[fusion_builder_container background_color=”” background_image=”” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding_top=”20″ padding_bottom=”20″ padding_left=”” padding_right=”” hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” menu_anchor=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none” last=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all”][fusion_youtube id=”Vy3QdNM0TYg?list=PLOgOmXCGOFC7alBIaF0iKCp9l56d3-Kmb” width=”600″ height=”350″ autoplay=”no” api_params=”” class=”” /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible” margin_top=”20px” margin_bottom=”” background_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0)”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none” last=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all”][fusion_separator style_type=”none” sep_color=”” border_size=”” icon=”” icon_circle=”” icon_circle_color=”” width=”” alignment=”center” class=”” id=”” /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container background_color=”” background_image=”” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding_top=”20″ padding_bottom=”20″ padding_left=”” padding_right=”” hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” menu_anchor=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none” last=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all”][fusion_title size=”2″ content_align=”left” style_type=”default” sep_color=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” class=”” id=””]”Quick Look – The New Dynamics AX Task Recorder[/fusion_title][fusion_text]Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of “Quick Look The New Dynamics AX. My name is Jeremy Centner, and I’m a pre-sales architect for Sikich, a large professional services firm based outside of Chicago, Illinois. In this edition of “Quick Look” we’ll be covering the ‘Task Recorder,’ and how you can leverage this powerful tool to overcome several very common challenges businesses face when implementing enterprise software.
About Sikich
Before we get to the task recorder, here’s a bit of information about my employer Sikich. The firm occupies several segments of professional services, including Technology, Advisory, Accounting, and Investment Banking services. We’ve been in business for over 30 years and currently have over 700 employees. Over the past several years, Sikich has received a variety of awards for being a great place to work, a top regional accounting firm, and a top technology solutions provider.
Enterprise Software Implementation Challenges
When an organization decides to implement a new enterprise software, several challenges typically accompany the overall project. Throughout a successful project lifecycle, organizations will have to define standard operating procedures, efficiently train new users and generate detailed business process documentation. With the new task reporter functionality, Microsoft has engineered the perfect tool to overcome many of these common challenges.
The task recorder has been rebuilt, focused on responsiveness and productivity. The task recorder is a tool that will record and track all clicks, key strokes, and processes that a user performs. Throughout this presentation, will cover how to use the new task recorder, as well as how you can leverage the tool to create efficiencies across your organization.
Task Recorder Demo
We start the demo portion of today’s presentation by logging into lifecycle services, which is also known as LCS. LCS is a Microsoft Azure based collaboration portal that provides a one-stop shop. Within LCS you can manage the life cycle of the Dynamics implementation, deploy multiple Dynamics AX environments, create and store business process libraries and so much more.
Let’s take a look at the business process modeling tool where you can create and store libraries of all your business processes. Here we have an organized catalog of all the business processes for the organization. Designing and creating new entries is a breeze. Once you’re in edit mode, just drag and drop the new business process icon into the category or subcategory of your choosing. You can then number and or name the task to match the process you’re going to create. For example, I will create a task recording on how to create a prospect. Once you’ve entered a name and description, click ‘save text’ and the catalog is updated.
Now, let’s log in to the new Dynamics AX and use the task recorder to record the steps of creating a new prospect in the system. Microsoft has greatly enhanced this tool in many ways, starting with the ability to update and change the steps of previous recordings on the fly. Instead of having to re-record the entire process, by recording these steps you are accomplishing several things at once. The recording will serve as a standardized business process user training documentation, outlining the exact steps your users should follow and personalizing your own user help experience, which you will see in just a bit.
As I progress through the steps and enter information into the data fields, you can see the system is actually recording my actions in real time. There are some noticeable improvements in this form as well, with the ability to edit and delete steps throughout your recording process. Once you’ve completed the steps in your process, click the ‘Stop’ button to end the recording.
From this point, you have several options as to what to do with the recording. You can save the recording locally, save it back directly to lifecycle services, or you can generate a Word document with the steps outlined, which can be leveraged into user training guides.
Now that you’ve seen how to generate a Word document, let’s save the recording to the business process library on the LCS portal. Once the library loads, you can see the categories and subcategories generated in LCS. Just click the node on the process you created earlier so they will be linked. Now that the recording is saved and stored, it can be accessed and leveraged within the AX user Help Experience.
AX Help Experience is a combination of resources available to users within Dynamics AX. Health Experience includes both tasks, recordings, and access to the AX wiki for online research and support. The user simply enters some key search terms and the Help Experience will find the related task guides and wiki links. The steps from your recording can be displayed in the side pane for reference, or played as a task guide.
Task guides are interactive experience where the system guides the user through the steps in the previous recorded process. When a task guide is initiated, the user is guided by action messages and prompts so there’s no guessing as to what the next steps are. This interactive experience keeps your users engaged and excited about the task at hand. Task guides are an extremely powerful tool where users can actually learn new processes on their own. You imagine having an ERP system that is capable of training your users for you.
Now that you understand task guides and how to leverage them, let’s take a look back at lifecycle services and see how the update looks on the back end, within the business process library. Once you’ve located your process node, you will notice the system has performed several updates. The system has linked the recording from Dynamics AX to the LCS process node, and also generated a corresponding business process map indicated by the flow chart icon here. The process map is generated into a Visio-like canvas, displaying steps in the process, along with whom is responsible. Responsibility is indicated by the swim lane along the left side. LCS also stores the detailed process steps of the navigation pass in the pane on the right side.
Summary
Throughout this presentation we’ve seen how to use the task reporter, leverage the task guides and organize all of your business processes in a centralized library. If used effectively, the task recorder can help your organization overcome several very common challenges listed here.
If you have any questions about this presentation, please feel free to email me at the following address. Thanks for your time and have a great day![/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
