Upgrading to Management Reporter CU15

Posted on: January 13, 2017 | By: Jarrod Kraemer | Microsoft Dynamics AX/365

Authored by: Craig Leska – Senior Technical Consultant

Management Reporter 2012 CU15 has been out quite some time now and this version included some fixes and enhancements over previous versions. In addition to this CU, there have been four hotfixes released.

The enhancements to CU 15 are:

·  Improved responsiveness in the Web Viewer.

·  A search bar has been added to search through the current level of the report. In-browser search functions may not always return all results because of the performance changes to improve responsiveness.

·  Printing in the Web Viewer through XPS download.

·  Add Turkish (tr-tr) localization.

·  Additional fixes for product defects.

·  PowerShell module to enable reset of data mart (My favorite feature).

 

Hotfix changes include the following:

HotFix 1

·  Change Tracking only gets enabled on the first Microsoft Dynamics GP company database

·  CU15 Issue – Data is missing on reports when using wildcards or ranges

 

HotFix 2

·  Management Reporter CU15 RegF for Brazil – 2.12.15000.56. Hotfix 378213 will be visible in add/remove programs.

·  Specific to Brazil localizations only

 

HotFix 3

·  Dimension filter uses an OR condition instead of AND condition when two or more dimensions are specified in link to financial dimensions

·  Dimension filter uses an OR condition instead of AND condition when using a dimension value that does not exist

·  GP is performing a count query before actual query, doubling the query cost with data mart

·  GP Fact integration slow when posting large Analytical Accounting batches with data mart

·  GP data validation not working with GP 2016

·  GP integration fails with GP 2016 Dexterity shared components

·  GP Yes/No dimensions for Analytical Accounting not integrating correctly with data mart

 

HotFix 4

·  Integration fails when collation is different between tempdb and AX database

·  CU15 Regression: web viewer – autotext date header not using the regional settings of the service user

·  AX DM Companies to Company Integration query slow for integrations with a large number of security roles configured in AX

·  Report fails when using a Dimension Value Set in the tree based on MainAccount

 

Remember that hotfixes are cumulative so installing Hotfix 4 will apply all prior fixes. 

After upgrading several clients to CU15 I thought I would share my experience on this along with rebuilding the data mart using power shell, a very cool feature that I recently used.

Some observations with this release – .NET 4.6 framework needs to be applied to the MR server and client workstations and servers.  This can be installed through the MR Setup program. PowerShell 3.0 is also required. Microsoft Access Database Engine x64 is also required.  Another requirement is that the MR database needs to run on SQL 2012 or greater. If you are running a previous version, you will need to update before even starting to upgrade Management Reporter. This is specific to Management Reporter only and you do not need to upgrade your ERP database. I find the error message amusing, “Data mart connection information: The Management Reporter data mart database requires SQL server 2008 (11.0.2100.60) or later. The version of the specified server is 10.50.2550.0.”

Please be aware that a reboot is required during the installation of these components so you may want to schedule this during a maintenance window.

The upgrade process is fairly straightforward and no different than previous versions. Remember to always back up the Management Reporter and Management Reporter Data Mart databases and don’t forget to export the building block groups.  We don’t want Murphy to show up unannounced.

One annoying gotcha- exporting the building block groups on Management Reporter versions prior to CU13 is that the Report Designer may crash, this is due to a Windows KB. The workaround is NOT to use the mouse and tab your way through the Building Block export process. Remember where you put the Building Block .tdbx file.

Rebuilding the data mart through the power shell is the coolest feature on this release, my only complaint is that it only supports SQL authentication.

 

Using PowerShell to Rebuild the Data Mart

To use PowerShell to rebuild the Data Mart, simply start the Windows PowerShell in Administration mode and CD to ‘C:Program FilesMicrosoft Dynamics ERPManagement Reporter2.1serverconsole’ directory.

Load the MR module by running this command: ‘Import-Module .Microsoft.Dynamics.Performance.Deployment.Commands.Integration.dl’

You can use the Get-Help command in PowerShell to see all that is available using this method. The command is: ‘Get-Help Reset-DatamartIntegration -Full.’ The output is shown in Figure 1 below.

Next we need to build our Powershell script.

Reset-DatamartIntegration -Reason BADDATA -ReasonDetail “Restored database from backup”

-DatamartDatabaseServer [MRServer] -DatamartDatabaseName [ManagementReporterDM name]

-MRDatabaseServer [MRServer] -MRDatabaseName [ManagementReporter database]

Change the [parameters] specific to your environment and execute the script. 

Enter the above to the PowerShell window and type the credentials when prompted and confirm. That’s all there is to it. The rebuilding will take anywhere between 10 minutes to hours depending upon your database size. Be sure to look in the Configuration Console to verify integration is running along and to review any error messages.

Note: You can add the credentials to the script as well, but I DO NOT like to keeping credentials in a text file, it takes less than a minute to manually enter the credentials when prompted in PowerShell. You can see how this is done in figure 2 below.

 

Figure 1.

 

Figure 2

 

It is also a good idea to set up notifications in the Configuration Console. Figure 3 below. If you are unsure of your SMTP server name, you can always look in the Dynamics AX email parameters for this value. Additional configuration may be required on the SMTP side.

 

Figure 3

 

Let us know if you have any questions regarding Management Reporter or the upgrade process.  For additional information please feel free to reach out to us at info@loganconsulting.com or (312) 345-8817. 

All the best! 
Logan Consulting 
www.loganconsulting.com

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