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Can Dynamics AX 2012 work with Office 365?

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Office 365 provides secure anywhere access to Microsoft Office capabilities including document collaboration. Users can create, store, and edit Office documents online in Office 365. SharePoint Online can be thought of as the storage mechanism for Office 365 documents.

Document Generation and Office 365

If Word and Excel documents generated by Dynamics AX 2012 are uploaded to SkyDrive, SharePoint Online, or SharePoint 2010, then the corresponding Office Web Apps for that storage mechanism can be used to view and edit that document.
Document generation functionality is disabled if the appropriate Office application is not detected.

Export to Excel and Office 365

Export to Excel requires a local copy of Excel to be available. Export to Excel functionality is disabled if Excel is not detected. If a local copy of Excel is available, then the workbook can be saved and uploaded to SkyDrive or SharePoint Online for future collaboration and editing using the web version of Excel. However, the Office Add-in capability of refreshing the data in a workbook is not supported in Office 365 Excel.

Update for Dynamics AX 2012 R2 specifically... Users can set the Export location (File > Tools > General > Miscellaneous > Export location) to an Office 365 SharePoint Online folder. After the export workbook is copied to the SharePoint Online folder, then it will be opened, at that location, using Web Excel.

Document Management and Office 365

Document attachments can be located anywhere on the Internet or an intranet using the URL DocuType. If a document attached to a record is located on SharePoint Online, then, when opened, the attachment will automatically open in the web version of Word, Excel or PowerPoint. The user can also choose to save attachments for local editing as needed.

Office Add-ins and Office 365

Office Add-ins cannot be installed on Office 365 so Office Add-in scenarios are not supported when viewing a document in the web versions of Word and Excel.

Your needs?

In this forum I can't mention specifics about what we're working on with regards to Office 365 integration in the future, but I'm interested in hearing from anyone that is working with or intends to work with Dynamics AX 2012 and Office 365. How is it working out for you? Are there things you'd like to see us add in the future?

Feel free to comment on this post or drop me an email. Thanks!

Update 2013-07-17: Also see this new post on Dynamics AX 2012 R2: Improved Office Inerop capabilities

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2012
    We are looking at Integrating Sharepoint Online with AX Dynamics 2012. Has any of this changed since feb?