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Monday, March 7, 2011

Review On Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Administration Book

As promised, I have come up with my review on Dynamics AX 2009 Administration Book Sorry for the delay as was tied up here with project commitments.

Introduction

This book is an excellent resource for Dynamics AX Administrators to install/configure Dynamics AX 2009 components into a company's environment topology.

The best thing I like about this book is it has covered the complex topics of installation and configuration of AX Components in a simple and lucid manner with screenshots wherever applicable so that any layman who follows the steps with screenshots can do the installation/setup without much of a learning curve. Also, the chapters are arranged in a logical manner.

Highlights

a. Cover Image, It's really an eye catcher for me :-)

b. Hardware Sizing - Usually you don't across information on sizing so easily over the web. This is very critical part of the project when you plan an implementation. The author is aware of this aspect and has provided good information on the capacity planning and different topologies.

c. Installation of Dynamics AX Base Components. In this chapter, there's an interesting Section in Page 50 on granting the execute permissions on 2 stored procedures. I had stumbled on this issue sometimes back while manually restoring an AX Database and here's my experience on that
Object Server 01 Internal Error
Good to see the book covering this part.

 d. Enterprise Portal Setup and covering in depth through Sharepoint Central Administration (With screenshots) showing the different steps for configuring the web application in Sharepoint. Also, the book covers Configuring and Deploying Enterprise Portal in Sharepoint NLB forms.

 e. There's a dedicated section on configuring Kerberos authentication with respect to setup of Enterprise Portal, Role Centers, SSAS reports and SSRS. Usually one never comes across this information in any of Dynamics training materials which exists. The author has put his efforts in showing the configuration
involved in Kerberos Authentication. Good job here.

f. Setting up and Configuring Workflow and AIF Components (Bindings, Authentication, Security covered).


g. There's section on User Profiles and Security Permissions, Alerts and Notifications

h. Good to see the author put here screenshots of setting up Enterprise Portal in Sharepoint 2010

i. A separate topic for Backup of Application and Database is covered

j. Automatic Processing of SSAS Cubes



WishList - Things which I would have liked to see the book mention

i. AIF Load balancing (IIS) - How to Scale AIF

ii. Would have liked to see the book mention about Role Center Migration (maybe in appendix section or somewhere) Troubleshooting Dynamics AX Role Center Migration

iii.  There's a chapter for Data Migration, It covers Excel migration, I would also have liked to see in the book more real time complex scenarios involving data migration from different data sources like ODBC and OLEDB Sources, Customizing SSIS Packages etc. Also, it would have been nice if the book had covered topics on Archiving and Data Purging

iv. There should have been a section or chapter detailing about Dynamics AX Build and Deployment using Team Foundation Server (More About TFS Administration, Adding Users, Providing permissions, Branching and Release Procedures)

v. Also, there should have been a chapter or section talking about SQL Performance Tuning - SQL Performance Tuning


Overall, I rate this book high (4/5) as this covers most of the day to day tasks undertaken by an AX Administrator and going further with AX 2012 (Which is the first leap of Dynamics AX moving towards Tier1 ERP Solutions competing with SAP and Oracle Apps), I see more specialized positions opening up in AX for Administrators and a book such as this will always be handy! Good work with this book overall and would be excited to see the next version of this book for 2012.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Can Microsoft Compete with SAP and Oracle’s Mid-Market Offerings


This is another interview in the series of interviews conducted by Derek Singleton where Guy Weismantel, Microsoft’s Director of ERP Marketing, talks about the changing competitive dynamics for “two-tier” ERP opportunities.

Guy explains how SAP and Oracle’s introduction of mid-market offerings has created new opportunities for Microsoft in these large, distributed accounts.

You can see the video here..

http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/can-microsoft-compete-with-sap-and-oracle%E2%80%99s-mid-market-offerings-microsoft-executive-interview-1022811/

There was another interview which I posted some weeks back here http://daxdilip.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-can.html





Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Question - How to Scale out AIF WebServices via Load Balancer

We have a load-balanced environment where we have 6 AOSServers in a clustered environment each hosting AIF Webservices on IIS.


The Load Balancer is basically a virtual IP which routes the requests to the 6 AOS Servers depending on the load. Now, when we try to consume the AIF Services hosted on the 6 boxes through the Load Balancer, the request doesn't go through, but when we try to consume the AIF Services directly from one of the 6 boxes, it works fine.


How do we make the request work through the load balancer? Anyone has any ideas or experienced this before, Please post your comments. Thanks.

P.S - Googled it, and this link at the end talks about the inherent limitation which AIF WebSercvice has as it has 1:1 relationship with the IIS website http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/32946372/aif-web-services-ax2009--scaling-out.aspx

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 – Can Microsoft’s Largest ERP Release Take on SAP

This morning I got an email from Derek Singleton, ERP Analyst from Software Advice requesting me to publish this video interview on my blog.

The CEO of Software Advice interviewed Microsoft’s Director of ERP Marketing, Guy Weismantel and he talks about the latest updates to the Dynamics ERP product line.

Over the next two weeks, 7 videos, would be published each centered on one question about Dynamics ERP offerings.






 “What’s new in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012?” http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-can-microsoft%E2%80%99s-largest-erp-release-take-on-sap-1022111/.






In brief, this video talks about :

* 2012 one of the Biggest Release of Dynamics AX ERP Product Line
* 1200+ New Features
* Lot of new functionality
* New way to use Business Apps
* General Availability is Q3 2011



Watch out for the next footage/video which talks about: “Can Microsoft Dynamics ERP move to the cloud?”

Dynamics AX 2009 Role Center Migration Issues

In our Project, we have around 40 approx. custom role center pages and we have to often do a deployment from DEV to other environments. In this process the web part pages come up, but the Quick Links don't turn up properly.



DEV

This is how the role center page looks in DEV











UAT (After Migration) – This is how it looks like after we migrate, The issues here are:


















  1. My Reports Label Description coming as "Quick Links Web Part[1]"
  2. All the Links in My Reports not showing up after migration
  3. My Links Label Description coming as "Quick Links Web Part[2]"
  4. Desktop Links (hidden) ones not getting migrated properly to UAT
 
Migration Process: (These are the steps carried out to migrate the role center page from DEV)

  1. Export Page Definition and Web Menu Url for the specific Role Center Page from AOT > Web > Page Definitions
  2. Import Page Definition into UAT
  3. Deploy Page Definition from UAT
  4. Export Cues and Links by choosing the option Export to AOT
  5. Export the whole Cues and Link from AOT as xpo
  6. Import the Cues and Link from AOT
  7. IISReset in UAT

Please note that I'm using axupdateportalutility when we have to do a full migration but for partial migration like one or two role center pages we follow the above steps. Even when I do an axupdateportalutility for full migration, still we have these issues of missing links.

 
The current workaround for this is either to go manually and add the links in each environment or I usually write a sql script which updates the sysquicklinks table at the database level.
Does anyone else facing the same issue and how to resolve it in AX way? Any responses appreciated.