About Erik Ernst

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 few "candidates", not anything made in NAV. The integration into NAV and the whole project took way longer than expected. But it didn't take them long, before the costs had been paid. With the new system we were able to handle it in hours, rather than days. We still had to handle the paper receipts manually, but got the reporting and approvals online, and had it integrated with credit card statement imports.

In 2005 systems like this were a huge investment and only really attainable for companies with +100 users.

In 2015 this is something any NAV customer who just have a few employees with lots of travel could justify investing in.

Today Danish ISV Continia released their Continia Expense Management. Continia is most know in Denmark for being the company that about 25 years ago released NaviBanking, now known as Payment Management, something a lot of Danish Navision customer here uses. Lately they have also become known for being the company behind Document Capture. They didn't develop this product, but bought it from the developer Tommy Olesen, who now is working in Continia. Here he and Claus Lundstrøm (known for his NAV report designer/RDLC blogs and courses) have been the product managers for their new solution.

Continia Expense Management is build on the same platform as their Document Capture (DC) solution. In fact DC needs to be installed on the end-users NAV, but if they are not using it directly, then they don't have to add it to their license. It is basically a smartphone app (available Windows Phone, Android and iPhone) connecting to Continia's internet server (continiaonline). On the app the employee is able to upload receipts via pictures taken with the phone (or alternatively attaching emails). After adding base information to the receipt, like was it paid with credit card, amount, currency, description, dimension etc., then the employee can upload it. The employee doesn't have to be a user (neither full or limited) in NAV.

In NAV the accounting user can now synchronize the receipts uploaded by the employees to continiaonline, into NAV. The approval process kicks in, where the approvers will be using a web portal to approve the expenses. Same portal as used by Document Capture. The employee can follow the approval progress via their smartphone app. Additionally credit card statements are imported, allowing to apply the employees reported expenses to the transactions on the credit card. Any transactions without receipts are "kicked" back to the employee, who needs to account for the transaction by attaching a receipt.

When approved the expenses are transferred to the general journal and posted, just like any other expense made manually in NAV.

This was just a very quick introduction to what it can do. I can recommend that you go to http://continia.com/profile-(4).aspx to read more ad watch their webinar. Continia Expense Management be available for NAV 2009 R2 (classic and RTC), NAV 2013, NAV 2013 R2 and NAV 2015, and is released today at 12:00 CET.

I have great experience with the add-on products from Continia. They are on of the few ISV’s in the NAV world who I can always trust delivering great products. And I’m sure going to try out Expense Management my self. Not that I’m travelling that much in my current job, but just to be able to help my own clients using it.

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 “out there” running older classic versions of Navision. Often customized and with hundreds of reports requiring to upgraded. Doing it manually is a huge time consuming project. When I did my first upgrade of an invoice from NAV 4.0 to 2009, it took me about 30 hours to get it right! After I got more familiar with the process, I have of course been able to do it much faster. But it still takes hours for each report. Maybe I am I just slow, but it is pretty much the same I hear from my co-workers.

When I’m doing a classic to “modern” NAV upgrade, I mostly suggest the customer, that we just skip all their old reports, and only do those they really need in the new in the new. Most customers with a +10 year old NAV installation have tons of customizations they no longer are using. Upgrading a classic NAV is a good time to do remove old customizations and unused add-on’s etc. Get rid of everything they don’t need, to get as close to a standard as possible. Or at least making sure that what ever customizations are done in a way, so that future upgrades can become as easy as possible.

But not all companies are able to skip all their customizations when upgrading, and just do a few new.

Which means that they have to spend 100’s of development/upgrade hours on old reports. Good for us the NAV developers, plenty to do, except it gets boring, when you have done a few. The customers then often end up staying on their old Navision.

And if we decide just to skip the old reports, the customer often then asks if this is something he can do himself, like he did in the classic. When I show the customer the report designer and Visual Studio, then he looks at me as if I was mad! In classic NAV it was easy to move a few fields and so.

The new solution

About 2 months ago I first heard about a new company called ForNAV. It was founded by Michael Nielsen, Jacob Reinholdt Rasmussen and Jan Silleman, who all are very well known in the Dynamics NAV world, where they all have worked for Navision Software/Microsoft/+Partners the last 25-30 years. But you can read more about them here.

Their first product is called Reports ForNAV Converter and is a “tool” you can use to convert old classic reports objects in to object files you can import, compile and run in your new Dynamics NAV, just like any other NAV report. The only difference is that you can not modify the report from within NAV, when it has been created with the Converter. If you need to do any layout changes, then the only way to do it is to go back and do the changes in your old classic NAV, and then migrate it back. But since it really only takes seconds for each report, and the solution is only months away, it not a big problem.

Next year there are releasing Reports ForNAV Designer. Then it will be possible not only to modify the layout of the upgraded report. But also to do it in an environment I’m sure that all users who are familiar with the report designer in the classic version of Navision, would feel right at home.

A few weeks ago co-founder Jacob Reinholdt gave me a demonstration of both the Converter and the Designer. The Converter almost done and being released very soon now. In the current state of the Designer it is not yet possible to change the dataset, but that will also be in the product when released.

ForNAV looks great, and it will be a way for the many customers with old reports to get them into the “modern” NAV experience. And a customer who wants to be able modify his own old reports or create new reports will love it! Yes even developers and consultants will love ForNAV. And everything is much faster than in standard NAV. Creating a 200-300 page report in standard easily takes minutes. With ForNAV it only takes seconds.

That’s all great. But the is also a few minus to be using ForNAV. The way the generate the report is quite different than how NAV is doing it. Whenever a report is created, the output is not XML, as in NAV, but a fully formatted PDF file. That means that the features you have today, to export any report to Excel/Word will not exists. PDF and print only.

And what about the many standard reports in the new NAV, not upgraded from classic. Unless it’s going to be possible to convert a standard NAV RDLC report with the converter also, then I really don’t see ForNAV as a possible replacement for Visual Studio. Because then the customer would not be able to modify any existing standard reports, not available in the classic versions.

Not to talk about potential issues in handling of reports in a mixed environment? As I understood, then it’s not going to use exchangeable layouts (where the user can select different layouts for the same report object – like RDLC or Word). And what about functions like SAVEASEXCEL, SAVEASPDF etc.? They are not going to work either. But I would not be surprised, if ForNAV could find a solution to that too in a later relase, knowing the founders.

If you also want to see the product, then you can watch the latest ForNAV webinar recording on their webpage. And if you’re going to Directions EMEA in October 2015, then you will be able to see a live demonstration of both ForNAV Converter and Designer.

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 their CRM and GP forums, but not that much going on in AX and NAV. Here users were still using mostly DUG and Mibuso.

Today the Dynamics Communities is were new users typically asks their first question. Only if they don’t get a reply within a very short time, then they post on either DUG or Mibuso (when it comes to NAV and AX). Less and less users posts in the old “3rd party” forums.

When Microsoft first acquired Navision Software with AX and NAV in 2002, the community was separate from the products. There were no direct communication between the community and the people developing the systems. Only between Navision Software and it’s partners.

Microsoft changed that! They introduced the MVP awards to the Dynamics world, and now started actively working with the community. For all those of us, who had been active in the Dynamics community this was great. Finally we felt that we were appreciated for our work. An although we do it because we love it, then it’s always nice to receive a thank you!

In the first years the old AX and NAV product groups at the old “Navision Software” was struggling to find out how to work with us. Later I feel that they also have come to appreciate the community, and not only see us as someone who always complains.

Now there’s a high level communication from the product groups at Microsoft and the community (primary MVP’s). We participate in online meetings with the product group and in all the activity connected with the new releases.

That’s all great, and we appreciate it a lot!

But what happens in the part of the community not dominated by MVP’s and the superstar bloggers? What about the normal Dynamics developers, consultants and end-users?

As I see it, then basically all of the old “3rd party” communities, a becoming less and less popular.  Most new users start by using Microsoft’s own Dynamics Communities (community.dynamics.com). Quite natural, if you think about.. If you went out to buy a new expensive Audi car, then you would normally take it to the authorized dealer, not the local “no-name” car shop on the corner. Not that the local car shop could not do the same job. But just to be sure, then you go the the Audi dealer. Same thing with Microsoft Dynamics. If the users know that they can get the help they are looking for within Microsoft, then they really have no reason to go else where!

So we can ask the question: Do we still need to have the 3rd party Microsoft Dynamics forums or is our time over?