Microsoft continues to add features and functionalities in every new release of Dynamics AX. With such a broad set of functionalities and features, the implementation projects become bigger and more complex, and thus, project teams require tools and technologies to support configuration management.
There are several tools available with Dynamics AX for the initial configuration and configuration management. The following sections describe some commonly used tools for configuration management.
DIXF is a powerful tool available in Dynamics AX 2012 for data migration and configuration. The chapter on data migration in this book has covered the basics of the DIXF tool. DIXF provides several out-of-the-box master data and parameter entities that can be used for configuration management directly.
The following sections define the key features of DIXF, which are useful for initial configuration and management.
DIXF supports importing of data using various formats such as files and ODBC. Several file types such as CSV, Excel, and XML are supported for import and export. DIXF can also be used for exporting entity data in any of these supported file types.
Using DIXF, a user can compare and copy the data between different legal entities. The copy entity data between the company's wizard, under the Data Import/Export Framework module, can be used for this purpose.
The following diagram shows the high-level data flow that occurs while copying the entity data from one company to another:
You can use DIXF to copy data from one Dynamics AX instance to another. The following diagram shows the data flow that occurs when copying the entity data from one instance to another:
As shown in the preceding diagram, the entity data gets copied from the Target entity to a staging table and is then exported to a file in Instance 1. Now, that file can simply be imported into Instance 2 using the typical DIXF import process.
There are more than 150 entities available out of the box in AX 2012 R3, which can be used for the configuration. However, these entities are far from the complete set of configurations, which are required in typical implementation projects. DIXF allows the developers to create new entities if they do not exist. The developers can use the custom entity wizard to create new entities for the data export and import processes.
The following are some additional key features of the Export/Import Framework:
The Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services is a cloud-based service provided by Microsoft for its partners and customers for configuring a Dynamics AX 2012 installation using an interview-style questionnaire. After the questionnaire is completed, the responses and information can be imported into the specific Dynamics AX 2012 environments.
The RapidStart Services provide a framework which the partners and customers can use to create additional questions and question groups and map them to specific AX functionalities. They can also create a configuration template and then reuse the configuration for other customers who in the same industry.
The following image shows the architecture of the RapidStart Services for Dynamics AX:
RapidStart services is available in the Microsoft Lifecycle Services tool set. However, a separate agreement is required in order to use the tool in your project.
The key features of The Microsoft Dynamics ERP RapidStart Services are as follows:
An Excel add-in is a very powerful tool available in Dynamics AX 2012, which can reduce significant amounts of manual configuration effort. Using the Excel add-in, implementation teams can design an Excel template by selecting the appropriate tables or data elements, and create or update the configuration data directly via the Excel spreadsheet.
The following screenshot shows the Excel add-in for the addition of the CustGroup
table to create a customer group in the design mode:
The key features of an Excel add-in as are follows:
The limitations of an Excel add-in as are follows:
The Export/Import tool is a legacy data export/import tool in Dynamics AX. This is not a configuration tool but rather a tool to move the data from one AX environment to another or between legal entities. To use this tool, you should know the list of tables which contains the setup data.
The following sections define the key concepts of the Export/Import tool.
The definition group is a mechanism to define a list of tables that need to be exported from a specific legal entity. To export data from one environment to another, you need to identify the underlying tables where the data is stored and then create a definition group comprising those tables. You also have an option to select the tables based on the table type properties. For example, base data tables and reference tables contain configuration data primarily. By selecting the option of table types while creating definition groups, the system will add all the tables containing the selected table groups.
The following screenshot illustrates the various options available for including the different table groups:
A user can filter the data that needs to be exported from a table by defining the filter criteria. This can be useful when the user needs to export a subset of the data from a table:
Another option in the Export/Import tool is to find the related tables from a base table. This is useful when exporting multiple related tables such as AifInboundPort
or AifOutboundPort
records. You can start a definition group by adding one table and then finding all the related tables. The system will find all related tables which you can select to add into the definition group. Data from the related tables is exported only if the records are related to the primary table record.
The key features of the Export/Import tool are as follows:
The limitations of the Export/Import tool are as follows:
The LCS configuration manager is a tool that utilizes the DIXF entities and can export the configured entities' data from one environment to another. The following screenshot shows the configuration manager tool under the LCS project tools:
The key features of the LCS configuration manager are as follows:
The Test Data Transfer Tool (dp.exe
) is a command-line tool that exports and imports the data from one environment to another. It uses the SQL server bulk copy tool and directly exports and imports data using the Dynamics AX transactional database.
The following diagram illustrates the export and import processes using the Test Data Transfer Tool:
The key features of the Test Data Transfer Tool are as follows:
It is not suitable for production use due to the preceding limitations.