Introduction
Using extensions to develop for finance and operations apps is fundamental to Microsoft’s strategy of One Version, which allows all customers to be on the latest release by always acquiring continuous updates that are managed by Microsoft.
Some of the benefits to this new change include:
- Finance and operations apps supports continuous updates, so upgrades are much easier and less expensive.
- By always being on the latest version, you can improve productivity without impeding upgradability.
- Supportability and serviceability are improved.
- Implementation costs for no-code personalization and customizations are reduced.
- Innovating alongside Microsoft is easier for independent software vendors (ISVs).
This change is fundamental if you are coming from Dynamics AX 2012 for infrastructure and services used, and for development. In finance and operations apps, you can no longer overlayer base code and have intrusive customizations when developing.
The following bullet points review why you must use extensions for development.
Customizations that are implemented by using overlayering can create product issues that are difficult to diagnose and fix.
Merging conflicts between the customizations and the updated Microsoft or ISV metadata and source code is a manual development task. This issue occurs even if the customization isn’t intrusive because the changes are mixed in with the original code.
Total cost of ownership is high.
During your upgrade to finance and operations apps, you will use the Code Upgrade Tool to move your code from your Dynamics AX 2012 model store to new code that will be compatible with finance and operations apps. Developers must move the code and business logic from overlayering to extensions.
For more information, see Tools for code and data upgrade from Dynamics AX 2012 to finance and operations apps..