Technical information for Functional consultants in Microsoft Dynamics AX (AX7)

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Posted on by SebastienVerspeelt

Hi,

I am a Functional Finance consultant getting familiar with the new Microsoft Dynamics AX (AX7) these days. There is more focus on the distinction between the functional part and the technical part in the new version. MorphX is taken out and within the application there is no access anymore to the AOT.

Furthermore, in previous versions it was very easy to see the exact field names and tables used in a form. Or see which filters were used in the query linked to the form by the personalization right mouse click.

In addition, to do analyses to give information to developers, it is needed to see the relations between tables based on which fields, to see exact field names on tables, etc.

All those things were easily possible in AX 2012 and before. Not all, but most of them are difficult to see in the new Microsoft Dynamics AX. I understand it is taken out of the application for users. But for functional consultants, this is not an easy situation to deal with.

How is it designed to deal with these kind of situations? Ask every question to developers, or more that also functional consultants cross the line to Visual Studio?

Thanks for your ideas and vision!

Kind Regards,
Sébastien.

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Martin Dráb 237,801 Most Valuable Professional on at

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If you want to see AOT, you really have to start Visual Studio. Otherwise it's up to somebody else to do it for you.

Nevertheless note that you still can get a plenty of information in the Form information form.

It's not the same as before, but it still gives you the field name, the query and so on. Your developers can even customize it if needed.

It also about how you organize work. Usually functional consultants don't need to tell developers implementation details such as physical field names.

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André Arnaud de Cal... 300,911 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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HI Sebastien,

There is a difference between functional consultants and functional consultants. In fact consultants should be able to understand and setup the system, give recommendations and also when required write functional designs.

In fact that's all. But there are also consultants who like to know more.

You have to ask yourself what would be the use? For querying data, I would agree that you would like to know which tables are used on a form. When you open the advanced query form in AX7, you can see the table and field names. I do think developers would need to find out which forms and tables should be used for customizations.

If you want to have your car tuned, you are also not going to look at the engine, the motor management and then tell the engineer what exactly to do. No, the engineer would be able to inform you about options and the consequences. So in what case do you really need to have access on the development environment?

Nevertheless, for troubleshooting and more advanced topics, it would be required to have knowledge of both the functional area and the development environment. When as a consultant you want to have access to Visual Studio, it would be possible to get hands on a DEV box. When all customizations will be deployed using a build server, it is possible to setup VSO that consultants would get read-only rights. That will protect you from changing the application unattended.

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SebastienVerspeelt on at

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Hi Martin and André,

Thank you very much for your feedback and opinions!

The key of all this is indeed a matter of how work is organized, a matter of procedures and agreements inside a company and between technical and functional colleagues.

In my personal experience so far, I had the feeling that the situations where I could give the biggest added value to companies (often in those troubleshooting or advanced topics), is in the grey zone where the line between the functional part and technical part is crossed just a little bit. And those situations lead to a big part of my job satisfaction.

Let's find out how things will work in future...!

Thanks again,

Sébastien.

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Martin Dráb 237,801 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Then you probably want Visual Studio, with its AOT, designers, cross-references and so on...

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