Dynamics 365 for Operations Technical Conference - Day 1 Keynote Session

Friends,

Below some key points from the Tech Conference - Day 1. Around 110 sessions being delivered in the 3 days, so it's not possible to attend all the sessions. I'm summarising my notes:

Day 1 - Keynote Session by Sri Srinivasan, GM for Dynamics 365 for Operations at Microsoft

110 Sessions Being delivered in this Tech Conference (11 Tracks)

Dynamics 365 for Operation Advantages:

• Purpose Built
• Productive
• Intelligent
• Adaptable

Based on AX2012 R3 CU11

Challenges in ERP Deployments:

• Change
• Quality of Data
• Training
• Business process change

How Dynamics 365 for Operations Speeds up adoption among end users

Dynamics 365 for Operations Features:

• Immersive experience
• Continuous update
• Effective change management, Data Governance, Complete solutions

Customer Stories:

Maersk

• Single instance based in US East
• 7 Global distribution centres
• 5000 Employees
• 6 ISV Solutions
• Entire project implementation in a span of 15 months
• Intercompany processes
• 15000 order lines via EDI
• 550 users live
• No terminal services, direct connection

PEET

• Over 100 entities
• Consolidation
• Increased awareness of costs
• Reduction in reporting cycle timeframes
• Tracking invoices from receipt to payment
• 6 months Development time

Dynamics 365 for Operations - Record time of implementation with one customer - 40 days

What's Coming

• Intelligence Insights
• Productive experiences
• Continuous life
• Business anytime, anywhere

Dynamics 365 RoadMap - https://roadmap.dnamics.com

Dynamics 365 One View App Demo built on top of Common data service

Spring 2017 Release

• Hybrid / On-Premises
• Around June 2017 timeframe,  local support to run in your own datacenter
• Upgrade framework AX 2012 R3
• Extensibility - How to keep customers current and using extensions
• Extensions to configure and customize the applications
• Power BI Content Pack  - drill through into details
• In the spring release, 10 Power BI Dashboards to be released
• Customer Ageing Report in mobile device
• Expense Management Mobile Demo
• Offline capability
• Power BI Content Pack Credit collections
• Preview version of AX 2009 Upgrade

Common Data Service  (A view into Product Insights)

• Ability to customers having visibility to their product life cycle(Design , marketing, seel, manufacturing, distribute, service)
• Brings the data together from disparate data sources - bring data into one common area
• Product Graph - the name of the project for bringing common data services together
• Product Explorer - can take data from different data sources like SAP, CRM, and put together and relate it
• Product Explorer - Filter by Product Attributes
• Preview in late spring 2017

On-Prem

• Cloud, Cloud + Edge, Local Business Data
• Microsoft recommends Cloud as the preferred medium of deployment
• In June, local business data option would be available - disconnected from cloud, Run in your own data center, scenarios where internet connectivity is problem, data sovereignty issue, enterprises who are yet to buy into the concept of cloud.We will not have Power BI, Embedded analytics, machine learning capabilites, product graph, will not be available for on-premise local deployment option
• Deployment for all 3 options is through LCS
• The 3rd deployment option is hybrid - combine power of cloud + immense potential of data centers, Federated instances, each manufacturing instance can run , syncrhronizing data into cloud, no other erp provides this
• Demo on cloud + edge
• The synch happens in the background, Demo to create a sales order in edge and it comes into cloud (master) - Preview in Spring

How to consume ABN (Australian Business Number) or ACN web services from AX 2012 R3

Dear Friends,

Greetings!

Have been super busy with so much to do in so less time!

However, I wanted to take some time and post about my recent experience on how I went integrating ABN Web Service with AX 2012 R3 CU8.

In Australia, we have a concept of ABN and ACN numbers for business registration. ABN is for Australian Business Number and ACN is for Australian Company Number. These registrations are governed by ABR as they are the authority to issue the registration numbers and they maintain this database.

Now, let's get started.

First thing, you would need to go to the ABR site and register to use their webservices.
http://abr.business.gov.au/Webservices.aspx

Once the application is processed which happens within an hour they will e-mail you an authentication GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) which is required to access the ABN Lookup web services. Also with the email, they will send you a pdf which shows you how to access the webservice through various clients like C#, Java, VB6, MS Access etc

Next step, is to open Visual Studio, create a Windows Class Library project and reference the web service. Note, since this is classic web service (.asmx based), so just consume it via the web references node as shown

Web Reference - http://abr.business.gov.au/AbrXmlSearch/AbrXmlSearch.asmx?wsdl

Once this is done, next step is to deploy the Project to AOT (as shown below).

Now, back in AX you should be able to see your deployed project

Now, let's write some code.. Here is a simple job which I have used to pass a valid ACN number and it returns me the organisation name.

Output:

Tip to improve performance while working on Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Demo Virtual Machine

Dear Friends,

Recently, we had an issue where the AX 2012 R3 Demo VM was performing very sluggish. Opening up AX Client or SQL or Office application were taking lot of minutes.

Initially, we tried to stop some services (like Mobile Connector, Retail Services, Sharepoint services etc) but no luck.

Next, we increased the RAM on VM to 64 GB but still no luck!

Finally, after some troubleshooting we found the culprit was SQL Server as by default the Max memory configured on the VM was 2 GB.

We changed it to 16 GB and then all the applications started to perform better. If anyone, facing performance issues on VM, can give the above tip a try! Happy Daxing :)

Tom Moles - How to attract the best talent in a skills short market (Dynamics AX)

Dear Friends,

Here is a well written article by Tom Moles (from TalentWeb) on how to attract the best talent and how to retain them in a short skilled market. This article is written keeping in mind the Dynamics AX market and a good read both for employers and candidates.

Please read the entire article over here http://talentweb.com.au/index.php/news-blog/61-how-to-attract-the-best-talent-in-a-skills-short-market

Resuming after a break....

Dear Friends,

Trust you are doing well! Guess you missed me :)

I was away on holidays for a while now and since last 2 weeks I was not doing well.

I'm back now and will be soon coming up with new posts, there's a lot to be covered, so keep looking out.

Thanks for stopping by and all your support and encouragement.

Happy Dax'ing :)

Merry Xmas!!

Dear Friends,

Wish you and your family A Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year in Advance!!! Keep Daxing.... :)

Join my Movember Team :)

Dear Friends,

I've registered for Movember and pledged to grow a moustache for 30 days to raise funds and awareness for men's health. This year, we honour the great men who have grown before us and, as Movember and Sons, pay respect to the simple truth "Knowledge is Power, Moustache is King."

 

As our forefathers always knew, the moustache is the mark of a man. Today, it is a man's ribbon, a symbol to spark conversation and help change the face of men's health.

 

You can take part either by growing one Dirty Son of a Mo as a Mo Bro, or join as a Mo Sista to help recruit others, share knowledge and support Mo growers.

 

To join my team of Movember moustache merchants go to

https://www.movember.com/au/register/details/team_id/844045

 

If you'd like to find out more about the type of work you'd be helping to fund by supporting Movember, take a look at the Programs We Fund section on the Movember website:

http://au.movember.com/about/funding-overview/

 

 

 

Tip - How to display Administrative Tools in Win 7

Recently, I got lost searching Administrative Tools on one of my Win 7 boxes and here's an useful tip from technet to display it on your Start Menu (Just wondering why MS hide it in first place!)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff700232.aspx

Tip - How to avoid Overriding of SQL Indexes from AX when a Full Synchronization is done

There's this stored procedure written in SQL which retrieves historical order data and displays it on the Commerce Server Website. This SP uses almost 13 tables to retreive the data from (which includes custom and standard AX tables).

We added few indexes from AX to boost performance but in vain as when we run the Query Execution Plan, the Subtree cost of the index still shows more than 80%. SQL Server 2008 suggests new indexes which can be added via SQL to improve the performance of the query. I tried the indexes suggested by SQL and immediately the performance boost can be observed.

After some investigation, I found that the index added by SQL is different from index added via AX as AX doesn't have the capability to add the INCLUDE keyword when we create a new non-clustered index which SQL does as shown in the screenshot below





Here's something more about the include keyword from MSDN


Index with Included Columns
You can extend the functionality of nonclustered indexes by adding nonkey columns to the leaf level of the nonclustered index. By including nonkey columns, you can create nonclustered indexes that cover more queries. This is because the nonkey columns have the following benefits:
•    They can be data types not allowed as index key columns.
•    They are not considered by the Database Engine when calculating the number of index key columns or index key size.
An index with included nonkey columns can significantly improve query performance when all columns in the query are included in the index either as key or nonkey columns. Performance gains are achieved because the query optimizer can locate all the column values within the index; table or clustered index data is not accessed resulting in fewer disk I/O operations.


Issue

Whenever a synchronization is done, AX overwrites the indexes which we put through SQL

Resolution

a. Created the index via AX as a table method

b. Modified the Application Class/dbsynchronize method so that after synchronization it invokes the table method to create index (mentioned above in Step a)

So, by doing this we have the SQL Indexes intact as we are recreating the index once AX finishes it's synchronization thereby avoiding the overwritten part

Wishing you Merry Xmas and A Happy 2011

Wishing you all my blog readers Merry Xmas and A Very Happy 2011.

Dynamics NAV 2009 Application Design Book

Packt Publishing has introduced a new book for Dynamics NAV Application Design.

One can read about the book from this link below https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-dynamics-nav-2009-application-design/book