Installing Management Reporter 2012 for AX2012

In this post I will go through the process of installing Management Reporter 2012 using its own Setup experience. I will also add a Data Mart for Dynamics AX 2012. You know you can install Management Reporter 2012 using Dynamics AX Setup, but you can also install it using the regular MR 2012 Setup. The Dynamics AX Setup experience is a bit easier because it hides some options which the regular installer doesn't. Hence this little blog post.

Installing the Management Reporter Server

Start by downloading, extracting and running Management Reporter Setup.

When the binaries are installed, choose to let the Configuration Console open after pressing Finish.

In this example I will opt for only installing the Application Service and the Process Service. I could select the Dynamics AX Data Mart now, but I'll set it up afterwards to keep this guide a bit simpler.

I don't need the Access Database engine, so I'll ignore this warning.

You need to define a service account for the service and I have already setup and defined an account in the Active Directory for this.

I will create a new database so I need to provide the SQL Server Instance, the name of the database, a passphrase for encrypting the content of the MR database and finally the account that will be automatically added as first admin of the Management Reporter installation.

By default, the Application Service will listen on 4712 by default. I'll stick with the defaults for the sake of everyone's sanity.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee and let it configure.

 When it is done, you have two running services but no configured applications yet. From File menu, choose Configure and run the Configuration wizard.

Choose the proper application, in my example the Dynamics AX 2012 Data Mart.

It will need information on how to connect to the right AOS, so provide the name and port for the AOS, and also the SQL Server instance and database name.

It also wants to know where it can put the Data Mart database. If you're running this wizard in the context of a user that can create the necessary database artifacts you can simply let it do so using Windows authentication.

 When it is done, I recommend restarting both services from the Configuration Console.

You will notice a new task pops up in the Task List asking you to enable the integration.
Before doing so, you need to make sure the Management Reporter 2012 service account has the necessary permissions to Dynamics AX, so the recommended step is to add the service account to AX as a user with System Administrator permissions. Not only will it read out financial data, but also information about companies and users.

When clicking the "Enable Integration" you will be prompted for some credentials. If you user context has sufficient permissions to enable the integration, you can choose Use Windows authentication.

When the integration is enabled, it will immidiately start collecting data from the Dynamics AX database. The next important step is to install the client and apply the Management Reporter license. Otherwise, only two users will be able to play with the reporting.

Installing the client is super easy. The only thing you may need to know is what to put in as server connection for the client.

When you have installed the client, open the designer and open the Tools and Registration to paste in your license key.

Now that was pretty easy and straight forward, wasn't it? :-)

Upgrade Management Reporter 2012 for ERP

So you installed Management Reporter and have it running like expected. And then later down the road you've been asked to apply the latest (cumulative) upgrade. If you, like me, installed Management Reporter using AX2012 Setup, you will notice the Management Reporter upgrade story involves using Management Reporter Setup, and not AX2012 Setup experience.

No problem! This post by Jill Carter on MSDN Blogs explains the highlights, and I will show you some screenshots from the process. Without any hick-ups this upgrade should over in less than an hour, at least the server bits.

First head over to download page and grab the latest setup with the latest updates. You'll find an upgraded version of the documentation from there as well. At the time of writing this post, the latest documentation is from May 2014. Run, extract and run setup.

Upgrade the Server Components

As Jill explains, you need to upgrade the server bits first, so choose the Server install and run through the setup that will upgrade the services for you. After it is complete, let it open the configuration console as recommended. I highly recommend using the same user for upgrading as you used when you installed in the first place. That way the permissions should already be the properly defined and you won't get into trouble.

When the Configuration Console has loaded you will notice in the bottom left hand side the "tasks" necessary to complete for Management Reporter to be ready on the latest updated version.

So click the "Update the Management Reporter database"-text and let it help you upgrade the database schema to the latest version. A dialog will pop up and you should be able to update the schema in the context of your current user. Hit Update and wait.

Next click the final task to make sure the integration to the Dynamics AX transaction database is correctly updated. First you will provide the credentials to the Management Reporter integration user. If you remember when setting this up to begin with, you needed to have a dedicated account for Management Reporter and this account would be injected as a user within AX. Dig up your documentation and provide the credentials.

Secondly it will ask for credentials for updating the Datamart database schema. Using your current user should be sufficient.

After it is complete, start the Processing Service and open the logs for the Data Mart Integration. You may need to wait a couple of minutes and hit refresh just to have a check if things look promising (as in no horrible errors).

Upgrade the Client Components

Next we will upgrade the client bits, and I tend to install them on the same server as the server bits so I can test and see things look like expected before I install client bits on terminal servers or client machines.

Unless you closed the Management Reporter Setup, you can continue just by clicking the Client install and run through that simple upgrade process.

And again, finally open the designer and check the version number and test any reports if that is your swag.

In order to upgrade the clients, you will redo the client upgrade on any necessary client machine or terminal server, but as you just saw it was a quick and easy experience.

The upgrade I just showed you was CU9 which contains a lot of new and improved features. If you installed Management Reporter using AX2012 R2 Setup which came with CU7, you are most likely on Management Reporter CU7 and you should really consider upgrade to the latest version. Obviosuly, AX2012 CU is not the same as Management Reporter CU - but you knew that already.

Adding users in Management Reporter from AX2012 R2

I have been getting some requests from blog readers on how users are added in Management Reporter. If you are on AX2012 R2 with CU7 and onwards the users are collected directly from AX by the service itself. This means that if you attempt to create the users from Management Reporter, the MR client (Report Designer) will stop you.

Management Reporter comes with 2 users and a limited license. So the very first thing you need to do is load the license. You will find the license on VOICE where you find the license for Dynamics AX. Load the license and observe the number of users granted. Management Reporter has four types of users: Viewer, Designer, Generator and Administrator. The account installing will become administrator immidately, and as soon as the service starts it will start collecting users from AX.

What typically happens is that you'll get your own user in right away, and then the two users given by the demo license. You then load the license and then the service adds the remaining users.

If you still don't see any users, it is most likely due to one of these two:

1. No users have the correct roles in AX
2. An error

The overview of roles is in the Whitepaper "Management Reporter Integration Guide for Microsoft Dynamics AX (DynAXDataProvInstGuide_ENUS)". But since you're reading here, I'll list the current ones:

Designer: Accounting manager, Accounting Supervisor. (LedgerBalanceSheetDimMaintain)
Generator: Accountant, Accounting manager, Accounting supervisor, Chief executive officer, Chief financial officer, Compliance manager, Financial controller (LedgerFinancialJournalBGenerate / LedgerBalanceSheetDimPrintGenerate)
Administrator: Security Administrator (SysSecSecurityMaintain)
Viewer: No roles but there is a privilege. Create your own role or edit one of the existing ones if you need this MR role. (LedgerViewFinancialStatement)

As for error, the only problem I've experienced so far is having AX users who were removed from Active Directory. The service will simply stop collecting users as soon as it hits a user in AD which it cannot find in Active Directory. Personally, I would prefer if the service skipped inactive users. In one of my environment I had a handful of users who were deleted from AD, and these users prevented the service from collecting all the users.

I hope this helps. :-)

Installation of Management Reporter 2012 for AX 2012

This post will take you through the basic steps of installing, configuring and a basic test of Management Reporter 2012 for AX 2012. This tool is now easily available after AX 2012 R2 CU7 as part of the Dynamics AX Setup and the tools has also been translated and made available for multiple languages.

The Reporting tool has a lot of features and Microsoft has release several videos to cover some of the functionality. Technet also describes in detail how to install and setup this tool, and you can also download a comprehensive set of whitepapers and documents covering a lot of ground for this tool.

For the sake of simplicity, I will run you through the setup with some screen shots. I am assuming you're the tech guy which has been given the task by the financial consultant to get this tool installed as soon as possible.
As with all UI, there might be minor changes in the upcoming versions.

The guide will be in three sections:

1. Installing the Server components
2. Installing the Client components
3. Testing!

Before you begin you should have prepared a new domain user which will be used by the service to connect and collect data from AX. I will assume you have full access to the AOS and SQL Server and that you are on AX2012 R2 with CU7 (or higher). Needless to say, but you can obviously do all the three steps above on the same machine - if that is your swag.

Estimated installation time? We should be done within an hour. :-)

1. Installing the Server Components

Run AXSetup and choose to install "Management Reporter"

Type in the details for the AOS you want to the Management Reporter Service to connect to. This is neat if you want to diversify what AOS you want to handle any load.

Select the SQL Server Instance and Database holding the business data. In my example setup threw an error before I was able to select an actual server running a SQL Server Instance. Maybe they'll fix that in some update.  

Enter the credentials for the service account which the Management Reporter Service will run as. I chose to use the same service account as the AOS.

Type in some additional details for the Management Reporter Service. Default port is 4712. The first database entry points to the configuration database. The second to the data mart database, which will hold report data. I just added a suffix so I can test installing multiple instances later on. 

Finally type in the credentials for the domain user which will be used to connect to AX and collect data. Either let the installer set it up or choose an existing AX User ID.

Done!

Before we continue, let us check some things. You should have a new shortcut named "Configuration Console" on the Start menu. Open the Console, locate  "Data Mart Integration" and hit Refresh. Observe that things look promising. It might take a few minutes before data has been collected fully to the Data Mart Database. 

Oh, and if you wonder how that link from AX works, you should also have an entry in LedgerParameters.ManagementReportUrl for the company that has an active integration. Setup should have added that. If not, you will have to do some manual steps from this Configuration Console, but that is not the scope of this post.

2. Installing the Client Components

Run AXSetup and chose to install "Management Reporter Report Designer". This will install both the Designer and the Viewer. You can install these on the terminal server if that fits your requirements. 

Done!

3. Testing!

Let us do some testing now that we have things installed!

The Designer

First, let's test the Designer. Locate the shortcut "Report Designer" under the Start menu. 

Enter the url to the server and port where the Management Reporter is running and connect. This is a one time per user per machine thing (as far as I know).

Select a company and hit the "Set As Default".

Select the first report and hit "Generate" on the toolbar.

Observe while the report is generated. Let it complete and wait for the report to be launched in a new window.

And the report should open. Yea, I hid some of the numbers from my demo.

The Viewer

Now for the Viewer. Locate the shortcut "Report Viewer" under the Start menu.

This tool might also need to have its connection properly set. The setting is under Tools, Connection.

Double click the generated report located in the Report Library and observe it loads an integrated view of the report.

And that is it. Now tell me, did it take you more than an hour to get this up? Next up is to inform the financial consultants that you're done and they can start hammering the tool for awesome reports. 

Final note

Have someone with access to the customer license (VOICE) download the license for the Management Reporter. It is its own license file, and you only have to copy+paste its content into the Registration form under Tools. If you don't do this step, you are limited to less than a handful of users, which is fine for testing, but not the real deal.

Also, don't bother to add users manually. These will be populated from AX dependent on what users have access to what. This is all documented in the Installation Guide for the AX provider.

Data are being held up to date by using SQL Server Change Tracking. If you however notice data not being refreshed and updated properly, you will find steps to resolve this in the already mentioned guide.

I hope this little guide helped you get going with Management Reporter 2012 for Dynamics AX 2012 R2 (CU7 and upwards). There are plenty of guides out for both installing, configuring and using this Reporting tool - I just felt like making one myself as well.