Global Address Book

Global Address Book in Microsoft Dynamics® AX 2012

In today’s competitive landscape, it is critical that an organization have a centralized approach to managing information about the external entities with which it does business. With an increasing trend towards consolidation, integration (both vertical and horizontal), and diversification of businesses, it is easy to foresee that an organization’s relationships might metamorphose or evolve with time. Today’s customer might be a future vendor, depending on how their organization’s business model changes.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enhances the global address book, to provide a secure, easy-to-use common repository through which customers can share information about all organizations and people (both external and internal) that are engaged in business with their organization. By internally abstracting the type of party being created, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 generates an extremely agile and adaptable repository for information about parties and the relationships between parties. SET UP AN ORGANIZATION OR PERSON AS A PARTY IN THE GLOBAL ADDRESS BOOK Each person or organization in the global address book is referred to as a party, and all parties store common information, such as name, address, and contact information. Roles that are associated with parties are called party roles and include customer, vendor, prospect (formerly known as business relation), contact, worker, applicant, competitor, and Human Resources (HR) organization units.

Setting up organizations or individuals as parties with roles such as customer, vendor, or prospect has become a more streamlined operation in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. All business entities that are set up as parties possess two sets of attributes:

A set of common attributes, such as address and contact information.

A set of unique attributes that apply to each specific role of the party, for example, vendor or customer.

Internally abstracting these business entities enables Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to store Global address book attributes in a central table and allows them to be shared across legal entities. This strategy enables an organization to reuse the information in different contexts to reduce redundant list page data. The repository allows the customer to perform the following core actions:

Define a customer, vendor, or prospect.

Designate one or more contact persons for each of the business entities defined as a party.

Integrate the contact person (if required) with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 security framework, which is used to confer credentials, privileges, or rights to an individual.

Define relationships between legal entities to allow information to be exchanged between otherwise unrelated departments.

GROUP PARTIES IN AN ADDRESS BOOK Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 introduced the global address book and the concept of Detailed information parties. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 now allows multiple user-defined address books to about an organization categorize parties and to restrict access to their data. An address book can be defined as a collection of parties with whom an organization or team does business. Multiple address books can be beneficial because:

Each address book can be separately set up and secured.

By associating a party with an address book, an organization can keep information modular and organized.

An address book that is defined for a particular team, such as a sales team, can provide a single source for all the information the team needs about a particular customer organization or contact person for that organization.

DETERMINE THE MULTIPLE ROLES OF A PERSON IN AN ORGANIZATION Accessing information about a person from an address book will reveal the roles that the person plays within his or her organization. Accessing information about a person’s organization will yield a list of all the people associated with the organization and their relationship to it. For example, discovering a person’s roles within an organization can be significant to the sales force, who might use this information to build a network of contacts among related organizations.

The roles played by a person in an organization also provide an idea of the influence they might exert within that organization. This information could be used by a purchasing or sales professional to design a negotiation platform and to leverage information (if any) about past sales or supply deals. Therefore, access to shared data could result in the negotiation of better prices or discounts with a vendor.

BALANCE INFORMATION ACCESS WITH SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS Users must tread a fine line when making decisions about how to provide easy access to information while maintaining data security. The security features of address books in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enable the user to make the right choices about securing his or her database of contact information while making the information available to the target audience. The following list describes how Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 balances ease of access with security concerns for particular feature areas: Setting up address books

SECURING ADDRESS BOOKS

Ease of access: An address book can be used to categorize organizations or people that are associated with a team. The address book can also be used as a directory of contact information by (for example) purchasing professionals or the sales force.

Security: After being defined, an address book can be secured to a specific team or to a set of teams. This provision helps limit information access to authorized users only and also helps avoid unintentional misuse. However, address books can be used Securing address outside of their secure boundaries to categorize the parties. books by team

SHARING AND SECURING INFORMATION BY LEGAL ENTITY

Ease of access: Address book records are shared by default across all legal entities of an organization to reduce data redundancy and data entry maintenance.

Security: In cases of competing or independent legal entities, you can create and secure parties so that they are visible strictly by the legal entity to which the user has access.

SECURING ADDRESSES OR CONTACT INFORMATION Ease of access: The global address book stores addresses and contact information (such as phone numbers or email addresses), which are common attributes for most business entities.

Security: For workers and applicants, information that is personal (such as a home phone number or a personal email address) can be marked as “private.” This feature ensures that these details will be visible only to authorized users and to their owners, and not to others in the organization.

SUMMARY In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, the global address book has been enhanced to :

Provide a flexible data model that supports business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) business models.

Allow multiple, user-defined address books.

Reduce database size, data entry time, and data entry maintenance by eliminating redundant data storage.

Provide a holistic view of a person or organization across the enterprise by modeling all parties and their relationships to each other.

Provide options to secure parties.

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like and with familiar Microsoft software, automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship and supply chain processes in a way that helps you drive business success. U.S. and Canada Toll Free 1-888-477-7989 Worldwide +1-701-281-6500 www.microsoft.com/dynamics

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