Personalize the forms on department level

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Posted on by Lakshmi Karambakkam

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Hi,

I am noivce to these type of work. Basically this is my first task. So I would like to have some guidelines/tips or any other useful info w.r.t. this.

Users are requesting if certain fields on forms be made required fields based on business use. Then they are also asking if for their department we could setup their forms to hide certain fields. Instead of each end user personalizing the forms in their own way, supervisor wants this to be done on department level.

In what way can these be achieved in a very effective way?

I have to submit a detailed report indicating all aspects that gets affected with this impact? Also have to give a detailed explanation how this will effect a future upgrade/hotfix or any other installations?

I am thinking of role centers and permissions must do this job. Will that be good enough or any additional needs to taken care. Any ideas, suggestions will be more useful to a novice.

Thanks,

Lakshmi

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André Arnaud de Cal... 300,904 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Lakshmi,

The personalization needs to be setup per user. Nevertheless you can copy from another user. Eventually with a script.

If there is a general pattern in hiding/moving fields, you can consider to change it as customization. Hiding fields is also possible using the security where you can define this per role when you use 'override permissions'

About making fields mandatory: This is a small customization per table field. This will result having this field mandatory in each legal entity. If it is conditional you should be able to achieve it with a code customization.

All customization can affect future upgrades. Some are quite easy to migrate to a newer version.

For mandatory fields and possible other validations, we have an add-on where you can setup rules rather than creating customizations. Also these rules can be assigned to one or more legal entity and can be defined conditional (depending on values in other fields/tables).

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Lakshmi Karambakkam 1,307 on at

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Hi,

I am very novice to this task. So please explain me in a detailed way even though some of my questions may look silly for you.

Is there a document/manual that gives an idea as how to setup a user personalization and how to copy it for other users. Also how to write a script and use it.

From where to download/get it.

There can also be a general pattern of hiding/moving fields, because we are implementing DAX 2012

and for sure some needs to be done on department levels (marketing/sales/purchase/production/EC/Accounts/etc. and many more)

How to categorize these departments on the whole company level and how to use this pattern?

Also some needs to be done on role centre basis, how to achieve this?

Is there a document/manual for how to set security permissions and also how to override them. It will biggest help.

How to find out which customizations will effect future upgrade and which will not.

And for those which will effect, what type of care (coding/setttings/etc.) needs to be done so that it does not clash with future upgrades.

You were also mentioning about an add-on for mandatory fields and some possible validations. Which add-on is this? From where to download and use it and any other useful information,

guidance will be fully appreciated.

Also how much time period does this change might take to do for an entire company. I have to submit a detailed report to my manager with all my findings.

Thanks,

Lakshmi

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André Arnaud de Cal... 300,904 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Lakshmi,

These are a lot of questions. Very hard to explain in detail on the forum. I could write a book about this... I will try to answer. If I forgot something to answer, please update this thread.

There is a description how to use the personalization: technet.microsoft.com/.../aa597239.aspx

I have a script for copying form personalizations from one user/company to all other users. Probably I will review this one and share it in a future blog post.

Best practice to hide fields for multiple users is to use the override of security: technet.microsoft.com/.../hh209290.aspx

Also in one of my blogs I have explained this for a particular scenario: kaya-consulting.com/unwanted-permissions-in-system-user-role-ax-2012

You are talking about department level. Can you elaborate if this is related to e.g. hiding fields for a group of users or if it is related to hide some records for groups of users?

About effect on future upgrades: If you can use new elements or the extending possibilities of the AX 2012 development environment, these objects can be upgraded quite easy. E.g. new field, new method, event handlers. Related to security it is possible to duplicate objects first to not affect the standard/example roles and the contents.

The add-on I was referring to is our Data Validation Framework. You can have a look here: kaya-consulting.com/.../microsoft-dynamics-ax-data-validation-framework

The information is not informing you about the possibility of making also individual dimensions on e.g. a customer form mandatory or control which values are allowed within the same framework. This is an addition which was not updated yet on the website.

If you have further questions, do not hesitate to update this thread and ask...

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Lakshmi Karambakkam 1,307 on at

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Hi,

Instead of asking concepts wise, I thought a real case scenario will give an easy understanding and a better solution approach.

Let’s go to customers form /edit button

It comprises of groups like General, Contact information, sales order defaults, payment defaults, sales demographics, automotive packaging administration, Retail, etc.

Customer data handling users and their manager would like to add, edit information in General, Contact information and Payment defaults. This group never add/edit information in sales order defaults, sales demographics, automotive packaging administration, retail, etc. so this department which handles only customer related data wants only required groups to be shown and others hidden.

Sales Group (i.e. order entry users , sales posting users and their manager) would like to add/edit information in sales order defaults but they will not add/edit information in some other groups. So this department along with their manager wants these groups only to be shown(whenever they access this form) and other unrelated groups to be hidden.

In some places it can be certain fields in a group also.

In a Consolidated way, some must be hidden and also some must be added to a particular department.

Departments are like sales, purchase, accounting, customers, vendors, production, shop floor, shipping & receiving, etc.

Similarly if we go to Sales order form --> customers department, marketing department , sales department ,etc. will use only particular groups in this form. So accordingly

they must be hidden or shown.

In this way several forms needs to be personalized for every department.

This is departmental personalization which needs to be achieved and it needs to be done for all the departments in the organization instead of asking every user to personalize their forms.

I looked into security roles but not sure how to do it conditional wise for some particular forms.

How my approach should be? Where and how should I do this in a very effective way ? And how much time does this might take (approximately no. of weeks) to achieve this?

Thanks,

Lakshmi

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Lakshmi Karambakkam 1,307 on at

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Hi,

I figured out how to effectively personalize the forms. Now I have two queries.

a) A user is using a personalized form (fields added and fields hidden).

When an upgrade takes place (CU or next version) what impact will it have on the personalized forms.

Do we have to reset all the personalized forms and then again personalize or is there any best approach?

b) Also in the process of personalization, Some fields are made mandatory fields. How will this effect a future upgrade ?

Any ideas will be very much useful.

Thanks,

Lakshmi

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André Arnaud de Cal... 300,904 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Lakshmi,

I will try to answer your questions:

a) When the form is not modified in a newer release, there is no issue. Otherwise some internal controls might be in another order. Possibly some controls are removed from the basic design or have been renamed. In that case you need to review the personalizations.

b) Reading this question, I wonder how you personalized the forms. Is it done by changing the form in the AOT? Or is it a user specific personalization?

Making fields mandatory is not a personalization, but a development effort. This kind of development is overlayering the standard objects and needs to be reviewed like I mentioned in an earlier reply.

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Lakshmi Karambakkam 1,307 on at

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Hi,

Personalization:

I am preferring form personalization rather than using script.

I am referring to the option of using load, save, reset and retrieve from user buttons in Personalization form. This way the supervisor can save the settings and all the remaining users in the same department can retrieve this setup and use it. The department can reset their setup and save a new setup or load any pervious setup.

So whenever supervisor and the users of the department wants to change their personalization, they can change without having any dependency on the developer to change the script every time they need a change.

But how to take care of security in this aspect? only supervisor must have the authority to save the setup and any other security measures that are important to be taken care for form personalization. Also by mistake user does not have to retrieve either administrators or other departments setup.

Thanks,

Lakshmi

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André Arnaud de Cal... 300,904 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Lakshmi,

The security requirement you have is not matching the purpose of the personalizations. The values are user based and are saves or retrieved with his credentials; even when a supervisor would do these actions.

So technically the user should have the rights. The only thing you could do is create a small customization that clicking the buttons first requires an additional password and then performs the normal action like save or retrieve.

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Lakshmi Karambakkam 1,307 on at

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Hi Andre,

Could you please navigate me to such X++ code through which you can create user credentials or to any link or any thing?

Also somewhere you have to store these list of passwords created by each department supervisor and compare them everytime they want to access the buttons?

Thanks,

Lakshmi

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André Arnaud de Cal... 300,904 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Lakshmi,

There is an example how to create users, store password and use them in the new Warehouse management module. You can try to look how it is done in that module.

You can also try to verify the credentials with active directory. I have not done something like this before myself. I was just trying to provide some options for you.

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