Partitions in AX 2012 R2

With the announcement of MS Dynamics AX 2012 R2 release on December 1st, 2012, MS has given a powerful feature in R2 called data partitions. Now in AX, there is a element above the company called "Partition". Just like with every new AX installation there is a default company "DAT", now there will also be a default partition called "Initial". This is really powerful feature as the companies now have the leverage to use an installed AX instance across multiple deployment sites. Couple of features associated with partitions are:

• System data like batch, AIF, workflow is shared between partitions. This has been achieved by introducing a new table property "SaveDataPerPartition" on these tables.
• Business data like UoM, Address Book is shared among companies within a partition only. A company can be associated with multiple partitions with the same name.
• Users only belong to a particular partition.
• Some drawbacks like intercompany does not work across partitions and companies across partitions can not be merged are also there. Cross company queries might not work across partitions.

Unpublish standard template or functional area in rapid start services for AX 2012

I recently come across a situation where I had to modify the default data given with Account Categories template in Rapid Start Services. Even with the administrative rights for the user, I was not able to unpublish the template or functional area (GL in this case). I then came to realize that MS has not given permissions to update the contents of default (hidden) templates like account categories. One can unpublish his own custom template of functional area but not the ones that come as default and for which there is no question present in the question group.