1 September 2014

How to Use Retail Categories and Items in Microsoft Dynamics AX

How to use retail categories and create items faster in Microsoft Dynamics AX

Creating a retail product and item can be a challenge in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. There are a lot of properties possible. Using a great feature in the Retail module, you can create items much faster. This can save you a lot of time and money, and give you more control and better quality.

You can also use this capability in To-Increase Connectivity Studio for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. That can be very useful in integrations to an e-commerce solution like To-Increase Webstore.

How can Retail help to create items?

In the Retail module, we can set up default values per item category. When you select this category, you will get a complete item.

How can we use the Retail categories to create items?

The Retail categories are linked to the product categories. Retail should be enabled to use this. The steps are:

  1. Create the product hierarchy
  2. Enable the product hierarchy for Retail
  3. Set up your default values per company
  4. Create an item

Create a product hierarchy

In the product information management module you can set up the category hierarchies.

How to create a product hierarchy in Dynamics AX with Connectivity Studio

You can set up and group all the categories and attributes.

How to set up and group all categories in Dynamics AX with Connectivity Studio

Enabling the product hierarchy for Retail

To enable a new or existing hierarchy you only need to specify the category hierarchy type for “Retail product hierarchy.” You can only select one hierarchy per type.

How to enable product hierarchy for Retail in Dynamics AX

Set up your default values per company

When you now navigate to the Retail module, you can specify per company all the default values for each category. That means you can set up all the values according to their categories.

How to set up default values per company in the Retail module of Dynamics AX

Create an item

Navigate back to the product information management module and create a new item. When you specify the Retail category, you get all the default values.

How to create an item in Retail category in Dynamics AX

When you confirm the settings the item will be created.

How to create an item in Dynamics AX with Connectivity Studio

Item synchronization using Connectivity Studio

By using Connectivity Studio we can use the same setup to create items. When you create an item, you check if there is a category hierarchy type for Retail. If so, you verify if you have a category linked to the product and use that category to initialize the item with all default values.

How to synchronize items with Connectivity Studio

I hope you find this useful. Feel free to contact us.

Talk to our expert to know more about retail categories

expert
Pieter de Jong
Pieter de Jong,
Pieter de Jong,
Technical Solution Architect

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