New Extensions for Project Madeira

27/06/201626/07/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Azure, Dynamics, extension, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Madeira, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Project Madeira, SaaS

When I run Project ‘Madeira’ for the first time, I found only three extensions there:

QuickBooks Data Migration
PayPal Payments Standard
Envestnet Yodlee Bank Feeds

All of them were created by Microsoft. But now, we can find eight of them (one new from Microsoft and few of them by ChargeLogic and Sana Commerce).

It looks nice to see new extensions here from other vendors. I hope we will have a hundreds of them in few months as well.

But I’m afraid about their visibility when we have a hundreds or thousands of them. I use brick view for the best visibility, and yes – search works fine, but I think we have to have some additional tags. Minimum I need is Category tag, because we will have a lot of completely different types of extensions (data migration, notifications, integrations, payment, some specific vertical or horizontal solutions, localisations,…). Also, it will be fine to have Market tab because some of extensions are for global market, but some of them will be only for some specific countries.

I expect to have some kind of rating as well. We will have a lot of similar extensions, and we need something for differentiation. I think these ideas can improve ‘Madeira’ experience. But it look it will be a great product.

Contacts in Project Madeira via Outlook Client

24/06/201626/07/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Azure, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Outlook, Project Madeira, SaaS

In the last few articles about Project ‘Madeira’, I wanted to show how to configure it and some basics about usage and limitations. Now, I want to show you how we can use Project ‘Madeira’ using our Outlook. First, just to know, to do it we need Exchange Online (I’m using O365).

In this example, I’ve got an e-mail from unknown person. If we use a small icon on the top on e-mail, system will as us what to do with this contact.

If I choose to add this contact as a contact in my Project ‘Madeira’, I can associate this contact with some of the companies… And everything without leaving my Outlook. If we don’t know how to use some of the fields, we need just to click on this field caption and we will get a small help.

Now if we want to edit this contact, we can do it using “Edit” button. Or if this is not so comfortable to you, you can choose “Pop Out” button to open this contact in independent window. We also can run some other processes, eg. creating opportunity, creating interaction, checking or creating a quote… or run statistic or send some of the reports (in file format you want).

If you run e-mail from this person some other time, system will recognize her as a contact. If this contact is not connected with a company, system will offer you this possibility. And everything is a live with your ‘Madeira’ database. You don’t need to leave your Outlook page.

NAV Gallery Image – PS Scripts Order

12/06/2016 atotovic Azure, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, Power BI, SQL Azure, Azure SQL, gallery, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV2016, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Power BI, PowerShell, Tips & Tricks

This week I have training about NAV and Azure and I used some examples in NAV 2016 Gallery Image on Azure.

This image is awesome, but sometime people doesn’t know what PowerShell script can be started before some others. For example, you cannot run “Use Azure SQL Database” and after that “Install Multitenancy”…

Because of that I wanted to make some small help to all people who want to use this NAV 2016 image. In the following, you can find a chart with order of using all PowerShell scripts. Now, you know how to configure all of them on the same VM.

Project Madeira – Tax and Email Setup

17/04/201626/07/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Dynamics, email, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV2016, NAVUG, O365, Project Madeira, SaaS, Setup, tax

OK, in previous mails, we’ve already made the basic configuration and data migration, but now we need to continue with “Madeira” setup. The next step is Sales Tax Setup.

When we start wizard, the tax group of TAXABLE is created. Then, we need to add sales and purchase tax accounts:

After that, we need to set up city tax rate, county tax rate and state tax rate. And, finally we need to choose for whom we want to add these tax areas.

You can notice, I speak only about taxes and not about VAT. This is because this “Preview” is only for US area.

After we configure taxes, we will continue with email configuration. We can choose between O365 or some other providers. If we choose O365 option, we just need to fill our User ID and password. But if we choose other, we need to fill more details: Authentication, SMTP Server and SMTP Port and of course, our credentials:

After we configured this, we can send test email from the wizard. And this will be all about configuration of tax and email. Very easy, right?

Project Madeira – Configuration

14/04/201626/07/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS App, Dynamics, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Madeira, NAV2016, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Project Madeira, SaaS, service

When you open “Project Madeira” for the first time, you will get access to the Cronus demo company with a Business Manager role center. Of course, you can this change role center, but you have not all role centers as you can find in standard Dynamics NAV solution. There are “only” five role centers:

But for this kind of software, it is more then enough. It is really everything what you actually need. Of course, you can create your really company. When you open My Setting, you can find how to change companies. You can choose Cronus as you actually use and “My Company”. When you choose “My Company”, you need to log-out and log-in, and you will get the wizard for company configuration. When you click “Next”, you will see the standard configuration questions. These questions are very simply and everybody can finish this questionnaire (the basic company data, bank data, accounting period… and that’s it):

You will get your production environment for your company. This wizard is simply and excellent and the most important, on this way you’ve just got your company in SaaS. You can continue your work.

This is just small intro about configuration. You can expect more soon.

Project Madeira – Preview

12/04/201626/07/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, O365, SaaS Dynamics, ERP, Madeira, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Madeira, O365, Office 365, Project, Project Madeira, SaaS

Today, Microsoft has published the first public preview of “Project Madeira”. I’ve just installed and opened this version. This will be the first Microsoft ERP as SaaS. Microsoft continues with their vision “cloud-first-mobile-first”. We can use this software as App on WP, iOS and Android phones and tablets and as web application. When you look this on the first sight you can see, it look like as Microsoft Dynamics NAV and this is basically NAV, but only in the root.

You will see, this system has only the basic features, something similar as Small Business Role Center in older NAV versions, but this is not the same. There are a lot very interesting things and this is only first impression about it, but it look awesome.

For example, you can see your items on three different ways (bricks, tiles or list) as you can see on this picture:

This is only one nice features and I need to check more to give you a complete user experience. I’ll spend few next days with Madeira and you will find more about this product soon. I expected something new and awesome, but this is really something amazing. Currently I can just repeat Microsoft words: Microsoft is reinventing business productivity with Project “Madeira.”

Power BI is a Global BI Leader

05/02/2016 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Power BI BI, Gartner, Magic Quadrant, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV2016, O365, Office 365, Power BI

One of the great new features in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 is natively working with Power BI. You can use this feature very easy using OData web service in NAV and copying this URL to Power BI when you try to use it. You just need to choose to import your content pack from Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Because of that, I want to write few words about this solution. This BI tool is not only for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, of course. You can use Power BI with i.e. other Dynamics product or with almost every database you want. This is is really powerful and modern tool for analyzing and visualization your data. And everyday is better and better. You can find a lot information about this product here and I don’t want to write about functionalities.

I’ve just wanted to show how other people outside Microsoft see this product. Gartner organized a huge survey about BI products and we can see this results in famous Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms. You can see that Gartner has positioned Microsoft as a Leader in this area. Microsoft is a leader for the ninth consecutive year, but for the first time, Microsoft is placed furthest in vision within the Leaders quadrant.

It means we can expect more and more capabilities and new benefits of this solution. Well done Microsoft.

How to Create CRM Online Trial Subscription

18/10/2015 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics NAV App, CRM, CRM Online, Dynamics, Integration, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, natively, NAV, NAV2016, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, onmicrosoft, portal, subscription, trial

I suppose all NAV people have already heard that NAV 2016 has natively Dynamics CRM Online integration. This is a really great feature in new NAV release. Probably most of you want to try how it looks like. If you don’t know how to create your trial CRM Online subscription or didn’t try it, this article is for you. I want to show you how to do it, step by step.

First open this web page. On this page, in upper right part, click the “Sign In”. You have to type your Office 365 account.

Now you need to confirm this order to get Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Trial with 30 day subscription for 25 users. After you confirm it, you will open your Office 365 Portal. You will see new e-mail with all instructions and I suggest read it. Click on Login and choose Admin.

Go to your Active Users on portal and add CRM license to you and your other users. You can do it clicking on Edit > Licenses > and check “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional”. Click Save.

Now you need to choose your CRM App, enter your domain name you already registered (*.onmicrosoft.com) and click “Continue Setup”.

You can find potential issue here. Maybe you will not see it, but it is possible. If you get the following error message, try do to next step:

You are not a member of this organization. You (YourAccount@XXXXX.onmicrosoft.com) do not belong to the organization YYYYY. Verify the organization name and try to sign in again.

Resolution: Click the “Sign Out” button on the page that you see the error on. Then log back in with the correct login to access your Dynamics CRM Online organization. This is because the cookies that are used in the Internet Explorer browser sessions are trying to use your previous credentials to login.

Then, you should confirm some details about your language, country and currency. Then click the “Finish” and you can start “get started video”.

And… You’re in! Click on your CRM Online URL you’ve got on this page (copy this URL because you will need it later and for integration with NAV 2016). Now you’ve opened your CRM Online and you have to assign security roles to the new user. You can do it clicking Assign Roles button on the top of the screen.

Now, assign security roles in CRM so this user can access your Dynamics CRM organization.

You can use your 30-days trial Dynamics CRM Online subscription. In next article, I will show how you can connect your CRM Online subscription with your NAV 2016.

After NAV 2016, NAV ‘Madeira’ Is Coming

06/10/2015 atotovic Conference, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Azure, Core, deployment, Directions, Directions EMEA, Mannheim, NAV, NAV Madeira, NAV2016, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, Prague, product

Unfortunately because of my backache, I cannot be involved in this year Directions EMEA as I really want. But I try as I can. On other side, I have more time to write.

Yesterday and today we’ve heard a lot of amazing news in NAV 2016. It is one of the best releases and I think we can say that people from Microsoft made awesome product. A lot of functional features and more technical really good things. We will speak about them in few following months. There will be a lot of documents, videos… I hope a new projects…

But what next. For now, we have information where will be the next Directions EMEA. It will be one of the most beautiful cities on the world – Prague, for the second time. And we also know what a code name of next NAV release is. It is NAV ‘Madeira’ and we can start to find it on an open see.

What we can expect in this new release? Currently, we know only few initial priorities, but it looks pretty good:

Office 365: Further enhanced “in” Office 365 experience
Azure: Pre-packaged Azure ML services
Core Product: Developer experience, More service integrations
Deployment: Fast set up, Easy configuration

A now, let’s start to use NAV 2016 and waiting for new features the next year in the same time.

What is a Cloud Sure Step?

12/08/201521/08/2015 atotovic Conference, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015, Azure, cloud, Conference, Directions, learn, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAVUG, O365, Office 365, R2R, Sure Step, WPC

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.

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.