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Steve Ballmer today announced the formal launch time frame of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. The Public Beta of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is already out. The General Availability (GA) is expected in August 2011. I’m excited about the launch as it brings to the table several new features that I will go into detail in a few. Some key ones that were shown at the Keynote speech by Lachlan Cash at Convergence include:

• Organizational structure: The organizational structure which was already powerful and a visual tool now has the ability to be connected to the underlying financial dimension structure. Those with appropriate security privileges can in the organizational visual editor tool of Dynamics AX 2012 cut and paste and move around the organizational structure with all associated individuals and transactions related to the structure also being updated.
• Vendor portal enhanced with RFQ bid: The vendor portal has been enhanced to tie to the Purchase Requisitions and RFQ functionality. When RFQs are sent to vendors they can login into a vendor portal and place their be
• Shop floor manufacturing enhancements: Visualization of the shop floor with Microsoft Dynamics AX showing routes, capacity and choke points.

Lachlan also showed the ability to control Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 without touching the screen or the computer with Kinect for scenarios such as complex or hazardous manufacturing scenarios where the users cannot touch the computer. It is nice to see all the Microsoft Technologies come together.

Figure. Picture of Lachlan Cash using hand movements to control Dynamics AX 2012 without touching the screen, mouse or a keyboard. Done with Kinect. Sorry for the not go great picture –taken at Convergence today on my Windows Phone 7 camera

Finally Lachlan showed the ability to access Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 on a table device in a very seamless fashion. More detail to come later. If you are at Convergence stop by the Ignify booth #501 and say hi. I will be the Ignify booth for most of the expo hours today, tomorrow and Wednesday.

Sandeep Walia is the Chief Executive Officer of Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of ERP, POS , CRM , and eCommerce software solutions to mid-market and enterprise businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify is a Top-tier Microsoft Gold Certified partner ranked in the Microsoft Partner of the Year for Retail in 2010 and both the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and the Microsoft Dynamics Presidents Club in 2009 . Ignify offers Microsoft Dynamics AX, Dynamics AX for Retail POS and the Dynamics CRM Loyalty Management solution for retailers and to several other businesses. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 4 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Sandeep was ranked in 2010 in the Microsoft Dynamics Top 100 Most Influential People List by DynamicsWorld. Ignify has employees in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Phoenix, Nashville, Chicago, Toronto, Manila, Pune and Bangalore.

We recently started Dyanmics AX community discussion meetings to internally talk about projects – what worked,  what didn't to share our learnings and strengthen our practice. On Nov 21, 2009, we held our first DAX community meeting in Los Angeles. The idea of this meeting is to contribute new learning, knowledge sharing, sharing solution designs towards DAX community.  We took one project which went live last month and discussed the implementation cycle.

We discussed major features of this project like Warehouse Management, Auction Upload, Bidding, Inventory Reservation, Order Creation, Picking, Shipping, Invoicing, Returns, Order Cancellation, Refunds, Coupon Management. This involves integration of Dynamics AX with front end. Front end is implemented in Java and integration is done using .net business connector.

We also discussed what gotchas we faced during this project implementation and what pain points business was having. Initially, we faced integration problem. For example, one of the challenges was around doing integration between Java applications and Dynamics AX?   we created a .net dll that uses the .net business connector to connect to AX and Java in turn is calling this dll.

Before this implementation, the customer was using a legacy system which was implemented in .net and SQL. The in-house system did not provide ERP features and Warehouse Management functionality. For example – the system did not have proper order cancellation and customer refund processes. A significant advantage that the customer got from new implementation is the robust ERP system with a full-fledged warehouse management system, order cancellation and customer refund process. It is so easy now for the users to calculate accurate refund using Dynamics AX standard RMA creation process. We enhanced the standard RMA process a little bit but the basic process is very much standard AX. Claim process is also utilizing RMA functionality. The only difference between RMA and Claim process is that item doesn’t get received back in Claim process. We also customized it to give user facility to adjust sales/refunds.

We also implemented a rule engine which monitors the order while creation and puts the order into Not Reviewed, Suspect, Stopped, Released state based on fraud rules setup.

There is a new requirement to have the customer cash credit feature within AX. The requirement is that customer can refer other customer and customer who referred should get cash credit based on first purchase done by customer whom customer referred. Basically, to have referral reward feature within AX. We discussed design solution to implement this requirement and we come up with 2 design solution. One to use standard free text invoice and second to use standard payment journal feature of AX. Most probably, we will go with payment journal feature.

More to come!

This post is written by Khushhal Garg. Attendees at the Dynamics AX community meeting were Khushhal Garg, Craig Griffith, Ravinder Singh, Gopi Balakrishnan and Satish Panwar. Khushhal Garg is a Dynamics AX technical manager in the Microsoft Dynamics AX Practice at Ignify . Ignify is a Global Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle Partner specializing in Dynamics AX for Retail, Distribution, Manufacturing and Chemicals verticals. For help on Microsoft Dynamics ERP email us at dynamics@ignify.com.

The Microsoft Dynamics AX Sustained Engineering Team has completed the following compatibility tests for the new releases of the following Microsoft stack components. Dynamics AX 2009 is now compatible with Windows 7 and a host of other Windows platform releases. For more information on Dynamics AX please visit the Dynamics AX datasheets page or view the Microsoft Dynamics AX demos

If you wish to upgrade to Dynamics AX 2009 please read our upgrade tips to Dynamics AX 2009 

If you have any questions or need any kind of assistance for Microsoft Dynamics AX, please contact dynamics@ignify.com