Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3: How Manufacturers Can Use Sales Order Events and Holds

There are two interesting functional areas in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 that have flown in under the radar in the manufacturing industry because they are officially labeled as part of Retail and the "Call Center" capabilities. The ability to log and monitor sales order events and to create sales order holds can greatly improve a manufacturer's process efficiency, and even though they were released for other purposes, MTO/ETO manufacturing companies can find value in using them "as-is". The value of these features also helps make the case to extend the sales order hold even further for production purposes.

To enable these features, let's first check the license configuration. The two features discussed in this article do not have their own license key, they are part of the "feature set", so make sure the Retail  - Full feature set is checked. The rest of retail features, including the call center, can be switched off without losing Order events and Order holds.

License configuration

Sales Order events

In an ERP system, few transactions are as scrutinized as sales orders, which makes the requirement of a sales order change history in manufacturing scenarios rather unsurprising. We have heard this requirement regularly over the years and until now we could only answer "use database logging". But we all know that ...