Advanced Scenario with Project Madeira and Outlook

30/06/201626/07/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Dynamics, Madeira, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Madeira, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Project Madeira, SaaS

I think in my few previous posts, I’ve already showed some very interesting Project “Madeira” feature in collaboration with Office 365 and Outlook. Now, I will finish this small story with the some more advanced business scenario.

I got an email from my client where he asks an offer for some items. As I expect, because he is my old client, “Madeira” automatically recognized him and gave me possibility to see his company contact card or him as my customer. This second info is more useful for me.

On this card, I can see his balance, past due balance, overdue as a chart and few interesting tiles with information about his existing quotes, orders, invoices, credit memos, posted documents… If I want to see details about his balance, I need just to click on amount and I’ll get all information from Customer Ledger Entry; again everything in mail Outlook client. I can see posted document from this entry or edit if I want it…

And the same situation is if I click on amount in the chart. I also can use these tiles to see all documents with details from this default place.

OK, I decided I’ll give him an Offer. From this customer card, I can make new Sales Quote (I can make other sales document as well). As I expected, system noticed me that he has overdue balance, but I will live with this risk J. Now, I just need to fill what he wanted on quote and choose Send by email.

System will automatically create new email with attached Quote as PDF and all necessary information in mail body. And I just need to click Send. When I get confirmation, I will continue with working making an Invoice and sending approval request. And after that I’ll choose to Post and Send this invoice.

As you saw, we can make almost all sales business processes without leaving our Outlook client. And this is not everything we can; this is only part of possibilities. But we can see all of these in only few months. I am really waiting to see this product in production environment.

Invoices in Project Madeira via Outlook

29/06/201626/07/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Azure, Dynamics, Invoice, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Outlook, Project Madeira, SaaS

Few days ago, I wrote article about working with contacts in Project ‘Madeira’ via Outlook. Now, want to show something more about integration with Office and Outlook.

What if you get an e-mail with invoice number in mail body? Outlook will underline this number and make link to your actual invoice in NAV if you just click on it. Beautiful.

If invoice with this number doesn’t exist, system will offer you to search document in all your sales and purchase documents. You just need to choose type of documents, and you will get list of your documents as bricks. Impressive.

But what when you find your documents? First, you can continue to work with this document in your mail body or you can choose to open it in new window for a better visibility. And then, you can choose a lot of actions, everything from your e-mail (you don’t need to open your Madeira client during all these actions).

If I choose the first option (Send), system will just make a reply mail with this Invoice in PDF as attachment with the basic details about this invoice in a mail body.

But you can make a different actions as well. Maybe you need to correct this posted document (system will automatically create and post Credit memo and create new document) or you want to create a Credit memo or change your payment service… Everything of this is possible, but only if this contact is connected with your customer.

There are still more possibilities, but in some other article… Currently we can say, Project ‘Madeira’ promises a lot.

New Extensions for Project Madeira

27/06/201626/07/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Azure, Dynamics, extension, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Madeira, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Project Madeira, SaaS

When I run Project ‘Madeira’ for the first time, I found only three extensions there:

QuickBooks Data Migration
PayPal Payments Standard
Envestnet Yodlee Bank Feeds

All of them were created by Microsoft. But now, we can find eight of them (one new from Microsoft and few of them by ChargeLogic and Sana Commerce).

It looks nice to see new extensions here from other vendors. I hope we will have a hundreds of them in few months as well.

But I’m afraid about their visibility when we have a hundreds or thousands of them. I use brick view for the best visibility, and yes – search works fine, but I think we have to have some additional tags. Minimum I need is Category tag, because we will have a lot of completely different types of extensions (data migration, notifications, integrations, payment, some specific vertical or horizontal solutions, localisations,…). Also, it will be fine to have Market tab because some of extensions are for global market, but some of them will be only for some specific countries.

I expect to have some kind of rating as well. We will have a lot of similar extensions, and we need something for differentiation. I think these ideas can improve ‘Madeira’ experience. But it look it will be a great product.

Contacts in Project Madeira via Outlook Client

24/06/201626/07/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Azure, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Outlook, Project Madeira, SaaS

In the last few articles about Project ‘Madeira’, I wanted to show how to configure it and some basics about usage and limitations. Now, I want to show you how we can use Project ‘Madeira’ using our Outlook. First, just to know, to do it we need Exchange Online (I’m using O365).

In this example, I’ve got an e-mail from unknown person. If we use a small icon on the top on e-mail, system will as us what to do with this contact.

If I choose to add this contact as a contact in my Project ‘Madeira’, I can associate this contact with some of the companies… And everything without leaving my Outlook. If we don’t know how to use some of the fields, we need just to click on this field caption and we will get a small help.

Now if we want to edit this contact, we can do it using “Edit” button. Or if this is not so comfortable to you, you can choose “Pop Out” button to open this contact in independent window. We also can run some other processes, eg. creating opportunity, creating interaction, checking or creating a quote… or run statistic or send some of the reports (in file format you want).

If you run e-mail from this person some other time, system will recognize her as a contact. If this contact is not connected with a company, system will offer you this possibility. And everything is a live with your ‘Madeira’ database. You don’t need to leave your Outlook page.

Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn!

13/06/2016 atotovic General acquire, LinkedIn, Microsoft, network, News, Skype, social, Yammer

I could not believe this while reading this news, but Microsoft and LinkedIn just announced today have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire LinkedIn.

I don’t want to think about money, I’ll prefer to think more about impact on our business world. LinkedIn is the most popular business social network and Microsoft already has Yammer and Skype. With all these three products, I think they will be a really serious part of global social network game.

And when we add here some other Microsoft tool (now I just try to imagine all possible integrations)… I think we will know more in the few following days. But, today this news was a really BOMB!

NAV Gallery Image – PS Scripts Order

12/06/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, Power BI, SQL Azure, Azure SQL, gallery, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV2016, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Power BI, PowerShell, Tips & Tricks

This week I have training about NAV and Azure and I used some examples in NAV 2016 Gallery Image on Azure.

This image is awesome, but sometime people doesn’t know what PowerShell script can be started before some others. For example, you cannot run “Use Azure SQL Database” and after that “Install Multitenancy”…

Because of that I wanted to make some small help to all people who want to use this NAV 2016 image. In the following, you can find a chart with order of using all PowerShell scripts. Now, you know how to configure all of them on the same VM.

June 2016 CUs for NAV have been released

03/06/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV Application, Build, CU, Dynamics, hotfix, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV 2015, NAV2013, NAV2013R2, NAV2016, NAVUG, Platform

Today, Microsoft has published new Cumulative Updates:

Generally, NAV 2016 has pretty more Platform Hotfixes than other three versions (they have only few of them). About Application Hotfixes, the last two version have most of all improvement.

Almost all Hotfixes, both Platform and Application are just improving some issues in system. If we wait something new, I think we will wait until new version will be published. In any case, I suggest to install the most recent cumulative update for your NAV version. And still better, upgrade your NAV to the freshest NAV version :). You will not make mistake.

Totovic Dynamics 365 Blog

Month: June 2016