Developers: Prepare for More Security Work When Upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

In a special AXUG Summit breakout session on security, FastPath's Mike Cassady and Arbela Tech's Carsten Glem tackled the thorny issue of maintaining security for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Users and developers in the audience drove the conversation, asking questions about and sharing solutions for problems such as restricting security at the record level, generating comprehensible security reports and testing changes in security profiles.

The most timely part of the discussion honed in on the transition from previous and current versions of AX to 2012. One audience member who plans to upgrade to 2012 asked, "Will security not come up automatically?"

Glem said that Microsoft offers the Security Upgrade Tool: "Essentially, it will try to map your current security setup using an instructor, and it gives you some suggestions on what roles you might want to map it to, but it's not going to come over just like that."

"So, that would be my next question," the audience member said. "Should I just start over and re-do the whole thing?"

Audience member Rachel Profitt, training manager from Junction Solutions, chimed in, noting that AX 2012 comes with around 80 roles, 700 duties and 20,000 permissions and privileges. "There's a bunch of stuff out of the box. It gives you a great starting point" she said. "The problem is, if you have any custom objects, during your code-up period, those don't fully get upgraded. So, somebody has to go through all your custom tables, menu items, forms, etcetera and put privileges on them."

Once that's done, Profitt added, an administrator from the user interface has to assign roles based on the duties and privileges of previously used groups. "I, personally, would say it's faster for you to just start over and use the tools that they've given ...