NAV TechDays 2017 Recap

One day after NAV TechDays 2017 in Antwerp is finished. Again, amazing conference with 1.236 attendees this year and big thanks to Luc Van Dyck for organization of this event.

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There were a plenty of amazing sessions provided by Microsoft staff and by some well known MVPs. But I think that this NAV TechDays is marked with new NAV and Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ challenge, ie Extensions v2 in Visual Studio Code, new integration directions, new deployment models… I don’ want to write in detail about all these sessions; as I mentioned all where I was been were amazing. But soon, they will be published on mibuso official channel on YouTube and I’ll make reference on them in the next article when they will be published. And, then all of you who were not been there can see these sessions.

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But just to know, attending this conference is not just about sessions, but also networking, because you can fins 1.000+ professionals all around the world on one place.

I’m waiting the next year and November 22-23 in Antwerp (schedule these dates right now). And once more, thank to Luc, all speakers and sponsors…

The most important NAV events in 2018

We’ve just finished amazing NAVUG Summit in Nashville and got all confirmation about NAV future as SaaS and on-prem options. But in this period we can start to make a plan for the next year about the most important events, because almost all of them are already announced.

First in the spring 2018, we will have Directions Asia in Bangkok in period March 15 – 16. By my opinion, this event will be very important to attend, because Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ is planed for this spring.

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After that, one month later we will move to Europe to Summit EMEA in Dublin, Ireland in period from April 24th to 26th.

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Later this year after summer, on the fall 2018, we will have another well known conferences. First we will start with Directions NA, this time in beautiful California, in San Diego between September 30 and October 3.

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This time, NAVUG Summit will come before Directions EMEA, and it will be in October 15-18 at sunny Arizona in Phoenix.

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And on the end, one month after North America premiere, we will have Directions EMEA, this time in Hague in Netherlands. It will be held in period October 31 – November 2.

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Of course, we have one more very important – NAV TechDays, but we still don’t know when it will be the next year.

But if you want to plan all Dynamics important conferences (these four and even more), you can open my page with Dynamics conferences with all details.

My sessions on this fall conference season

This fall Dynamics NAV conference season will start soon, in two months and it is the last moment to register on conference you planned to go. This season we expect thick events schedule and officially season will start in Orlando on Directions NA at September 17th. If you need the full list of Dynamics conferences, you can find here.

I’ll have my session on three of these conferences. First I’ll start with Directions NA, then continue with Directions EMEA and finish my season on NAVUG Summit.

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I’ll have the same session on Directions NA and Directions EMEA – ‘Project Management Methodology in Dynamics 365 BE Implementation‘ and I already wrote about this topic.

My first session will be third day of Directions NA – September 19th at 3:15pm. As I said, I’ll have the same session on Directions EMEA, and it will be at the first day of conference, after Keynote – October 4th at 11:15am. After these two conferences where I’ll have soft skills topic (project management), I’ll have more technical topics on NAVUG Summit, starting from October 11.

My topics will be how to use Flows with NAV, where I’ll show not only technical topic, but also practical example how and where to use it. And then, I’ll have topic about variations in Manufacturing in NAV, where I’ll try to transfer my experiences in a lot of Mfg implementations. Schedule is published, but it will be changed for sure. I know this, because I need to provide two sessions in the same moment 🙂 … and I know myself, I cannot do it 🙂

See you there…

Dynamics ERP and CRM Continue Together

I didn’t write a blog for a while, but these few days I’m on eXtreme 365 conference and I decided to share some observation. For some time, since there is a Dynamics 365 product family, we created a closer collaboration between ERP and CRM products. Generally, it was mostly based on technology.

But now, I see the next steps. First, more and more ERP partners try to learn more about CRM and the same situation is with CRM partners and ERP knowledge. Now, I’m at eXtreme 365 conference that was originally CRM conference, but from this year this is not only CRM conference. We have a lot of sessions about D365 for Financials, D365 for Operations, Common Data Service, PowerApps, Flow… And as I see, there are some NAV partners (and MVP’s as well J). Also, I saw announcement for Directions this year and there is a same situation, this will not be only NAV event and we will have CRM sessions as well.

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This is very important, because all of use started with thinking that we need to continue with both products together. And this is a huge opportunity for partners. This is opportunity for upselling and if they know both products they will be better on a market.

And about a conference. Great conference and great opportunity for networking. This is the first time I’m on some big conference that was not originally NAV conference and this is the great opportunity to see some new people, sometimes with different attitude. I also met some friends from a NAV world here and I can say this is a great mixture. I’m expecting something similar on Directions as well.

OK, in some next posts I’ll write more about some news with these products, but for sure we can expect more and more news in this world in next few months.

Final List of My Lectures – Fall 2016

I’ve already wrote about my sessions during this fall conferences, but now I have the final agenda for all conferences where I’ll attend. If you want to come on some of my lectures, I’ll be happy and I’ll try to help you as far as I can.

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Directions NA, Chandler, AZ, US

Directions EMEA, Prague, Czech Republic

MS Sinergija, Belgrade, Serbia

NAV TechDays, Antwerp, Belgium

Directions NA and Directions EMEA 2016

Few days ago, Directions 2015 season has finished. Directions EMEA in Mannheim has finished in first part of October and Directions NA in Orland has finished on the end of the same month. There were a really amazing conferences, bigger then ever. We had a a lot of excellent sessions and announcements of the last NAV release.

After all these news, we have a complete year to make some good projects with NAV 2016 using all these knowledge we learned on Directions sessions. Now we have some also amazing NAV conferences (NAV TechDays and Convergence), but with them this year conference season is finished.

What we can expect the next year? Of course, we are waiting new Directions, as well. Currently, we already know where Directions will be and start to prepare for them with never better NAV.

See you there.

Directions EMEA and NAV 2016 General Availability

This is my first reporting from Directions EMEA this year. I’ve arrived in Mannheim two days earlier because of my other obligations and I registered yesterday after rain stopped, but this is actually first day of Directions EMEA 2015. Keynote is finished and from this moment, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 is generally available.

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Group of Microsoft Dynamics Program Managers with Marko Perisic as leader, made an awesome job on scene. They presented the most important news in new NAV release very effective. Of course, guys from Continia also made amazing show in second part of Keynote with their new solution. Now, other sessions are starting and we can see lot of news and interesting things.

On Keynote scene we could see NAV Mobile App, a lot of new Web Client features, e-service exchange in practice, natively CRM Online integration, natively NAV reporting in Power BI,… I don’t want to write about all news now. I will write about them, one by one in few following posts.

Now, I only want to say that you can download new NAV now from this Partner Source link and let’s driving start. Now nothing else about NAV 2016 is not by NDA.

The Final Dynamics Conference List This Fall

I’ve already wrote about conferences this fall with Microsoft Dynamics NAV topics. Now, we can make the final list. Few days ago, we have got the last conference in the raw – Microsoft Business Summit Asia 2015. Conference will be held in Kuala Lumpur 7-10 December this year. You can find here more about this conference.

Now, you can find the final list with all Microsoft Dynamics NAV Conferences this year here. See you on most of them.

What is a Cloud Sure Step?

Cloud Sure Step is a new Microsoft program. This program should evolve the Road to Repeatability (R2R) program. The main goal of this program is to make an ease transition to the cloud for the most of partners. The NAV team has promoted this new program to WPC 2015 attendees, with the goal of transitioning more partners to cloud-based deployments that focus on fast, repeatable implementations that bring partners’ own IP and vertical specialization to bear.

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This is something that we could expect, as second part of Satya Nadella’s mantra “Mobile-first, Cloud-first”. With the newest NAV version, we will get new Azure and O365 integration enhancements, and it is naturally that we can expect more and more cloud based NAV implementations. The most important is that some of these enhancements will decrease cost of NAV deployment on Azure (e.g. using Azure SQL…).

Because of that, you can see that Cloud Sure Step is actually completely strategy, not only some lesson. Microsoft wants to prepare all NAV partners for the future. Because NAV in this new vision uses Azure and O365 as base, Microsoft has prepared Cloud Sure Step in two parts for both of their bases and you can find here more about it for Microsoft Azure and for Office 365. Using these information, you can learn everything from the beginning to the end: what are the Azure and O365, overview of these products and how to grow and optimize your business.

More details about Cloud Sure Step will come at fall partner events. If you are planning to be on Directions EMEA or Directions NA this October, you can find Cloud Sure Step sessions.

My NAV Lectures This Fall

To the end of this year, there will be a few very interesting NAV Conferences. I will go on most of them, but on few of them I will be a lecturer. Now, I can present schedules of my lectures this fall.

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First, I’m starting at Directions EMEA, Mannheim, GermanyOctober 5-7, 2015

I was on almost all Directions EMEA Conferences, but it will be my first time as lecturer. I still remember Paris 2008, but now it is really huge conference (it will be conference with 1.300+ attendees). Topic will be how you can implement NAV in construction business. I think I have a lot of experiences in this topic and I think it will be very interesting. I still don’t know exact term, but I’ll publish it in a timely manner. I will be there few days earlier. See you there.

Sinergija

In second half of October, I will start with MS Sinergija, Belgrade, SerbiaOctober 21-23, 2015

MS Sinergija is my favorite Serbian IT Conference. It will be my tenth lecture on this conference. Conference will be at inconvenient times this year because my trip to US, but it will be a jubilee lecture and I cannot miss it. I’m still not sure about topic, but it will be for sure about something new in NAV 2016. I hope it will be interesting for people in my country.

DirectionsNA

Only one day after Sinergija I will fly to US on Directions NA, Orlando, USAOctober 25-28, 2015

This will be my first time on Directions NA and I hope not the last J. I expect to meet a lot of good people there. On this Conference, I will have the same session as on Directions EMEA – How to implement NAV in construction business. This lecture is part of MVP Best Practices Track and it is already scheduled as session BP 450 on 1:15 PM – 2:15 PM, Tuesday, October 27. This year, I will stay in USA two weeks. After this conference, I will be few days in San Francisco and in Seattle on MVP Summit after that, as well.

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And on the end, as my the last conference this year, I’ve planned NAV TechDays, Antwerp, BelgiumNovember 19-20, 2015

Last year, I was on this conference for the first time and I just fell in love. I will have one session this year: Deploying and Managing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 with Azure SQL Database. It will be completely technical session and I hope you will recognize it as interesting topic. It is an honor to be with these great people on this conference. This session is already scheduled at 11:00 – 12:30, Friday, November 20.

I hope I’ll see and meet a lot of good people on all these conferences. In meantime, I will also be on MVP Summit in Redmond, US – November 2-5, 2015. See you there.

Unfortunately, I will not be on NAVUG Summit, Microsoft Business Summit Asia and on Convergence EMEA because of my tight schedule on the end of year. But I hope, maybe next year.