All around NAV dev and test
Steven Renders; what's in a name! I have to confess, a name I never heard of until only recently. I mean never before I had heard or read the name Renders, let alone Steven Renders. I guess I totally missed your no-advertising-though-advertising post, Waldo.
And all of a sudden it popped up: an e-mail of Mark Brummel to Steven with me on cc. September 22. Mark sounded Steven about presenting an advanced reporting session at our next DDC-event. Steven appeared to be the "Belgian guy he new about and who would be a good presenter on the subject". Within a couple of hours the whole thing was settled! And ... from Stevens initial reply I was to learn that he would not only be the presenter for the subject, but also was going to release a book fully dedicated to NAV reporting.
Being the spider in the middle of an big report transformation project currently, I couldn't have wished for more and I immediately ordered myself a copy of the - still to be released - book. Even before reading it I was hooked by it, or to be honest and more precise by its cover. Red, my favorite color, in all its shades. Of course purely subjective, but the most beautifully cover so far of the PACKT Dynamics NAV portfolio. And how it matches the current theme of my blog.
The DDC-presentation was settled, the book arrived and that thought kept lingering: read and review, Luc. Spread the word! So I lit the fireplace and sat down to read. Admittedly I regret not to be the first to spread the word as these credits go to Waldo and Alex. But still, here I go and stop my posturing .. now.
Of course, as the title (and subtitle) reveals, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009: Professional Reporting - Discover all the tips and tricks for Dynamics NAV report building. Indeed many (usefully) tips and trick are unrevealed. Of course I could about describing various parts of the book, but I guess that wouldn't make sense, so I'll give you my list of strong and weak points
.. and I mean, really strong points:
... or should I call them less strong point, as they are fully out weighted by the strong points:
So ...
Go out there and buy the book! If you're still not sure if this book fits your needs, open this sample chapter and read What This Book Covers (pag. 4 in this pdf).
Tomorrow 1 year ago it all started and now we continue our 2nd year. On Wednesday November 23, 2011, our next DDC event will take place. Same format as always.
You're welcome from 18:00 on to join the meal and meet each other. The rest of the program looks like this:
This evening we will have three speakers on three subjects in parallel:
Subscribe here.
More details here.
Being part of the Zetadocs Express beta program I ran into some strange issue that eventually could to be blamed to my Outlook installation. In tackling the issue I got great and professional support from the guys from Equisys. And, indeed never to old to learn, I picked up something new: resetting user-specified settings. Again one of these trivial things I tend to think all you out there are aware of except me. So not worthwhile mentioning, ha-ha.
Well, on reading this mibuso post I changed my opinion. I surely wasn't the only one.
So what had I learned? Like me, you probably have been asked various times by NAV to allow external objects to be run from your client (or server). Showing this dialog (with similar request):
In case you selected Always allow and OK, you would never get asked again and giving eternal control to the external object. So how could you take control back, i.e. disallowing the object the grant you made? By resetting the Automation decisions.
And "klaar is Kees". Voilà!
One thing I do not understand. It seems not very consistent to. Did you notice it? The menu item on Customize menu is called Delete Personalization Settings ..., where as the window that is been shown is called Reset User-Specified Settings.
In many of my blog posts I tend to link the topic somehow to my everyday live, thus unveiling myself to you. Mostly unconsciously, but, admittedly, sometimes also intentionally. I like to be marveled and, in the end, be defied. Live is one big adventure. Gross, tempting, bewildering, radiant and, all-in-all, me; me and you and all that comes with that. A long and winding road (tou-tooo .. tou-tooo) with big bears, sunlit orchids, and everything in between and ... far beyond. And with age I have learned that both sides of the coin really make up that one coin; undivided, fully committed, unconditional. With age I have found peace with the two major forces inside myself that one way or another do not seem to go along easily. Loving to be marveled and at the same time wanting to be in full control. Living with riddles, unsolvable, and planning software development with known outcome. Teaching adolescents and installing NAV servers. Being a teacher and coach, and wanting to be on my own.
"Is this going to be some kind of testimonial?", you might think. Uhhh, yep. I just turned 49. 7 X 7. The holiest of all ages. I am not a numerologist. But numbers are a part of my life. 7 for me, my brothers and sisters. 4 for my birthday. And what about number series like 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... or 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ...
OK, I turned 49. I succeeded to become MVP, got involved with the DDC, survived having been made redundant at MS, attended the NAV TechDays 2011 (they were great! and BTDTGTTS), and partly did let go of my contract at Imtech; less traveling, opening up ...
Indeed. I am now reflecting on what new experiences I am going to get into. Considering what I would like to pick up in my next 7 years phase. Coaching developers? Teaching NAV pros or even (again) adolescents? Helping partners out on Online Help or Team Foundation Server? Enough things to get involved with for sure. Enough to make this next phase worthwhile. Hope to cross your long and winding road.
Since little over a year once in a while, not very frequent (yet?), the NAV Team Blog seems to behave differently than normal. I don't mean this negative, yet surprising. Among all those technical posts all of a sudden five functional posts popped up on November 29, 2010. Sigfredo Beerman was the culprit in a positive sense to me and I recall thinking: finally someone from MS is picking up the gauntlet that had been laying around for a long time regarding functional NAV matters. A little later Alex Shaw joined in on this effort.
I must admit, I am a full blown SCM nitwit and I cannot really judge the quality of the content, but the sheer fact that posts on functional matters (by the NAV Team) are very scarce isn't a good thing. NAV is for sure more than technology!
It's interesting to know from those of you who can judge how you value these posts. May I invite you to add your comments below?