Configuration Technologies for Products in AX2012

With the move from Manufacture-to-Stock to Configure-to-Order philosophy, companies are looking for a way in their ERP system to accomodate product variants while keeping a balance between stock levels with lead time. In AX2012, Constraint based configuration technology allows to configure products based on customer preferences at the time taking the order. This is different from the previous Product Model functionality in AX2009 as product designner does not have to be aware of X++, rather MS Solver can be used to develop the constraints. As the dependency on X++ is gone along with product model compilation, one does not have to purchase AX development license to configure the products.

Upgrade to MS Dynamics AX2012

With its latest version of AX, MS has given Source to Target model for upgrade. Using this model will help reducing the downtime for the actual production environment (single user mode) while upgrading from AX2009 or AX4.0. One will be able to execute the upgrade tasks on Source system (AX2009/AX4.0) without interrupting the user using the live system, and in parallel prepare the Target (AX2012) system for upgrade.

Microsoft Sales Specialist for Dynamics ERP

Successfully completed the requirements for ERP Sales Specialist from Microsoft.

Now a certified Microsoft Trainer (MCT)

I have recently got the MCT status from Microsoft. Looking for some exciting training challenges now. 

Dynamics AX 2012 Technical Conference was a great success!

See what people say about Tech Conference:

http://twitter.com/search?q=daxconf

Will post some more exciting information about AX 2012 soon, so please be patient and get yourself prepared to welcome an awsome ERP product by MS.

Sure Step Business Modeler

Microsoft provides an awesome tool known as Sure Step Business Modeler that partners can use to have their customers visualize how Dynamics Customer Model is synced up with hypothetical or their own business processes. The tool itself is really simple to use (IE like controls) and user can easily add, edit new departments, personas, business processes, org charts to meet their own needs. You can also attach JPEG images like flow diagrams with each process, sub process, task etc to further explain the process in detail.

I found this tool extremely useful when customer want to see how their business processes, employees and organization will work with the proposed Dynamics solution. After you download the tool from PartnerSource, you can install it either on a single machine (with DB and client application) or centrally with DB installed on a separate machine with multiple clients accessing it.

Using Performance Analyzer for MS Dynamics AX2009

Performance Analyzer is a cool tool for Dynamics products suite to capture and analyze application performance counters. It provide handy SPs and DB Views to get various sorts of performance information. More information and tool itself can be found from:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/DynamicsPerf

Together with PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs), one can consume the power of this tool more effectively. PAL is an open source tool and can be downloaded from:

 http://pal.codeplex.com/