NAV 2018 after all

After Direction NA announcement, it was clear the next Dynamics NAV release will be known as Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ and it will be published in spring next year. But…

As we heard on Direction, actually new NAV is already finished from technical perspective and probably because of partners feedback, the final decision is that we will have once more release of NAV as NAV 2018 later this year. More about it is published here in Microsoft official blog, and it is yesterday confirmed by Marko Perisic on Twitter.

But in further, this blog post still speaks more about future of Dynamics 365 as we already heard on Direction. That means we will just get new NAV in a meantime, because product is already finished. As I mentioned in my previous post, we can use this NAV release to be well prepared for the future release of Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’. In this post I made one mistake when I said we can customize NAV 2017 using extensions and VS Code; I actually thought on Dynamics 365 for Financials, but with this new NAV 2018 release, it will be possible as I said on both of these current products D365FOBE and NAV 2018.

With this approach in development, it will be very easy to transform all new implementations to new solution the next year. Because of that, the most important thing for partners is accepting extensions and VS Code.

And I don’t know if we will get new user interface with NAV 2018. By my personal opinion – not. Probably, it will be announced with Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’, but this is just my private opinion. For more details, we need to wait R&D team.

More truth about the future of NAV

22/09/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 tenerife, extension, Financials, NAV, NAV Tenerife, Tenerife

After the first day of Directions NA, there are a lot of confusing posts about the future of Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 for Financials. I don’t know why, because Marko Perisic was clear about all details.

The first well known products are not canceled. This is just rebranding and it means we will still have products with the same features (and lot of new features) as old NAV (and Dynamics 365 for Financials). Now we will just have one common platform for both of these old products and with the same name – Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ (currently code name). We will have this product on cloud and on-prem (as old NAV). If partners want to deploy NAV on Azure, they will not use their own infrastructure and instead of that, they will use this product as SaaS. But what is the best for partners, they can make project based customizations on cloud as well as on-prem. And this is amazing.

About other Apps, we can license Apps as we want to use and we will be in situation to make combination of Apps from old BE or EE solutions. And of course we will pay per feature and per named user. And I must to be honest, maybe we still don’t have all details about licensing and this is one of the most important reasons, why this product is not published just now. Product is already finished, but we need to wait the final adjustments about licensing. This will be on the first place, because Microsoft wants to encourage partners and clients to use cloud solution as more as possible. This is the most important strategy. But all clients can continue to use on-prem solution if they insist. But Microsoft will make much better offer for cloud solution. And we need to be patient to wait the final decision.

New product will have new modern user interface, almost the same as other D365 products and this will be very important for future customers, because they will have the same filling working in different Apps.

And yes, we need to wait until the spring for the new product, but I cannot see some specific issue, because we can continue to implement NAV. If we customize NAV 2017 using extensions and VS Code, it will be very easy to transform these implementations to new solution the next year.

And yes, we can continue to use CDS for integrations, PowerApps, Flow, PowerBI… All of these will be used with the new product as well. We can continue to publish Apps on AppSource, because this service will be continue to use and it will be much more improved. And one more yes, on the closing session, Marko announced that he and his team accepted the most important feedbacks from partners. This is encouraging message for all partners who are afraid from any reason.

Of course, partners will need to change their business models in some parts, more or less, but this is normal situation in whole business. Personally, I’m happy with all new announcements and I think R&D team made a good job.

New UX in NAV (Dynamics 365 Tenerife)

19/09/2017 atotovic Conference, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV apps, Directions, Directions NA, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 tenerife, GA, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Tenerife, New client, Tenerife, UX, Web Client

After first Keynote on Directions NA, we got a very exciting news about rebranding of our products and about their common future as Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’. In my previous post, I wanted to announce only the most important news and later write a more detailed. But in a meantime, Waldo wrote a post with perfect explained all these details and I’ll just give you URL to this post instead of writing the same text.

Before I start with other exciting news from the second Keynote part, first I want to share details when we can expect new products:

Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ – In preview, but GA Spring 2018
Dynamics 365 for Sales – In preview, but GA Spring 2018
Dynamics 365 for Marketing – In preview

Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL will continue as for now with the same name and we will get new versions this year at Q4.

But now, what we have more about new future release. OK we will get a lot of new features, but on the first sight, new UX will be the first what we can see and just to say my personal opinion – It is the great work. We will get complete rendered web client (probably Tablet and Phone and the same time, I’m not sure). Now when you compare all Dynamics 365 clients, there are all almost the same. This is the point, we don’t want to speak about specific different solutions, we want to speak only about Dynamics 365 as a product; and of course, we will run only these Apps we need:

Now, I can just share some first pictures of the new client to see how it looks like. When we run Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’, we can see new refreshed role center with very interesting ordered information:

Then in further, when we slightly go down, we can see more tiles and Power BI charts:

If we click on some tile, we can get very first sight to the most important information in beautiful interface:

The list pages are very similar as in old client, but without fact boxes. These information will be available on a different place, but by my opinion on much better place:

And on the end, cards are little bit different with the most important information on the top of card:

I really like this new interface and I cannot wait to make more tests with this.

New NAV will be Dynamics 365 Tenerife

17/09/201717/09/2017 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Dynamics 365 Directions, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 tenerife, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Tenerife, on cloud, on premises, SaaS, Tenerife

The first day of Direction NA has just started and Keynote has just finished. The event is the biggest ever with 774 attendees. We heard a lot of news about our product(s). The most important announcement is:

The future Dynamics NAV release will be Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ on-premises;
The future Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Edition release will be Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’ on cloud.

That means, we will continue with ‘AND’ story. The main goal will be ‘on cloud’, but if we need we can continue to work with ‘on prem’. But, both of these products will be the same – a full NAV.

But there are more news, especially about ‘on cloud’ story. In the future release, we can provide customer oriented customizations in our SaaS solution, we can run Sandbox environment, our services can be offered… All of this is very exciting and we can find a lot of opportunities, especially in integrations with other products.

This is not all with details. This is just the first basic review of news. There will be more news soon.

My Dynamics lectures in Serbia this fall

15/09/201721/09/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, HRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017, Belgrade, Beograd, D365, D365 for Talent, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Tenerife, October, Serbia, Sinergija, Srbija, What is

Just before I go on a trip to Orlando (Directions NA 2017), I want to announce something to my countrymen in Serbia. I’ll have two sessions on Sinergija 2017 conference in Belgrade. Sinergija will be held at October 25th – 27th and detailed agenda is still not known.

But my sessions will be the following:

Is the new NAV actually Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’?
What is Dynamics 365 for Talent?

You can register with early bird until the end of this day. If you want to attend, it is a good opportunity to register.

Dynamics 365 Accountant Portal on a Phone

18/08/2017 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Dynamics 365 Accountant Portal, Android, Azure, D365, D365FOBE, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, iPhone, Mobile, phone, Phone Client, Windows Phone

I already wrote about using Accountant Portal in Dynamics 365 for Financials. And now just imagine if you are accountant and your client call you about some very important information when you are out of office. Generally you have your phone in your pocket in almost all situation and as we know we have Dynamics NAV/365 App for iPhone, Android and WP.

Good information is that when you installed Accountant Portal extension, it is available on a Phone Client as well. And you will have the same features.

You will see the same basic information on a Phone Client as on the Web Client. When you click on your client, you will see more detailed information on whole page. and if you want to work with your client, system will continue opening your client instance.

Because you can run it not only from Phone Client, system will offer you to open it with your App and then you can continue with standard using Phone Client and all standard features. But depends of your phone, you have a link to check if your device is supported and to download App if you already didn’t.

Very easy and absolutely in the spirit of ‘Cloud first, mobile first’.

How to start with Accountant Portal in Dynamics 365

09/08/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Accountant Portal, App, AppSource, BE, Business Edition, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV

If you have accountant agency and want to take care about a lot of clients, you can use this new feature in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Edition (too long name: I’ll use D365FOBE). It is really good to encourage your clients to start with Dynamics 365. After that you can use your new Accountant Portal to manage all your clients using free license for external accountants.

To do it, you need to have your own D365FOBE subscription and install this App from AppSource. Open Extension Management and go to AppSource and choose Account Portal (click on ‘Get it now’).

When you finish installation process, you need to sign out and sign in again. Then you will be noticed that Account Portal is installed and system will ask you if you want to accept user personalization changes to enable this feature (click Yes). Then you can continue with Next and Next to start 30-days trial.

After that, you will get a different home page, where you can add new clients, choosing one of the options: Enter Clients, Manage Clients…

Then, you need to create client and the main details. The most important field is ‘Client URL’, where you need to enter the URL destination for your client’s instance for D365FOBE. When you finish with this, you need to click on ‘Test Client URL’ actions to check if everything is OK.

After filling other details about your client, you can close this page and see your new client on your home page.

Here, you will see the basic clients information and you can choose to go to the client. . From this page, accountants can drill down to their clients’ specific transaction details. These were only the basic steps how to start.