Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide电子书

Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide

Table of Contents

Microsoft Dynamics AX Implementation Guide

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Free access for Packt account holders

Instant updates on new Packt books

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