The Reservation hierarchy in Dynamics AX is the thing that enables two-level inventory reservation. Essentially, we get to choose if we want to reserve inventory at Batch and/or Serial level, or not. Once set, changing a Reservation hierarchy has been particularly difficult, especially because often this is being done in combination with a Tracking Dimension Group change.
I knew for an upcoming project that I was going to need to change Items that were set as Batch-only to become Batch & Serial enabled. I had already dabbled with it, and found that you hit a catch-22; you can’t set a serial-enabled Tracking Dimension Group if your item has a Reservation hierarchy which does not have Serial in it…. and, well, the periodic job that exists for changing an item’s Reservation hierarchy did not seem particularly interested to do that for item’s which already have a Reservation hierarchy. (Rather, it worked for items which did not. This might be fine if you’re enabling warehouse management functionality in an environment for the first time, but was no good for me).
It was whilst reviewing a list of recently released hotfixes (as I’m sure you all do) that I spotted KB4022327: ‘You cannot change Tracking dimension group (and Reservation hierarchy) for WHS enabled items’. It’s like it was written for me; how did they know! Although it was released in May, I only just got round to checking it out.
After installing it, I rushed to change the Tracking dimension group of one of my items, and find I am presented with an updated error message:
‘You can change the tracking dimension group and reservation hierarchy simultaneously by using the ‘Change tracking dimension group for items’ periodic task’
Change both the Tracking Dimension Group and the Reservation hierarchy at the same time? You spoil me! But where is this periodic task? It’s been added in the Warehouse module (alongside the ‘Change item hierarchy’ job), and you’ll now also find both of these jobs in the Product Information Management module:
The ‘Change tracking dimension group for items’ periodic job.
Opening the job reveals this shiny new dialogue:
There are some things that you need to do in preparation for running this job. Things that you would have to do anyway when you change a significant property of a Tracking Dimension Group….
- You need to make sure that the Products (which are linked to your Released products) do not have a Tracking Dimension Group set. If they do, you can just remove it from the Product.
- You’re going to need to remove all inventory for the items. After doing that, you might think about doing an Inventory close (and therefore, when you do this for real, you might need to do it at a period end).
- The job will error if you have any open reservations. When you removed all inventory of the items, you would needed to remove all reservations anyway.
- The job will error if you have any open receipt transactions. It’s odd that I’m allowed to make this change if I have open sales orders, but not if I have open purchase orders. The very first link I posted at the top of this post says, in relation to changing a Reservation hierarchy, ‘all items must be purchased or sold’. If you decide to leave open sales orders, I suggest that you test that they can still be released/picked afterwards.
After doing these things, the job worked for me on my test items. One less headache to worry about.
