Microsoft Technical Conference 2016 - Day 1 General Sessions

MS Tech Conference 2016

We are a week or so removed from the Microsoft Technical Conference 2016 and my brain is still hurting. Pounding actually. I crammed so much information in, I had to plug one ear for fear that information would start plopping out onto the conference floor. If you stepped in a pile of X++ code outside of room 613, it was probably mine. Sorry.

DAY ONE

General Session – Dan Brown and Sri

I arrived with my work mate David not sure what to expect. I had attended two previous tech conferences under the presumption that Microsoft was unveiling the next version of AX; sometimes called Rainier or AX7.

We entered the main hall ready to hear from Dan and Sri. The room was full, over 1300 attendees, and electric and I knew that this was finally going open the gates to the next level.

Dan set the tone, focusing on the high-level thought process behind the now awkwardly titled, The New Dynamics AX. He emphasized the reasoning behind the development of TNDA. Gave us a road map of the next year and the planned roll-out of TNDA: Available to new users in the cloud and on premise upgrade stories. AX2009 users are going to have to wait because our story is still being written.  Let’s cross our fingers it is a story of hope and triumph and not penned by Step hen King.  

Other Dan Brown highlights:

• Expect faster to market updates and implementations rolled out by MODULE to better ensure successful results.
• More languages available upcoming
• Get to know the term TELEMETRY!!
• 10 current customer LIVE
• The Excel integration is excel-ent! Does anyone out there like Excel? Holla! Think about all the things you can do now with Excel and AX and add 100K. J

We heard about the cloud, Azure, and LCS. I sat in on an LCS ASK THE EXPERTS session and was impressed. More on that from Day Two!

The client experience is off the chain. Is that still a saying? Doesn’t matter. It is web-based using HTML5 and java script and built with mobile in mind.

Dashboards are stepping their game up. These can very easily be customized per user. Work spaces (think old MENU options) are also customizable and are made exponentially more useful with filters. Here is a link to a blog with more details AX7 Workspaces

Sri came out of the gate swinging and wowing us with DEMO after DEMO of the good stuff. He showcased:

• Work space customization
• Customizable BI reporting using the include POWER BI license
• User based data for Conference Room Pilots

However, the biggest, coolest, kickiest-ass thing, from a sheer user experience, has to be the task recorder. Sounds boring but it is a functional giant compared to its big brother. It is the Greek god, Grapho-Morpheus! (Although, I did talk to a few conference goers who held belief that it does have its Achilles heel. Time will tell.)

Highlights:

• Much more guided through each recorded step to assist in on the fly training (Task Guides)
• Can convert a recorded task into:
• A Word document
• A test case for development or performance testing purposes
• Upload to LCS
• A stand-alone mobile application
• For instance I could record a task of creating a sales order, then create a mobile app that has all the fields and processes from the recording in it so that the reps could create an order from said mobile app.

I left the main hall barely able to hear my own thoughts above the buzz in the room. It is truly an exciting time to be a part of the Dynamics AX community. Microsoft is clearly putting its weight behind the product to, as another blogger wrote, drive the technology instead of adapting it. 

I will be adding a recap of the DAY ONE sessions that we attended later this week.