When I first started looking at creating an automated build process, I settled on PowerShell primarily because of 2 resources; the DynamicsAXCommunity PowerShell module and the Build and Deploy Scripts for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.  While I was ultimately unable to get the B&D Scripts running in my environment, I did learn a lot about PowerShell and the direction I needed to go to get a build process going.  I ended up using a lot of the ideas in my own processes.

The DynamicsAXCommunity Powershell module became the first brick in my process.  I started out using most of the functions available but eventually rewrote some of them to incorporate email functionality.  The three that I still use regularly are Get-AXConfig, Start-AXAOS and Stop-AXAOS.  I have also modified some of the code used in the Get-AXConfig method to return some values from the configurations that I needed.

My changes to the module are on the alpha version.  There appear to be 2 newer versions of this module, a beta and 0.3.4 but I have not integrated my changes into either of these.  You can find both the original alpha version and the version with my code changes in Codeplex based on the check-ins.  I plan to either integrate my changes in the newest version or add the three functions that I use from the DynamicsAXCommunity module into my functions at some point in the future.  For now, the alpha version has been used with my scripts for the last year and half and I feel comfortable that it works.

I have added three values that are returned from the Get-AXConfig function.

• ServerBinDir
• ServerLogDir
• AosName

The two directories are used to get executables and compile logs and the AOS name is used in some of the standard AX PowerShell functions installed with the Management Utilities.

This post and my last one have laid the groundwork for what is necessary to start using my functions.  In my next post, we will start looking at them.