By CAL Business Solutions Skills, experience, and proven tools for a successful ERP implementation. Microsoft Dynamics® Sure Step is a key part of the Microsoft Dynamics experience for both customers and partners. It provides a scalable, repeatable implementation methodology for Microsoft partners to use when implementing Microsoft Dynamics solutions. By using a consistent methodology consisting of best practices gathered from Microsoft Dynamics implementations worldwide, partners can reduce implementation time, cost and risk while boosting their consultants’ productivity. Confidence Realize the benefits of your Microsoft Dynamics solution quickly and predictably with Sure Step, which helps us complete your implementation on-time, on-budget and on-spec.

Because we can draw from a large toolbox of proven guidelines, templates and best practices, we can deliver more value to you in a Microsoft Dynamics solution streamlined just for you. Control Sure Step provides us with detailed requirements-gathering checklists that speed the discovery and requirements definition processes, ensuring that your solution requirements are complete and will meet your business needs. Visibility Through Sure Step, you can easily visualize the implementation process which helps you manage the timeline and communicate process changes to your employees and customers well in advance of transition to Microsoft Dynamics. Learn more about.

And to be a bit snarky here, what's unfortunately not new is that the application, after it installs, can be found in Start Menu still under it's old name: Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step 2010 Smile. All in all, this is a great release of Sure Step, and it's obvious that the team had done a tremendous job. I'm glad that the.

• These best practices apply to the development of product extensions built by independent software vendors (ISVs), as well as Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation partners and customers who are customizing Microsoft Dynamics AX for specific ERP deployments. Microsoft’s Sure Step Methodology provides basic testing guidance that scales for five different project types. The terminology and process steps in Sure Step are the foundation of this document. The best practices presented here will supplement the Sure Step guidance for testing efforts in the Microsoft Dynamics AX ecosystem.

Vjeko, great blog – thanks for your continued support of our Sure Step program! I wanted to get back to you on some of the points you have raised. Our Release Strategy: Our Sure Step releases are now intrinsically aligned with the Microsoft Dynamics product release cycles.

As such, the focus of the Sure Step 2012 release was on AX 2012, with a secondary focus on CRM 2011 – as an FYI, we put out the Release Notes on PartnerSource earlier this week. As newer releases of NAV, GP & SL solutions are launched, we will have focused coverage for them in the corresponding Sure Step releases. Your “What’s New in 2012” & “What’s Fortunately New” sections: Glad that you like the content here – obviously a lot of work went into this release. Still more work to be done – and we have already started down the path of updating some of the process maps that we weren’t able to get to.

Your “What’s Unfortunately New” section: The overall Solution Optimization diagram lists a few “examples” – but it is certainly not intended to convey that AX is about Analysis, etc. But I get your feedback – it is confusing, so will look to revise that in the next go-around. Regarding the individual roadmaps such as the ones for NAV, the intent is not that NAV doesn’t need “Design Review” – since Optimization Offering is meant as an oversight of an ongoing implementation or upgrade, the mapping essentially shows the services currently available. But again good feedback – and I will take it back to the NAV teams to try and enhance in future releases. Your “What’s Fortunately Not New” section: Glad you like the continued direction:). We saw no reason to make top-level changes, but we will continue to refine as needed – for example, we added an “Accelerated Proof of Concept with CRM Online” Decision Accelerator service in this release.

Your “What’s Unfortunately not New in 2012” section: I have to respectfully disagree that we don’t need a Program Mgmt cross-phase. This is one of the most critical workstreams in an engagement, large or small. Regardless of whether one persona plays multiple roles (ex., a Solution Architect taking on Program Mgmt activities), this is necessary to stay on scope. It is also completely different from the Integration and Interface cross phase, which deals with integration of the selected solution to third party solutions that may exist in the customer org. Perhaps the confusion stems from the naming convention – bears noting that the cross phase names don’t necessarily have a direct correlation to the Project Management Disciplines.

Statement of Work is a common consulting industry term in many parts of the world. While the Project Charter conveys the general constructs and rules of engagement, the SOW provides detailed deliverables by phase. I have seen smaller engagements go without a Project Charter, but not without a SOW. We will continue to look at doing more with the Agile project type.

However, making the Deployment phase also iterative is not on the radar. As a matter of fact, all the customers and partners that I have presented to feel that a true Agile approach helps in solution “development” but not solution “deployment” of a Commercial of the Shelf product – and they appreciate the fact that we have adapted an iterative approach to solution deployment. Feedback I have received is that our project type gives them more practical usage patterns. Good catch on the name:). We saw that a bit too late to warrant stoppage of the release process – but we will fix that in the next update. Conclusion: Once again, thanks for your continued evangelism of our solution. As noted earlier, you will see more content on NAV as we approach the next NAV product release.

Chandru: thanks for the comment. I believe you got me wrong on my “Program Management” point. I didn’t compare it with Integration and Interfaces cross-phase, because I believe I know as much as not to think there is anything in common or redundant in these two. I compared it to Integration Management discipline of PMBOK (and I also compared these two in a previous blog post as well). I honestly think that there is a lot of room for improvement in consolidating these two. The map doesn’t have to be direct to MSF and to PMBOK, it should be what makes most sense for Sure Step, and currently, I am still convinced that Integration Management of PMBOK and Program Management of MSF/Sure Step are essentially the same thing.

I’m looking forward to future releases, and you can definitely count on both my evangelism, and honest opinion. Great, and we’ll be counting on your opinion 🙂 First off, I want to make sure I clarify on your MSF-Sure Step comment.

Ariston Ls 609 St. Sure Step is actually aligned to SDM (Services Delivery Methodology) rather than MSF. SDM has been restructured in the last years with three uber phases – Initiation, Performance, Closure. Sure Step and other methods, including those for iterative solution development based on MSF, are all now aligned to SDM. Would like to understand further your point about trying to consolidate the Program Mgmt cross phase in the project types with the Integration Mgmt discipline in the Project Mgmt Library. We have done some good work to align specific deliverables, and certainly open to suggestions.

I was looking in the trainning partner source, a webinar that says it was published on February 3, 2012 about “Selling and Implementing in the Process Industry with Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step” that links guide you to a presentation made by Bob Jung (support analys-Fullscope) and Chandru Shankar (director-Microsoft Services) during the presentation they are showing a Sure Step version that can be seen at the bottom part (Platform 3.0.13.0, Content en-US 3.1.1.103), which seems to be even older than the one I have installed. The thing is that all the process industry addendums they are showing, mainly the documents, questionnairs, are not in current versions of Sure Step. Where can I found them? Can they be downloaded from somewhere and apply to actual Sure Step? Many thanks for any input! When comparing.NET variables, including Enums, you cannot use C/AL comparison operators. To compare.NET variables, you must use the Equals method (of the System.Object type) that all.NET types implement or inherit.

So, instead of IF var1 = var2, or IF var1 = var1.EnumValue (in case of an Enum), just write IF var1.Equals(var2), or IF var1.Equals(var1.EnumValue). I see this mistake often being made or attempted by developers, even though it has been documented inside.NET Interoperability documentation since it was introduced with 2009 R2. To check if a BLOB field has a value, you call its HASVALUE function. For example: IF Item.Picture.HASVALUE THEN; In older versions, earlier than NAV 2009, you had to call CALCFIELDS before you could check HASVALUE, which – if you think of it, did not make much sense. This was changed in NAV 2009, so ever since that version you can check HASVALUE before you decide to call CALCFIELDS first. It makes all the sense – you don’t need to pull up to 2GB of data over just to see if anything is inside. If you are an old-school guy (or just old, as me), and you CALCFIELDS first, HASVALUE next, maybe it’s time for you to reconsider it.

Rembember – the pattern is: IF Field.HASVALUE THEN Rec.CALCFIELDS(Field).