Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide

Table of Contents

Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Preparing for a Great Start

Project kickoff

Managing customer expectations and commitments

Tips for customers

Customer environment and culture

Resources

Consulting team resource alignment

Customer resource alignment

External resources

Establishing the team

The kickoff meeting

Project management and governance

The project plan

Communication

Change control

Budget tracking

The view from the top

The Agile methodology

Summary

2. Getting into the Details Early

The requirement gathering techniques

The tools to use at this stage

Questionnaire

Lead

Negotiate

Conference Room Pilot (CRP)

Why is CRP needed?

Considerations for CRP success

The CRP execution

The Fit/Gap analysis

The implementation strategy

Key deliverables from the analysis phase

Summary

3. Infrastructure Planning and Design

The Dynamics AX components and architecture

Databases

The middle tier

Reporting and BI

Client

The Help server

Capacity planning and infrastructure estimation

Capacity planning

The deployment details

Reports

Operating sites and schedules

The ISV products

Customizations

Integrations

The batch process

Using Lifecycle Services – Usage Profiler

Infrastructure estimation

Planning the system topology

The production system topology

The nonproduction system topology

Cloud deployment

The cloud services

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 on Azure

Industry best practices and recommendations

Planning

The SQL server

The AOS server

Reviews

Summary

4. Integration Planning and Design

Integration planning

Integration scenarios

Integration requirements

Synchronous or asynchronous

Integration technologies

Application Integration Framework and services

The AIF architecture

Key concepts in AIF

Services

Adapters – transport mechanism

Message processing

Cloud-based integration

The Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Data Import/Export Framework

An ad hoc manual file import/export

Automated asynchronous integration

Master data management

.NET Framework – .NET Interop

The .NET Business Connector

The third-party integration solution

Connector for Microsoft Dynamics

Integration design and development

Selecting the right integration technology

Developing a high-level conceptual design

Defining field mapping

Development, configuration, and testing

Best practices and recommendations

Summary

5. Data Migration – Scoping through Delivery

Managing scope – simplifying data migration through rightsizing the scope

Questions to ask during the scoping exercise

Leading the data migration requirements sessions

The battle of history

The design and development phase

Data mapping and transformation

Planning the data migration

Selecting the tools for data migration

How do I select the right tool?

Data migration versus data entry

Data import features developed on the project

The Data Import/Export Framework

Terminologies

Architecture

The import/export process

A summary of key features

AIF

The features of AIF

Custom X++

Describing custom X++

Excel add-in

Describing an Excel add-in

Data migration execution tips

Initial templates for business

Extracting source data into SQL tables

Never rename/repurpose fields

Considering premigration steps

Considering postmigration steps

Changing SQL to simple recovery mode

Multithreading and max DOP

Index and statistics maintenance

Disabling the AX logging

Considering SQL updates on migrated data

The SQL import – through caution and expertise

Managing configurations

Configuration management simplified with DIXF

Reviewing and deciding on the configuration

Data validation

A classic example of a data migration issue in projects

Summary

6. Reporting and BI

Gathering BI and reporting requirements

The top three customer issues in reporting

Inaccurate data and calculation

Performance

Layout and formatting

Knowing about reporting tools

SQL Server Reporting Services

Out-of-the-box SSRS reports

EP chart controls

Cues in Role Center

The AX auto-report wizard

Exporting to Excel from forms

Business intelligence/analytics – cubes

Accessing data from cubes

SSRS reports on AX client

KPIs and chart on AX Role Center

Excel and Power BI

The Report Builder tool

Visual Studio

The Management Reporter tool

List pages

Office Add-ins

Word add-ins

Excel add-ins

Other add-on BI solutions

Mapping reports and identifying gaps

The custom report development

Development

Testing

Deployment

Summary

7. Functional and Technical Design

The functional design document

Why write FDD?

Fit/Gap review session

Project management aspects of design

Things to know before writing FDD

The party model

The global address book

The financial data

The reverse engineering tool

Key global features

Big picture diagrams

The functional architecture

Integrations

The flow of data

Do's and Don'ts

The solution design document

Overview and objectives

Guidelines for Solution Design Documents

Engaging ISV partners

Before choosing ISV solutions

After selecting the partner

Common pitfalls

The Technical Design Document

Overview and objectives

Guidelines for the Technical Design Document

Preparation

Execution

Outcome

Summary

8. Configuration Management

Configuration planning

Collecting the configuration data

Configuration tools

The Data Import/Export Framework

Importing and exporting data using various formats

Copying and comparing data between legal entities

Copying data between Microsoft Dynamics AX instances

Creating a custom entity

The Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services

The Excel add-in

Export/Import – DAT/DEF file

The definition group

Defining the export criteria

Finding related tables

The LCS configuration manager – the beta version

The Test Data Transfer Tool – the beta version

Configuration data management

The golden environment

Copying the template company

Building configuration templates

Summary

9. Building Customizations

Getting ready for development

The version control

The development environment

The shared AOS topology

The private AOS topology

The TFS branching strategies

The main only strategy

The development and main branching strategy

Development, main, and release

Ground rules for development

Development layers and models

AOT objects' naming conventions

Label files and language

Establishing the code review process

The development process

Conceptualization

Data design

Adding fields to the existing tables

Table Types

Regular

In-memory

TempDB

Table fields

Date effectivity

Table properties

The table group

The table caching

Index considerations

The clustered index

The non-clustered index

Best practices for indexes

Tables key considerations

The alternate key

The primary key

The replacement key

The foreign key

The natural key

Surrogate keys

The delete actions

The business logic

The number sequence framework

The FormLetter framework

The RunBase framework

The SysOperation framework

Services and the Application Integration Framework (AIF)

Other application and development frameworks

Best practices to customize business processes

Reusing the code

Using eventing

Customizing the code

Where to add the custom code

The user interface

Client user interface guidelines

The list pages

The details forms

Details forms with lines

The simple list

The simple details forms

The simple list and details forms

The table of content forms

Enterprise portal user interface guidelines

List pages

The details forms

The two-phase create dialog

Report user interface guidelines

The document type reports

The simple list

The group list type

Security

Key concepts

Security roles

Duties

The process cycle

Privilege

Permissions

Policies

Security for custom objects

Coding best practices

Best practice check

Naming variables and objects

Commenting the code

Labels and text

Database

Transactions

Exception handling

The Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Development

Creating the build

Testing/defect fixing

Release to production

Application Lifecycle guidelines and best practices

Summary

10. Performance Tuning

Performance testing and tuning

Preparing for the process

The execution stage

Outcome

Tools for performance monitoring

The trace parser

The performance monitor

The performance analyzer – DynamicsPerf

The LCS system diagnostics

The performance benchmark SDK

The SQL Server Profiler

The SCOM pack for Microsoft Dynamics AX

Factors that impact performance

Infrastructure

Issues due to inadequate hardware

Virtualization

The environment setup

Network bandwidth and latency

Setting up Windows

Setting up SQL Server

An outdated application, kernel, and missing hotfixes

Inappropriate AX configurations

Number sequences

Database logging

Debugging in production

Maintaining indexes

Batch servers

Code and queries

Data caching

Too many RPC calls between the client and server tiers

Set-based operations

Batch parallelism

Long-running queries – missing indexes

Displaying methods on form grid

Approaching performance issues

Understanding the issue

Planning and defining the analysis strategy

Corrective action and review

General scenarios and investigation strategies

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

Issue 5

Issue 6

Issue 7

Issue 8

Summary

11. Testing and Training

Testing

The test planning

Test scenarios and test case development

Unit testing

Function testing

System integration testing

User acceptance testing

The UAT planning

UAT execution and experiences

The UAT outcome

End-to-end testing

End-to-end test planning

Execution and real-life examples

Training

A training plan

The change management

Training preparation

System and business readiness

Security roles

Business process flows

Training manuals and user guides

The Task Recorder

The business process modeler

The Help system

Personalization

The training environment

Summary

12. Go-live Planning

Key considerations prior to going live

The decision to go live

Business contingency planning

Some technical tips

Putting together the go-live plan

Executing a release

The importance of communication

Summary

13. Post Go-live

Initial stabilization

Triage and prioritization

Bug fixes and their business impact

The deployment stage

Troubleshooting tips and FAQs

Proactive preparation – what's coming

Preparing for the first month-end

Reporting requests

Security and roles assignments

Form changes

Performance reviews

The data growth

Training opportunities

Engaging with Microsoft

A Microsoft support budget

Business process optimization

Open change requests

Post-implementation review

Why post-implementation review?

Key factors to get the most out of PIR

Preparing for PIR

Pain points from experience

Post-implementation review – an AX 2012 customer

Current state – key challenges

The unused potential of Dynamics AX

Improvement opportunities – processes and systems

New features from the next release

Summary

14. Upgrade

When to upgrade

Benefit to the business operations

Are operations ready for the change?

Stabilization of the newer version

Continued technical support

Upgrade versus reimplementation

Project strategy and planning

Upgrading options

Source to target

In-place upgrade

The Dynamics AX upgrade process

Planning the upgrade

Managing customization (Fit/Gap)

Managing the scope

Managing the data

Business engagement

Impact on integrations

Impact on reporting

Code freeze in the source system

Infrastructure planning

The upgrade analysis

The code upgrade

Planning for the code upgrade

The code clean-up

New features that replace the existing ones

Standalone partner/customer code

Changes in customization due to Microsoft refactoring in a new version

The code upgrade process

The baseline database

Selecting the upgrade checklist

Importing AOD/model files into the baseline database

Executing the code upgrade checklist

Code upgrade conflict tools

The upgrade script

The security upgrade

Testing the data upgrade

Objectives

Planning

Execution

Outcome

Upgrade testing

Data validation

System and regression testing

Integration and end-to-end testing

End-user adoption

Deployment planning and execution

Summary

Index

Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide

Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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First published: September 2015

Production reference: 1140915

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78528-896-8

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Credits

Authors

Yogesh Kasat

JJ Yadav

Reviewers

Palle Agermark

Fatih Demirci

Stephanie Kroese

Ravi Shankar Kumar

Commissioning Editor

Priya Singh

Acquisition Editors

Kevin Colaco

Neha Nagwekar

Content Development Editor

Anand Singh

Technical Editor

Parag Topre

Copy Editors

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Sonia Mathur

Project Coordinator

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Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

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Graphics

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Disha Haria

Abhinash Sahu

Production Coordinator

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Cover Work

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About the Author

Yogesh Kasat is a cofounder of Real Dynamics, which is one of the first Microsoft Dynamics AX IV&Vs (Independent Verification and Validation services provider). The goal of Real Dynamics is to help businesses and their internal IT teams to take their Dynamics AX implementation to the next level with independent and unbiased recommendations.

Yogesh has led a number of large Dynamics AX implementations and turned them into success stories. He has a unique blend of knowledge of financial and supply chain modules, technical architecture, and business process optimization, and he has held project management, leadership, and solution architect roles. Yogesh is one of the founding partners of Real Dynamics—an organization focused on providing independent guidance and oversight of Dynamics AX implementations, post-implementation reviews, and help to customers in defining a roadmap for the Dynamics AX platform. He held a leadership role for one of the leading Dynamics AX partners as the vice president of Dynamics AX delivery and oversaw Dynamics AX implementations throughout North America. He was awarded the prestigious Leadership Award twice during his tenure with the company. He has six Dynamics AX certifications, including financials, trade and logistics, and managing Dynamics AX implementation (Sure Step). In addition to more than a decade's experience of working on Dynamics AX, Yogesh has earlier experience with other business applications, including Dynamics NAV/GP and PeopleSoft. He has traveled extensively for global projects and has had the pleasure of visiting different parts of the world.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my mom for always being there and giving me lessons in honesty and being truthful that have helped me at every stage of my career.

I would also like to thank my wife, Ashwini, who has supported me at every step in life, bringing all the charm to my life. She has had the patience to allow me to take some personal time away to work on this book, pursue challenging projects, and travel like crazy, which have resulted in the many experiences mentioned in the book. Big thanks also go to the rest of my family, friends, coworkers, and peers in the industry for their input and inspiration.

My sincere thanks go to my coauthor and longtime coworker, JJ Yadav, and the reviewer, Stephanie Kroese, for their efforts and ideas in the making of this book. Special thanks to all the reviewers and Packt Publishing for providing valuable feedback and comments during the making of this book.

Finally, thanks to my bosses, clients, and the people who provided guidance in creating many success stories and helped me reach where I am in my career—Sandeep Walia, Pankaj Kumar, Anwar Jiwani, George Van Rijn, Sri Srinivasan, Kevin Scott, Henrik Bergholt, Paul Delahunty, Scott Ball, Petras Petroskevicius, Vivek Garud, Rohit Kulkarni, Anil Daga, and Dwarkanath Kasat.

About the Author

JJ Yadav has worked on Microsoft Dynamics AX for more than a decade as a solutions architect, project manager, technical lead, and developer. He started working on Axapta 3.0 as a developer with Euro Info Systems in India (now Tectura India). He has experience in leading and managing several Dynamics AX Global implementations and upgrade projects. His core technical expertise in Dynamics AX includes infrastructure planning, integration services, data migration, and workflow. He has extensive functional experience in financials, procurement, accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory and warehouse management, and the service modules of Dynamics AX. Currently, he works as a senior technical project manager with Ignify in the central region of the U.S. on a leading Global AX 2012 R3 implementation project.

I would like to thank my family, friends, and coworkers for their support and inspiration. My sincere thanks to my uncle, Radhe Shyam, for his support during the most difficult time of my life; without his support and inspiration, I would not be where I am today. Finally, my beautiful wife, Khushboo, for supporting and encouraging me at every walk of life and all the patience and support during the hours and weekends that I spent writing this book.

My sincere gratitude to my longtime coworker and coauthor, Yogesh Kasat, for coming up with the idea of writing this book and making me a part of it. I would like to thank my reviewer, Stephanie Kroese, all the other reviewers, and Packt Publishing for providing valuable feedback and comments during the creation of this book.

About the Reviewers

Palle Agermark has worked as a developer and technical consultant with Concorde XAL and Microsoft Dynamics AX for more than 20 years. He worked at Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen for a number of years, primarily developing on the financial, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and unit test modules.

Currently, Palle works for one of Scandinavia's largest Microsoft Dynamics AX partners, EG, in Denmark.

He has been named a Microsoft Dynamics AX MVP for 2 consecutive years and blogs about AX at http://www.agermark.com.

Fatih Demirci (MCT) is a technical consultant, project manager, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. He graduated in computer engineering. He has been working professionally on Dynamics AX since 2006. During this period, he has worked for a lot of Microsoft partners, customers, and projects. He has over 10 years of consulting experience, playing a variety of roles, including senior software engineer, team leader, trainer, technical consultant, and project manager at Dynamics AX. He is a cofounder of DMR Consultancy, which is the most promising ERP consultancy company in Turkey, and he works with some of the most experienced and creative Dynamics AX professionals. Recently, he also reviewed another wonderful book, Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Development Cookbook, Packt Publishing.

He runs a professional and technical blog at www.fatihdemirci.net and shares his thoughts and readings on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I would like to thank my family and friends for motivating me and always pushing me to do my best.

Stephanie Kroese is a solution architect and project manager with over 15 years of successful experience in managing IT organizations and leading projects, in which she delivered significant business value. She has a broad experience in the implementation, application, and delivery of ERP, strategic planning, and project management. For 12 years, Stephanie was the senior IT leader for a global battery manufacturer and was responsible for driving the strategic direction of the organization toward supporting business growth. In addition, she has spent over 7 years implementing various ERP systems—the last 4 of which focused on Dynamics AX—in certain global organizations as a senior consultant in project management, functional analysis, report writing, training, and technical roles.

Ravi Shankar Kumar is a passionate professional, who is able to contribute a unique blend of project management, delivery, sales, and exemplary problem-solving skills, along with a commitment to excel in any job. He has an eye for detail in ensuring that a project's mission and objectives are met within scope, budget, and schedule. Ravi has exceptional organizational skills to coordinate with and manage multiple stakeholders, along with the ability to work autonomously and prioritize his workload to deal with conflicting demands. An adept understanding of business processes and an organization's culture, combined with an aptitude for lateral thinking, enables efficient management of project risks and deliverables.

Ravi has been working in the IT industry since 2001, and his passion at work has been to assist companies to increase their usage of IT/ERP systems to improve productivity, manage change, and conduct better business for their customers, employees, and owners. He is a highly motivated and energetic person with a strong commercial and systems background, including extensive experience in analyzing business requirements and translating these into systems solutions. He is also particularly strong in the project management discipline and has a very good record of driving projects to their successful conclusion through the use of his interpersonal and organizational skills, including negotiations at the executive management level. Ravi has a consulting, functional, project management, and sales background and is flexible enough to be able to maintain a sense of humor under pressure. He is poised and competent with a demonstrable ability to easily handle cultural differences. In addition to this, he is also passionate about providing the best solutions in order to achieve business needs. Ravi is always keen to take up challenging assignments and deliver solutions to the customer's satisfaction.

Lastly, during several DAX 2012 and 2009 projects, he practiced communication on multiple levels, for example, from the CEO to a shop's ground staff. Ravi currently works with one of the top Big Four firms in India.

I would like to thank my fellow authors and Packt Publishing for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to many more publications! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my mother, Shanti Sinha, and my beloved wife, Bharti Kumari, for their continued support during the long hours of reviewing this book.

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For my son Neel, who brings me feeling of winning the world with his cute smile.

– Yogesh Kasat

For my precious children, Hrehaan and Mira.

– JJ Yadav

Preface

The Microsoft Dynamics AX product has evolved into a formidable ERP platform that is suitable for large-scale and enterprise customers. Although it comes with richer functionality and better scalability, it also has additional complexity. This has translated into more challenging implementation cycles as many projects are now multicompany and multinational affairs. The keys for a successful Dynamics AX implementation in this type of complex environment revolve around strong project management and a clear understanding of what needs to be done in each phase of the project. Recent releases of the AX platform put many new tools in your toolbox; you need to understand the tools and select the corresponding techniques to ensure that your Dynamics AX implementation project is effective and successful.

Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide draws on real-life experiences from large Dynamics AX implementation projects. This book will guide you through the entire lifecycle of a Dynamics AX implementation, helping you avoid common pitfalls while increasing your efficiency and effectiveness at every stage of the project. This book focuses on providing you with straightforward techniques with step-by-step instructions on how to follow them; this, along with real-life examples from the field, will further increase your ability to execute the projects well. Upon reading this book, you'll be in the position to implement Dynamics AX right the first time.

ERP implementations are complex by nature because of their many moving parts, and leaders are expected to know of all the aspects. This book provides a summary of the various facets of running a successful Dynamics AX project without having to go through expensive and time-consuming training courses. The aspects covered include management, infrastructure planning, requirement gathering, data migration, functional and technical design with examples, go-live planning, and upgrade.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Preparing for a Great Start, focuses on instituting effective project management, project governance, and resource alignment from the beginning of the project.

Chapter 2, Getting into the Details Early, focuses on the planning and execution of requirement gathering and Conference Room Pilot (CRP) sessions.

Chapter 3, Infrastructure Planning and Design, covers infrastructure planning, the architecture of production, non-production, and disaster recovery environments.

Chapter 4, Integration Planning and Design, covers integration planning, integration tools and frameworks available in Dynamics AX.

Chapter 5, Data Migration – Scoping through Delivery, discusses data migration requirements, managing data migration scope, and identifying tools and techniques for data migration and validation.

Chapter 6, Reporting and BI, covers common reporting and BI design principles and best practices.

Chapter 7, Functional and Technical Design, discusses planning and executing a functional design and a technical design. It covers tips and tricks with real-life examples of design patterns—both good and bad—to support the best practices recommended.

Chapter 8, Configuration Management, introduces you to tools and techniques used in managing configurations and moving them from one environment to another and managing configurations on larger projects to minimize conflicts and rework.

Chapter 9, Building Customizations, provides you with the best practices for customization and patterns that are recommended by Microsoft.

Chapter 10, Performance Tuning, helps you to understand architecture components that impact performance, performance and stress testing to