This module discusses the general capabilities of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite of finance and operations apps, including built-in reporting and integration with other Microsoft products such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Power BI, and Microsoft Teams.

Dynamics 365 offers a large range of cloud-driven applications that help organizations optimize their business so they can reach their full potential. This module explores the Dynamics 365 ecosystem and how the apps work together to help your organization reach its fullest potential. Additionally, this module describes the major components of finance and operations apps that are important for you to know before you begin developing.

This module introduces learners to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 cloud and reviews the architectural and component changes between Dynamics AX 2012 and the finance and operations apps. By understanding these changes, you can make better decisions for upgrading your Dynamics AX 2012 solution to Dynamics 365.

To begin developing for finance and operations, you must understand the core concepts of development, including packages, models, and elements. Additionally, as a developer, you will need to understand metadata management and source control tools and processes by using Azure DevOps. Last, this module will also discuss the purpose of Lifecycle Services, deployable packages and their importance throughout development, and implementation of finance and operations apps.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the management of computer programs, which includes managing requirements, software architecture, software development, software maintenance, change management, continuous integration, project management, and released management. Learn about ALM to plan, create, test, and implement code for finance and operations apps.

Lifecycle Services helps you host finance and operations apps environments. It provides repeatable processes to support consistent success with each delivery. Lifecycle Services is available to customers and partners as part of their support plans.

Visual Studio is the integrated development environment (IDE) for finance and operations apps. Developers can create deployable packages that contain projects and elements that are stored as metadata. Developing in Visual Studio allows users to customize the finance and operations apps experience.

When you’re collaborating with other developers, it’s important to manage your source code by using version control. For finance and operations apps, source code is managed by using Azure DevOps within Visual Studio.

Extended data types (EDTs) and base enumerations (enums) are data types that are created and managed in the development environment. Base enums represent a list of literals, while EDTs are reusable data types that have a specific definition. The Application Object Tree (AOT) in finance and operations apps contains many existing EDTs and base enums that can be extended for use in your project, or you can create new data types. This module will focus on creating new data types.

While tables aren’t always viewable to a user in finance and operations apps, they are important in development. All data in finance and operations apps is stored and managed in a table in Visual Studio. Tables store data such as company transactions, inventory, and journals.

Elements in finance and operations apps are customized through extensions to help you modify properties, add components, or remove controls.

Forms are created and managed in Visual Studio and will display to the user as web pages. This module explains how forms are created and managed in the finance and operations apps developer environment, along with how to optimize the performance of forms.

Classes are blocks of code that contain data and methods. When developing for finance and operations apps, you will use the X++ language to create new classes.

Finance and operations apps are customized by using extensions, which let you add functionality to model elements and source code in the Application Object Tree (AOT) by using Visual Studio.

In this module, learners were introduced to the idea of personalizing the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations user interface to fit their business needs. They learned how to change menus, forms, and reports.

Workspaces are personalized work centers with data, reports, and transactions and are designed to increase efficiency of daily tasks. Workspaces can be created and modified by developers. There are many reasons to design and create a workspace in the developer environment rather than the user interface. For instance, your business might want key performance indicator (KPI) tiles, analytical components, drillthrough components, or other advanced features that cannot be created or modified in the user interface.

X++ is an object-oriented language. This module introduces X++ development for finance and operations apps, which is performed in Visual Studio.

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that is modeled around objects and how you manipulate them. This module discusses concepts for object-oriented programming so you can develop customizations in finance and operations apps.

Organizations have a lot of data. When an organization grows, its ability to provide context for all that data becomes increasingly crucial. Reports can organize data in a meaningful way. finance and operations apps include reporting tools to help you create reports for your organizations, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Excel reports. You can use these reporting tools to visualize a data set in many ways, including as a tabular layout with collapsible tables and by using dashboards. Throughout this module, you will build a foundation to design, create, and modify reports.

The Data management framework’s package representational state transfer (REST) application programming interface (API) lets you integrate with finance and operations apps by using data packages.

In finance and operations apps, the test framework helps to alleviate risks and provides a system to manage a clean record of testing.

After all customer requirements have been handled by either configuration, customization, and integration, you need to know how to perform user acceptance testing (UAT) in finance and operations apps to validate the solution. User acceptance testing is an important step in the go-live preparation. You can perform automated tests by using the Regression suite automation tool (RSAT).

A report is a structured presentation of data. Reporting presents data in a way that lets you make informed decisions by using data visualizations, dashboards, financial reporting, and structured documents. finance and operations apps provide several reporting tools that you can use to meet different reporting needs. This module will help you become familiar with the various reporting options that are available with finance and operations apps.

An important step in your upgrade journey is to determine how you will provide your users with the reporting and analytics that they need to make decisions. finance and operations apps provides out-of-the-box tools that allow you to use your data to create modern reporting and analytics.

As a developer, you are generally part of the data integration scenarios during and after a finance and operations apps implementation. This module explores web application programming interfaces (APIs) that are available for finance and operations apps and will help you understand the key differences between synchronous and asynchronous integrations for the application.

Connect to your finance and operations apps data by using data entities, where data is accessed outside of the application and with different endpoint and external applications.

Integrations are an important component of implementing finance and operations apps. By implementing recurring integrations, you can enable the exchange of documents or files between finance and operations apps and third-party applications or services.

Microsoft Power Platform services like Power Apps and Power Automate, and the Common Data Model are tools that you can use to create efficient ways to get more work done with finance and operations apps.

Dual-write offers an out-of-the-box infrastructure that can provide customers near real-time interaction between Customer engagement apps and finance and operations apps. The Dual-write implementation workshop guides you through key points to help identify and resolve potential blockers to a successful dual-write implementation.

You can export or import data in finance and operations apps by using the Data management workspace. Validate the data by staging the source data, and then move it to the target tables in the finance and operations apps database.

Learn how to use performance tools and Lifecycle Services environment monitoring tools to enhance your validation and testing experience in finance and operations apps.

Finance and operations apps use role-based security to assign access to components in the system. A user who is assigned to a security role has access to the set of privileges that is associated with that role.

If you understand the security architecture of finance and operations apps, you can customize it to fit the requirements of your business. finance and operations apps, helps keep your sensitive data safe, and users focused on their roles.

By optimizing your development for performance, you can ensure that your work is useful and appreciated by users. As a finance and operations apps developer, you should understand how your designs can be properly optimized for performance.