Business Intelligence: Know Your Role
By Mat Grisham in Dynamics AX, Reporting and BI on Thursday, December 30th, 2010
ERP and Business Intelligence go together better than Forrest and Jenny, and they were like peas and carrots. Unfortunately, most people simply look for the fastest and easiest way of implementing an ERP system and leave BI behind. As I have written previously, an ERP system is only as good as its ability to deliver data to its users and the BI tools Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 are extremely good at this. The main BI tool used in AX 2009 is the Role Center. The Role Center is a home page tailored to each user’s role in the company. AX 2009 ships with 29 prebuilt Role Centers in five disciplines: Finance, Supply Chain, Sales & Marketing, Human Resources, and Project. Role Centers are built on SharePoint Web Part Pages. It’s these Web Parts that the users interact with and can be used to enhance the user experience. Today, we’ll cover how to edit Role Centers and highlight five of the Web Parts.
Before we can review the Web Parts, I should first mention how you can add the Web Parts to a Role Center. There are two versions of the Role Center that can be edited, the Shared Version and the Personal Version. Changes to the Shared Version of the Role Center affect the view of the Role Center for all users using that Role Center whereas changes to the Personal Version only affect the view for the user making the changes.
To change a Shared Version, navigate to the User profiles form (Administration module>Setup>User profiles), select the Role Center you would like to change, and click the View Role Center button. This will launch the Role Center in a web browser. From there, simply click on the drop arrow next to the title of any of the web parts and select Edit Web Part. This will enable edit mode.
You will also have a reminder that you are editing the Shared Version of the Role Center.
To edit a Personal Version of a Role Center, navigate to the Home module in AX. In the upper right corner, click Personalize this Page.
You will get a similar reminder that you are editing the Personal Version of the Role Center.
Whether editing a Shared Version or a Personal Version, adding Web Part is done the same way, just click on the Add a Web Part button in the section of the Role Center that you want the Web Part added.
You have several choices when it comes to Web Parts, but the ones that you will want to focus on are:
- Business Overview
- Dynamics Report Server Report
- Dynamics Unified Work List
- Cues
- QuickLinks
The Business Overview Web Part uses KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to give an overall view of how the company is performing.
The Dynamics Report Server Report Web Part adds an SSRS report to the Role Center. This can give a more in depth view of a company’s performance and the variety of the reports is only limited to what reports you can create in SSRS.
A Dynamics Unified Work List is list of tasks assigned to the user that have been generated by a workflow, such as pending approvals.
Cues are used both as a quicklink to a saved filter on a form and as a visual reminder of tasks waiting to be done. Users can create cues in forms and then add them to their Role Center as a shortcut.
Users can also use the QuickLinks Web Part in their Role Centers to create a list of shortcuts to commonly used forms, reports, etc. in AX 2009.
There are many more Web Parts to choose from, but those are the most commonly used and they really do add a lot of value to your implementation of Microsoft AX 2009. Not only do they provide a good overview of the company’s performance, they also increase the ease of use for the user making their jobs easier.
About Mat Grisham
Consultant for Dynamics AX with I.B.I.S., Inc. specializing in Reporting and BI, BSME from Georgia Tech, Class of 2009
Tags: Business Intelligence, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, Role Centers
Posted in Dynamics AX, Reporting and BI
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