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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived) / Stop Creation of Finan...
Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)

Stop Creation of Financial Dimensions and Fin Dim Values without Approval

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Posted on by Community Member

Hello AX Brains Trust!

I am currently struggling with multiple Financial Dimensions that were created accidentally via DIXF file loads. Plus creation of values in existing Dimensions that are grossly incorrect. 

As an example, we have a Financial Dimension called ContractID. Thorugh erroneous load files, we now have two more Financial Dimensions called Contract and Contract ID. I need to get rid of these! 

We also have, under the correct Dimension, ContractID, created 5h!+loads  of values that are completely useless. I need to get rid of these too!

My questions are as follows:

  1. How can I delete these duplicate dimensions? I get an error " " when I try.
  2. How do I delete mass values under a dimension? Imagine deleting hundreds of these, one by one!
  3. How can I keep track of when a dimension value gets created without my permission?
  4. Can we perhaps set an approval process for when a new Dimension or Dimension Value is created? This should help with restricting rubbish value creation!

Thanks in advance for your help!

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  • Suggested answer
    Nathan Clouse AX Profile Picture
    Nathan Clouse AX 140 on at

    Hi Satrangi,

            I'll answer your questions in order then given some general advice.

    1. Yes, so long as there are no transactions that use that financial dimension. It may be possible to alter your account structures and remove a financial dimension from transactions after the fact but I haven't tested it nor would I recommend it without lots of testing to prove it out. The error you would typically get is something similar to "The financial dimension exists on a transaction. You cannot delete financial dimension Store.". If you are getting something different, you may need a technical resource to help track the issue down

    2. You can delete the dimension values 1 at a time us the dimension values screen. This would be tedious but it is possible. Since we have the functionality, albeit somewhat restricted, we should use that even if it takes a while. I was able to delete one in under 5 seconds so if you have 100 to delete at 5 seconds per, that's just over 8 minutes of cleanup which isn't terrible.

    3. You can create an alert rule on dimensions and (custom) values so you can at least be notified when a new value gets created. This would be reactive rather than proactive but its better than nothing. The alert for both would have the who, what and when in it. I can expand on this if you are unfamiliar with this functionality.

    4. It is possible but it would be a customization. As an alternative, access to who can create these should be limited to trusted positions that understand the functionality. I would recommend getting your dimensions, value and account structures set now and have planned meeting to discuss potential changes. Soft controls like that I would say are more reasonable and common than hard controls like workflow.

          In my experience dimensions, values and your account structure are pretty static once created and configured. I understand you have some cleanup but it may be worth re-evaluating the process and doing this manually, depending on the amount of data. If you have 4 dimensions with 4 values each, that's 16 things to enter and may not be worth uploading. If you have 10 dimensions with 400 values each, that's definitely worth importing. I would suggest doing a manual cleanup, verify the process for uploading (remember, measure twice and cut once ), put alert rules in place so you at least have some visibility to what is going on and continually re-evaluate your dimensions, values and their usage. You can also suspend and set the date availability of your dimension values ( plus set what company its available on ) so there's lots of functionality there.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    Hi Nathan,

    I have 5 dimensions that were created accidentally through journal uploads by other finance users. They have values too, created from the same load files I imagine but these dimensions are not being used. We have 14 other dimensions being used and some of these have incorrect values also. One of these dimensions has approx 2000 values, about 300 of which are rubbish. This is one of the smaller ones. In total, we have over 250k records spread between these 14 dimensions. Most are unnecessary.

    1. Great! I need to start cleaning them. 

    2. With so many dimensions and values to clean, is there a quicker way?

    3. This is great! True, it is reactive but I would rather have that in place and keep on top of the cleanup instead of getting nasty surprises when I get time to go through and check them bi-monthly. Could you tell me how to set these up, please?

    4. True. Would you know which roles usually have this Dimension creating power, besides the administrator? I'd leave off the workflow creation for now and concentrate on cleaning and alerts for now.

    I am new to my company and a first-time AX user too. Still getting to know their setup and structures. Cleanup of master data is on top of my agenda.

  • Nathan Clouse AX Profile Picture
    Nathan Clouse AX 140 on at

    Hey Satrangi,

            For question 2, there is but it would be a technical effort. One could potentially write a script to assist with this or modify the dimension values form to allow selecting items and deleting them as a group. However, since the ability to delete one, and only one, at a time is there, I recommend using that even if it could be time consuming. That being said, 14,000 is quite a few. If you have a technical person available, simply setting the multiselect property grid "GridContainer" to Yes on from "DimensionValueDetails" does seem to allow me to select multiple values and delete all at once. I did not to any extended testing to verify that everything was cleaned up properly. For questions 3, here is a link to an article from MS (technet.microsoft.com/.../aa497014.aspx). Let me know if that doesn't work. For question 4, off the top of my head, excluding sysadmins, roles that have access to this are AP manager, AR manager, CFO, Cost accountant, accountant, accounting supervisor and accounting manager and there are probably more. However, based on passed experience, chances are it is someone with sysadmin that shouldn't have that level of permissions. My list isn't an exhaustive list and is more than likely not 100% accurate as its been now 2 years since I worked with security in 2012.

  • guk1964 Profile Picture
    guk1964 10,888 on at

    Ludwig in a previous post offered a neat workaround -  just don’t use the unwanted dimensions. Enter a fixed financial blank’ value, in the dimension value at the main account to fix those dimensions that you do not need anymore this will overwrites everything that the user enter.

    AX 2012 R1 and RTN did not allow the ability to fix a financial dimension value for a given main account.

    AX 2012 R2 added the functionality to fix a financial dimension value for a given main account. The key to use fixed financial dimension values in AX 2012 R2 for a given main account is to use the ‘Select the level of main account to display’ option in the Main accounts form. When this is set to ‘Companies’ you can map individual companies and an additional fast tab called Financial dimensions fast tab becomes available. Click the green Plus button to the right of the Companies field , and select the individual company for which to assign a fixed financial dimension value. Expand the Financial dimensions fast tab, and select  the required dimension field and specify ‘Fixed’ and leave the value as blank.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    Thanks Nathan.

    I got the alerts setup but I am not sure if they are working. I did a test by setting up new dimension and new values in an existing dimension but realised that it would probably not send me an alert if the user was me myself!

    I came across one fake dimension that had 1 value. I was able to delete the value however the dimension itself gives me an error: "The dimension exists as a default dimension. You cannot delete dimension XXXX." I have had a look at account structures as well as our other companies set up in the system to see if it is being used elsewhere but it is not. Would you have an idea what else could be causing this issue? The dimension is actually not part of our default structure so it is strange that this error is popping up.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    Hi Magic1949,

    Thankfully these dimensions are not available for usage when entering journals etc. I just want to clean them out! :) I suppose if I am able to get rid of all the values then there is nothing there to select but I would rather keep my dimensions clean.

  • Nathan Clouse AX Profile Picture
    Nathan Clouse AX 140 on at

    Hey Satrangi, you may have to setup the batch job that actually processes the alerts. Here is a techNet article that covers that: technet.microsoft.com/.../aa834433.aspx you can also check your batch jobs to see if any have the name "Due Date Alerts" and "Change Based Alerts" as those are the two batch jobs that process the alerts. Lastly, check in the bottom right of AX for icon that looks like a little bell. Being able to email alerts out may not be fully configured.

    A default dimension is just the financial dimensions associated with an account. For instance, if you had (ledger) main account 4010 with dimensions of division, costCenter and Dept as 01, 22 and IT, respectively, the ledger dimension would be represented in AX as 4010-01-22-IT while the default dimension part of that would be just 01-22-IT. I've never run into that error but that means it is used somewhere in AX, maybe on a customer or vendor, and more than likely not on a transaction. However, it also means its going to be difficult to get rid of. You can suspend that dimension value to prevent it from being used on a transaction but chances are its there for good. You can suspend a value by finding the value and checking "suspended".

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