buy something.

Implication of VAT on businesses

Businesses will be responsible for carefully documenting their business income, costs and associated VAT charges. Businesses that meet the minimum annual turnover requirement (as evidenced by their financial records) will be required to register for VAT. Businesses that do not think that they should be VAT registered should maintain their financial records in any event, in case the ministry needs to establish whether they should be registered. The FTA does have the power to conduct audits on taxable persons and subsequently impose penal measures on those that are not compliant with the law.

A business must register if the total value of their taxable supplies made within the UAE exceeds the mandatory registration threshold over the previous 12 month period, or they anticipate making taxable supplies with a value exceeding the mandatory registration threshold in the next 30 days.

The mandatory registration threshold is AED 375,000.

A business may also apply to register if they do not meet the mandatory registration criteria and the total value of their taxable supplies or taxable expenditure in the previous 12 months exceeds the voluntary registration threshold, or they anticipate that the total value of their taxable supplies or taxable expenditure will exceed the voluntary registration threshold in the next 30 days.

The voluntary registration threshold is AED 187,500.

For the purposes of understanding whether a registration obligation exists, a taxable supply refers to a supply of goods or services, made by a business in the U.A.E., that may be taxed at a rate of either 5%, or 0%. Imports are also taken into consideration for this purpose, when a supply of such goods or services would be taxable when made within the U.A.E.

VAT registration require some official documents. Before submission of an application some important documents must be completed. Businesses will get VAT registration in the form of a VAT certificate, with the help of official documents. Every VAT certificate will have a specific identification number. The identification number will be essential for all the tasks to be carried out for VAT in UAE.

The process for VAT registration and fee submission will be done online. Following documents are required for the registration of VAT in UAE.
1. Copy of Trade License
2. Passport copy of the owner/partners who owns the license
3. Copy of Emirates ID of the owner/partners who owns the license
4. Memorandum of Association (MOA)
5. Contact Details of company (complete address & P.O Box)
6. Concerned person contact details
7. Email of the concerned person
8. Copy of all bank accounts and statements including IBAN
9. Owner has any other entities?
10. Income statement for the last 12 months
11. Expected revenue and expense for the next 30 days after VAT implementation
12. Are they exporting, or importing?
13. Are they dealing with any custom department? If yes. What is the custom code?
14. Are they doing business with any other G.C.C. country? (Country name)
15. If these are representing more than one entity, whether they want one tax group number for allof the entities, or separate tax numbers for each entity.
16.Experience of business (Owners or directors involved in any previous businesses before for the last 5 years?)

The submission of the documents will be done when you have registered online.
After online VAT registration and fees payments, you will be allowed to submit the documents. After the verification of the documents and completion of the process, a VAT certificate will be provided.

VAT will be charged at 0% in respect of the following main categories of supplies:

Exports of goods and services to outside the GCC States that implement VAT
International transportation, and related supplies
Supplies of certain sea, air and land means of transportation (such as aircrafts and ships)
Certain investment grade precious metals (e.g. gold, silver, of 99% purity)
Newly constructed residential properties, that are supplied for the first time within 3 years of their construction
Supply of certain education services, and supply of relevant goods and services
Supply of certain Healthcare services, and supply of relevant goods and services

The following categories of supplies will be exempt from VAT:

the supply of some financial services
Residential properties
Bare land
Local passenger transport

Registered businesses and traders will charge VAT to all of their customers at the prevailing rate and incur VAT on goods/services that they buy from suppliers. The difference between these sums is reclaimed or paid to the government.

VAT-registered businesses generally:
• must charge VAT on taxable goods or services they supply
• may reclaim any VAT they have paid on business-related goods or services
• keep a range of business records which will allow the government to check that they have got things right.

VAT-registered businesses must report the amount of VAT they have charged and the amount of VAT they have paid to the government on a regular basis. It will be a formal submission and it is likely that the reporting will be done online.

If they have charged more VAT than they have paid, they have to pay the difference to the government. If they have paid more VAT than they have charged, they can reclaim the difference.

Please note there will be a year end rush on consulting services we have already received over 100 inquiries for software consulting support so don’t leave it too late.

SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 4 (SP4) is available

October 16th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

SQL Server 2012 Service Packs, Service Pack 4 (SP4). This release of SQL 2012 Service Pack has 20+ improvements centered around performance, scalability and diagnostics to enable SQL Server 2012 to perform faster and scale out of the box on modern hardware design.

SQL Server 2012 SP4 includes all the fixes up to and including SQL Server 2012 SP3 CU10

Dynamics 365 October update

October 10th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Several enhancements and new capabilitiestwill be rolled out to customers of the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement services for: Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Project Service Automation.

User productivity

Employees interact with business data across different form factors on-the-go. It is important for them to get a consistent experiences and behavior across all types of devices. With this update, the Dynamics 365 applications get a refresh of the web user interface that will help employees achieve higher levels of productivity. The user experience includes consistent color themes, uniform page structuring and spacing, font standardization, and containers for related data.A new, Unified Interface powers Dynamics 365 for phones and tablets app and Dynamics 365 App for Outlook.

Users will see customer data in easy-to-read ‘containers’ that streamline data entry for improved employee productivity. The new experience reduces the need for scrolling on the form and leverages enhanced use of whitespace. It also allows for text wrapping, and an updated business process experience that they can expand and dock on-demand as needed.

The new timeline control gives a single sequential view of activity, notes, and posts across the time horizon that can be filtered easily to show relevant data. The record navigation experience makes it easy for employees to find and navigate to critical data with minimal clicks.

Microsoft Flow is provided in the context of Dynamics 365 to provide the user direct access to a list of active flows that are user-owned, as well as the ones enabled from their organization, to automate tasks and workflows between apps and services. Users can invoke flows from the site map, grid, and detail forms of records. This capability is now available on all form factors: web, tablets, and phones.

Business application platform improvements
Significant enhancements to the business application platform across the design surface and integration options for Dynamics 365 applications will support an organization’s ability to launch changes quickly at Microsoft cloud scale. This release will bring the following new platform capabilities:

Data integration and management
With Virtual entities, application customizers can easily embed external data in Dynamics 365 without writing any code or replicating data. Customizers can integrate this external data into Dynamics 365 grids, forms, lookups, sub-grids, and find at runtime. You can use this data by creating a data source for your OData endpoint. For more advanced requirements, developers can implement their own data providers to suit their specific needs.

Security and compliance
Activity Logging and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems integration with Dynamics 365 enables auditing and analysis of create, read, update, and delete actions, admin operations, and login events. This release enables scenarios for basic forensic investigation, reporting, access to SIEM systems, monitoring, and compliance.

Existing customers will start receiving these updates later this calendar year.
New customers, and trials for these Dynamics 365 applications ,will receive these updates this month.

.

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition platform update 11

October 10th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition platform update 11. This version was released in October 2017 and has a build number of 7.0.4679.35176.
For information about bug fixes : see the LCS article KB 4047244 for PU11 https://fix.lcs.dynamics.com/Issue/Resolved/1191076?kb=4047244&bugId=3869536

Some key new features:
Attachment presence and document count indicator

Auditing of user sign in and sign out
Copy legal entity configurations to a new legal entity
Support for display and edit methods in class extensions
Support for field arrays in table extensions

Excel tutorials

October 5th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

The Microsoft Excel team blog has moved to https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/the_microsoft_excel_support_team_blog/.

Their new blog is mainly focused on support announcements and updates,

it seems to be missing the tutorial style content it used to have.

Meanwhile here are 40 excel tutorials you might find useful – https://dgtl.link/excel_tutorials.

Happy 25th anniversary Bayara

October 1st, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Just a short note of congratulations to our customer Bayara celebrating their 25th anniversary (just a year behind our 25th anniversary).

Its always satisfying to see our customers grow using the solutions we implemented and support for them, and proving that the right business systems and partner adds value.

Synergy Software Systems at the Microsoft Manufacturing Masterclass-

September 27th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

A packed house for the Microsoft Manufacturing Masterclass today with stimulating presentations on Digital transformation.

SQL 2016 new cumulative update releases

September 26th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

The 5th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2016 SP1 is available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.

To learn more please visit:
•CU#5 KB Article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040714/cumulative-update-5-for-sql-server-2016
•Understanding Incremental Servicing Model for SQL Server
•Microsoft ® SQL Server ® 2016 SP1 Latest Cumulative Update: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54613
•Update Center for Microsoft SQL Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sqlserver/ff803383.aspx
The 8th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2016 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.

To learn more visit:
•CU#8 KB Article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040713/cumulative-update-8-for-sql-server-2016
•Understanding Incremental Servicing Model for SQL Server
•Microsoft ® SQL Server ® 2016 RTM Latest Cumulative Update: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53338
•Update Center for Microsoft SQL Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sqlserver/ff803383.aspx

Backup Compression and Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)

September 26th, 2017 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Backup Compression and Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) have been immensely valuable and popular features in SQL Server.

In SQL Server 2016, backup compression was enabled for TDE databases. When you backup a TDE enabled database with compression and MAXTRANSFERSIZE > 64K, backup compression will kick in to reduce backup size and to improve overall backup performance and time.

Recently, Microsoft found some edge scenarios related to backup compression for TDE databases caused backups or restores to fail.

Hence our recommendations have been
• Avoid using striped backups with TDE and backup compression.

• If your database has virtual log files (VLFs) larger than 4GB, then do not use backup compression with TDE for your log backups.

• Avoid using WITH INIT when working with TDE and backup compression. Instead, use WITH FORMAT.

• Avoid using backup checksum with TDE and backup compression

Note: The default native backup uses MAXTRANSFERSIZE = 64K when the database has a single database file, so compression doesn’t kick in automatically for TDE enabled databases and the above issues aren’t encountered.

However, there are c scenarios (listed below) where the SQL server engine chooses to use MAXTRANSFERSIZE > 64K dynamically to optimize for performance. That means compression for TDE databases can kick in automatically even when maxtransfersize is not explicitly set.

• When the database has multiple data files created, it uses MAXTRANSFERSIZE > 64K for which the backup compression kicks in automatically if compression is specified and database has TDE enabled.
• When performing backup to url, the default MAXTRANSFERSIZE = 1MB for which the backup compression kicks in automatically if compression is specified and database has TDE enabled.

Starting SQL 2016 RTM CU7, SQL 2016 SP1 CU4 and above, improvements and updates to the SQL Server engine avoid these edge cases . If you plan to leverage native backup compression for TDE databases or are already using it, we strongly recommend you apply the latest CUs on SQL 2016 to ensure you are not hitting any of the known issues .

If you are already using backup compression for TDE databases in your environment on SQL 2016 builds below RTMCU7/SP1CU4, then we strongly recommend you validate your backups by a test restore and also apply the latest CUs proactively to ensure your RPO/RTO requirements are met.

If the restore of the backup from SQL Server build below RTMCU7/SP1CU4 is failing, then applying the latest CUs won’t allow restore of older backups.

Only backups created from the latest CU build will avoid the above issues and can be restored without any errors.

VDI support for backup compression on TDE enabled databases is not added yet and Microsoft plans to add it soon in an upcoming service releases of SQL Server.