History of Dynamics Ax(Axapta)

 

Axapta is a highly respected accounting system and ERP solution which wasoriginally brought to the United States from Europe in IBM in 1996. Axapta wasfirst created in 1983 by brothers Erik and Preben Damgaard in Copenhagen,Denmark. The company claims that from the start, Axapta wanted to create aninternational product that was integrated, scalable and flexible so that theywould be able to build one CD for all markets and platforms. It was ErikDamgaard's vision to build a platform that could evolve with technology andmarket demands. Written completely in Java, Axapta is designed to be a complete ERP solutionwhich includes advanced distribution, process and discrete manufacturing,built-in CRM capabilities, and outstanding customization. The product grewsteadily throughout Europe and in 1996, IBM brought Axapta to the United Statesmarket. It is important to note that IBM s motivation behind teaming up with asuccessful software application is primarily for marketing leverage. Most peoplewon t attend a seminar on hardware, databases, or infra-structure and IBM has along standing history of using various software applications to attractprospects. For example, IBM teamed up with Business Management Series in 1988,Platinum Software in 1990, Lotus Notes in 1994, Axapta in 1996, and ACCPAC in1999. This is a marketing strategy that works well for IBM, but the point isthat IBM s primary focus was never on Axapta. After the IBM/Axapta relationshipplayed out in 2000, Axapta (Damgaard Software) merged with their long-timeDanish rival Navision Software.

1998 - Axapta 1.0 is released in March.

• Released in the US and Denmark
• Financial, trade, inventory management, logistics and production, Microsoft SQL Server 6.5

1998 - Axapta 1.5 - Early release in Norway, Sweden, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium Spain and the European Union.

• Publishing Manager
• Call COM
• Service Pack technology
• Microsoft SQL Server 7.0

1999 - Axapta 2.0 - July:

• Project Accounting module
• WMS
• External OLAP
• Option Pack concept
• ActiveX support
• COM-connector and an early release of Axapta Object Server

2000 - Axapta 2.1 - January: Market demands from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain.

• Web tools and CSS (The first WebApp)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000, database log.
• Receives Microsoft Windows 2000 logo.

2000 - Axapta 2.5 – December: Complete Web applications development environment.

• Auto upgrade tool
• ESS (Project)
• Banking
• First step of Load’n’Go
• OLAP within Axapta
• XML support
• FA to Denmark, Austria and UK. Domains and ASP support
• DBCS Support.

2001 - Axapta 2.5 Market Pack – October: Released in France and Italy.

• Marketing Automation (CRM)
• Commerce Gateway
• Product Builder (Web application as well), training
• Event Management (Web application as well).

2002 - Microsoft Axapta 3.0 - October:

• Microsoft Axapta Enterprise Portal, intercompany collaboration.
• New security and configuration keys.
• Expanded geographical reach (more countries).
• Demand planning.
• Enhanced partner productivity tools.

2006 - Dynamics AX 4.0  - March:  The seventh major Axapta release brought with it an updated look and feel. As the first version that Microsoft was involved in from the beginning it attempted to integrate better with existing Microsoft technologies.

• AOS became a true Windows service
• .Net business connector was provided
• CLR Interoperability was introduced
• XML data exchanges were supported through a set of code classes (Application Integration Framework)
• Full Unicode support was introduced
• Service Management module.

2008 - Dynamics AX 2009  - June: Originally named AX 4.1, later renamed to AX 5.0 (and finally AX 2009), the eighth major release of Axapta brings with it yet more improvements to the UI. This new version adds role-based concepts to both the Enterprise Portal and windows clients, support for timezones (utc), a new Site inventory dimension, and Enterprise Portal development through Visual Studio projects.
2011 - Dynamics AX 2011  - Q1: Sometimes dubbed AX 6, it is said to include additional improvements to the user interface and application enhancements focused on specific industries like Retail, Media & Entertainment, and Public sector. Originally AX 2011 was due to be released toward the middle of 2010, but this has since been put back to Q1 2011.

Dynamics Ax Certification

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AX Interview Blogs

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Interview Questions

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Question	Intent
Tell me a little about yourself	Get a background on the candidate - always interesting to see where this simple question takes them - I've had 15 second and 20 minute answers
Tell me about your background on Dynamics AX	When did they start with AX; what roles have they served in?
What interests you about this role?	This is important because I don't want them to say "I want to work for Microsoft".  I'm not interested in someone who wants to get into Microsoft; I want someone who wants to be good at the Premier Field Engineering role
Where do you see your career taking you in the next 5 years?	What are their aspirations - this gets to the "Desire to Get Better" attribute
What do you think you are good at? What do you wish you were better at? How are you working to improve it?	This question takes a while to answer, but I want him to assess his strengths and talk about how he learns new things, and what's on his current "to do" list for new learning
Driving value and becoming a trusted advisor are key elements of this role.  What are some ways you’d ensure that you drive value to your customers and build relationships such that you were a trusted advisor for each of your customers?	This gets to the trustworthy attribute I'm trying to understand
Who is the most senior and/or challenging audience that you have ever faced? What did you speak about? How did you prepare for it? What was the outcome?	This gets to the confidence attribute.  If I get the sense he's backed away from those opportunities, I see a lack of confidence.  I also want them to talk about the different way you present to a senior audience as opposed to a project team member.
Tell me what you think a job well done looks like for your customers.  What metrics (objective measures) do you use to evaluate how you performed on a task or with a customer?	Most interviewees stumble on the question about "metrics" but I want him to articulate what a good job looks like in his eyes.  Hopefully this answer includes something about how the customer is better off.
SCENARIO QUESTIONS
You were scheduled to be on-site with a customer tomorrow and they called and postponed for another date two months out.  You have nothing you have to work on tomorrow for any other customer; what do you do?	Here I'm looking for his priority list - is he going to study a new area, is he going to reach out to the rest of the team to see if they need help (best answer) or is he going to contact the rest of his customers to see if they need anything (another good answer).
A customer calls you at 4:30 on Friday to indicate their test upgrade failed and they are planning to go live the following weekend?  You have another customer onsite visit scheduled for the following week.  What do you do?	Some interviewees may think I'm asking them to work the weekend here; instead I'm trying to see if they are willing to trust their teammates to pick them up by either helping with this customer or their other customer.  I also want them to call the customer to articulate the plan that will put this customer in good shape for their upcoming upgrade
A customer runs into a situation where the functionality that they receive through AX is not what they expected.  This piece of functionality is key for the customer and they aren’t happy that the product was designed in this manner.  You realize that this is important to the customer, but the chances of the product being changed to accommodate this request are extremely small.  In your opinion, what’s the best way to handle this?	Here I'm trying to see how quickly they go to "make customizations".  I want them to communicate the truth to the customer and exhaust other options before moving to creating the customization
TECHNICAL QUESTIONS
Performance: What is the difference between a clustered and non-clustered index in SQL?	The way he answers this tells a lot - I actually don't want the "I just read this out of a textbook answer" either - some illustration of them actually thinking through when to do which is the best answer
Development: What are some of the common methods to override or add in reports and why would you override or add them?	I will ask first if he has any development background, and if the answer is no, we won't subject him to this question, but it's a great way to separate the talkers from the knowledgeable ones.  [P.S. I don't know the answer to this question, but I keep the answer in my interview notes so I can tell if they hit on any of the key topics]
Application: Talk through the different costing methods in Dynamics AX	There have been changes through recent versions of AX, so I'm looking for their ability to go into depth about each of these methods - what are the pros and cons of each
Troubleshooting:  Your customer contacts you to report an error they get in the AX app: "Message: Error executing code, DialogField object not initialized".  Walk me through the steps you'd take to troubleshoot this issue	I want to see if he's seen such an error before and then his thought process for the steps to troubleshoot.  We are going to have to do this when customers call, so I want him to show an understanding the mindset of troubleshooting

Question	Intent
Tell me a little about yourself	Get a background on the candidate - always interesting to see where this simple question takes them - I've had 15 second and 20 minute answers
Tell me about your background on Dynamics AX	When did they start with AX; what roles have they served in?
What interests you about this role?	This is important because I don't want them to say "I want to work for Microsoft".  I'm not interested in someone who wants to get into Microsoft; I want someone who wants to be good at the Premier Field Engineering role
Where do you see your career taking you in the next 5 years?	What are their aspirations - this gets to the "Desire to Get Better" attribute
What do you think you are good at? What do you wish you were better at? How are you working to improve it?	This question takes a while to answer, but I want him to assess his strengths and talk about how he learns new things, and what's on his current "to do" list for new learning
Driving value and becoming a trusted advisor are key elements of this role.  What are some ways you’d ensure that you drive value to your customers and build relationships such that you were a trusted advisor for each of your customers?	This gets to the trustworthy attribute I'm trying to understand
Who is the most senior and/or challenging audience that you have ever faced? What did you speak about? How did you prepare for it? What was the outcome?	This gets to the confidence attribute.  If I get the sense he's backed away from those opportunities, I see a lack of confidence.  I also want them to talk about the different way you present to a senior audience as opposed to a project team member.
Tell me what you think a job well done looks like for your customers.  What metrics (objective measures) do you use to evaluate how you performed on a task or with a customer?	Most interviewees stumble on the question about "metrics" but I want him to articulate what a good job looks like in his eyes.  Hopefully this answer includes something about how the customer is better off.
SCENARIO QUESTIONS
You were scheduled to be on-site with a customer tomorrow and they called and postponed for another date two months out.  You have nothing you have to work on tomorrow for any other customer; what do you do?	Here I'm looking for his priority list - is he going to study a new area, is he going to reach out to the rest of the team to see if they need help (best answer) or is he going to contact the rest of his customers to see if they need anything (another good answer).
A customer calls you at 4:30 on Friday to indicate their test upgrade failed and they are planning to go live the following weekend?  You have another customer onsite visit scheduled for the following week.  What do you do?	Some interviewees may think I'm asking them to work the weekend here; instead I'm trying to see if they are willing to trust their teammates to pick them up by either helping with this customer or their other customer.  I also want them to call the customer to articulate the plan that will put this customer in good shape for their upcoming upgrade
A customer runs into a situation where the functionality that they receive through AX is not what they expected.  This piece of functionality is key for the customer and they aren’t happy that the product was designed in this manner.  You realize that this is important to the customer, but the chances of the product being changed to accommodate this request are extremely small.  In your opinion, what’s the best way to handle this?	Here I'm trying to see how quickly they go to "make customizations".  I want them to communicate the truth to the customer and exhaust other options before moving to creating the customization
TECHNICAL QUESTIONS
Performance: What is the difference between a clustered and non-clustered index in SQL?	The way he answers this tells a lot - I actually don't want the "I just read this out of a textbook answer" either - some illustration of them actually thinking through when to do which is the best answer
Development: What are some of the common methods to override or add in reports and why would you override or add them?	I will ask first if he has any development background, and if the answer is no, we won't subject him to this question, but it's a great way to separate the talkers from the knowledgeable ones.  [P.S. I don't know the answer to this question, but I keep the answer in my interview notes so I can tell if they hit on any of the key topics]
Application: Talk through the different costing methods in Dynamics AX	There have been changes through recent versions of AX, so I'm looking for their ability to go into depth about each of these methods - what are the pros and cons of each
Troubleshooting:  Your customer contacts you to report an error they get in the AX app: "Message: Error executing code, DialogField object not initialized".  Walk me through the steps you'd take to troubleshoot this issue	I want to see if he's seen such an error before and then his thought process for the steps to troubleshoot.  We are going to have to do this when customers call, so I want him to show an understanding the mindset of troubleshooting

Dynamics AX Interview Questions

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EP and Sharepoint Development
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