Open SSRS reports (designed outside Dynamics Ax) in Dynamics Ax

Dynamics Ax provides rich set of reporting capabilities for both end users and developers.

By default Dynamics Ax does not support opening the SSRS reports (created through Report Builder or without using Dynamics Ax reporting tools) in Dynamics Ax itself, instead you can only view these reports on your browser by typing the full report web address.

So, here is the workaround to open SSRS reports in Dynamics Ax created through SSRS Report Builder or any other tool.
Note: It is assumed that you have already created the SSRS report through report builder from Dynamics Ax.

ActiveX Gantt Chart control in Dynamics Ax

This article exposes the very less used but two very important features; Gantt Chart Reporting (data analysis based on different kind of scheduling jobs) and use of ActiveX controls in Dynamics Ax. I hope you all understand what we can achieve through Gantt Charts. And ActiveX controls are small programs that provide add-on functionality to your application, usually it provides a GUI which can be placed on your forms / reports.

Note: This article is for advance Dynamics Ax users.

Dynamics Ax uses a third party ActiveX control to implement Gantt Charts. The ActiveX control is from NETRONIC, called VARCHART XGantt version 4.1.

So, for our Gantt Chart we will use this ActiveX, this way you will also understand "How to use third party ActiveX controls in Dynamics Ax?".

Ax 3.0 SP* to Ax 2009 SP1 Upgrade - Part 2 (data upgrade)

This article provides Ax technical consultants step by step procedure of executing Microsoft Dynamics Ax 3.0 to Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2009 SP1 upgrade. It also suggests some steps which can be followed for enhancing the upgrade performance.

I recommend get Ax at Ax 3.0 SP3 or Ax 4.0 level to start upgrade. Or If you have country specific DIS layer involved than you first need to take Ax to Ax 3.0 SP6 first as there might be issues of some db schema changes in different country specific DIS and some data upgrade scripts not included in Ax 2009 to handle DIS db schema changes below Ax 3.0 SP6. Identify cases where this situation exists and create an upgrade script to handle the situation automatically, or copy the data manually from the Ax 3.0 database to the Ax 2009 database after the upgrade.
Note: Not all the countries affected with this.

Upgrade
It is divided in two parts, Code Upgrade and Data Upgrade. You can do both these steps in one go but I will say go one by one, starting with code upgrade first and then moving to data upgrade.

Ax 3.0 SP* to Ax 2009 SP1 Upgrade - Part 1 (code upgrade)

This article provides Ax technical consultants step by step procedure of executing Microsoft Dynamics Ax 3.0 to Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2009 SP1 upgrade. It also suggests some steps which can be followed for enhancing the upgrade performance.

If you are on an Ax version older then Ax 3.0 than you first need to upgrade Ax to Ax 3.0 / 4.0 only than you can take it directly to Ax 2009 / Ax 2009 SP1.

I recommend get Ax at Ax 3.0 SP3 or Ax 4.0 level to start upgrade. Or If you have country specific DIS layer involved than you first need to take Ax to Ax 3.0 SP6 first as there might be issues of some db schema changes in different country specific DIS and some data upgrade scripts not included in Ax 2009 to handle DIS db schema changes below Ax 3.0 SP6.

Note: Not all the countries affected with this.

Although this article describes Ax 3.0 to Ax 2009 SP1 upgrade path but you can also find it useful if you upgrading from Ax 4.0 to Ax 2009 SP1. The procedure for upgrading from Ax 3.0 and from Ax 4.0 differ primarily in the amount of preparation required for data upgrade. Upgrading from Ax 3.0 requires additional steps.