AXM Technical Insights

What do we look for in an Element – while this may seem the easier question, what our technical team has found is that the real question is what is “Not an AX Element” -

1)      Element’s are not a “Fix” to the Dynamics AX product, those are supplied by Microsoft with your Enhancement at no charge.

2)      Elements are not Vertical Products, IE our Elements are not industry specific verticals, ISV’s and Partners provide such as part of their services that include specific domain experience.

3)      Elements are not complicated to merge or setup, based upon the concept of an Element, these will not be overlapping much in existing Dynamics AX functionality and will require minimal setup due to their productivity basis.

A few people have asked why we came up with the name Element, and yes this is something that our Technical team was very keen upon.  What we found in discussion with both Dynamics AX End-users as well looking at other companies that provide applications, that definitions are important. The other alternatives discussed were:

Widgets – The general description we found for Widgets were they were little programs that most often provided quick sets of information. Thus we decided to reserve this name for our own set of Widgits that we will release later in the year.

Apps – OK, you can guess that if Apple has Apps, then a product that is geared for Microsoft Dynamics AX will not want to use that naming convention, as well Apps seem to be stand alone functions that do not work within an integrated environment, which also explains how their ability to have many Apps, but few provide full solutions.

Applets – This is actually a program written in Java, so that would not be logical for a productivity tool for Dynamics AX, and especially today with who owns Java, Oracle.