In a month, BCUG/NAVUG Summit in Orlando will start. There will be dozens of amazing lectures and if you are NAV or Business Central user, this event is probably something you must attend, especially if you want to continue with improving your knowledge.
I like to come back to this event every year as this is probably only one opportunity where you can get directly feedback from thousands of Dynamics users.
This time, I would try to explain why you should attend this amazing event using video message and I hope you will like it 🙂
This fall I’ll be active and attend to four conferences as lecturer. If you want to see some of my lectures or to meet me, register for some of these events:
Directions NA 2019 has just finished and I’m writing this
article in a plane on my way to home. It was great opportunity to meet 925 Dynamics
professionals and not only from North America. It was amazing event and I’m
happy because I had opportunity to speak here. We got a lot interesting
information regarding Business Central Spring Release and to listen about
experience of implementations of this solution here in US.
If you were there, you know what I’m talking about. If you
were not be there, you can find all that news on Microsoft official document here.
I’ll only emphasize some facts we hear from Jannik and Claus on a closing
session as well as they will have a big impact on a future of BC.
In the future, ISV scenarios will include 15 objects for Team Members
From July 1st, we will get device license – CSP pricelist = 40USD
For On-prem transition to BC, user ratio is changed to 1:3 (for each concurrent user in NAV/GP user, they will get 3 named BC users) and this time this includes limited users as well
On-premises partners will get more internal
users licenses
On-premises license will include one CAL for
external accountant and one CAL for a system administrator, the same as we have
in a subscription
If you read only these few facts, you can understand how
important it is for partners and for clients as well.
We also heard that we will get new certification exams for
Business Central functional consultants in FY20 as well as better
differentiation through the Cloud Business Applications Competency and/or the Small
and Mid-Market Cloud Solutions competency. Also, there will be secondary
transition journey for clients who want to stay on-premises and to use cloud
benefits or to migrate to the cloud (stay on BREP and purchase Midterm Offer).
And on the end, Directions NA 2020 (April 19-22) will be again in Orlando in Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress and for me it has a special place in my hearth, because in this place a few years ago, I had an opportunity to speak on Direction North America for the very first time.
Directions Asia has just finished, and we will continue with
spring conference season in Dynamics. The next Directions will be in North
America in Las Vegas in period May 5-8 in Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa. Registration
is still available.
This year I want to show you about benefits of integration
with different Dynamics 365 solutions. Why? Generally, I think we have great
features in Business Central, but possibility to integrate this solution with
other solutions using Azure tools or using different UI are the amazing
possibilities. These options are why it is important to have Business Central
in Dynamics 365 family.
Because of these reasons, you can find my sessions in agenda. From today (April 12th, the full agenda is available):
‘Dynamics 365 for
Talent’ is a new Microsoft Dynamics HCM solution. This solution is available
independently or through Unified Operations plan. Because we can use it
independently, it is interesting if we can integrate this solution with Business
central. You will see how to integrate Talent with Business Central and very
important thing – without coding. And of course, you will see different
integration options based on different user scenarios.
Although on the first
sight, there is no so common things between Business Central model driven
PowerApps, it can be very useful if we could use it with Business Central. Generally,
model driven PowerApps is a tool for CRM development, but there are many
reasons why to use it with Business Central. If you want to know why, come to
this session to see why to do it and how to do it… and maybe even more. As we
expect more and more CRM and ERP solutions in simultaneously work, it can be
very interesting.
OK, I will not write more, but if you think these topics are
interesting for you, you are welcome on my sessions and see you in Las Vegas.
And of course, my sessions are not only reason to come on
Directions 😊. You will find great sessions there… you will
see details about Business Central Spring release ’19 as well as amazing
sessions by MVP’s and other experts.
In my previous
post, I’ve introduced you with the news from Directions ASIA and Business
Central spring release. As I said in this previous post, there are a lot of
improvements. Some of them are on this slide, and as very important
improvements in performance, reliability and scalability, we can find that now
we have
50% faster Role Center load time
40% faster in Lead to Cash scenarios
2x improvement in RapidStart
Of course, there are a lot of other improvements. I’ve
recently had a session about this topic in eXtreme 365, but this time I’ll not
write about them, because you can find all of them in the following:
In total, there are more than 100 enhancements and some of
them are extremely usable.
But what is also interesting? We got some hints what will be
in Fall ’19 release. And as I mentioned yesterday, the first things – there will
not be Windows Client and C/SIDE anymore; only Modern Client (web) and AL with
VS Code. But in on-prem, you will get full BC code as an app and you can change
this code as you used to work with that in old Development Environment. Not
exactly the same, but you can do it. But even if you can do it, this is not recommendation
as we heard that in one moment in the future we will continue with extensions
only even on on-prem. Nobody can say when exactly, but this is a future.
Because of that, start with extensions immediately.
Of course, team will continue to improve proficiency, to reduce ISV friction, enhance migration tools, to improve service fundamentals… and now we can see plans for CDS in 2020 and further.
What is not so good information (especially for countries without
MS official localization) is that team announce that we can expect expanding
localizations after October release, not before that ☹. But
on the other side, team will invest in really cool things in this period.
And on the end, Directions NA will come in May and we will see if we have stil something new regarding all these topics.
Directions ASIA has just started a few hour ago. On a first
day keynote, we could hear a lot of interesting information. I’ll start with
some numbers. As this is third Directions in Asia, number of attendees still
increase every year. This year we have the following statistic:
Number of attendees: 453
Attendees from 157 companies and from 32 countries
Number of sessions: 70
Number of speakers: 55 (Microsoft, MVP’s and
industry experts)
Now, what we could hear about product and market? Based on
showed information, Business Central and NAV together are implemented at
223.000 customers with more than 3.3 million users in 196 countries. Impressive
numbers, right? And I really hope, this solution will continue as previously
and even better.
As this is announcement of Business Central Spring ’19 release,
we can see what is new in this release and the full roadmap for this solution. During
keynote, we could see that product team is extremely proud on stability, security
and performance. Of course, there is a lot of new features. In my following
texts, I’ll write about all these things.
Currently, we could see new roadmap for our solution, and it
looks fine:
We can see that system already got a lot of new feature, especially
trying to improve user experience. And I can conclude, they really succeed with
this.
But if we look in more detailed roadmap, you will find two
very important facts. This release will be the last one with Windows Client and
with C/SIDE and C/AL.
From October ’19 release, we will have only Modern Client (web
client) and VS Code + AL in development side. If you used only BC on a cloud,
you will not recognize some difference, but if you used on-prem solution, then
it is the right moment to migrate to web client asap. And in development,
please start with extensions immediately. But to be honest, in on-prem solution
you will still be in situation to change a code, but this time in VS Code using
completely BC system as an App. But it will still be much better if you start
to move all your customization to extensions.
Of course, there are some other news, but I cannot put
everything in one blog post, but you can expect all this news soon.
eXtreme 365 conference is one of very important partner oriented conferences. After eXtreme 365 in Austin Texas in December last year, now it is a time for European eXtreme 365, this time in Amsterdam. If you still didn’t register, and if you are available in period March 25-27, you can do it here.
NAV TechDays 2018 has just finished a few days ago and I can say this was the best NAV TechDays ever. I don’t know what name will be the next year NAV or BC TechDays (or something different), but I’ll be there for sure and I’m promising I’ll prepare session for next year. Now, all sessions are already published and I want to have all of them on the one place. There are all of them:
Opening Keynote
What’s new in Developing for Business Central
Practical approaches for upgrading your NAV database and moving to extensions
Performance: Business Central reloaded for the Cloud
Crazy mix of integrations: Dynamics 365 Business Central and Azure services
Add some magic to Business Central with Machine Learning
Business Central: The new face of the client
Evolution of a titan: a look at the development of NAV from an MVP angle
Designing for extensibility: Learn straight from the Application Architects
Under the hood of Business Central service
The future for developers and consultants
Real life scenarios and best practices for using NAV on Docker
Having embed PowerBI in Business Central is well known fact, but recently in Fall ’18 release, Microsoft made it even better because now you have already added PowerBI reports on all pages where they were planned to be. OK, it is nice to have and it can be time saver, because you don’t need to waste your time to add reports to page-by-page.
But what if you are not satisfy with it how these reports looks like? If you want to change something? Previously it was locked, but now… Now it looks amazing. You don’t need to leave your Business Central environment… everything you need, you will find in your Web Client (of course I’m speaking about cloud version 🙂 ).
Let’s show… Find some PowerBI report and choose Manage Reports command.
When you run this command, you will open PowerBI Management in Business Central (PowerBI Designer) and you can design your reports.
You can change your existed reports or eventually add new tab with new charts… you can do as you want.
When you finish, you just need to save it or to save this new report as a copy (if you want to keep original).
When you close it and open this report in Business Central, you will see that now you have your new report. Simply, right? Amazing job!
After amazing conference in The Hague this fall – Directions EMEA, we have two another great events until the end of this year. First in Europe, NAV TechDays will come in November 22-23 and after that we will go to US on eXtreme 365, December 2-6, Austin Texas.
This event was dominantly Dynamics CRM conference for a years, but in a last few years, we have more and more topics in ERP area as well. And now it is Dynamic 365 conference and it is very important because we have more and more partners from CRM world who want to start ERP practice as well.
This time we will have a lot of interesting content there and I’ll provide six sessions about Dynamics 365 Business Central, each in 75 minutes (7,5 hours in total – not so bad).
Totovic Dynamics 365 Blog 