ERP

In this video I’m back on the Advanta campus chatting with Michael Merz, Program Manager for Application Integration Framework (AIF) on the Dynamics AX team.

AIF is a standards-based framework that allows you to publish and consume web services.  It’s used primarily in integration scenarios when connecting Dynamics AX with other systems.  AX also has .NET Business Connector  (BC.NET) for integrating with .NET applications.  BC.NET is more for client side integration.  AIF is all about web services and is completely standards-based. Under the covers AIF takes full advantage of .NET using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).  For more complex integration scenarios AIF can also help expose services using MSMQ and BizTalk.

With Dynamics AX 2009, the team ships a bunch of services (about 60 out of the box) that are ready for use.  That includes, for example, the more common scenarios like integration with sales orders or customers.  AIF allows you to create, read, update and delete those sales orders while maintaining the integrity of the database (i.e. without directly touching the database at all).  This is done independent of the transport so when developing you could begin by updating via http and later switch to MSMQ.  This can be as simple as enabling the service then “generating” which generates the WCF interface (i.e. WSDL).  That web service is then available to be consumed by any standards-based client (including apps written in php, java and naturally any of the languages in Visual Studio).  You can also configure the service endpoints to change the binding or authentication parameters.

WCF and AIF in Dynamics 2009: Chatting with Michael Merz

In the video, Michael walks us through using a standard Excel Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) project to consume a AX 2009 sales order service that is exposed using AIF.  He also shows us how, by using WS-Addressing in the WCF headers, you can pass a target company for a web service call. By default, AX limits error messages coming back from the server for security reasons.  Michael shows us how to configure AX to propagate those errors when you need to see them.

Dynamics AX is a rich platform for supply chain management and financials.  AIF opens up AX so that ISVs can build on that richness by integrating their own applications.  Sometimes when you do that you need to consume a web service exposed by external applications.  We see here how you can plug external web services into the AX processes.  In this case, Michael shows us how when trying to create a customer in Dynamics AX with a name that has been blacklisted by the US government (“Bin Laden”, for instance.  Yikes!  ) the customer create process calls out to an external web service in the cloud to verify the customer name.  This seamless integration of external processes is a boon for ISVs that need those deep integration points.  Michael explains how. In order to do this sort of integration you build a Service Reference in the Application Object Tree (AOT) to provide the parameters.  AX takes care of much of work by generating the artifacts (compilation, deploying, bundling etc) that are deployed and executed on the server.  CLR interop is available in order to use .NET DLLs and their classes.

Some code samples are available here:

• Application Integration Framework Overview (MSDN)
• Calling the Customer and Vendor Services (Dianne Siebold)

I almost snorted my tea across the room when I read this one.  Pretty funny quote, I think. 

ZDNet:  Dynamics AX 2009: The ‘Halo’ for Microsoft’s app platform

The great news, of course, is that Dynamics AX 2009 is now generally available.  The team put a lot of hard work in to this release.  There are thousands of new features here and there’s some really good stuff related to the Microsoft stack and especially good stuff for .NET developers.  I’ve got my video camera out and have been visiting a few friends in building 110.  Look for some interesting Channel 9 videos coming soon.

Dan over on our Channel 9 team sat down with some of the folks from the Dynamics AX team to chat about Dynamics AX 2009 which should release quite soon.  In this video we see some of the cool stuff that’s coming with Enterprise Portal built on SharePoint and ASP.NET.

A preview of Dynamics AX 2009 with the Dynamics team

If you’re an ISV building cool stuff on Dynamics CRM or Dynamics AX and are planning to attend Convergence EMEA drop me a note.  I’d love to meet up and see what you’ve been up to.  I’ll be in Copenhagen from Oct 21st through Oct 25th.

Conferences can be a real drain between travel, jet lag, long hours.  I fight that by soaking up the positive energy from the many partners working on the Dynamics platform.  It’s the thing I enjoy most about Convergence conferences; meeting up with ISV partners that are doing new and interesting things.  

This conference I’m going to try and grab some of the partners on video so the readers of this blog (both of you ) can see some of this cool stuff.

If you’re attending Convergence drop me a note via my blog contact form.  Give me a little information about your self and when would be a good time to meet.

Nice!  We’ve opened the new Dev Center for Dynamics.  This is fantastic.  Lots of improvements with this but the nicest thing for me is that we now have separate sub-Dev Centers for each of the individual Dynamics products (AX, CRM, GP, NAV and SL).  That makes a lot of sense as it will keep the signal to noise ratio really high (if I’m focused on AX and CRM then I probably don’t want to see stuff about the other products, right?).  The trick, of course, will be to keep each of these Dev Centers stocked full with fresh content.  But then again that’s partly my job.

Link to Microsoft Dynamics

Technorati tags: Dynamics, Software Development, Line of Business Apps, MSDN

Want to help change the SMB software industry? Are you a big-picture thinker, interested in addressing both business and technology opportunities for line of business application developers? Do you get excited about the market opportunity to bring the latest platform innovations to the future of SCM, CRM or Financial Management line of business systems? Do you love helping software companies learn how to use the latest technologies to build a better experience for their customers? Are you a voracious learner, devouring new technologies and industry trends with an unabashedly geeky enthusiasm? Can you quickly digest your learnings into pragmatic, succinct suggestions that help decision makers meet their particular business objectives?

Join our team to evangelize the Microsoft Dynamics platform as part of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division.

Want to help change the SMB software industry? Are you a big-picture thinker, interested in addressing both business and technology opportunities for line of business application developers? Do you get excited about the market opportunity to bring the latest platform innovations to the future of SCM, CRM or Financial Management line of business systems? Do you love helping software companies learn how to use the latest technologies to build a better experience for their customers? Are you a voracious learner, devouring new technologies and industry trends with an unabashedly geeky enthusiasm? Can you quickly digest your learnings into pragmatic, succinct suggestions that help decision makers meet their particular business objectives?

Join our team to evangelize the Microsoft Dynamics platform as part of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division.

A few months ago I was asked to take on a new role at Microsoft.  We’ve kicked off an initiative within Developer and Platform Evangelism to help drive ISV evangelism for the Microsoft Dynamics brand.  I was asked to help drive the content development and programs.  What an opportunity!  I jumped at the chance and am now on this full-time.  That’s why my blog went dark for a few months, BTW. 

The reason I jumped at this is that I see enormous potential in this area.  Early in my career I spent many years building ERP systems.  This was back when they were still called accounting systems. 

For those who haven’t been paying attention to this part of the Microsoft business, a little history: Microsoft acquired Great Plains in 2001 (getting Great Plains and Solomon in the deal) and Navision in 2002 (getting Navision and Axapta in that one).  Until recently we’ve been running all of these products as a separate division.  That has worked ok but I don’t think it’s done much to help integrate those products into the rest of Microsoft.  We’ve taken it slow as all four products had partners with investments in products and businesses riding on the success of those products and Microsoft is nothing if not hyper-sensitive to the needs of our partners.

In 2005, we mapped out the plan for how we were going to rationalize the four ERP products in our portfolio and more importantly talked about the roadmap for how we were going to do it in a way that our existing partners could come along for the ride.  We’ve been executing to that plan ever since.  The past year especially has been pretty exciting to watch.  About a year ago we combined all the line of business products into one brand called Dynamics.  Around that same time we also moved the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) group in with the Information Worker group to form the Microsoft Business Division under Jeff Raikes.  And finally, a few months ago Jeff Raikes appointed Satya Nadella to head up the MBS group.

You see what we did there? We took what, a couple of years ago, was a billion dollar bag on the side of the company and pulled it into to where it is now a strategic part of the business.  We then put a hard core Microsoft exec who understands both the Microsoft business and culture as well as having made a big impact on the MBS roadmap. Nice!  In most companies that would be just another re-org.  In my mind, though, we’re now set up to bust out and grow this business and that I like, I like!  Do I like that it took us 5 years to get here?  Not so much but I understand why and agree it had to happen that way.

If all we’d done was rearrange the office name plates I wouldn’t be so excited.  What’s got me really excited is the product roadmap for the next few years.  I’ll talk about that in my next post…

A few months ago I was asked to take on a new role at Microsoft.  We’ve kicked off an initiative within Developer and Platform Evangelism to help drive ISV evangelism for the Microsoft Dynamics brand.  I was asked to help drive the content development and programs.  What an opportunity!  I jumped at the chance and am now on this full-time.  That’s why my blog went dark for a few months, BTW. 

The reason I jumped at this is that I see enormous potential in this area.  Early in my career I spent many years building ERP systems.  This was back when they were still called accounting systems. 

For those who haven’t been paying attention to this part of the Microsoft business, a little history: Microsoft acquired Great Plains in 2001 (getting Great Plains and Solomon in the deal) and Navision in 2002 (getting Navision and Axapta in that one).  Until recently we’ve been running all of these products as a separate division.  That has worked ok but I don’t think it’s done much to help integrate those products into the rest of Microsoft.  We’ve taken it slow as all four products had partners with investments in products and businesses riding on the success of those products and Microsoft is nothing if not hyper-sensitive to the needs of our partners.

In 2005, we mapped out the plan for how we were going to rationalize the four ERP products in our portfolio and more importantly talked about the roadmap for how we were going to do it in a way that our existing partners could come along for the ride.  We’ve been executing to that plan ever since.  The past year especially has been pretty exciting to watch.  About a year ago we combined all the line of business products into one brand called Dynamics.  Around that same time we also moved the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) group in with the Information Worker group to form the Microsoft Business Division under Jeff Raikes.  And finally, a few months ago Jeff Raikes appointed Satya Nadella to head up the MBS group.

You see what we did there? We took what, a couple of years ago, was a billion dollar bag on the side of the company and pulled it into to where it is now a strategic part of the business.  We then put a hard core Microsoft exec who understands both the Microsoft business and culture as well as having made a big impact on the MBS roadmap. Nice!  In most companies that would be just another re-org.  In my mind, though, we’re now set up to bust out and grow this business and that I like, I like!  Do I like that it took us 5 years to get here?  Not so much but I understand why and agree it had to happen that way.

If all we’d done was rearrange the office name plates I wouldn’t be so excited.  What’s got me really excited is the product roadmap for the next few years.  I’ll talk about that in my next post…