A question around Organization Modeling for AX 2012

I hope that you have had a productive week thus far, filled with all things Microsoft Dynamics! As promised earlier this week, I wanted to post today about a specific question that came from my post on AX 2012 - Understanding & Extending the Organization Model.



The question posed by a reader of that post, is around the modeling of their organization for business units, and associating released products to specific Business Units.

Lets take this possed question a little further, and assume that the business unit association is desired to limit the use of released products.



Since released products, with AX 2012 out-of-the-box, are legal entity specific entities, that is the level of separation that comes as offered. Further out-of-the-box, with configuration, you can have business units used as financial dimensions. Meaning that we could then associate a released product, within a legal entity, to a business unit.



Having this association however, would not by itself limit the use of products, for users of AX, that work within specific business units. We have added something new here right? We can associate business units with released products, as financial dimensions. However the new element that we need to try and achieve is limiting the released products in a legal entity by business unit.

Now let us think about this. We could easily jump right into code driven design, that would allow for releasing products to business units, within legal entities. But why do that? The idea with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is to model more and code less.

Our secret to success in this endeavor then, would be to think in terms of modeling. This includes having Organizational modeling that has an operating model, that gives us legal entities, with business units under them. Further having the financial dimensions modeled and configured so that business units are used as financial dimensions. Finally, we need to model security with the use of Extensible Data Security Framework (XDS).



Now with this, I must warn that there are very specific warnings when using XDS for modeling security. The idea is that it would only be used with Master Data elements, according to best practice. With that warning in mind, my next post on this topic will go into greater detail of how this can be achieved with modeling, and minimum code. 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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AX 2012 - Security Tools Review

I hope everyone is doing well this week, and finding yourself in a very productive mood, diving deeper and deeper into your AX projects. I wanted to take the time, and highlight an Context Menu Add-in, for AX 2012, specifically the Security Tools that appear when highlighting certain objects in the AOT.



When talking about security in AX 2012, it's important to understand what securable objects within the application are related to what Duties, Roles and more.



To help us understand how the secureable objects in AX 2012, are related to specific privileges, through duties and roles, Microsoft comes with out-of-the-box offerings, that help us in this effort. This is what we see in the first image of this post, showing where, highlighting for example, the SalesTable table object, right clicking and then highlighting security tools, and finally clicking on the View related security roles. In doing this action, a similar screen as shown below is displayed.



There are many fields in this, for helping us understand how the specific element we have highlighted, related back up through the security model in AX 2012. As the following screen shot, further shows even more of the helpful information, for understanding the securable objects relations.



You can see, that like any other form in AX, that has a grid control, you can filter by grid, to get to needed specific information, like type of security, if it's related to form controls, etc. What's also great, and this is again throughout the AX application, the ability to take the data within the specific grid control, and easily export that to Excel, for further analysis and reporting.



Clicking on the export to excel, and we can see quickly and start working with the security related information for the element.



This then, helps in the design phases, as well as post development, within the operation of AX, to understand and glimpse into the current setup from the Role, down to the duty level of the security artifacts that exsit now as part of any AX 2012 instance. This again is powered, out-of-the-box, through the content menu. You can better understand what other functions exists as part of these Security Tools context menu in AX 2012, by going to the Menu's node, in the AOT tree. From there navigate to the SysContextMenu element, and expand the Security Tools node.



With this information, understanding what exist around security for specific elements of AX, be that out-of-the-box or custom, becomes a lot easier. This translate further, into helping make the term, powerfully simple, a true one. To add more value to this topic, if your interested in understanding more about how to work, and add your own scope to the context menu in AX, I recommend checking out the following resource page on MSDN: How to: Add Items to the AOT Add-Ins Menu [AX 2012]

Well, that's all for this post, check back soon as I have a lot more coming, including the continue dive into AX 2012, BI, Data Management, Services, Ecosystem and a whole lot more! Till next time!

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AX 2012 - Security Model Design Considerations

While at AXUG Summit last week, it was clear that there are some misunderstanding surrounding the AX 2012 Security model, and it's impact on design, as well as what level of design the great new model impacts. In an article, posted by MSDW: Developers: Prepare for More Security Work When Upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 It is being portrayed, as if Developers and Technical Consultants will have some huge workload related to security and upgrades.

Before I continue, with at least how I think this should be understood and viewed, MSDynamicsWorld.com is a great resource, and does a great job at helping cover the Dynamics Ecosystem. Like all things however, healthy information, correction and debate is always needed.

With that said, I think the partner quoted, and the people leading the session on security that drove to this article being published do not fully understand the security model in AX 2012 and the vision for the design aspects, and what it brings. It's true there is a new security model, however it's a great step forward, and not some new burden, with no value gained.

I touched on some of this in a previous article, on the impact on design the new security model for AX 2012 will have. I tried to point out, that this is very much a Functional Design Consideration, and not some heavy extra burden on technical resources. What takes place now, is instead of security being an after thought, or something pushed to a later point in a project, it now has correct considerations through the functional design process.



The above is taking from the newly released Sure Step 2012, within the Design phase, part of the Design Activity Flow, 2.5.1 - "Create Gap Design in Functional Design Document". The owner of this process? The Application Consultant.

Now the Application Developer role, has their part to play in this, however, the design, implementation, and customer administration of security is a functional business process, not a technical one. There is technical needs to create new privileges, that tie into Security Entry points. Beyond that however, the Duties, Process Cycles, Roles, as well as assignment of Users to Roles is a business function.

The vision with the new security model, beyond the implementation or upgrade process, is meant even to be spread out among the business units, where those owners of the specific parts of the business actually control assignment of security for their respective area's.



Further more, to the upgrade, there is a new tool to help suggest upgrading groups from AX 2009, to AX 2012, which you can find on Microsoft's new InformationSource. This tool however, makes suggestions, and should not be the Application Developer Roles responsibility. This must reside on the shoulders of the Application Consultant, with the Developers help, and of course very much on the business unit owners for the customer. If correct design is not spent during the upgrade process, or implementation around this area, a great set of new functionality around security, and a better use and understanding of security for AX will be missed.

I will finish with this, we have a great new security model in AX 2012, that raises the bar, and the design concepts to the business level. This is the vision from Microsoft, to abstract out and raise out of the technical depths, so that businesses can be Dynamic and react fast based on demands. This is seen throughout design concepts from services, business workflow modeling, and more.

Hopefully with this understanding, and with the new Sure Step 2012 released, we can all be armed with the correct vision, approach, and design considerations to look at the new Security model in AX 2012 for what it is: Not a burden, but finally a correct level of consideration and design during upgrades or implementations.

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

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