Register for the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for Retail Virtual Launch Event
on February 1st, 2012 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (US)
Microsoft leaders, customers, and retail industry experts will talk about what it means to be a Dynamic Retailer in today’s retail environment while providing a first-look at the powerful retail capabilities being introduced as part of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Register now and receive access to the following on February 1st:
Hear Microsoft executives and retail customers talk retail trends and technology from NRF in New York
Watch demos showcasing Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 retail capabilities
Chat live online with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 retail and technical experts
Learn about local retail events in your geography
Explore all of the additional functional and industry innovation in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
Register now and experience the most dynamic release ever of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for Retail.
These best practices apply to the development of product extensions built by independent software vendors (ISVs), as well as Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation partners and customers who are customizing Microsoft Dynamics AX for specific ERP deployments. Microsoft’s Sure Step Methodology provides basic testing guidance that scales for five different project types. The terminology and process steps in Sure Step are the foundation of this document. The best practices presented here will supplement the Sure Step guidance for testing efforts in the Microsoft Dynamics AX ecosystem.
http://www.microsoft.com/erp: Video 2 in our 12 week series entitled "Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012" explores the theme of Integration and Web Services. This video features C. Venkatesh, Principal Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Dynamics AX R&D. To learn more about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 visit http://bit.ly/pisiH9
New York City, perhaps with one of the biggest customer base with over 100,000 city employees certainly catches the eye when its Mayor Bloomberg wants to make an announcement with Microsoft, CEO Steve Ballmer. At City Hall, they both have announced a new five-year deal which will turn up dozens of separate city contracts with Microsoft into one master agreement and is projected to save the city an amount of $50 million. The value of the deal itself is about $100 million, or $20 million a year.
These savings will not only come from different contracts’ consolidation, but also by shifting some of the software needs of the New York City to the Cloud. The first phase of the deal impacts 30,000 city employees, and will include Microsoft Windows 7, Office, SharePoint, Exchange, Live Meetings, Azure, Windows Server, development tools, and database products. (also, when Office 365 becomes available that too could be show up as the part of the agreement).
City workers will fall into one of three buckets: occasional users, basic users, and power users. The city employs a lot of desk-less workers who are out on the streets. Giving them access to Office, email, and collaboration tools in the cloud makes more sense than giving them desktop versions of Office. Power users, on the other hand, will require both desktop and cloud versions. The more software that Microsoft hosts on its own servers, the more the city saves on hardware and IT costs.
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AX2009 allowed developers to create charts and graphs on their AX forms using a third party charting control. This third party control was based on COM technology which is no longer updated by the vendor themselves. Thus, limiting the ability to introduce support for additional languages, get key bug fixes and essential security changes. Therefore, Microsoft are replacing the COM control with Microsoft .NET MSChart for Dynamics AX.
Among others, some of the key benefits of using the MSChart control:
- Moving from older COM Control to new .NET based Chart control.
- Increased security.
- Instead of support for 6 languages, we’ll be adding support for ALL AX languages.
- Users may now save their charts to disk in 7 different file formats.
For many years, Dundas Data Visualization, Inc. has been known for producing industry standard data visualization components. They have also been producing for Microsoft technologies since ever. Microsoft acquired the codebase for these components, back in 2007, in order to deliver data visualization directly within products of Microsoft.
Microsoft also enabled Dundas to continue to sell, enhance, update and support the components for a specified duration as a service to their existing customers which was a part of an agreement that will expire on October 31, 2010.
One of the plus that Microsoft have with Dynamics AX or any other product is its existing product stack. The integration of Microsoft Office Suite aids Microsoft Dynamics AX to be more interactive and integrated in users existing environment.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 also provides integration with Office Communicator. This enables the presence of a person/contact to be shown as part of the contact information, along with links to contact that person. Where the eBook provides several of the coding tips and tricks, Greg on Dynamics AX describes this in a few easy steps. Follow this article for further implementation details.
Software Applications (Apps) are everywhere, from phones, to watches, and from desktops to laptops. Every computing device is running with apps. However, in the race of new updates, software vendors often mistake the very common user fact, and that fact is:
“You don’t need to change the look and feel of app every time to prove you guys are still working!”
With the release of new Windows Live Platform, Microsoft unveils another new version of its great app Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Claiming this to be the reinvention of web browser (along with Microsoft Silverlight), Microsoft adds great new features including my favorite, hardware-acceleration, non-interruptive notifications, separate download manager, along with pin a website to taskbar etc.
However, while introducing ultimate new features and achieving the reinvention of web browsing experience, IE9 have made some terrible things which I personally don’t like, and as a matter of fact, such things might also help me step using IE for good.
Hate Point 1: Where is the title bar?
Since ever, title bar have been used to put a quick information for what page you are viewing, and in some website (like www.cricinfo.com) where title bar kept on updating with the ongoing information helps user see the activity right from the taskbar when the browser itself is minimized. Putting title text on the tab is not a good idea to me, as it’s a really short space to put that kind of information. That was one of the key reason I don’t like Google Chrome.
Hate Point 2: Too short address bar.
With increasing number of tabs, it keep on getting reduced, until a time comes where you can hardly see the query string. I agree that this won’t be any point of concern for a lot of internet user, but for web developers it’s a mess. This could possibly be the foremost reason for me not using IE9.
Hate Point 3: Removal of Status Bar.
Now where is it? The one plus I see in IE8 is that almost everything that has been relocated in this new UX appears to be at a place where it should be, so where is the status bar. The classic IE status bar that use to show me (apart from just the link on mouse-over that pops up on a tooltip in the lower section of the window) all the great stuff like, how much page is loaded, quick links for phishing, network status, popup blocked etc.
Hate Point 4: UX (Firefox + Chrome = IE9)
I am a very strong advocate of the point that if every car has a steering wheel, that does not mean they are stealing it. However, making the Back button bigger than forward does make me think I’m using Firefox. Similarly, why thumbnails of my most viewed websites on a newly opened blank tab reminds me its Google Chrome?
To put in a nut shell, Microsoft have made a great work with the new IE9 when it comes to clean UI, performance and usability. However they have left a few holes that classic IE lover would still love to see them back. IE9 is still in Beta and I’m sure by the time of its final release, Microsoft and the IE team won’t disappoint their fan-club.
This surely brings new dimensions in Microsoft’s underlying strategy of every computing can be done the Microsoft way. While they don’t need to reinvent the wheel, still they can get the lions share of the web world.
Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions are by far the most comprehensive ERP solutions available in overall aspect. Ranging from cost to complexity and implementation to support, if you are interested to keep everything into account, Microsoft Dynamics would be your answer. They offer exceptionally easy-to-use solutions that fit smoothly with your existing IT systems and infrastructure.
However, one may get into this trouble of which one to choose? And mostly people end up comparing Dynamics AX vs. Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM or NAV etc. Microsoft does not compare any of those solutions, neither any comparison exists nor they encourage it. However, there are several other ways to look at a project from different angles that are reflected in the decision engine of your choice. Here is an easy to use app on the web that helps you find the right solution for your business.
This is a simple assessment test carefully map your responses to each Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution. The final result is a recommendation that targets your specific organization.
The idea of the this AX-SAP connector is to set up a two-tier structure for process integration from both the headquarters of an organization (using SAP's Business Suite) and office-branch subsidiaries (using Dynamics AX). Microsoft has already announced that this connector will be available for download sometime later this year.
The technology behind the connector is an integral part of Microsoft Dynamics AX, as well as a standalone integration component. The standard technical component includes the Application Integration Framework (AIF), which is a Microsoft Dynamics AX module based on Windows Communication Services. It basically functions as a middleware that allows systems to expose and consume web services in X++. Secondly, the BizTalk Server together with the SAP Adapter and Microsoft Dynamics AX Adapter handles communication and mapping of messages between Microsoft Dynamics AX and SAP
Microsoft describes the two-tier ERP approach as offering cost-savings to organizations.
"Organizations seeking to streamline their processes and technology should consider a two-tier ERP strategy as a cost-effective alternative to the limitations associated with forcing a single enterprise solution across their entire business," stated Crispin Read, Microsoft's general manager of Dynamics ERP, in released statement.
Here is a useful resources on the while two-tier ERP concept that Microsoft introduces.
Working with Microsoft Dynamics AX development environment, one must follow certain best practices that would allow the code to run and work better. By default, the compiler for X++, checks the code for a list of best practice issues that are very important to follow. These issues are listed as best practice errors, warnings, or even informational messages.
Here is the great resource for those working on Dynamics AX for the consolidated list of best practice error and warning messages on msdn site.
This is in continuation of an earlier blog post about Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference 2011. Since Microsoft announced the upcoming event in January 2011, it also helps spreading the word. If you want to blog about this conference, here are some useful content you can use.
This includes a couple of banner images, and also a silverlight video to share.
From the website:
“Silverlight Video
If you would like to embed the intro video into your blog post or site you can use this HTML tag. This is a Silverlight video so people will need to have the Silverlight player to play this in their web browser. They will be prompted to download it. This is the same video we have on the front of the conference site.
We are looking forward to the event as it will be the first dedicated product/technical conference we have had for Dynamics AX. Please restrict blogging to announcing the conference or discussing why people should attend or comments on the session content we are restricting blogging on deep feature discussions until the conference.”
This is in continuation of an earlier blog post about 
