As I promised a few days ago in my post about news in Dynamics NAV, now I’ll add some additional news. In this post I’ll show new API’s.
Currently we have these 42 completed API’s:
And we will have these API’s soon:
Sorry because of quality of pictures (photos taken on Microsoft Inspire). I’ll make them better in the few following days. Today, I just wanted to share these info.
I didn’t write for a while, but now we can speak about some news in Dynamics NAV. We got some information on Microsoft Inspire conference and not only about NAV. There are a great news, as announcement of new products, e.g. Microsoft 365 enterprise and business edition… But in this text I just want to mention few things about NAV.
The first, we will continue with both of models, ‘on premises’ and ‘on Azure’. We can expect for all Dynamics products we currently have, ongoing development.
Except this important information about future releases of all Dynamics group of products, we got the main information about the most important technical and functional news in NAV ‘Tenerife’. You can find them on the following picture:
And of course, these are not all news we will see in the next release. For example there is a new and better out of the box PowerBI integration, not only on the role centers. Now we will use more contextual PowerBI integration on different places in NAV.
And not only this. But we will have more information soon… I’ll keep you in a touch.
To continue yesterday’s article about In-client Designer in Dynamics NAV as I promised. If you want to check these features from this year June update, you need to deploy Azure virtual machine from the following link: http://aka.ms/navdeveloperpreview.
One of the biggest feature is possibility to customize Role Center. Now, we can reposition or hide Cue or Cue group on Role Center. And not only on Role Center, we can also do it on any page where we have cues.
What is more new in In-client designer? When we want to finish our customization, system will ask us for our Extension Name and Publisher as well.
When we save it, system will download it as a zipped VS Code:
Of course, we have a lot more features and improvements, but they are mostly related to VS Code. In some new articles, I’ll show more about it.
Recently, Microsoft published new Developer Preview for the next NAV version. If you try to find it on Azure portal as one of the NAV virtual machines, you will find “Dynamics NAV ‘Tenerife’ Development Preview”.
When you install run NAV after deployment, in the first moment you will not see ‘Design Mode’ icon. To get it, you need to run ‘Install New Developer Experience’ PowerShell script. After that you can try In-client designer. Now let’s see some of the features. This tool can be used for page design.
Currently, we can work only with Fields and not with Actions, Parts and Pages. If we run design for the list page, we can change an order on columns, remove some of fields, add them and set freeze pane.
The same situation is if we want to make some customization on card page; we can do everything the same as on list, except adding freeze pane 😊. But this is with standard fields on pages. On the other side, we can add fields on card part pages. We can notice that we have context oriented fields for part pages. And also, we have some controls, as we can only drop media fields onto card part pages and we cannot drop a field under a repeater control, because this is not the design that list pages were intended for.
And finally, we can add or remove some parts on role center. When we decide to finish with customizations, we just need to click on ‘Stop’ and system will ask us what to do with ours work. System will offer to save the changes to the tenant for all users, or to save the changes to a VS Code package file that we can work on later in VS Code.
On the first sight, that is all, but if you create Azure VM using http://aka.ms/navdeveloperpreview URL, you can get some newer features. More about this in the next post.
Few days ago, I’ve started with a story about new product (still Technical Preview) – Dynamics 365 for Talent. I want to spend a few words about possible integrations.
When you look at the official announcement, you can find that key integrations will support the overall business and the following integrations will be created, but they will be available at or shortly after general availability:
As you can see, there are not planed integration with Dynamics 365 for Financials or with Dynamics NAV. But think it will be necessary because these products don’t have a real HRM solution. But I’ve also found that it will be possible to use Common Data Services platform with built-in extension points for Power Apps, Flow and Power BI.
But, when I tried to make connection via Flow and Power App, I’ve found that it is still not available as a connection. Of course, it is probably because it is only technical preview and I’m sure it will be available with a general availability. I’m waiting this moment and I want to make some kind of integration. I’ll write about it, I hope soon.
The third year in a row, I’ll have session in Directions NA. I’ve got confirmation a few days ago and I can say that I’m so happy, because it is one of the my favorite conferences and I really love the American audience.
Conference will be held at the beautiful hotel JW Marriott Orlando, Grande Lakes, Florida in period September 17-21. It is still not too late to make registration here. I would like to see all of you there.
This time, my topic will not be technical, but related with Dynamics 365. I’ll speak about Project Management Methodology in D365 BE Implementation. I think this is important topic although we are usually thinking only on very fast selling and very fast implementing solution, when speak about D365 Business Edition. But it is still a project and we still need to take care about a lot of things and to manage it.
Now, I don’t want to speak about all details here, because I’ll try to help you in this kind of project management with this session.
Effective July 1st, Microsoft will announce new Dynamics 365 family member. This is new HRM app – Dynamics 365 for Talent. Of course, this will not be only one news, but I want to say a few words about this product. First, we can run and test technical preview and I want to share some first experiences. We still cannot find all features here, but we can make the first sight. For example, we will still wait integration with LinkedIn. It will be very important integration, especially in recruitment process. But we still don’t know all areas where integration will be done. But again, lets see what we have here.
This will be standard SaaS solution with web client, very similar with D365 for Operations. And of course, it will be integrated with this solution. And I would like if we can get integration not only with this enterprise solution, but also with D365 for Financials. Minimum, I’m expecting some App for this.
If you try to run a few basic features in demo database, you can notice that it works fast enough and very smoothly. When we open app for the first time, we can see a menu as default dashboard and in the left side in the same moment. If icons are not clear enough on the left side, we just need to click on three-lines, and it will be expanded so you can see the names of these commands. Also, when you run system for the first time, you will find very good “Get Started” with very good prepared videos and with a lot of step-by-step manuals. And if this manuals are not enough, you have a awesome tool where you can create task saving; you just need to choose this tool, run it and do everything what you want to do; when you click on stop, system will create nice manual step-by-step and you can choose how and where you want to deploy it.
In this first text, I didn’t plan to speak about features, just to make some basic overview. In my next texts, I will write more about features.
More details about this technical preview, you can find here:
In the last period, we used to have one slide with roadmap about future release of Dynamics NAV with few expected enhancements. But now, instead of this, we have new dedicated site for roadmap. You just need to run here, and you will open this site. Generally, when open it, you can see this is for Dynamics 365, but when you change to Business Edition and choose Dynamics 365 for Financials, you can see all new future features for both of products D365 for Financials and Dynamics NAV.
But this is just to know what will be in a future. Of course, some strategic features will not be announce here and we need to wait to see them official release. But I am sure, the most of you want to be more engaged in this part “what will be in the future”. In the past (and now) we have a Connect site. This was a place where you could add new product suggestions. But generally it was for the current and past NAV versions and it was used mostly for some bugs and improvement ideas.
Now we have something better. You just need to go to https://ideas.dynamics.com/ for all Dynamics 365 products or to https://ideas.dynamics.com/ideas/dynamics-financials for Dynamics 365 for Financials and as I already said for the Dynamics NAV (because they are the same in the basic). On this site, you can suggest new idea or vote for some of existing idea. This forum is very nice created and it is important that every day you can see current status of your suggestion.
Of course if you want to suggest a new idea or to vote, you must be signed in, because it will not be a fair to put something as anonimus. But with all this organization, I’m really sure that we will get amazing products in the future.
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.
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.
Last month I wrote about some issues when you tried to download NAV Cumulative Updates. Now it looks like as we can download all CU’s using Microsoft Download Center. Today, I’ve investigated and found the newest February CU’s for all NAV versions. I check on Dynamics NAV blog, but I didn’t find them. I hope, we will get them on blog very soon, but in the meantime, you can download them from the following URL’s. As I fond them on MS Download Center, that means these are public:
And even more. I’ve found URL’s where you can find all old Cumulative Updates for all NAV versions. And of course, all these links are correct and everything I tried looks fine. There are these URL’s:
Good luck…
Totovic Dynamics 365 Blog 