Erik's blog on Microsoft Dynamics and Navision

The story goes back to 1988. In school I must write a report about an accounting system called PcPlus. It was love on first sight. PcPlus grew up and first became Navigator, then Navision. 25+ years later I'm still in love. And Microsoft continues to impress. There is nothing in Dynamics NAV 2017 not to love.

“Extensions are the only way forward enhancing NAV in the future. No matter the customer scenario”. At least that's how Kurt Juvyns said it in a webinar a month ago. Mark Brummel and Waldo have already written about the improvements Microsoft is going to do to extensions, and the issues in regards to the current extensions. Or at least how Microsoft is planning to improve Extensions for the next release and have already done it with the Project Madeira preview. Are extensions...

Today Microsoft announced the Project “Madeira”. This is a new way to become a Navision user. It is Dynamics NAV’s version of CRM Online, a NAV only available as a SaaS solution hosted and managed by Microsoft on Azure. Fully integrated with Office365 and sold “packaged” by Cloud Solution Providers – CSP’s. No customizations The big difference between the “normal” Dynamics NAV and project “Madeira” is you only get a part of the full Navision (they call it “modified functionality”. But more of the...

Next week it will finally happen! After 7 years, basically without any updates, we are going to upgrade Dynamics User Group’s website . We are upgrading to the latest version of Telligent Community Server 9.0. Our current version is 4.0. And while the website on the outside is not changed that much, then under the hood, everything is different. The jump is as big as going from Dynamics NAV 4.0 to Dynamics NAV 2016. I has taken a lot of time getting here. In fact I started the project in 2010, where...

Today was the day NAV 2016 was released . And most of Microsoft’s documentation and files are already online. When a new version is released, then what most of you really want to is to get your hands on it. At least if you’re not currently at Directions EMEA to see the new version being presented. It is available for download at: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/northamerica/deployment/downloads/product-releases/msdnav2016download If you don’t have access to download...

Today at Directions EMEA in Mannheim (Germany) the release of Dynamics NAV 2016 was announced. I had expected that the Navision release of 2015 would have been called NAV 2015 R2, like with NAV 2013 and NAV 2013 R2. But I think that with the many new features, then this version really deserves it’s own version – even internally, where it’s now version 9.0. End User Improvements I am super excited about this new version. There are 60 improvements to this release. So I’m...

October 1st is not only the day Dynamics User Group can celebrate it’s 20st anniversary . It’s also the day where the new MVP cycle starts. First time I received it was in 2004, and I’ve received it each year since. Every year it has become something I look forward to. will I get it or not? And since the mails are sent from Seattle, then here in Denmark it’s late afternoon, before the mail arrives. The waiting had become long. But I did it again – just received the...

In October 1995 I was a young Navision developer living in New Jersey, US. While working for one of the first Navision partners in the New York (Business Management International), I really missed the Bulletin Board System ran by Navision Denmark, open only to Danish partners. So I started a online mailing list. One of those where when you sent a mail to the address, then it was automatically send to everybody else on the list. I think I had the email of may 10 people working with Navision. Emails...

Handling employee expenses is a very time consuming task for many companies. When I worked as a global erp architect for GN Store Nord, and traveled a lot to our subsidiaries using Navision. Each month I spent approx. one full day of making travel expense reports based on my batch of receipts. Then it took one of the accounting employees about the same amount of time, one day pay employee (in our department at least). So in 2005 we started implementing a system to handle this. We did find a...

Anyone familiar with upgrading customized classic Navision customers to the “new” role-tailored Dynamics NAV experience, knows that it can be a rather challenging and time consuming affair.  When it comes to upgrading forms to pages, Microsoft provides a transition tool. But there were not much help getting the classic reports migrated to RDLC. The function to suggest layouts in NAV 2009 were basically not useable, unless it was a very simple report. Today there are maybe 100000’s of customers...

It’s a very long time since I last wrote one of these “Status of the Dynamics community” updates here in my blog. In fact last time was on July 1st. 2009 ! And in October 2015 the Dynamics User Group can celebrate it’s 20 years anniversary! Compared to 2009, not that much has really changed, except I feel that it’s now even more difficult to find your way around in the Dynamics communities. In 2009 Microsoft’s own Dynamics Communities was still in its beginning. There were a lot of activity in especially...