Dynamics Ax First Impressions

Generally I like the product as such, which should come as no surprise to those who know me, I have been working with it pretty much since it was made and before that with it's predecessor etc etc.

Anyhow notes :

Like:

AOS robustness

In V3 the AOS could at times seem a bit fragile and if you stopped a server you were certain that all the users were thrown out / off the system. With V4 some new technology has been added that allows in some instances sessions to be recovered by the other AOS's this is impressive when you realise how complicated such an operation can be, its the computer equivalent of a juggler replacing another juggler in the middle of a trick with all the balls in the air !

New dimension setup

Finally we are able to make hierarchies and to limit what and where they are used etc etc.
New financial statement generator

In the product that preceeded Ax there was a report generator enabling the users to create financial statements with accounts and dimensions as lines and the ammounts against them. Finally we can do so with less effort than before. In V3 you had to name each dimension it was basically tedious and almost impossible to do with the V3 financial statements.

Dislikes

New Menu

I find almost comical the pains that the UX team are going to to reduce usability, I am sorry it is not easy to read and furthermore I would even state that the old grid menu of XAL was from a UX point of view easier and more intuitive. As was the old tree menu that you can still by exporting and importing under another name activate as your main menu. The main problem is that the new menu eats screen space. Just try opening any of the larger screens (Inventory, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders) on a 1024*768 monitor it just does not work. I am really looking forward to the next version where this will change again to accomodate / be compatible with Office 2007 hopefully !

To be continued

/Sven Jochimsen