DAXCONF - Extending the Reach of the application with the new Office Add-ins

I've really seen some cool  things in this session. Here we go:

Copying data from Ax to Excel is not new, but it wouldn't be Ax2012 if it wasn't improved: now only the actual columns you're seeing on the screen are copied. But that's nothing compared to the fact that you can actually create, change and delete Ax data from within Excel. In an Excel workbook, you can 'add data' and pick one of the availabe services (these are webservices). In design mode you can bind the fields from your datasource to the cells in your worksheet.

You can then:
- Add new records (of cource all mandatory fields need to be in place)
- Even create new linked header/line records
- Update existing values (data is validated!)
- Delete records
- Add (non-bound) calculated columns
- Format your data as you want
- Use lookup-values (just as with the drop-downs in the Ax client)
- Add 'matrix fields' to create aggregate views
- Changing the value of an aggregated field automatically updates the original values (proportionally)

All modifications that you do on bound data stays within Excel until you hit the 'publish' button, this sends the data back to Ax.Actually this can be used as a new way to bulk-insert data (think data conversion).

Is it limited to MS Excel?
No it is not: you can use MS Word to create nice looking documents based on Ax data.
Again: formatting can be applied, columns/tables can be created and populated, calculated columns can be added, support for multi-language using the Ax labels, the document handling feature can pick up templates from a SharePoint library and use these to produce customized documents, … 

Allright! Can I replace the reporting in Ax by Word documents then?
That's not the intention since you will be missing features like batch support , your hardcoded template texts will not be language-sensitive, the paging of the generated documents is not guaranteed, ...

Also: Ax2012 now support copying data from an Ax running in a remote desktop to an Excel running on your local machine. This saves you an Office license on the terminal server.

So this actually is a nice feature to read data securely into Office so that end users can see live data, refresh, modify, add and delete data in a way that's convenient for them and publish the data back to Ax. It is an easy way of creating re-useable reports (Excel) and documents (Word) without any development.

DAXCONF - Developing Advanced Reports - Deep Dive

This session promoted the use of SSRS as a reporting engine in Ax2012.
Let me rephrase that: '… as the reporting engine in Ax2012'.
The Ax reports as we know them from previous versions are still there in Ax2012, but no new development is to be done on them. The 'old' Ax reports are supported in the sense that they still exist and can be used, but there not supported in the sense that all Ax reports are converted to SRSS (read: SSRS is the way to go).

And since the security framework and the datamodel has had some serious redesigning in Ax2012, your reports will probably be broken anyway. Upgrading them would not be a good investment. The better decission would be to create new SSRS reports right away.

Not everyone was wildly enthousiastic about the SSRS integration in previous versions.
Do know that the SSRS integration in Ax2012 is seriously improved  and offers in combination with the latest 2008 version of SSRS a fair performance gain.
SSRS is totaly aware of Ax2012 metadata and new concepts such as the org model and security model. It has batch integration and archive support. Besides that, SSRS just offers cool graphical stuff and layot possibilities that just were not possible in Ax reporting. Let's face it: Ax reports were not eye-catchers.

The SSRS-Ax reporting framework allows creating basic reports (that need no coding at all).
OK, but what about more complex reports such as the projInvoice or salesInvoice?
All converted to SSRS! The new reporting framework gives developers different types of classes to customize reports as required: data provider classes, data contract classes and controller classes. These give the developer the same possibilities as with the Ax reports.

What does SSRS offer more over Ax reports?
- Awareness of Ax2012 metadata and concepts
- Correct PDF output
- Support for images in batch
Basically we the tiny shortages we had in Ax reports are a goner.

Is there anything in the Ax reporting framework offer that is not in SSRS?
Well, Ax reports allow the user to define sorting, subtotals, grouptotals, print ranges, …
SSRS does not offer this. And SSRS may be bit moody when it comes to footers in some circumstances.
But that's about it.

Not too bad this SSRS if you ask me!