AX 2012 - Upgrade Questions Answered

Recently, I took part in a community effort, in order to drive awareness, as well as social connections for the Dynamics Community. This experiment, was focused around the Microsoft Community Site, hosted a set of questions around AX 2012 Upgrades.

Several people took part in this, for submitting questions, and giving answers. The following link, will guide you to this first iteration of such an effort: Microsoft Dynamics Community: Dynamics AX 2012 Upgrade Questions……Answered!

An Example, from this post, can be seen here:
"Community Question #1

First of all I want to say I love the initiative! Great to see that Microsoft is working pro-active! My question is related to the licenses. There will be different type of roles which will play a part in the license value for a given customer. Image I have a lot of project manager which will be functional roles. Are there any limitations regarding availability of different legal entities? With other words, can a functional user use/see all the legal entities deployed in an AX2012 application?

What about custom security roles made by the partners? How will they fit into the license layout..."

And the answer I provided:
"First, lets address the fact that AX 2012 License model has changed a lot actually. It's for sure a much simpler approach, and closer to how Microsoft license it's other products for use. The best source, to help understand the new license model, in full can be found from the following PDF, white paper guide: Download Whitepaper

With this in mind, it's very clear that the mappings of named user types, to menu functions, and therefore roles will have to be updated. For example, currently, if you basically touch anything with a journal, for updating say, then your user will be marked as an Enterprise Named User License. This is not the vision Microsoft had for this, so there is a planned revisit to get the menu functions, and therefore ultimate mapping of users to Named User Types updated.

With that knowledge in hand, lets move to the more direct question, is the ability to cross legal entities for performing work. This is clearly stated as a goal, if a user is meant to cross legal entities they will be considered an Enterprise Named User. That make sense, in that, if your crossing legal entities, you are no longer a Functional or Task user, because you are truly doing functions at the enterprise level.

Finally, lets address your question around custom roles and security. In terms of reference to the Named User types, when custom menu functions, and business logic is created, either via an ISV, or the customer itself, the Microsoft Named User license count is not affected. If you look, for example, and create a custom menu item, which is how the Named User counts are tallied and linked, you will notice that None is set, instead of Functional, Task, Enterprise, etc. To the license point for ISV there is a different license model that ISV's can use, that for a customer will have to maintain that either through their VAR, or through a direct relationship with the ISV who is providing you service.

One note, I will make about this, is around AX in the cloud. When this is the approach, and the Partner Hosted model is in place, you pay by month, per user. The named user license still can come into play, however you only upcharge, if you will, when you add another user. So for example, if your implementing AX, via the cloud, and only need 5 users at first to get the implementation going, that's all you will be billed for, in the months those five users access your instance. When the next month rolls around, and say you add a cost accountant, for working in your AX implementation. Then this will add a sixth user license count and from that month forward is when you will pay the difference added to your bill for that use."

I would like to thank Andy, and the team at Microsoft for allowing me to take part in this effort. I look forward to such future engagements, as I believe this really helps connect the community. Using the power of social media, to get real world questions, answers and the sharing of knowledge.

If you have a burning question, feel free to leave me a comment on my blog, email me, and of course let Andy at the Microsoft Community Know. It could help shape the next topic, for when we do such an effort in the future.

That's all for now, but check back soon as more to come! Till Next time!

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