1. Attention! Read this first
Prior to planning and delivering the envisioning work shop review the customer information provided on the Pre-Engagement Questionnaire and we also recommend to complete a Customer Profile to better understand the customer fit for an upgrade and alignment to the Dynamics AX Roadmap. Visit the Dynamics AX Customer Success Profile site for more information.
Once you your reviewed the information provided by the customer and the profile customize the workshop deck to meet your customer needs and characteristics.
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2. Please read this first: How to use this presentation
10/29/2017 7:54 AM
Please read this first: How to use this presentation
The Upgrade to the new Dynamics AX 7 is more straightforward when moving from the AX 2012 R3 version, and becomes increasingly more complicated for older versions of AX. In general, the older the AX version, the more complicated the ‘upgrade’ or need for a re-implementation. New tools are being created to help with the upgrade or migration effort for older versions. The recommended approach will be outlined in the Upgrade Assessment.
The Upgrade Assessment offer evaluates the customers’ current version of AX and assesses the gaps for moving to a new version. The customer receives a recommended approach for moving their solution forward to the newer release.
The value of the Upgrade Assessment is:
Interactive workshops, led by experts, that help the customer think through and address their changing business needs with the updated solution. For example, determine:
How to leverage out of the box functionality in order to reduce number of customizations with the new release
Retire or streamline existing processes
Leverage new capabilities in order to address changing business needs
Revisit or update the customer’s profile in the previous completed profiler Customer Success Profile , as required.
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© 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

3. Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics AX
Microsoft Dynamics AX Planning Services
PARTNER ENGAGEMENT GUIDE

4. Contents Document Purpose
The goal of this document is to provide the engagement consultant with an overview of the required deliverables for the Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics AX Planning Services. The engagement is offered in 3-, 5-, 10- and 15-day lengths, which build on each other. This document describes the steps, resources and requirements of each engagement.
Engagement Goals
The Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics AX engagement is designed to identify an upgrade path to the current release from a previous implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX, assess the data migration/upgrade options, and to understand the risks involved, such as dependencies on ISVs and integrations.

5. Engagement Customization & Exceptions
This document outlines the steps for a typical Microsoft Dynamics AX upgrade planning process. The tools and resources reflect tested Microsoft best practices.
We understand that no two customers are the same. The intent of the engagement is to assist Microsoft Dynamics AX customers with their upgrade planning, including taking advantage of new features. To best address the needs of your customers, please feel free to customize the engagement in the following ways:
Edit the Pre-Engagement Questionnaire to more accurately address your customer’s unique scenario
Skip any phases as long as you can justify doing so in your final deliverable.
Skip a phase if you or your customer has already conducted it
Skip the workshop if your customer is already familiar with the new features and functionalities
If the initial steps of the engagement are less relevant to your customer, you can add a PoC using Lifecycle services
If your customer has a complicated implementation, extend the assessment phase to include in-depth functional assessment, transforming and adding processes, assessing existing and future integrations with additional tools and systems.
Customize the engagement documents or use your own documents if they are aligned with the engagement steps. Regardless of the documents you use, your deliverables to the customer must be attached to the Planning Service Completion Report and must cover findings and results similar to those listed in the provided templates.
Questions about permissible customizations and exceptions?

6. Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics AX
About the Engagement
Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics AX helps customers analyze the functional and technical gaps between their current Microsoft Dynamics AX solution and their business objectives. It helps them determine the best path to upgrading or migrating to the cloud and develop a plan to do so.
Envisioning Workshop & Demo
Technical Upgrade Assessment
Functional Assessment
Implementation Plan
Deliver envisioning workshop to introduce the current version of Microsoft Dynamics AX and discuss its benefits
Assess the current implementation and analyze technical hindrances to upgrading.
Conduct fit-gap analysis of business requirements and environment. Determine adequacy of the latest release of the Microsoft solution
Develop customized plan to upgrade customer’s ERP solution to the new Microsoft Dynamics AX

7. Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics AX
Engagement Overview & Supporting Documents
3 days
5 days
10 days
15 days
Resources
Activity
Envision Solution & Business Requirements Review
Analyze Technical Upgrade Requirements
Analyze Functional Requirements & Business Processes
Development Implementation Plan for future solution
Pre-engagement Assessment 
Pre-engagement questionnaire
Upgrade Envisioning Workshop + LCS demo
Workshop deck
Technical Upgrade Assessment (as-is)
Upgrade code tool
Assessment report template
Functional & degree-of-fit assessment
Gap analysis guide and report template
Upgrade Implementation Plan
Deployment and integration guidance
Architecture Guidance
Implementation considerations
Customer Deliverables
Summary report of business requirements & upgrade path recommendations
Technical and code assessment report
Fit-gap and functional a assessment report
Implementation plan including architecture, deployment, and integration considerations

8. Educate & Outline Future Solution Vision
Days 1-3
Activities
Pre-engagement Questionnaire
Ask the customer to complete the questionnaire in detail. Based on customer response, plan the envisioning workshop by conducting an initial high- level assessment of current Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation. Identify:
Out-of-the-box functionalities to replace work-arounds and custom code, or to extend current implementation and functionalities
Critical business goals and requirements that the new solution must meet
Functionalities to be implemented in advance to support robust technical upgrade, or to increase ROI of a functional upgrade
Workshop (resource: Workshop Deck)
Design the workshop around the questionnaire response to help the customer see the benefits of evolving their AX solutions. .Gain an understanding of their business processes and collaboratively capture their requirements to plan subsequent phases of the engagement.
Make sure the various stakeholders participate in the workshop, -
Explore impactful industry trends and how Microsoft Dynamics AX can help them stay ahead of the curve
Discuss their business challenges and goals
Define a vision for the future state of business
Review with the customer top business scenarios to better understand their needs and challenges
Workshop sessions should last about 2.5 days, leaving you with about ½ a day to compose the summary report and formulate recommendations.
Demo
Bring relevant processes to life with your LCS environment, Leverage pre-built processes to set up a demo environment. Bring attention to out-of-the- box functionalities that can replace customization in the existing environment. Go over the different Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation options and how they might influence the upgrade path.
Workshop Findings Report: Record findings from the workshop in a summary report, such as business & IT goals, upgrade challenges and risks, etc. Outline your approach to the solution, possible upgrade paths and their considerations, and key upgrade scenarios (optional). Recommend next steps and describe any additional resources you might need.
For report template capture:
Identified upgrade challenges
risks involved,
Outline of upgrade approach for the solution
Optional key upgrade scenarios and analysis of them
Propose options for data upgrade

9. Additional Important Topics to Cover in the Workshop
Key points to explore during the envisioning workshop to help with determining the upgrade approach
Relevant new features and functionalities (see What’s new or changed on Microsoft Dynamics AX Wiki)
Planned merger or upgrading of layers with customization (VAR, CUS, or USR)
If ISVs are involved discuss what will be the impact on customization and if these ISVs solutions are available on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3/new Microsoft Dynamics AX
Customization: Can OOB functionalities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 or the latest release replace customizations in the current solution? Are there any redundant or obsolete customizations that need to be cleaned from the code base upfront to minimize impact on the upgrade? Are there customizations on the core frameworks that need to be modified for compatibility with the new frameworks?
Integration: Can OOB functionalities address any integration pain points or eliminate the need for integration?
System tuning: Do any features or functionalities need tuning for improved performance?
Data upgrade/migration: Is the customer considering a complete upgrade or migrating with master data and opening balances into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 / new Microsoft Dynamics AX or complete data upgrade? What level of schema change will be needed in customizations? Are upgrade paths supported and scripts available? Which tool will be used for data migration?

10. Analyze Technical Upgrade Requirements
Days 4-5
Activities
Technical Upgrade Assessment
The objective of this assessment is to confirm the need for an upgrade, gather technical requirements, need for upgrade and outline the scope of the project.
Conduct an assessment of your customer’s Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation by using Lifecycle Services Upgrade Analysis Tools and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Upgrade Tool, to understand the technical gaps. If you have another tool you prefer to use for the assessment you are welcome to use it.
If JavaScript is used, it might stop working or cause an error during the upgrade. For a smoother process, run the LCS Code Analysis Tool to identify and repair potential problems beforehand.
Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services provides a cloud-based collaborative workspace that Customer’s and its partners can use to manage Microsoft Dynamics AX projects from pre-sales to implementation and operations.
Upgrade to AX 2012 R3 tool helps planning your upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 by analyzing code artefacts (AOD files) from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (or current version of Microsoft Dynamics AX). It provides a Rapid Data Collector (RDC) tool that analyzes existing environment information to help estimate the scale of the upgrade project.
Technical Analysis for Upgrading to new Microsoft Dynamics AX
LCS code upgrade service provides two options where you can either generate estimates only or you can upgrade actual AX 2012 R3 model store to the new Microsoft Dynamics AX code artefacts. The code upgrade will not be complete. Lifecycle Services generates a Task list with a list of activities like code conflicts which needs to addressed on an individual case basis. This information is to help estimate the scale of the upgrade project.
Prerequisites to upgrade the new Microsoft Dynamics AX:
Access to Lifecycle Services website
To use upgrade analysis, you must get the finalized model store from AX 2012 R3 environment.
LCS code upgrade service should be run with a copy of the production environment model store in which no upgrade scripts have been loaded.
Resources:

11. Required Technical Assessment Components
Review full assessment guidance in the Assessment Report Template
The Assessment Report should summarize all findings and recommended next steps.
Run the LCS Upgrade Analysis Tool in the customer environment and analyze the results. The Upgrade analysis helps you plan your upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics AX by analyzing code artifacts from Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, or AX Analysis creates a Microsoft Excel report that you can download and review. Click the Upgrade Analysis Report file to download it.
Your report should include analysis of the below components included in the reports LCS will produce after running the tool:
For upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3: For upgrading to the new Microsoft Dynamics AX (from AX 2012 R3):
Sheet
Description
Upgrade summary
List of key reports, and the number of objects impacted by upgrade in each module.
Global tables
Lists tables that do not have DataAreaID values
Customization Statistics
Lists all customizations
Customization View
Number of customized tables and classes
Modified Objects
List of modified objects
Modified Object Details
List of what is modified in each object
Domain information
Lists companies, domains, and related users
Table statistics
Lists table size, properties, and counts of rows and columns
Parameters
Lists parameter values
Tables without DataAreaId
List of any tables that do not have a DataAreaId.
SysUtilElementsLog (Object Usage Summary)
Lists usage patterns of MSDAX objects
Sheet
Description
Upgrade summary
Summary of elements converted to extensions, over layering elements remained, code conflicts resolved, code changes and meta data changes and TO List.
Form patterns
Lists all customized forms with identified form style and suggested form pattern in the new Microsoft Dynamics AX and percentage of controls in each form covered in new pattern.
Elements converted to Extensions
Lists all elements which can be converted to extensions
Over layering elements remained
Lists all elements which cannot be converted to extensions due to various reasons and remained as over layering objects
Elements converted failed
List of elements which can fail during element conversion. These elements have to be upgraded manually on case to case basis
Merge report
List of elements where code conflicts can be resolved and auto merged.
Code upgrade report
Lists all code upgrade actions done for each element during code upgrade process.
Code upgrade errors
Lists all code upgrade errors encountered during code upgrade process through LCS. These errors have to be resolved manually.
Code upgrade task list
Lists of manual activities to be done to complete the code upgrade, which can include the unresolved code conflicts and any patterns which LCS code upgrade service could not support to the new Microsoft Dynamics AX code artefacts. This also provides tentative effort in minutes for each task.

12. Analyze Functional Requirements & Business Processes
Days 5-10
Activities
Functional Upgrade Assessment
During the Functional/Fit Gap analysis you need to assess if the business processes currently implemented in the customers AX environment can be migrated to the new AX solution. The assessment determines how they will be addressed by the target upgrade version (that is, the latest Microsoft Dynamics AX release). You need to develop a assessment report which explains to the customer how the business would use the upgraded Microsoft Dynamics AX Solution by key business process areas. Also, work with customer IT department to assess the custom work included in the customer current implementation.
Functional Assessment Workshop
We recommend delivering an interactive workshop to review the business processes and understand better requirements for a future solution as well as identifying challenges of the current environment that might be solved with OOB functionalities of the current version. Workshop agenda should be structured by business process areas and include BDMs.
Customer Responsibilities
Provide an overview of all key business processes implemented in current solution and expectation from the current version of Microsoft Dynamics AX
Provide documents giving an overview of the current implementation e.g. Solution Blue Print/ Solution Design Document.
Ensure presence of key Business and IT Stakeholders
Communicate any key drivers/ challenges in current implementation which needs to be taken care of after the upgrade/migration
Partner Responsibilities
Understand the customer business context and key processes implemented in current solution
Provide high level feedback on fit/gap of the processes against Microsoft Dynamics AX
Use the input from the customers on business process and provide a walkthrough of impact of moving these processes to the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics AX
Develop Functional Assessment Report the report should include finding regrading business processes implemented, recommendations of OOB functionalities to replace custom code and recommendations of new features that can be implemented for the business process as well as the degree of fit of the new version to the business processes and requirements per area.
Resources; AX Help Wiki –
Assessment Report
The report should include findings from the fit-gap analysis, an evaluation of the existing implementation, and an explanation of the benefits of upgrading by business process or requirement. It should also include a discussion of the new OOB functionalities and features that can replace custom code.

13. Analyze Deployment and Integration Requirements
Days 11-15
Activities
Development of Upgrade Plan
It is important to address deployment and integration requirements while developing an implementation plan. The resulting plan should contain an architecture blueprint that depicts the deployment of the solution, its key components, and its integration with other applications per specifications. In this phase of the engagement you may find that you need more information to plan and scope the implementation, or that you need to bounce off new ideas and considerations. Schedule additional meetings with the different stakeholders as needed.
You should discuss with stakeholders and clarify the next topic :
Architecture of the future solution
Design a solution that caters to the customer’s unique business challenges
Handle technical objections, remove obstacles, and mitigate risk that may prevent the customer from adopting your solution
Identify an end-to-end implementation strategy that includes design, build, test, deploy, and support
Answer any questions concerning the different upgrade paths as well as cloud deployment
Integration requirements
Review each requirement and identify those achievable through standard/OOB integration
For requirements not achievable through standard/OOB integration, seek alternatives
If the integration preferred broker  is not supported by the target solution, document the issue
If the trigger mechanism is not supported by the target solution, document as non-critical issue
If the integration frequency and volume is expected to cause a processing issue, document as non-critical issue
Answer any questions concerning integration with on-premises applications in cloud deployment
Data migration
In-scope activities and their associated costs

14. Developing Upgrade Implementation Plan
Days 11-15
Activities
Implementation Plan
Your implementation plan should include the following components:
Prime considerations for the technical and functional upgrade
Proposed solution architecture
Proposed implementation approach
Proposed integration approach; in-scope and out-of-scope integrations
In-scope process and role upgrades
OOB functionalities to be adopted for customization replacement
scope assessment including resource allocation, hardware and licensing requirements and cost estimate
Timeline
Anticipated risks and challenges
Next steps
Refer to the deliverable template for examples.

15. Tools & Resources

16. Tools & Resources Prepare to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics AX
Segmented Entry controls – Migration guidance
TechNet – Upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics AX
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Upgrade White Papers
Code Upgrade Overview (White paper)
Adapting your code to table normalization for country/region fields in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2
Data Upgrade Best Practices (White paper)
Migrating Extended Data Type Relations (White paper)
Lifecycle Services
Lifecycle Services (LCS) home page
Lifecycle Services (LCS) for Microsoft Dynamics AX customers
Lifecycle Services (LCS) for Microsoft Dynamics AX partners
Lifecycle Services (LCS) blog
Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services user guide

17. Planning Services Program Requirements

18. Program Requirements Partner organizations must:
Have Microsoft Partner Gold Competency in Enterprise Resource Planning
Become an approved provider of Dynamics Deployment Planning Services (DYDPS)
Microsoft Dynamics AX customers should:
Have Software Assurance Planning Services Days available
Be interested in updating and potentially migrating their Microsoft Dynamics AX solution to the cloud in the near future (the engagement does not include improvement of existing implementation or performance assessment)
Provide the partner access to relevant data for project success

19. 10/29/2017 7:54 AM
© 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.