Conv12 - Here we come!

I hope everyone has had a great week so far. Personally I've been super busy, and getting ready for next weeks Conv12! It's packed with a host of great sessions, materials, speakers, training & network opportunities. You can get full access to all the sessions, and tracks by going to the following resource.: Convergence 2012 - Session Catalog, Content, Tracks and more!



One of the great parts about Convergence, specifically for me, is the involvement of AXUG, and it's DayOne Events. These are always some really great sessions, round tables, panels and the like. Specifically I will be involved in leading, or help leading in the following session at Convergence.

UBAX03 - AXUG Special Interest Group (SIG) Roundtable Discussion: Software Architects
"Join fellow Microsoft Dynamics AX technical gurus who share the need to better understand how development and infrastructure in Microsoft Dynamics AX can be administered and utilized to support your company's needs. Listen, learn, and share your experiences around maintaining the environment, delivering quality X++ solutions, and how best to manage the Microsoft Dynamics AX performance with your database."

This event already has a good amount of people registered, and I will be helping host this session, along with some other great, and very active AXUG community contributors, including: Mike Simms, Joel Pietrantozzi, Jason Thorpe & Christian Fordham.

Right after that, we have the next section I will be involved in.:
UBAX14 - AXUG Special Interest Group (SIG) Roundtable Discussion: Business Intelligence & Reporting
" In this exciting session, join fellow Microsoft Dynamics AX users who share the need to better understand how best to utilize Microsoft Dynamics AX reporting to meet user needs. This AXUG SIG breakout session will discuss the various approaches and techniques that users are utilizing to meet reporting requirements, including both standard Dynamics AX and SSRS approaches."

This event should be a great one as well, and once again I will be joining with other community giants, to help make this a wonderful event like: Mike Simms, Joel Pietrantozzi & Jason Thorpe

Directly related to the above session, keep your eye open, and sign up for my upcoming three part series I'm putting on through the AXUG Academy BI with Dynamics AX 2012: Options, Development, and Delivery I will cover more about that series, right after Convergence. So if your attending the BI & Reporting SIG at AXUG DayOne, then joining us for the three part series will carry over and help you create a true BI story for your company, using AX 2012. Further, I will dive into the upcoming SQL Server 2012 BI abilities & AX 2012 RC2



Moving right along into the week at Conv12, and along these same topic lines, for both Monday and Tuesday, I will facilitate two "Birds of a Feather: Microsoft Dynamics AX" sessions. These will be open discussions, specifically focused around BI & Reporting for Microsoft Dynamics AX.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you understand that BI is one of my expertise, and specifically a topic in which I believe a lot of customers never fully get the full benefit of. There is a lot of value that can be added through understanding the BI as it relates to Dynamics AX 2012. Having the knowledge of working with the right tools, for the right job, is critical is driving that value, through BI concepts.

Further, I will continue to post and dive into real world BI examples, and needs, with the goal, once again of driving the most value out of your existing AX investment.

Finally, I will close with there is going to be a lot going on at Convergence 2012, so make sure you have used your schedule builder, and get the most out of your visit. You can follow my tweets as I do live event coverage while at Conv12 at: @DynamicsERP. Well that's all for this post, I will have one more tomorrow, and then it's off to see everyone at Conv12. Further there will be plenty of blog post during, as well as post Convergence as we continue this Dynamics AX journey together. Till Next Time!
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VSLive - Las Vegas Baby!

Well I hope everyone has had a very productive week, and is ready for a nice weekend. Keep in mind we Spring Forward this weekend. Personally I love it, because it means more hours of Sun, and might be able to actually enjoy the outdoors a bit.

To help wrap up this week, I wanted to post about a series of events that is going on, specifically related to Microsoft Visual Studio and .Net technologies. As you can see from the above graphic, I'm speaking about the Visual Studio Live! Conferences that are held. This year, there are four such events, with some really great tracks. The first event, is being held in Las Vegas Baby!



You can click on the above graphic, and sign up, the event is coming up soon but really has some awesome tracks, and exposure to things like.: Cloud Computing, Windows Phone App Development and Windows8/WinRT tracks.



Such events, are more than ever, very helpful in getting the most value out of your Microsoft Dynamics AX investment. More and more solutions, or total solutions for customers, embrace and make use, including extending value, with the technologies, tools and software that are covered at VSLive events. As Microsoft continues to invest with Microsoft Dynamics AX, via the rest of the product stack, the value of such conferences will only increase as time goes on.

If your interested in the full details, and all the tracks, I would suggest taking a look a the eBrochure.



There are already some great post in the Microsoft Dynamics Community that showcase the use of such technologies, like extending AX via a Windows Phone Solution. As well as, showcasing the value of Visual Studio LightSwitch for Dynamics AX.



Finally, we are all aware now, per Microsoft, that the future client for Dynamics AX will have a heavy focus around Windows 8/WinRT and HTML5 focuses, as highlighted here.: Microsoft Dynamics AX - The future Client Win8 / HTML5.

With all of this in mind, going back to my statement earlier, such conference with a wealth of tracks, speakers and knowledge, can add great understanding of the products, how they are used in solutions throughout the world, and how those concepts can then be applied to a total solution for a customers Microsoft Dynamics AX investment.

With that said, for all my readers, I have a promo code that has been giving to me, to share with you all, which is: VSLVTU. That promo code is for savings of $400 off the standard Best Value Package Rate!

That's all the time I have today, but I recommend you check out this event, and if the upcoming Las Vegas event just is not in the "cards" for you, don't worry, there are three other events going on this year, which I will blog about. Make sure to check back soon, and check back often as a whole lot more Dynamics Community coverage is well under way. Till Next Time!


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AX 2012 - Security Development Tool (Beta)

Well I hope everyone's week is off to a great and productive start. I wanted to inform everyone of a brand new tool that is currently released in beta form on InformationSource.



This new tool is called the Security Development Tool for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. You can find a direct link to this tool, on InformationSource from the following location: Link to Download the Security Development Tool.



Keep in mind, that in order to access this and other such information from InformationSource, you will have to have CustomerSource or PartnerSource Access. With that understood, this latest add-on releases just a few days ago, is Microsoft answering the call from the AX 2012 customer & partner base, for help in modeling security.

From the site:
"The Security Development Tool for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is intended to simplify the creation and maintenance of security artifacts such as roles, duties and privileges. It displays entry point permissions for a given role, duty or privilege and allows you to create new security artifacts on the basis of access through various entry points. The tool allows you to test newly created or modified security rol, duty or privilege from the same interface without using a different test user account. In addition, the tool also allows you to record business process flows and identify the entry points used."



There are a few resources that can help you with the install and use of this new tool. First off, there is a 6+ min video that goes over the use of the security tool, to a decent level actually. This is just to the right of the download itself, on that same page referenced above.

Next we have the following source on MSDN: Security Development Tool User Guide [AX 2012]. This page is the home that can take you to the above listed download as well as the Install and Execution of the Security Development Tool.

The Security model in AX 2012 has undergone a vast improvement, with great new features that enable a number of new concepts, from a business point of view. This includes topics like segregation of duty, and enabling the ability to model security, and getting rid of the need for custom code approaches to achieve certain goals. With this set of improvements, and flexibility the scope and therefore surface area for Security has increased. This is why such a tool was created by Microsoft, to help in that said modeling.

I have wrote a lot about security concepts in AX 2012 already, and the following is a compiled list to help you with this topic:

• [Date: March 7th 2011] - Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and the use of Claims Based Security
• [Date: June 2nd 2011] - Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - Security Architecture Overview
• [Date: Sept 15th 2011] - AX 2012 and the use of the new Extensible Data Security Framework
• [Date: Nov 16th 2011] - AX 2012 - Security Model Design Considerations
• [Date: Oct 11th 2011] - Ax 2012 and the impact of Design with the new Security Model
• [Date: Dec 12th 2011] - AX 2012 - Hiding a form control withut code
• [Date: Jan 25th 2012] - AX 2012 - Security Tools Review

The above, as you can tell are listed in chronological order, and all relate to the topic of Security Modeling in AX 2012. With these resources in hand, as well as this new tool, the ability to modeling security for a specific instance of AX 2012 should become a much easier task. I still want to stress with this post, that security is NOT just something a technical resource needs to be concerned with. This should have a heavy focus from the functional / business user point-of-view.

Well that's all for today, I hope this helps you in your quest to slay those security dragons, and enables you to further yourself along the quest of a Dynamics AX victory. Till Next Time!

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Understanding Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM) & Future with AX 2012

I hope everyone is doing well on this fine Friday! Hopefully you have had a very productive week, focused on your Dynamics AX projects. I wanted to continue today, the forward looking exercise of diving into the future of Business Intelligence and it's use with AX. We started the look, with an early post, focused around SQL Server 2012 & the Future of BI with Dynamics AX.



That was an introduction really, and resource post on getting access to SQL Server 2012 RC0, as well as focused on the new reality of Personal BI also known as Self-Service BI. From there, the next post was an high level introduction SQL Server 2012 - SSAS Tabular Modeling.



This included an introduction to a recently released book, pictured above, that helps dive into the topics of BI, empowered by SQL Server 2012. Now have these introduction post, it's time to take a step back a bit, and look at the larger picture, and vision of BI. Enter Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM).


Image Courtesy of Microsoft

From the above image, we can see that BI is taking shape in three real domains of context, and therefore development. First we have the Personal BI, followed by Team BI & finally Operational BI. A key understanding from this point, at least from the vision point of view, is Microsoft's focus on 'One Model for all End User Experiences'.

This was a driving theme behind Microsoft's adoption of technologies like VertiPaq that are enabling the Tabular Modeling concepts. As well, this still very much includes, vs. excludes, traditional BI concepts like OLAP Cubes.

If we look at this starting from the personal BI, we see technologies, that are very much apart of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 total solution. Starting with Personal BI and it's heavy use of Microsoft PowerPivot, through SharePoint and finally Analysis Services.


Image Courtesy of Microsoft

Moving forward, into the architecture of what will make up the BI Semantic Model, we see again, familiar and current use technologies that enable this reality. technologies, like SQL Server, Cloud based Data Services as we as OData Feeds.



We can see, already, that technologies like Microsoft PowerPivot can be used with enabling technologies like the Open Data Protocol or OData Feeds, can be used, correctly with AX 2012, to consume Query objects, for example, which enable this Personal BI, today. Having the above understanding of the BI Semantic Model, mixed with this understanding and we can see again how SQL Server 2012 will be used, and enable it's reality natively with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 RC2, scheduled for release in 2013.

To help better understand this vision & Microsoft roadmap, a great article was authored last May, that goes deeper into these topics.: Analysis Services – Vision & Roadmap Update

From the article:
"The BI Semantic Model is one model for all end user experiences – reporting, analytics, scorecards, dashboards, and custom applications. All client tools in the Microsoft BI stack – Excel, PowerPivot, SharePoint Insights and Reporting Services (including Crescent) – operate on this model. BI professionals can create the model in Visual Studio and deploy it to an Analysis Services server. Interestingly, the model can also be created by business users with PowerPivot for Excel and shared via PowerPivot for SharePoint. PowerPivot and Analysis Services are two different products; one targets business users and the other targets BI professionals and IT. However both use the BI Semantic Model under the covers."


Image Courtesy of SQLServerPerformance

Taking this understanding around the vision further, and going back to a focus around technical understanding, there is another great article, created by the SQLServerPerformance Site.: Getting Started with Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM) in SQL Server 2012

From the post:
"The Business Intelligence Semantic Model is one of the most significant enhancements in SQL Server 2012. BISM allows aspects of the traditional multidimensional model to coexist with the relational model in a format called the tabular model and can be used with all client tools in the Microsoft BI stack."

As you can see, the landscape of BI, offered from Microsoft, natively within the stack and products is getting a massive overhaul, and going to truly enable the 'BI for the Masses' tag line that has been a goal for many years now for Microsoft. These new offerings, are going to be natively used and very much a part of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 RC2. This will have a lasting impact, positive one in my thoughts, for how we even define Business Intelligence within the Dynamics Community.

That's all for this Friday, I hope that these post so far has your wheels turning, and your thinking hard about how this can benefit you and your companies Dynamics AX investment. Value is the focus, reducing time-to-value is the art, and for BI what we are seeing with SQL Server 2012's release brings the tools. Till Next Time!

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AXUG - From A Nice-Have To Must-Have: Social Media For Microsoft Dynamics Community Members

I wanted to take the time and highlight a specific AXUG Webinar event taking place next week. AXUG From A Nice-Have To Must-Have: Social Media For Microsoft Dynamics Community Members.

This event is being headlined by none other than Dynamics Social Media King, Jon Rivers! You can connect with Jon Rivers, via the following ways:
LinkedIn: Jon Rivers Profile
Twitter: @Jon_Rivers
Blog: Datamson's blog

From the event details:
"Don’t miss out and join this session to learn from a known expert in the Dynamics social space. Jon Rivers of Data Masons Software will share his insight into social media trends and explain why his company made the decision to integrate social media as a major part of their business strategy. Jon will discuss how Dynamics community members can leverage social media to network 24/7/365, gain knowledge from other professionals and stay in-the-know on Microsoft's latest announcements and initiatives."

I recommend anyone wanting to leverage Jon's social media expertise sign up for the event. It's perfect timing as well, just before Convergence 2012!

That' all for now, Till Next Time!

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SQL Server 2012 - SSAS Tabular Modeling

In my last post about SQL Server 2012 & the Future of BI with Dynamics AX, I mentioned that we would start with the introduction of concepts and continue to dive deeper. With that in mind, lets dive a little further into Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2012 - SQL Server Analysis Services.



I have referenced several times, the above image, and what it shows is the current AX 2012 Analysis Services Architecture and how OLAP Cubes are consumed and made use of within an AX instance.

It's very important to understand how the out-of-the-box AX 2012 OLAP Cubes are created, and consumed, to help understand how the new offerings coming with SQL Server 2012 might be enabled by Microsoft. Keep in mind the current target for the use of SQL Server 2012 with Dynamics AX is 2013 with the release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 RC2.

The purpose of the following post, was to point out how BI Analytics for AX 2012 currently works and can be used: AX 2012 - Diving into BI Analytics



With this understanding, we can move forward with looking at what's going to be new for SQL Server 2012, specifically relating to Analysis Services - Tabular Modeling. To help us understand these concepts a little better, we have a few resources already out there. First off, lets get connected to the Microsoft Published resources for this topic.

The current resource we have from Microsoft, which we can use with the download of SQL Server 2012 RC0, is the following: Tabular Modeling (Adventure Works Tutorial).

From the Tutorial:
"To better support the data analysis needs of sales and marketing teams and of senior management, you are tasked with creating a tabular model for users to analyze internet sales data in the AdventureWorksDWDenali sample database."

Taking this, there are a good bit of key concepts that you can start to understand for the use of Tabular Modeling, with a realistic scenario. The big picture parts that should have special attention applied during this exercise is around the parts that make up a Tabular Modeling Project.

Applying this understanding of SQL Server 2012 Tabular Modeling Projects, along with how OLAP Cubes are created and consumed in AX 2012 today, we can piece together how Microsoft might take advantage of this technology with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 RC2. Further we also can get a glimpse into PowerPivotV2 which plays a critical part in the consumption of Tabular Models from SQL Server 2012.

Finally, I will point out on this topic a book that was recommend to me, and one that I personally ordered yesterday: Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: Tabular Modeling



The Author of this book, Teo Lachev, by far, has the most exposure and expertise on this topic right now that I can find. I expect this book to get high ratings for myself personally once I'm done with it.

Well that's all for this post, but continue to check back as we look into the future of BI with Dynamics AX, along with many, many other topics. Till Next Time!

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SQL Server 2012 & the Future of BI with Dynamics AX

Recently I wrote about diving into analytics with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. In that post, I pointed to the aspect of driving value for AX customers by getting the most out of their investment. As I pointed out, all to often BI is overlooked with an AX project, specifically what can be done out-of-the-box.



Well to continue down this path of focusing around Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics AX, I feel it's very important to understand what is coming for us all in SQL Server 2012, in regards to the topic of BI.

First off, we have to point to the great new tool that has been shown off a decent amount, even at recent Microsoft conferences starting last year. I'm speaking to what was known as project crescent which is now known as Microsoft Power View.



Power View, is tagged with being able to offer "Highly Interactive Data Visualizations" that empower users, along with PowerPivot, to create self-service BI artifacts, and discovery critical data for making informed business decisions.



The ability that these two combined reporting tools bring, to power users, will offer a new level of self service BI, that has never before been possible within the Microsoft Stack itself. I recommend to help better understand what Microsoft is doing from an overall BI concept with SQL Server 2012, that you go and download the following whitepaper: SQL Server 2012: Managed Self-Service Business Intelligence



Highlights from the Whitepaper:
"Managed self-service business intelligence from Microsoft delivers breakthrough insights to organizations by empowering users of all levels to:

• Access and integrate data from virtually any source.


• Create compelling reports and analytical applications.


• Visualize and interact with data in bold news ways.


• Easily collaborate and share insights using familiar tools in Microsoft® Excel® and Microsoft SharePoint®.

"

These reporting tools, will be natively supported with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 when RC2 for AX 2012 is released in 2013. Getting prepared for this great new offering, and being able to take advantage of it for new and existing customers, means studying and prepping now.

To help do this, Microsoft is has RC0 for SQL Server 2012, in which you can download here.: Download Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RC0. This will be the first step in discovering all the great new BI capabilities that Microsoft's next major version of SQL Server brings to the game.

For this post, I will end on that download, however this is just barely scratching the surface of what we will cover, specifically related to SQL Server 2012 and it's new BI capabilities. Since Self-Service BI is a dream that most companies still battle with even trying to piece together I wanted to start the introduction from that level. As I progress this series, we will move deeper into the core of SQL Server 2012, and how it's new BI capabilities can be used, to drive value for your AX investment.

That's all for now, but check back soon as a whole lot more to come! Till Next Time!


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