Microsoft Dynamics AX 7.0 - Rainier By ShriShail Technologies pvt.ltd

MICROSOFT CONVERGENCE : DYNAMICS AX ROAD MAP AND STRATEGY – MICROSOFT DYNAMICS AX 7.0.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 7.0 ERP Software

Here’s a recording of the Dynamics AX roadmap session held at Convergence 2015 in INDIA.

It’s hard to believe that it was only a little over a year ago that AX 2012 R3 was released followed by AX 2012 R3 CU8 on Azure in November 2014.

As a reminder, AX 2012 R3 and R3 CU8 brought a lot of new functionality, more than average for an interim release. We saw the addition of:

·         Advanced Distribution and Warehouse Management

·         Transportation Management

·         Advanced Demand Forecasting

·         Modern Point-of-Sale (POS) interface

·         Enhanced Servicing Capabilities so clients can minimize code deployment, i.e. choose which hotfixes you want to deploy

·         Reduced friction to deploy dev & test in Azure

From this last release of AX, the following Guiding Principles of AX 7.0 were introduced to carve a path towards the new features that the next release would offer.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF AX 7.0

·         Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more

·         Create more personal computing

·         Reinvent productivity and business processes

·         Build the intelligent cloud

Let’s take a look at what was demonstrated in this important roadmap session.

EXPECTED AX FUNCTIONALITY ENHANCEMENTS

Productivity:

·         Modern, web-based user experience based on HTML5 technology. The client is device-independent and has a panorama view / dashboard and next generation role centres. In addition, it can support mouse or touch screen!

·         User adoption still remains a focus. Data input screens look similar to AX 2012 R3 so users can easily transition after a Dynamics AX upgrade.

·         Hover over task and preview mode reveals underlying data, reducing the number of clicks that are required to view underlying data.

·         Integration of the Windows “Hamburger” navigation pane for ease of navigation on screens with limited real estate. You can add or subtract favorites, view recent screens you have visited, etc.

·         New metadata search experience enables the use of metadata search to find an application screen very quickly (dashboard, navigation pane or Metadata search) without having to navigate menus.

·         Run multiple screens – you can dock windows and use side by side screens. A great feature for those in production who typically run multiple screens, like MRP side by side.

·         Personalization has not been overlooked. Microsoft understands that there is an emotional connection with the application user experience and this can make a huge difference in how much you enjoy work or how much you don’t.

ANALYTICS:

Power Business Intelligence (BI):

·         Data entities will expose an OData (Open Data Protocol) feed and can be consumed by Power BI.

·         Embedded Power BI – drill from one box to transactional information – in memory (Read Real-time Analytics).

Task Guides – AX documentation built on the fly:

·         The old Task Recorder gets reimagined into Task Guides.

·         End-user can now walk through a process end-to-end in a guided fashion.

·         Has annotation capability to provide feedback on a business process. This gives users the ability to add notations as they walk through the guided process.

·         So many uses:

·         Useful for increasing productivity

·         Helps users manage change

·         Use it for testing

·         Use it for training

·         Use it for support – send a Task Guide to Microsoft to ask them to get something working

DEVELOPMENT:

·         Visual Studio is used for development. Classic MorphX and model experience is still available.

·         Microsoft has enabled a WYSIWYG, multi-window environment to aid in developer efficiency. Utilities can work in both the web page and the designer at the same time.

·         Exceptionally rich customization environment.

DATA MANAGEMENT:

Version 7.0 significantly improves the capability to do data load tasks that are common in a heterogeneous environment where you want to have a single version of the truth.

·         Bring in incremental data loads and do name and name pattern matching. This reduces the amount of work that a consultant/business analyst needs to do to import data.

·         Drag and drop field mapping.

·         Data uses staging tables and can be mapped either in a visual or tabular format.

·         View a side-by-side comparison of records in the live system.

·         Bring imported data into forms for preview and validation.

UPGRADING FROM OLDER VERSIONS OF DYNAMICS AX?

If you are interested in upgrading from your current version of Microsoft Dynamics AX to AX 7.0, here are some important details that may help in your decision process:

·         Business logic and Data Model in Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 is the same as in AX 7.0. This will make the transition from AX2012 R3 to AX 7.0 relatively straightforward. AX 7.0 is more about the modern user interface and new tools and less about the underlying business logic and data models.

·         Direct upgrade path from AX 2009 & AX 2012.

·         Support for AX 2009 has been extended to 2018 because Microsoft wants all their customers to be able to upgrade to AX 7.0 at their own pace.

·         Functionality in CU8 will be made available to AX R2

AVAILABILITY OF DYNAMICS AX VERSION 7.0

·         End of 2015 year release.

·         Initial launch will be in the Microsoft Cloud only. This will be followed by an on-premise release.

·         Microsoft is fully committed to support running Dynamics AX in the public or private cloud and on-premise and Hybrid.

·         Reminder as above that the data model and business logic is the same.