Microsoft InformationSource - Powerful, Agile & Simple

Well AXUG Summit 2011 has come and gone, and a lot of information and great sessions took place. It was a great showing really by both Customers, Partners as well as Microsoft presence. There are so many great topics to cover, and I will continue to dive into each of these, as we continue to help grow our Dynamics Ecosystem together.

I would like to thank everyone for the great support for the blog, and for those that came and meet with me during the sessions and Expo. With that, and to help kick off normal postings, I wanted to highlight a great new resource that Microsoft is creating. This is called InformationSource and you can log into InformationSource using your windows live id, that you use for PartnerSource or CustomerSource.

The direct link to InformationSource can be found here: InformationSource.Dynamics.com.

This is slated to become a great new source of information, focused on: "Resources for predictable implementations." And the site, is already true to it's statement. It's broken up into three major area's: Powerful, Agile & Simple.


The powerful section from this site, goes into several key area's, around scale, efficiency & productivity. All around delivering more value, faster.


Next we have agile focused resources, for time-to-value, reduced risk and a focus on higher ROI for your implementation.


Finally there is simple, with a focus on a single solution, seamless collaboration, and easier application life cycle management.

All of this expands on the offerings, already talked about for Sure Step, as well as RapidStart Services. The goal, again as stated by this new great resource, is to have repeatable, predictable implementations. This means there is a great focus around the Partner as well as the Customer of course. I highly recommend keeping up with this site, as it moves out of beta and into more main stream use, and updates.

I would also like to highlight Joris, over at DAXMusings.blogspot.com for his great recent news update for AX 2012. He actually talks about the new InformationSource site, including highlighting some of the great new beta tools, including that of IDMF for AX 2012!

It's hard not to be excited about Microsoft Dynamics AX, and with the release of AX 2012, and all that it brings. Microsoft, and the community as a whole is expanding rapidly, and growing leaps and bounds. It's a great time to be working in the Dynamics world, and if your a customer that has chosen the path of Dynamics AX 2012, and wonderful time to reap all the benefits this true world class ERP solution can offer you.

Look for more post, and deeper dives on all kinds of topics. There is really so much to cover and talk about. All focused, around driving value for you, and your part in the Dynamics Ecosystem.

That's all for right now, but check back soon as a whole lot more to come. Till next time!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is live!

RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is live! PartnerSource or CustomerSource access is required to get access to it.

The link on PartnerSouce can be found here.: Microsoft Dynamics ERP - RapidStart Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX

From the post:
"Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services allows organizations to easily configure business processes and modules thru an intuitive interview style questionnaire. Organizations can answer questions specific to their business processes and based on the responses to questions the necessary records for those business processes are created. Time of configure Microsoft Dynamics ERP can be greatly reduced and allow organizations to spend time on value add services."

The link contains a download, services guide as well as configuring projects guide. I've looked at this now, and it really has the possibility of truly helping out projects of all sizes.

The first focus for this offering, for out-of-the-box questions and templates is around U.S. & Canada Financials, with a lot more planned offerings to come.

Based on the guide, this is a Partner focused effort, in which a Partner would on-board it's customers, and in turn then can enable the RapidStart Services for that given project. From there, an On-Premise connector is what enables the connection to this Azure based software, and let me say again, this is pretty dang cool. I would say bye-bye rapid configuration tool, hello to the next generation!

What I think is very cool about this offering, is the fact that Partners, and even implementation projects, can tailor the use of this tool, for their needs. Like all software, the community has to dig in, and start to see real value out of this. However I see this becoming a staple in all AX 2012 projects.

If your a partner, or even in the midst of a AX 2012 deployment already, this needs to be looked at now to see how it can help your implementation. If your an ISV, you need to be looking at this, so that you can create templates, that tailor the RapidStart Services to include Rapid Configuration ability to your IP for AX 2012.

The official product launch, or RTM, is not for some weeks, so you can look at this as being the GA release of RapidStart Services. I've heard several people from Microsoft comment on this is just the first release, in which many more or planned to have out-of-the-box questions and templates.

So if you have access, go check this out now!

That's all for this post, till next time!

Update: There is now further documentation about RapidStart Services over on TechNet: Help for Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services users [AX 2012]



"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"