Chapter 1: Overview

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW
Objectives
The objectives are:

Understand that Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a powerful

solution.

Understand that Microsoft Dynamics AX provides an agile solution.

Understand that Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a simple solution.

Understand that Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a unified

solution from Microsoft.

Understand the industry focus for Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Understand the broad functionality that is provided in Microsoft

Dynamics AX2012.

Perform the setup steps required to complete the demonstrations in

this training material on the training virtual machine.

Introduction
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is the Microsoft enterprise resource planning
(ERP) solution for enterprises that empowers your people to anticipate and
embrace change so that your business can thrive.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is designed for enterprises with 200 to 7,500
users. It helps employees be more productive and increases the value of
information by providing all people in the organization with access to important
business information and processes. Because it includes rich industry and core
ERP capabilities in a single, global solution, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
promotes faster time to value. Simple to learn and use, it provides the agility that
you need to expand business opportunities, modify processes, and differentiate
your business. With pervasive interoperability, you can take advantage of
existing investments, lower the total cost of ownership (TCO), and support
innovation in your organization.
Microsoft Dynamics AX supports global organizations by managing multisite
operations through shared master data and business processes, as well as countryspecific capabilities, in a single instance. Rich ERP capabilities also support
human resources, financials, project management, and sales and marketing.
The Microsoft Dynamics RoleTailored user interface includes more than 30 Role
Centers and makes it easier for everyone in key business areas to access and
share ad hoc, self-service business intelligence and reporting.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Powerful
Deliver value faster with powerful foundation technology
in a single solution.
Many Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems have never moved
beyond managing the administrative dimension of your business, tracking
general ledger, payroll, and HR, while the real operation of the business is
managed elsewhere. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is different, covering both the
administrative and operational requirements.
To do this, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 :

Delivers rich, prebuilt, industry-operational functionality out of the

box.

Is a truly global solution, designed to scale with your business.

Provides a RoleTailored user experience.

Pre-built Industry and Operational Capability

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides pre-built industry and
operational capabilities gives you more value faster.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 delivers rich, prebuilt, industry-operational
functionality out of the box, with proven functionality for manufacturing
(process, discrete, and lean), distribution, retail, public sector, and service
industries. By delivering this capability, Microsoft Dynamics AX gives you more
value faster, and establishes a strong platform for independent software vendors
(ISVs) to more efficiently deliver the specialized vertical functionality unique to
verticals within those industries.
Stronger base functionality and a broad portfolio of specialized vertical solutions
means a better fit for the needs of your business, more value, and more rapid time
to value. Microsoft Dynamics AX uniquely combines industry-specific
capabilities in one solution and makes them available to all customers, benefiting
organizations that require capabilities for more than one industry.

Global Solution
Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a global solution that grows
easily with your business.
Microsoft Dynamics AX is a global solution, designed to scale with your
business. Simple enough to deploy for a single business unit in a single country,
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 supports the unique requirements for business
systems in 36 countries - all from a single-instance deployment of the software.

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Chapter 1: Overview
Multiple currencies, multiple time zones, multiple languages, and compliance
with multiple banking and reporting standards and legislative codes give you the
global coverage that you require. The layered architecture and installable
language packs provide the flexibility for future growth to other markets,
including options for agile, partner-led localization.

Role Tailored User Interface

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a RoleTailored user interface
which provides instant insight and productivity for your
people.
The RoleTailored user interface spans the Microsoft Dynamics AX rich client
and Enterprise Portal and helps drive productivity and business insight through
its familiar user experience and connection with business processes. Microsoft
Word and Excel, familiar and powerful tools that workers already know and
use, work bidirectionally with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to enhance worker
productivity. A flexible Help system provides added support when it is needed.
The value of a business system is not only about the ease of entering transactions,
instead it is about turning those transactions into information, or business
intelligence (BI), to help users make faster, better decisions. To do this, business
intelligence must be an embedded part of the application, not a separate tool that
requires users to take additional steps and switch contexts. Rich, embedded BI is
at the core of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 with:

More than 30 Role Centers shipped out of the box, to provide the
right BI for each user's job role.

11 SQL Analytics Server Cubes that provide data to Role Centers.

Key performance indicators that are role based and tailored to each
process.

Over 800 out-of-the-box reports, all delivered through SQL Server

Reporting Services.

Rich interoperability with Microsoft Excel for outputting report and

enabling analysis.

Interoperability with Microsoft PowerPivot for ad hoc slicing and

dicing.

InfoParts providing in-context BI fully embedded throughout the

Microsoft Dynamics AX user experience.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Agile
Increase agility and expand business opportunities while
reducing risk.
Excellence for a business application begins with two primary challenges: how
well does the software model the real-world, and how quickly can I make it fit
my business in a rapidly changing world? If the fidelity between software model
and reality is high, then implementation is straightforward and the software can
provide strong insight, empowering efficient business execution. If it is not, then
implementation is filled with compromises and workarounds and using the
software is filled with challenge and complexity. It is that simple, and it is the
beginning of why Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is different.

Unified Natural Model

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a Unified Natural Model that
lets you plan, see and change your business.
Unified, natural models make modeling simple businesses fast and easy and yet
still provide the richness and flexibility to represent the most complex
organizations.
Fundamental elements of the unified, natural models in Microsoft Dynamics AX
2012 include the following:

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Flexible business organization modeling. This lets you capture the

physical locations of your business, legal entity structure, and
business reporting structure.

Representation of business workflow, policies, and dollar limit - and

the ability to specialize that policy for different parts of the
organization model by using a graphical workflow editor, without
any coding required.

Unlimited financial dimensions. This enables categorization and

analysis of transactions across multiple views.

Date effectivity for data and models at the framework level, with
additional security control on future effective information to enable
before-and-after reporting across organizational changes.

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Chapter 1: Overview
Flexible Deployment Alternatives
Microsoft Dynamics AX provides flexible deployment
alternatives to support your business today and tomorrow.
System deployment represents another important dimension where businesses
demand agility. Growth, or even consolidation, will change a business's needs.
Evolving technology may change the most effective way to meet those needs.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 enables flexible deployment alternatives that
support your business today and tomorrow.
Microsoft Dynamics is committed to enabling deployment choice - that includes
on-premise deployment and partner private cloud hosting today, and a roadmap
to Microsoft cloud capability in the future - all with a single application solution.
Deployment of a model at a specific moment in time should not lock a customer
into an application that should be the heart of their business for a very long time;
customers can choose Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 because it is the right
solution for their business.

Model-driven Layered Architecture

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a model-driven layered
architecture that makes company differentiating changes easy
to execute.
Microsoft Dynamics AX is designed with a unique layer and model structure that
separates and controls the updates and modifications made in the application.
This structure provides a powerful and flexible architecture for developing
business logic. As more and more of the system is defined through models,
unique requirements can be addressed without writing code.
The key benefit of the layer and model structure is that it lets developers change
and extend the functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX while maintaining
upgradability to new versions.
Models drive overall system agility by speeding the process of fitting the
software to the business at implementation, and more importantly, enabling rapid
system evolution in the face of changing business conditions and requirements.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Simple
Drive adoption and lower costs with an easy-to-use
solution.
As business applications evolve, the natural tendency is for complexity to
increase. Instead Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is committed to simplicity. It
focuses on simplifying every aspect of the system, including installation,
deployment, implementation, customization, user experience, and upgrades.
Simplicity drives adoption and ensures that customers truly get the benefit of the
system's power and agility.

Familiar User Experience

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides a familiar user experience to
make it simple to learn and intuitive to use.
For end-users, simplicity begins with a familiar interface that makes the
application simple to learn and intuitive to use. A key focus of user interface
design is to allow high-velocity transaction processes like order entry to be
entered as quickly and simply as possible.
Common, innovative user interface concepts including visualizations, Microsoft
Office look and common user interface across both the web browser and
Windows rich client user interfaces accelerate the ramp up time of all users.
The bi-directional integration with Microsoft Office 2010 lets users work with
Microsoft Dynamics AX data in familiar applications.

Integrated Collaboration
Microsoft Dynamics AX provides integrated collaboration to
make it simple to connect employees, customers, suppliers,
and partners.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 brings collaboration directly into the application
making it simpler to connect with other people.

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SharePoint based vendor and customer portals simplify basic supply

chain collaboration. Customers and vendors can access information
from the web portal.

Sites services support ad hoc, end-to-end business process

integration with partners and customers.

The Application Integration Framework allows data to be passed

between applications either within an organization or with trading
partners.

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Chapter 1: Overview

Unified Communication integration allows users to instantly interact

with other users and minimizes user's distraction from tasks.

SharePoint Collaboration Sites can be created directly from within

Microsoft Dynamics AX to share information with team members.

Application Life Cycle Management

Microsoft Dynamics AX application life cycle management
makes it simple to deploy, manage and upgrade.
Microsoft Dynamics AX automates application life cycle management and
provides tools which facilitate deployment, management, and upgrades for
customers, implementers, and ISVs. This results in operations efficiencies.

Pervasive Interoperability
Drive innovation-today and tomorrow-by working with a standard Microsoft
technology platform that simplifies deployment and reduces costs. This gives you
the power to drive your business forward. You can deploy in the way that works
best for you-on-premises, in the cloud (through partners), or by using a hybrid
model - and make incremental changes as needed. With Microsoft Dynamics
AX, you get a business solution from Microsoft that is backed by an ongoing
commitment to research, development, and innovation:

Maximize your investments, lower TCO, and make additional

productivity gains through Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
interoperability with Microsoft business productivity solutions and
the application platform, including:
o
o
o
o
o
o

Microsoft Office
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft Visual Studio development system
Microsoft BizTalk Server
Microsoft Lync

Innovate rapidly and move your organization into the future by

taking advantage of:
o

Ongoing investments by Microsoft and its partners in the

platform, infrastructure technologies, and applications that
enable your ERP solution to evolve as your organization grows.
Easy access to a broad and talented pool of Visual Studio
developers and solutions that can help IT implement and
maintain your ERP solution to meet your organization's changing
needs.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Industry Focus
In a single solution, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps enterprises meet their
business requirements easily with purposely built capabilities for five industries
(Manufacturing, Distribution, Retail, Public Sector, and Services industries).
In addition, the same single solution can support specific business requirements
easily by extending the industry foundation with packaged vertical solutions from
the Microsoft Partner Network, the largest partner ecosystem of global systems
integrators (GSIs), independent software vendors (ISVs), and value-added
resellers (VARs).

Functionality
This lesson provides a high level overview of key functionality in Microsoft
Dynamics AX 2012. For more information about the various modules, please
refer to the Appendix.

Financials
The Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Financial Management module provides fast,
reliable, and comprehensive accounting, financial reporting, and analysis. It also
provides all the functionality that you need to update accounts efficiently and
comply with reporting requirements.
Basic capabilities of the Financial Management module include the following:

General Ledger

Liquidity Management (Bank Management)

Fund Accounting

Accounts Receivable

Accounts Payable

Fixed Assets

Expense Management

Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps businesses
manage materials, information, and transactions as they move through the
process from the vendor to the manufacturer, and then to the retailer and to the
end customer. The three goals of supply chain management are as follows:

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Reducing inventory

Lowering costs

Improving time-to-market

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Chapter 1: Overview
Basic capabilities of the Supply Chain functionality include the following:

Inventory control

Sales order processing

Purchase order processing

Warehouse management

Production

Material Requirements Planning (MRP)

Lean Manufacturing

Product builder (product configurator)

Quality control

Project and Service

As the demand for faster and better service increases, so does the pressure to
automate processes and balance costs associated with projects and service
requests. For the growing number of companies that provide services to
customers, either as their core business or in addition to their products, the
challenge is to effectively manage knowledge, opportunities and resources.
Project Accounting provides a strong platform to help companies effectively
administer projects and achieve the results that they want.
Basic capabilities of the project and service functionality include the following:

Project accounting

Professional services automation

Service management

Service subscriptions

CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) may mean many things to many
people. CRM is actually a plethora of concepts, ideas, and strategies offered by a
large array of CRM specialists. The essence of CRM usually includes the
following three disciplines:

Know your customer

Act on what you know

Learn about what you know

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Therefore, the main objective of Customer Relationship Management is to keep
and grow customers. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 can offer many new features
in the CRM module that enable a clearer view of a company's sales processes and
helps companies to do the following:

Better manage and conduct their sales processes

Better document processes and procedures for future use

Basic capabilities of CRM functionality include the following:

Sales force automation

Sales management and reporting

Marketing campaigns

Telemarketing

Human Capital Management

An agile human resource management system can help companies quickly
develop their organization to meet the challenges of a fluctuating business
environment. Microsoft Dynamics AX 20212 Human Resource Management
module helps companies:

Gather and structure employee information

Encourage employee development

Streamline employee performance

Offer competitive on-cycle and off-cycle compensation

Reward long-term and short-term employee performance

Promote talent retention and motivation

Maintain an overview of the organization

Create the appropriate internal environment to drive business

forward

Basic capabilities of human capital management functionality include the

following:

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Organization and employee information

Recruitment

Employee development

Training course management

Absence management

Compensation modeling

Payroll

Benefits

Questionnaire

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Chapter 1: Overview

Virtual Machine Setup Instructions

This section describes additional setup steps required to complete the
demonstrations in this training course with the virtual machine provided for
training purposes.
Please make sure these are completed before the performing the demonstrations
associated with these steps.

Demonstration: Step 1- Alert Batch Job

This step required for Chapter 2 - Demonstration: Create an Alert Rule.
This creates a batch job to process alert rules and deliver alerts to users.
1. Go to System Administration > Periodic > Alerts > Change based
alerts.
2. Click the Recurrence button.
3. Select No end date.
4. Change Count: from 10 to 1.
5. Click OK.
6. Click the Alerts button.
7. Clear Ended.
8. Click OK.
9. Click OK.
10. Click Close.

Demonstration: Step 2- Workflow Approval Security

Access
Step required for Chapter 2 - Demonstration: Submit a workflow and Chapter 2 Demonstration: Approve a workflow.
This gives Phyllis security access to approve a purchase requisition workflow.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Go to System administration > Common > Users > Users.

Double-click the record with user name Phyllis Harris.
Click the Assign roles button.
Select System administrator.
Click OK.
Click Close.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Demonstration: Step 3- Workflow Processing
Step required for Chapter 2 - Demonstration: Submit a workflow and Chapter 2 Demonstration: Approve a workflow.
This creates a batch job to process workflow.
1. Go to System Administration > Setup > Workflow > Workflow
infrastructure configuration.
2. Click Next.
3. Click Next.
4. Click Next.
5. Change Repeat job after the specified number of minutes: from
30 to 1.
6. Click Next.
7. Click Finish.

Demonstration: Step 4- SharePoint Access

Required for Chapter 5 - Demonstration: Associate a User with an Employee
Record.
This gives access to Enterprise Portal for all users setup on the virtual machine.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

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Open Internet Explorer.

Click Site Actions and select Site Permissions.
Click Grant Permissions.
Type Administrators in the Users/Groups: text box.
Click the Check names button.
Select the Full Control check box.
Click OK.
Close Internet Explorer.

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Chapter 1: Overview

Summary
This tutorial introduces Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) system. The various modules of Microsoft Dynamics AX are described,
including the interrelations between the modules and their key features and
benefits.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Test Your Knowledge

Test your knowledge with the following questions.
1. Match each theme with the correct description:
_____ 1.
Powerful
_____ 2.
Simple
_____ 3. Agile

a. Plan, see and change your business with agility.

b. Drive adoption and lower costs with an easy-to-use
solution.
c. Increase agility and expand business opportunities
while reducing risk.

2. Which of these products interoperates with Microsoft Dynamics AX. (Select

all that apply)
( ) Microsoft SharePoint
( ) Microsoft Visual Studio development system
( ) Microsoft Office
( ) Microsoft SQL Server

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Chapter 1: Overview

Quick Interaction: Lessons Learned

Take a moment and write down three key points you have learned from this
chapter
1.

2.

3.

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Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Solutions
Test Your Knowledge
1. Match each theme with the correct description:
a 1.
Powerful
c 2.
Simple
b 3. Agile

a. Plan, see and change your business with agility.

b. Drive adoption and lower costs with an easy-to-use
solution.
c. Increase agility and expand business opportunities
while reducing risk.

2. Which of these products interoperates with Microsoft Dynamics AX. (Select

all that apply)
() Microsoft SharePoint
() Microsoft Visual Studio development system
() Microsoft Office
() Microsoft SQL Server

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