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Troubleshooting the product release process

The product release process is part of the product setup in Dynamics AX 2012. Every single product must be released to a legal entity before the system allows you to procure, sell, or produce it.

In some cases, the product release process can fail to release products due to inconsistencies or missing setup. In this post, we will take a look at system capabilities that allow you to troubleshoot the product release process and take action to resolve any issues.

Quick overview of the product release process

The product release process allows you to release multiple products and product variants or, in other words, make multiple products available in various legal entities. This action can be executed from various list pages and detail forms.

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If you work with a small number of products, it’s a very quick process to release them to a single legal entity. But in the case of, for example, a new site deployment, it can be a time consuming task to release all products to the new legal entity.

For this scenario, we recommend using a server batch job to execute the product release process in order to avoid extra load on the system during work hours. If issues arise during a batch job execution, the release session concept in Dynamics AX 2012 will help provide you with information about any issues or conflicts. Based on the system reports you can then resolve the issues or conflicts that occurred during the batch job execution.

The release session concept and the release process

The release session is a database persisted object which groups all products that should be released to legal entities. The release session object is automatically created behind the scene when you request to release one or more products.

If all products have been successfully released without any issues, the release session is automatically deleted and no further actions are required for the release product request. However, if issues occurred during the release process, then the release session will remain open with all the individual products that failed during the process. This allows you to troubleshoot the release process, fix the issues and repeat the action without having to select all products and legal entities one more time.

Example

Assume that a product manager must release a new collection of products to a new legal entity. When he executes the release process, various errors are reported by the system. The product manager can now navigate to the most recent release session, troubleshoot the issues and repeat the entire release action from there.

Open product releases list page

All open release sessions can be found under Product Information Management -> Periodic -> Open product releases list page. This list page contains all release sessions where something went wrong. You can filter all sessions by the user ID and release session time stamp to see all the products and product variants that the system could not release to the legal entity.

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You can click the View Infolog button to view details about the issues with the specific product or product variant. This is a great way to figure out what went wrong and why.

Let’s take a look at some issues that commonly occur during the product release process:

· The product already exists in a legal entity.

o This can happen if you release a product for the first time by mistake and then release the product again after having made changes to it. This action will create a conflict and one way to solve the conflict would be to delete the released product from the legal entity, go back to your product definition, make the required changes, and then release the product again.

· A different product already exists with the specified item ID.

o This might happen due to an issue with the number sequence for the item number or because the item number has been defaulted from the product number and by coincidence, another released product exists with the same item number. To solve this issue, you must use another number sequence or rename a product with a different product number value.

· The product variant could not be released

o This usually happens when the inventory dimensions (InventDim) number sequence setup is missing in the legal entity. Make sure that the number sequence is properly set up.

When you have investigated and resolved all issues, you can repeat the release action by clicking the Release product button.

Working with the release session from the code

If you have access to the code, you can also release a series of products without using the user interface. The following code example demonstrates how the release session can be created and how it should be used for release purposes:

 1: static void releaseProductToCurrentLegalEntity(Args _args)

 2: {

 3:     EcoResProductReleaseSessionManager  productReleaseSessionManager;

 4:     EcoResProduct                       product;

 5:     CompanyInfo                         companyInfo;

 6:

 7:     companyInfo = CompanyInfo::findDataArea(curext());

 8:

 9:     product = EcoResProduct::findByDisplayProductNumber('myProduct');

 10:

 11:     ttsBegin;

 12:

 13:     // Create a new release session

 14:     productReleaseSessionManager = EcoResProductReleaseSessionManager::newReleaseSession();

 15:

 16:     // Add a product to the release session

 17:     productReleaseSessionManager.addProduct(product.RecId);

 18:

 19:     // Add a legal entity where tne product should be released to 

 20:     productReleaseSessionManager.addLegalEntityForAllProducts(companyInfo.RecId);

 21:

 22:     // Release all products within the current session to the specified legal entity

 23:     productReleaseSessionManager.execute();

 24:

 25:     ttsCommit;

 26: }

Another approach would be to use the existing Product-Item data management services.

Summary

The product release process is an important concept in Dynamics AX 2012. We hope that the tools and functionality of the system sufficiently and effectively support your business process.