The cumulative update 12 is the latest update released on Q4 of 2016 for Dynamics AX 2012 R3. Although it has a nice installation guide there are many mistakes that can be made for someone who's installing it or the first time. The purpose of this article is to help you not do those mistakes.
CU12 has multiple interesting enhancements that you can find listed on this page :
https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/Global/AX/downloads/product-releases/msdax2012r3cu12whatsnew
The update can be downloaded directly from LifeCycle Services http://lcs.dynamics.com/
At the time I installed it, me and my colleague needed it in order to enable default descriptions for automatic posting ( ex : project invoices, customer invoices, purchase orders, etc. ) found in the hotfix KB 3101876 and well described in this article :
https://community.dynamics.com/ax/b/axsupport/archive/2016/08/23/how-to-enable-add-other-text-to-default-descriptions-feature-in-all-countries
1 - So the very first step in order to have a clean installation is... to have a clean compiled and synchronized environment! Yes, of course that may seem obvious, but when you're working or testing on environments with your team, you never know really in what state your environment is or what your coworkers have done. If you miss this step, you can find yourself with synchronization errors that will waste your precious time. If you already made this mistake, no problem I can guide through the steps to fix it right here :
http://dynamicsaxpert.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-to-solve-synchronization-error-ax.html
2 - After you checked you have a clean environment, we can begin the first part which is upgrading the database. So connect to your database server and launch the install. Be careful that you are logged as a user with the rights to access and modify the model database. The AOS service account is good enough, but a database administrator account wouldn't do harm.
3 - Create a "package" folder inside the extracted folder of the install (it will be useful later), which in my case is "E:\CU12\".
6 - If you already have an axupdate file, select it then click next and jump to the step 12 . Else choose "Download and install updates" and click Next >
CU12 has multiple interesting enhancements that you can find listed on this page :
https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/Global/AX/downloads/product-releases/msdax2012r3cu12whatsnew
The update can be downloaded directly from LifeCycle Services http://lcs.dynamics.com/
At the time I installed it, me and my colleague needed it in order to enable default descriptions for automatic posting ( ex : project invoices, customer invoices, purchase orders, etc. ) found in the hotfix KB 3101876 and well described in this article :
https://community.dynamics.com/ax/b/axsupport/archive/2016/08/23/how-to-enable-add-other-text-to-default-descriptions-feature-in-all-countries
1 - So the very first step in order to have a clean installation is... to have a clean compiled and synchronized environment! Yes, of course that may seem obvious, but when you're working or testing on environments with your team, you never know really in what state your environment is or what your coworkers have done. If you miss this step, you can find yourself with synchronization errors that will waste your precious time. If you already made this mistake, no problem I can guide through the steps to fix it right here :
http://dynamicsaxpert.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-to-solve-synchronization-error-ax.html
2 - After you checked you have a clean environment, we can begin the first part which is upgrading the database. So connect to your database server and launch the install. Be careful that you are logged as a user with the rights to access and modify the model database. The AOS service account is good enough, but a database administrator account wouldn't do harm.
3 - Create a "package" folder inside the extracted folder of the install (it will be useful later), which in my case is "E:\CU12\".
4 - Once the setup launches, you just have to click Next >
5 - Accept the terms of the licence
7 - You'll be prompted the LCS website, the same from which you downloaded the update installer. Click on Sign In >
8 - Enter the account you used, or any account that have access to LCS, and select the right type of the account ( for me it was a personal account )
9 - Enter your password
10 - And finally access your updates, and select Cumulative Update 12
11 - You can now wait for the download to finish to get to the next step
12 - Wait for the package to be processed then click Next >
13 - Then choose both binary and application update. Binary updates are for Microsoft Dynamics components ( ex : AOS, Client, Data Import Export Framework, etc.) and application updates are the one that will be applied to the model database. The express type of install will install everything whereas the Personalized lets you select the hotfixes and components to install.
14 - In this case I'll choose Personalized to show how you can choose your updates. Click Next >
15 - Then you'll be prompted to choose a model store. Generally you'll be able to pick it up from a list, but sometimes it won't ind any ( even if your user is allowed to access them). Then you have to enter the server name and database name manually.
Rq: Don't forget to specify the SQL server instance name i it's not the default one (MSSQLSERVER). 
16 - If everything is alright, you'll have to wait a moment then will be prompted this screen where your database is selected. Else, if you get an error, the problem is either your user, the computer you're connected from or the database you chose (if it has even one CU12 hotfix applied it won't let you apply one again.. yeah I know it sucks).
17 - You'll then be prompted to choose the updates or hotfixes you want to apply. You can either choose one, some, all or the applicable ones. For my part I chose the third option.
18 - The setup will then look for conflicts in the updates. If you have customized some of the objects that are going to be updated it will be marked as a conflict and you can export that list it in an excel file to correct it after the update is applied. Else you'll get a screen stating No conflicts were found, you can click Next > and you'll get a recap list o the updates you chose.
19 - Now you can save the updates you chose in a package file, which will be useful for the next updates we'll be applying. So you can now save it in the package folder located in the CU12 install directory. The file will be saved with the ".axupdate" extension.
20 - Finally if you have other components installed on the server (ex : Client, DIXF, Visual Studio, etc.). I described those steps in the Parts 2 :
21 - When the install is completed successfully, you'll get this screen
22 - The final step is to initialize the model store. For that, just open the AX Management Shell as an administrator (and a user with the right privileges) and launch the command :
Initialize-AXModelStore
And this is it! Now you can go on and update the AOS and the rest of the components, in the Part 2 :
If you only wish to use Visual Studio 2013 with AX 2012 R3, you can follow the tutorial in Part 4 :
Awesome content! this is really a great blogpost which is really helpful for Dynamics AX upgrade I hope you will post more such blogs in future for us. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
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