CU 10 for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Available: What’s New?

In case you missed it, Microsoft last week released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU10 for download on Lifecycle Services, CustomerSource and PartnerSource.

There appears to be no overarching theme to CU10, other than some much-in-demand, real-world utilities from warehouses, shop floors and retail stores (where mobile point-of-sale or MPOS looms large), and some nuts-and-bolts country-specific regulatory requirements.

Following is a summation. According to the What’s New document, most changes were made in the areas of:

• Warehouse management
• Transportation management
• Retail
• New regulatory features

Warehouse management enhancements

Among the WMS-centric enhancements are:

• Improvements to replenishment. Among other enhancements, wave demand replenishment now recognizes existing min/max replenishment work as supply when evaluating if it should create new replenishment work. Also, cancelling wave based replenishment work will now unblock sales order work automatically.
• Improvements when viewing inventory on hand. A new field called Available physical on exact dimensions has been added to the On hand by location form. This field shows the available physical quantity for all the dimensions displayed on the screen. Also, a new clean up job has been added under Inventory management > Periodic > Clean up > Warehouse management on-hand entries cleanup. This job will delete records in the InventSum and WHSInventReserve tables for closed on-hand entries.
• Enhanced serial number functionalities. Items with a tracking dimension using serial numbers in the sales process can now be used with warehouse management processes. Further, it is now possible to validate sales serials using the mobile device as well as the ability to indicate unreadable serial numbers. You can also enter sales serial numbers using the pack station and for sales order returns.
• Integration to manufacturing. Picking only the ordered quantity from license plate controlled locations during raw material picking is now possible. Also, you can now maintain what policy to use for raw material picking on an item level. It is also possible to switch the issue status between ‘Picked’ and ‘Reserved physical’.

During ‘report as finished’ and put away it is now possible to change inventory status on the mobile device.

Finally, it is now possible to overproduce with back-flushing when using a scrap factor on the Bill of Materials line.

• Integration to project. Among numerous new capabilities, it is now possible to use warehouse management processes items together with purchase, production and sales orders linked to projects. Further, you can register inbound purchase orders via the mobile device, which will synchronize the project issue transactions.
• Improvements to inbound processes. Chief among the updates, the behavior of the mobile device menu item with the work creation process set to License plate receiving has changed. It will now only register the arrival of a purchase order and create put away work. It will leave the created work in an open state. If you want to use the old process, where the put away work was also conducted at that point in time, use a mobile device menu item with work creation process set to License plate receiving and put away.
• Improvements to outbound processes. Over picking using the mobile device has been enabled during sales and transfer order picking work. Over picking will only be possible if there is enough inventory available at the current pick location and if it is not already allocated to other work. Also true, during picking on the mobile device, you can now use the Full button any time during picking to indicate that you cannot pick any more lines.
• Improvements to work templates. A new section of parameters has been added to the Work template form called Work header maximums. They can be used to split a work header when the sum of work lines exceeds the quantity specified.

Transportation Management Enhancements

• Create scheduled routes. Scheduled routes can now be generated from a route plan, where the segments of the scheduled route correspond to the hub configuration associated with the route plan. A batch job is used to create the scheduled routes depending on date range, particular days of the week and a load template.
• Improvements to auto-release to warehouse process. When using the auto-release to warehouse process it is now possible to consolidate multiple transfer orders based on To warehouse and From warehouse into the same shipment.
• Integration to project. It is now possible to plan transportation for purchase and sales orders linked to projects. It is possible to access the load planning workbench from the item requirements screen.

Retail Enhancements

• Global refund checks are not supported and have been removed. Global refund tab on the Register form and the “Global refund check” report on the Retail store transactions and Online store transactions forms have been removed.
• Show variant sales price in Point of sale (POS) instead of base price. Variant specific sales price is shown when a product variant is selected during product search or inventory lookup in POS.
• Make Infocode groups available for selection in open drawer store operation under AX functionality profile. This enhancement lets user select Infocode groups in open drawer store operation under AX functionality profile.
• Expose Gift Card functionality for customization. Retail POS SDK now allows for customization of the item types that are allowed for return.
• Make RetailProxy project as part of the RetailSDK. If the primary address on customer is marked as private address, the sales order created for a customer with this private address cannot be picked up at the retail store.
• Print Gift Receipts in Modern point of sale (MPOS). Added gift receipt feature at MPOS for a. Sales Transactions and b. Show journal, both Gift receipt preview and print.
• Enable Lookup and search customer through real-time-service. The changes in the hotfix enable look up of another store’s customers using real-time service.
• POS performance improvement when scanning multiple products with overlapping multi-item discounts. Introduced alternative algorithm for calculating discounts, which is enforced if predefined max number of calculations steps/loops is exceeded. In this case, point of sale will switch to the marginal value algorithm, which does not guarantee the best discount but provides much better performance characteristics. This feature is configurable in Retail Parameters.
• Enable Extended Login registration in MPOS. This fix adds the extended logon operation in MPOS. This operation provides an interface that you can use to enroll or remove workers in extended logon using peripherals. Supported peripherals include barcode scanners and magnetic strip readers.
• Installation of MPOS supported on WIN 10 Long Term Service Branch. Retail MPOS installation was not supported on the Windows 10 Long Term Service Branch. With this hotfix Microsoft has have added this support extending the supported operating systems for MPOS to the following:
  • a. Windows 8.1 Update 1- Server
  • b. Windows 10- Windows 10 Long Term Service Branch

Country-specific Updates

• Austria: The Half year convention on additional acquisitions parameter can now be set up in the depreciation profile.
• Brazil:
  • A new tax statement for fiscal books, “SPED ECF” (block 0, J and K), is now available.
  • New feature allows you to generate the PIS and COFINS tax assessment for Non-cumulative and Both regimes.
  • New feature enables the following compliance: PAF-ECF ER v2.02 certification Presales Sales return Linked NF-e in EPOS.
• India: IN_RegF_Additional depreciation as per Income tax act; changes in the hotfix ensure that you can calculate special depreciation, beyond the year of acquisition.
• Italy:
  • Split payment, introduced by Stability Law 2015, transfers obligation of tax payment to public authorities who are obliged to pay only taxable base to supplier.
  • New feature enables changes for the declaration IVA 2015 according to the requirements defined by Italian tax authorities for 2015.
  • Hotfix enables the latest Modello 770 2015 format changes.
• Malaysia: Malaysia GST enhancement on GAF, project credit note and debit note.
• Mexico: Electronic ledger accounting report – Series field included into Purchase invoice transactions to generate Journal XML file.
• Norway: NO – DCR – Project invoice improvement to comply with EHF e-invoices – AX 2012 R3.
• Russia:
  • RU-RegF – Social allowances for foreign workers.
  • RU – LocGap – Change_Prepayments factures requires the information about payment order in sales\purchases books.
  • RU – RegF – Changes in RSV-1 report for Pension fund.
  • The Cash Flow Management (CFM) functionality will provide customers with the ability to monitor the flow of cash/liquidity movement across companies and cash positions, and prevent a corporate cash shortage in good time.
  • RU – RegF – VAT operation code extension AX2012 R3. Lawmakers had changed the list of operation codes during the year 2015, which is why there is a need to change the codes in Facture journals and Sales or Purchases books created in the first quarter 2015.
  • RU – cDCR – 15th column in purchases book.
  • RU – LocGap – New electronic formats for Facture journal and Sales \ Purchases books are required.
  • RU – LocGap – Sick list calculation – there is no possibility to change temporary work incapacity type within a single insured event.
  • RU – DCR – Uptake of new implementation of Product receipt reliving scenario (Correspondence & Physical storno).
  • RU – RegF – Changes 4-FSS report (number of insured employees).

As was the case for CU9, the application version will show a different number of: 6.3.3000.110 if you apply CU10 to an existing install of Ax2012 R3. Using a slipstream process as detailed in the Installation guide will result in the single full model applied for CU10 with build number 6.3.3000.111.

To learn about known issues in cumulative update 10, log into LCS by using CustomerSource or PartnerSource account. Then, in the Issue search box, enter “CU10 known issue” as the query for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3.