Dynamics NAV and GDPR

A few days ago, Microsoft published Whitepaper about GDPR regulations and NAV as well as package of new Cumulative Updates where the first part (DataClassification property) on these changes were implemented.

Day after this was published, we could find a new article with more details how to work with classified data and new DataClassification property in tables and fields.

I don’t want to retype all these details, because you can find all these information on NAV Team blog as well as complete documentation about data classification. I’ve just wanted to spread a word. Again, all details about new CU’s and how to implement GDPR requirements can be found on a NAV Team blog.

NAV 2018 Web Client Improvements

08/12/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV browser, Client, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, NAV, NAV 2018, NAV Tenerife, NAV2017, Web, Web Client

With new Dynamics 2018, there is a lot of improvement in a Web Client. One of the first improvements is availability of Print Preview for non-Internet Explorer browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Safari). In these cases, the Preview button didn’t appear on the request pages of reports. Now it exists.

We have possibilities to change size of previewed document, use “select text” or “pan the document”, as well as download document or print it from preview.

On the other side, now we can use Web Client as tool for user personalization. Of course, when we change something, it can be viewed in Windows Client as well, but place for configuration is Web Client.

I think that Web Client is good enough and it can be used as the main client (as we have in Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’); of course, some of the features are still better in Windows Client, but this client can be used in regular daily business (I know some of my colleagues will not agree with me, but I think this is more related with our habits). But I expect more and more new features in Web Client (we already saw future UX on Directions).

In some features, I more prefer Web Client in comparison with Windows Client (example is Ribbon on documents, where we have all actions for lines in the main ribbon).

OK, there is a still some limitations and you can find them on the following links for both, NAV 2018 and NAV 2017.

Browser Limitations with the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Client:

· Dynamics NAV 2018

· Dynamics NAV 2017

Feature Limitations of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Client:

· Dynamics NAV 2018

· Dynamics NAV 2017

The future of NAV – a small wrap up

10/10/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV App, BE, CDS, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, Dynamics 365 tenerife, EE, Extensions, Marketing, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV 2018, NAV Tenerife, NAV2017, NAV2018R2, SaaS, Sales, VS Code

These days we got a lot of messages about the future of our product – Dynamics NAV. Now I’m seating in a plane and traveling to Nashville on NAVUG Summit and finally have found some time to make a small wrap up with all important things. I think now, after two Directions in North America and EMEA, picture is clearer.

Roadmap

The first thing I want to mention is roadmap of Dynamics NAV. I think it is absolutely clear that in this moment we have Dynamics NAV 2017 as ‘on prem’ and ‘on cloud ready’ solution, but as SaaS, we have Dynamics 365 for Financial and Operations Business Edition, generally based on Dynamics NAV. But this is just in this moment, because Marko Perisic announced in Madrid last week that we will have published Dynamics NAV 2018 at December 1^st. This announced is mostly based on partners feedback and this is absolutely this what partners wanted. For now, SaaS solution will stay the same, with the same name and in the same countries (US, Canada and UK). But with this new NAV version, partners will get new solution and the most important, with this new NAV version they can start to use Visual Studio Code for Extensions v2. This is important because partners now can start immediately with new model of development and to be ready for the spring and new solution.

At the spring 2018, we will finally get already announced new product – Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”, but only as cloud SaaS solution. As on-prem solution, we will get Dynamics NAV 2018 R2, but with the same code base as Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”. In this moment I don’t know a reason why we will still have the same product with the different names ‘on cloud’ and ‘on prem’. But very soon, we will continue with only one name – currently code name Dynamics 365 ‘Tenerife’. System will have new modern web interface, sandbox and lot of new features (more about it in another post).

And ant the spring, we will get Dynamics 365 for Sales App with less features (ex Business Edition) and Dynamics 365 for Marketing as preview. Both of these products was presented on Directions and they really look nice and rich.

New Package – New Opportunities

As I said, I don’t want to write about all new features in the future release, but what with the whole package. The main idea is to stop to implement ERP and/or CRM; but to continue to implement full business solution. This is what clients need; they don’t care what part of system it is, the just need to solve their problems and their requirements. And as the new business solution, we will have Dynamics 365 as business solution who cover most of the potential client’s needs. That means we will not sell e.g. ERP, but solution. In this solution we will see what real requirements client has and implement adequate Apps with adequate level of features. Price will depend of this, but we will don’t know prices, because of lot of changes. By my opinion, very important is that now we can combine Apps from ex Business Edition and ex Enterprise Edition. With this we will have more agility in implementation process. And of course, all of this will be integrated with Common Data Service. And even better, we can use CDS for our integrations. We can use not only Dynamics 365 Apps, but also PowerApps, Flow, Office 365, Power BI, 3th party Apps… as the same business environment.

Conclusion

The final message is by my opinion very clear and very positive. For both partners and customers. Don’t afraid, Microsoft will not stop with this amazing product. Rebranding is not canceling. But with new name, we will get still the same powerful product, but with the great new opportunities as well.

I can write probably more, but I think this is more than enough as the first wrap up after two Directions. Future of our product is a clear.

NAV 2018 after all

24/09/201724/09/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Dynamics, Dynamics 365 tenerife, Financials, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV 2018, NAV Tenerife, NAV2017

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.

My sessions on this fall conference season

19/07/201705/08/2017 atotovic Conference, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV BE, Conference, Congress, D365, Directions, Directions EMEA, Directions NA, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, EMEA, Flow, Manufacturing, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV2017, NAVUG, Project Management

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.

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

15/03/2017 atotovic Conference, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV CDS, Conference, CRM, Customers, D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, ERP, eXtreme 365, Financials, Flow, Marketing, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, NAV, NAV2017, O365, PowerApp, Sales

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.

NAV Cumulative Updates – February 2017

07/02/2017 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV Build, CU, download, Dynamics, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV 2015, NAV2013, NAV2013R2, NAV2016, NAV2017, NAVUG

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…

New Dynamics NAV Cumulative Updates

16/01/201720/01/2017 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV CU, Dynamics, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV 2015, NAV2013, NAV2013R2, NAV2016, NAV2017, PartnerSource

Today, Microsoft published on his blog that Cumulative Updates for all actual Dynamics NAV versions have been released. But when you try to go to these sites and download them, you will not be so lucky. You will ge a message that this site is currently unavailable.

If you look at the blog articles for NAV 2017 and NAV 2016, you will find information: The downloads are temporarily unavailable, we are sorry for the inconvenience. But you cannot find these information for older versions, but these URL’s still don’t work.

I found information on PartnerSource that the new system should be ready to go by Feb 2017. This info is published 3 days ago. I don’t know what to say. That means we cannot download any CU for any NAV version almost one month. I hope, this is only small misunderstanding and we will get some other ways to download everything we need.

If URLs start to work, you can download CU’s on the following links:

And if you want to try NAV 2017 CU2, I can suggest only one place: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/freddyk/2017/01/11/nav-2017-cu2-on-azure/

Temporary solution for all CU’s by Microsoft: if you can’t find a specific KB article via Microsoft Support Website contact itmbssup@microsoft.com.

New Development Tools for NAV

20/12/201620/12/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV D365, Dynamics, Dynamics 365, In-client Designer, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV2017, Visual Studio Code

Today, Microsoft has been published preview of new development tools for NAV as promised (before the Christmas). New tools are intended for extensions and apps development.

We have two tools:

The In-client Designer to make extensions in the client by consultants.
Visual Studio Code for building powerful extension and apps development, based on tables, pages and codeunits, using the new objects Page Extensions and Table Extensions.

You can start if you have your own Microsoft Azure subscription, using the following link http://aka.ms/navdeveloperpreview

More about it on Microsoft blog.

How to create your first Flow for NAV

12/12/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV D365, Dynamics, Financials, Flow, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, NAV, NAV2017

I hope you’ve already heard for Microsoft Flow. If you want to use this amazing small tool, you need to go on https://flow.microsoft.com. With this tool, you can connect a lot of different type of software. For example, you can connect Share Point, Outlook, Excel, Facebook, Twitter, OneDrive, Dynamics solutions, Google Calendar of File Drive, Yammer, PowerBI…

In this post, I want to show you how you can create a small Flow for connection between Dynamics 365 for Financials and Facebook. I used Financials only because it was easier for my demo, but you can do it the same with your NAV 2017 for example. Before you start with Flow, you need to publish Web Service you want to use in Flow.

To start, first click on My Flows and then on Create from blank (for this demo). If you want to use some of templates, you will choose Create from template.

Then you need to find some of Dynamics triggers. You can see on the following picture what you currently can use. If you want to create flow for NAV or Financials, you can use When a record is created or When a record is modified. In this example, I used When a record is created. And then you need to choose one of your connections to your solution or to create new one (be careful with username and password – Web Service Access Key).

After you finish it, you can choose some of your tables (based on published Web Services). I have chosen Customers, because I want example where Facebook will announce welcome, every time when I create new customer.

Then, I’ll click on the Next step to create step in Facebook. You need to find Facebook and to choose one of actions. I’ll choose Post to my timeline. And of course, you need to sign in to Facebook with some of accounts.

The type a message you want to post on your timeline and for this purpose you can use some of the fields in Customers table (from a right side).

After that if you already didn’t give Flow name for your Flow, just give some name and click on Create flow; click on Done and everything is finished.

Now, you can open your Financials or NAV and create a new customer. When you finish it, you will see that Facebook announce this on your timeline:

As you can see, this was very easy and you can do it on much easier way using already prepared templates. You can find a lot of templates for CRM (Dynamics 365 for Sales) or AX (Dynamics 365 for Operations). But you can also find few of them (currently 3) for Financials and NAV (I expect more and more soon):

Create an item in Dynamics NAV from PowerApps
Send a Push Notification for new Sales Orders
Post to Twitter on New Customers in Dynamics 365 for Financials