DAXRunBase

Synchronize Models between workspaces in MSDyn365FO

For our upgrade project we have decided to create 4 packages/models to start with, which is enough to separate larger areas. Once the models have been created on my VM, I had to make it available for everyone. The goal was to synchronize models between workspaces of other developers.

Package / ModelDescription
JAD CoreCore application framework changes, essentially what is in Platform and Foundation
JAD OperationBusiness application customizations, later on we might create additional models for larger functionality
JAD IntegrationFor exchanging
JAD ReportingFor reporting, data warehousing, CDS and entities

The devil lies in the details and for some reason the model was not showing up after synch. It turns out that the model description sits in an XML file within the Descriptor folder. You need to manually include it in source control, as explained in the documentation as well. Once it is checked in, all you need to do to synchronize models between workspaces is to get latest changes, then click on Dynamics 365 > Model Management > Refresh models.

Synchronize models between workspaces

DAXRunBase / 2018-10-18 / Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, MSDyn365FO / 0 Comments

Developer VM performance for MSDyn365FO

When you are used to snappy desktops or locally hosted virtual machines and suddenly you need to move to the cloud, you would expect to see similar capabilities for a reasonable price. Unfortunately that was not my experience when it comes to deploying AX 8.1 in Azure cloud. This post is about setting expectations straight for MSDyn365FO developer VM performance hosted in the cloud vs. locally.

First of all, when you deploy your developer VM on the cloud, you have two options. Standard and Premium, which is a reference to what kind of storage will be allocated to your machine. The default size is D13 (8 cores, 56 GB RAM) for regular rotating hard disks, and you need to use the DS-prefixed computers for the flash storage with memory-optimized compute. You can read up about them on these pages in more detail on the Microsoft Docs site:

Premium disk tiers
Virtual machine sizing

When it comes to premium performance, the Virtual Machine template that Microsoft has built for the LifeCycle Services deployment is using the following structure:

PurposeTierIOPSThroughput
Operating SystemP1050025 MB/sec (50K reads)
Services and DataP202300150 MB/sec (64K reads)
Temporary BuildP1050025 MB/sec (50K reads)

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DAXRunBase / 2018-10-15 / Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, MSDyn365FO / 0 Comments

Find standard code overlayering in Dynamics 365 FO

We are preparing for the code upgrade from AX 2012 R3 to D365FO 8.1, the latest version recently released. As you know it is extensions-only, meaning we are not allowed to modify any of the standard objects directly. I would strongly suggest to familiarize yourself with Extensions if you are planning to go down this journey as well. An important part of this is that you need to send in Extensibility requests via LifeCycle Services, for code that cannot be moved to a pre- / post-event handler. Our large number of customized methods came out well above 1000+ overlayered objects when we ran the LCS code upgrade tool on our modelstore. We had to find standard code overlayering of all methods to narrow down the search on what should be inspected for extensibility.

I have been exploring the options to use the MetaData API for extracting package information of methods. We wanted to find any methods, which belongs to both a standard, and a custom package, like ApplicationPlatfrom and ApplicationPlatform.JAD (our module). That did not lead to anything useful other than realizing that you can only access such details up to the root node level (table, class) currently. Here is the code piece for partial results: (more…)

DAXRunBase / 2018-10-05 / Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations / 0 Comments

AOT property for kernel objects are readable via reflection

There was a question recently on the Dynamics Community forums about finding out which enumeration to use behind an int type. It turned out that the table, field and enum in question was part of the kernel. Those entries reside under the System documentation node of the AOT, and they do not provide much meaningful details. Reflection works on them as well, so you could use the tooling the same way as on regular objects (Dict*, TreeNode objects). Here is a code snippet to read the AOT property for kernel objects.

You may also find some examples within the official documentation on how to use reflection. This example is getting class decoration of a method:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamicsax-2012/developer/how-to-use-reflection-to-get-attribute-class-metadata

(more…)

DAXRunBase / 2018-10-05 / AX 2012, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations / 0 Comments

Microsoft Ignite 2018 day 1 recap

Today Microsoft Ignite 2018 has kicked off with a lot of exciting news.
You may view sessions and on-demand videos on the main site:

Microsoft Ignite 2018

One of the most important content is the fall release documentation referred as 2018 October Release Notes, available on the Docs site

We can use new, more advanced and modern capabilities of the Power platform. Microsoft is also introducing AI to many Dynamics 365 products.

We can access a new library of training courses on a portal called Microsoft Learn. Here we get free learning opportunity for tools like PowerApps, Flow and Common Data Service.

The highlight which I am very excited about now is the soon-to-be-released tool called Regression Test Suite already mentioned in the release documentation. It was one of our requests during a workshop with Microsoft to improve capabilities on automating our manual user interactions. Every Friday after our regular maintenance we go through the same set of tasks for validating stability. This is to ensure that there are no disruptions to our business operation due to deploying code. This tool could be the answer to that by creating chains of small operational tasks, then running the entire test suite containing those test cases and validating the results in an automated fashion.

Microsoft is also improving the technical areas with further updates:

I would highly recommend to take your time and go through the wealthy content and videos shared as part of Microsoft Ignite 2018.

DAXRunBase / 2018-09-24 / Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations / 0 Comments

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